Over the following weeks, we set up the now properly incorporated Vanguard Enterprises. We partitioned the warehouse into two halls. The four Mack fabbers we took from the San Juan Mack base went into the front part with the loading docks and would produce our trade goods.

At the side, two large recyclers took form. I had finally found the time to reverse engineer and reconstruct the blueprint of the broken one I found at Styx base. Now the smaller fabricator at the shelter worked overtime to produce the parts for the new recyclers.

The rear part of the warehouse was going to hold the raw materials, mostly in the form of slurry stored in big tanks. It would be pumped to the fabbers as needed. Mack manufacturing tech relied a lot on such systems.

A group of contractors was installing the first set of tanks. Human-made in this case, from a chemical plant that underwent modernization and sold us the old equipment cheaply. Once some of the Mack fabricators were connected, we would use them to make further equipment ourselves.

Finally, at the top of the warehouse, directly below the skylights, we would add an apartment for Wendy.

Tuesday, November 17th 2048

Of course, if we had expected to build up undisturbed by the Macks, we were wrong. I was at the Vanguard Enterprises site and had just started a production run of parts for the raw material storage, when Elya piped up

There is a new Mack incursion from the north. The center of the fighting is at Swartz Bay, and the Macks are pressing towards the south.

The metal pests were out in force. It was one of the biggest emergences since I arrived in this reality. It was also uncomfortably close, as Vanguard Enterprises was on the north side of the airport.

Fortunately, we were in decent fighting shape. Wendy had her own armor and Shiv, and we both had helmets in matching design now. We looked like some kind of fantasy warriors in shining silvery armor.

For support, I had manufactured a dozen of the Lesser Battlecats, half of which I kept at the shelter and half at Vanguard Enterprises. As well as a bunch of Spectracopters for recon and some of the point defense Type Fours to keep the Sixes away. Now the investment in killbots would hopefully pay off.

I had, however, noticed in earlier fights that coordinating my bots could be difficult. So I asked

“Elya, what can you offer in terms of command & control software? I want something that gives me a better overview of what my bots are doing, and a more efficient way of directing them.”

There is the Class I Command and Control Utilities Catalog for 100 points. It contains a wide variety of hard- and software products for your needs.

I recommend the “Sauron’s Eye” software suite for 40 points, which your existing augs can easily run. It shows both your units and enemy units on a minimap, auto-maps previously unknown areas and offers an augmented reality mode that will show you units behind walls based on recon data.

For directing your units, you can use various eye movements and blink codes like you would use a mouse on an antique computer.

“Sounds like a good idea. I’ll take both.”

Class I Command and Control Utilities unlocked

Purchased: “Sauron’s Eye” C&C suite

New balance… One token and 4052 points

I took the time to go through the tutorial. In the corner of my vision the promised minimap showed up, with my six Battlecats showing up as blue dots. It looked very much like an old fashioned RTS game.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

This held true as I sent them through a series of waypoints. The area in their view range showed up in detail, but once my units left the area it was covered in a gray veil that indicated the place was now unobserved.

Finally, the augmented reality function showed hidden units as outlines on the walls between me and them. What surprised and pleased me was the built in estimate of how solid those walls were. I could work with that…

Wendy arrived with a silvery gray specimen of the “Kuddly Kitty” robot cat in her arms, a special version with a spray gun in its tail.

“Cait, does Picasso get his debut today?”

“If it makes sense in the situation, yes!”

A few minutes later, I had my tame Mack-copies around me, a Spectracopter aloft and I proceeded on foot northeast towards the Patricia Bay Highway. More Spectracopters were sitting at the warehouse, ready to take off in case we needed more recon capability.

Wendy followed in my van at some distance, in case we needed to make a quick retreat. I had briefly considered shooting the Macks from above with the Explorer, but the area was densely covered with buildings and there were enough tunnels and underpasses in the area that the Macks could mostly hide from air units.

Soon my new minimap showed a rash of red pustules over Swartz Bay and the marinas around the Blue Heron Basin. The Macks at the BHB still seemed to be in the process of setting up, but at Swartz Bay the fighting was in full swing.

HANAF had established a defensive line on the southwest side of Swartz Bay, but they were hard pressed from the direction of the harbor and in danger of being flanked from the east. Perhaps we could do something about the latter.

The Macks had apparently learned to go after HANAF’s recon capabilities, as I could see Type Six Macks chasing the few HANAF drones over the sky. The operators were pretty skilled at evading the Sixes, but every now and then one managed to hit a drone and drag it into fiery death alongside itself. The Spectracopter remained unmolested, presumably its stealth was good enough that the Macks did not detect it.

“Elya, can you patch me into HANAF’s C&C network? I’d like to fill the holes in their reconnaissance.”

Certainly. Do you want to feed the recon data right into their net?

“Yes! And show their data too!” Seconds later, my minimap was populated with more enemy locations, displayed in orange.

“What’s with the orange?”

HANAF recon data is not as precise and up to date as ours. The color shows which data points are inferior.”

An irritated voice came over the HANAF voice channel. “What the fuck are these new blips on the screen?”

I replied “This is Vanguard Command, Lieutenant McCallan speaking. We noticed a hole in your drone coverage and are plugging it!”

“And who the fuck are you? I never heard of Vanguard Command!”

A familiar voice interjected ”I recognize that interloper. She is not a regular officer, but has proven her usefulness before. On my authority, the mortar troops are to use her recon data for targeting.”

I recognized the voice of Colonel Briggs, the commander of the HANAF artillery units.

Soon I could see the mortar rounds flying across the sky, highlighted by the late afternoon sun. Gleaming specks of death came down on the unprotected Macks at the beach. Fortunately, they had not learned yet to protect their Twenty-Ones against attacks from above. I had a nagging concern that the key word might be “yet”.

On the ground, we advanced towards the highway near the BHB. On the far side of the highway was a mix of new apartment blocks, some industrial buildings and a few old family homes the owners had not sold.

On the near side, at the bend of the highway west of the basin, there were some buildings that promised a decent field of fire up and down the highway. I directed my little group towards one of these. We broke in with a paw swipe from a Battlecat.

I instructed Elya, aloud so Wendy could listen in: “Unless I utilize them otherwise, Battlecats focus on neutralizing Mack Battlecats and Magical Mack Girls. Try not to hit the heads of the latter.”

From behind me, Wendy asked “You care about them?”

“Sure, like I cared about you. Most are victims rather than willingly serving the Macks. I think Amanda AKA Shaver Bitch was an outlier, and even she realized she made a mistake at the end.”

Rushing headfirst into the Macks seemed a bad idea, so we fortified the building we had chosen and settled in, waiting for either an attack by the Macks or for an opportunity to catch some of them unprepared.