As my eyes begin to adjust to the sudden darkness which has engulfed the room, I hear the screeching of metal on metal coming from one of the other machines. The faint glow from my drones was enough to let me see that a mole had just crawled out of the hydrogen generator which now had a large hole in the middle of it. Thankfully my scorpions were also able to see the mole as they fired off their beams straight into it and my hounds ran up and tore up its stunned form.
Calling over the repair teams to repair, or more likely replace, the hydrogen generator I begin to split up my drones into two groups. Each of the groups was made up of three hounds and two scorpions and both groups were sent off to begin scouring the rest of the facility's various corridors. Leaving the two squads to their work, I begin to collect the various corpses for recycling.
———
A half hour and a couple of my drones later, the last of the enemy drones have been rooted out and eliminated. Soon after, my repair team finished patching up the generator enough for everything to power back on. Sending the repair team to tend to the remaining wounded, I walk over to the modification station. Opening up the menu for the station, I saw small avatars of all of the drones I had blueprints for.
Clicking on the spider drone avatar, it shows me a list of a bunch of basic modifications like extra plating or serrated jaws. At the bottom of the list of available modifications was a small block of text stating that I would need to find blueprints or examples of modifications before they become available. Flipping to my hornets, I see that I already had the modification for the EMP cannon which replaces the spike launcher.
I select the EMP modification which then becomes highlighted and a button lights up which is labeled "Save Variant Design" with a small note stating that I could select more than one modification at a time. Not seeing any other modifications that I was particularly interested in adding, I press the button which then notifies me that the new hornet design has been added to the available drone blueprints.
Speaking of which, I walk over to the resident medium drone works and begin to order up replacements for the fallen drones and a wing of five EMP hornets along with them. I thought about fabricating a few crabs for the mining outpost but after looking at my remaining stock of materials, I decided to settle for requesting the next delivery from the mining outpost to be rerouted to here. Then, as if sensing what I have not even finished thinking about, the scout group exploring the subway tunnels reported that they had found another station around thirