I release all of my drones from my direct command and so they all disperse to perform their designated duties. The hornets find vantage points while the hounds begin patrols. The spiders spread out and handle various repairs with their carrier moose in tow. Lastly the scorpions help out with smelting down the robotic corpses strewn all around the newly conquered outpost.

While they all do this, I hop out of my vessel and begin my usual checkups on all of my compounds. The main base is still doing well, the spiders have managed to scrounge up enough scrap to make those gates I requested and have started improving the 'walls' with some supports to help keep the clumps of loose concrete chunks together. The garrison have been fighting off the occasional group of enraged hounds without much difficulty due to the fact that many of their number could fly while the rabid hounds could not.

Moving on to the mining outpost I could see that it was going less well due to the substantially reduced number of defenders stationed there, not to mention the nonexistent fortifications in place. There was only the ten woodpecker drones and a triplet of fire beetles stationed there which would likely last only a dozen minutes if engaged by any large group of MAI forces. Thankfully, for the most part, the outpost had made it out without to many losses, having only had a few of their woodpecker lancers get picked off while they patrolled near taller buildings. The fire beetles have proven themselves quite capable in combat, although there were many times where they nearly resorted to self destruction before they were reinforced by their arial companions.

Checking on my current stash of resources in my main base I could see that it was still reeling from the last time I dipped into it but thankfully it had at the very least one more burst of drone production left in it before it would run dry. With that out of the way I ordered up a pair of mole drillers and another wing of five hornets, along with a spare moose to ferry resources back to base and a few replacement woodpeckers. As I order up the last of the needed drones, notification pops up and states that I am beginning to reach my administrative capacity.

Moving back to my base and more specifically my core, I find that I am indeed nearly at my maximum drone limit. Would building a second core fix that? Or is there a way I could upgrade my core? Checking both options, I find that I can do both if I so choose. Sure upgrading is a bit more expensive and likely more efficient, straight up building another core is considerably faster for whatever reason as it would only take around half a day compared to the two it would take to . Seeing as I will not need many more drones anytime soon, I go and have my spider drones begin working on improving the core.

Which begs the question, can my other structures be upgraded as well? Experimentally I open up the description of one of my small drone works and sure enough I see the upgrade button, although it was grayed out. Then as I look at the upgrade button more, something pops up in front of it saying that I need a level two core to upgrade the small drone works, which is a shame but not entirely unexpected.

deciding that for now my work here is done, I slide back into my vessel drone and begin wandering around, helping out wherever I can to pass the time.

———

Around two hours later, all of the reinforcing drones destined for the mining outpost have finished being fabricated and have begun making their way over to the outpost. After seeing all of them off, I hop back into my vessel drone and begin wandering around. Not seeing much to do, I resign myself to the duty of helping the scorpions with hauling the various drone corpses and clearing rubble off the various central paths.

As I continue working around the outpost, one of my far off rat scout teams reports that they have detected another attack group moving towards the mining outpost. According to them, the force is made up of three pairs of crab walkers, a dozen hornets, a fireteam of five scorpions, and eight hounds. Shit. I can't catch a break for the life of me. Thankfully my scouts report that it will take an upwards of a day and a half until they reach the outpost giving me ample time to prepare.

Dropping the chunk of loose debris, I order all of my drones to rally on me. Once they all gather around, I leave one of the scorpions and a few hounds behind to hold down the fort while we are gone as I start the machine back towards the mining outpost with my remaining retinue. Although before that I did send off my spider drones to fill up their moose transports with some various electrical components and alloys found around the warehouses.

———

A day of near constant marching later, and we arrive at the hilly exterior of the mining outpost. Entering the outpost proper, I see that the reinforcements have arrived around a half day ago and have already set up a few defensive measures without my instructions. The ingenuitive buggers have set up various defensive emplacements ranging from small peek holes in various buildings perfect for hornet ambushes, to pitfall traps with dozens of sharpened spikes arrayed in each and every one of them.

While the clever drones were doing that, the more ingenuative of their number spent a while drilling out a decent chunk of ores which were promptly smelted down into the much needed ingots for reinforcements, even if they were of the smaller variety. Deciding it was better to use up the materials now instead of having to wait for everything to be fabricated in the thick of battle, I ordered up another batch of five woodpecker lancers and a couple more of those fire beetles just in case I needed a bit more punch.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I do a quick head count of all the drones I currently have here on standby. At this moment I have a squad of five hounds, fifteen hornets, two scorpions, a swarm of soon to be fifteen woodpeckers, three fire beetles with another two on the way, and a pair of moles. At least our forces are somewhat evenly matched.

I start to disperse my drones to their defensive positions and once I finish with all that I begin to help out the leftover non-combatant drones set up a few more traps.

———

Another few hours later and my scouts report to me that the incoming drones are nearly upon us. Deciding to hop into the view of one of my said scouts, I have my drone face the approaching enemy drones as they march closer and closer to the web of meticulously constructed traps. Then one of their forward vanguard hounds steps onto a loose pile of rubble off the side of the road and promptly falls through the pitfall trap. I hear the thud of the poor drone all the way from the little viewing stand my scout rat is watching this all occur from.

The enemy formation seemed to realize what had just happened as they began to send in a few of their repair spiders. The poor sacrificial drones step around the road in search of the traps hidden, and eventually they find one but in the process activates it. They did not even have the chance to run as a few drones in a nearby building dropped a large chunk of rubble straight onto one of the spiders, crushing it instantly. Well that was kinda a waste, I think to myself wistfully, I was hoping to hit one of the crabs with that one.

But alas, the spiders continued on activating many of the prepared traps, sacrificing themselves in the process. Slowly but surely the main group of enemy drones shuffled forward getting ever so closer to my outpost. As their main cluster of drones reached the outskirts of the outpost clearing, my drones struck. Hornets fired off their salvo into the exposed sides of the enemy formation from the cover of various buildings, taking down a half dozen enemy hornets and damaging two of the back line crabs. Hounds charged forward and clashed with their counterparts in a bloody melee downing one of their opposing hounds immediately. Scorpions disabled a couple of the frontmost crabs with their stun beams. Woodpecker lancers swept through the air and picked off whatever was unguarded and exposed, managing to down another two hornets. And lastly, deadly fire flowed forth from the beatles strategically positioned underneath debris, hitting the moles that were beginning to burrow underground though to little success.

The enemy were quick to react as their own hornets fired down upon anything they could lock onto. A couple of my hounds were hit and as well were a few of my hornets unfortunately. Due to the loss of nearly half of the hounds, the ground engagement was going less than favorably. My hounds were beginning to be pushed back by their bow's slightly more numerous opponents. The only thing that was keeping my drones from being completely overwhelmed was the fact that the stunned crabs were stopping the others from moving forward.

Thankfully some support in the form of my swarm of woodpeckers that slammed into the undefined sides of the enemy hounds. My hounds quickly take advantage of the distraction and successfully bring down the few enemies that were not downed from the initial charge made by their bird support. As they do this, the stunned crabs begin to regain their motor function and start to advance all while swinging their large claws around, attempting to hit anything they could catch. They managed to hit a few of my drones but it was quite effective at forcing my lancers to keep their distance.

This did not deter my hornets from firing another salvo of spiky bolts into the enemy hornets and crabs. The hornets managed to down another three hornets as well as finish off the back most crab. Back over at the ensuing melee, my scorpions have decided that recharging their beams was taking too long and have joined their hound brothers. With this support my hounds finish off the last of their opponents and disengage.

Right on time too because as they began to retreat the two forward crabs pushed forward and slammed their claws into the ground and then fling debris all across the battlefield, hitting my retreating hounds and scorpions and flinging a few of my beetles off from their positions. Thankfully all but one beetle managed to get out from under the rubble but as they did, one of my scorpions was drilled into by one of the crabs.

To make matters worse, the three moles have split up and dug into some of the buildings that my hornets are hiding out in. I send over my own two moles to try and protect my exposed hornets but there are two many of them and so one of the enemy moles hunts down all of my hornets in the building. They were defenseless while they were rearming compared to the mole who easily took down two of my hornets before being pierced by the third who rearmed and fired their spike into the moles chest.

Now that just leaves the crabs.

My eleven - minus the one who shot the mole - remaining hornets take down the front most crab with their amassed fire. My woodpeckers all swooped into the back most crab, which was too distracted with finding where the hornets fire was coming from, and used the holes the spikes made to slice the crabs insides apart.

The final crab decided that the hornets were its priority and thus started to swing its gigantic claws and slammed them into the nearby buildings. This managed to hit three of my hornets as swaths of rubble were cast out onto the street.

As the crab was doing this, it did not notice one of the fire beetles crawl up and onto the belly of the crab. Then the beetle clamped down onto the crab and detonated its charge. A loud bang sounded off which was followed by the crab tipping over to the side and exposing the damage the beetle managed to do. There was now a small hole in the crab and inside said hole was the electronic guts which were all lit on fire and with various pieces of shrapnel lodged into it.

All of my drones lifted up their appendages or equivalent and I decided to join the chorus of cheers.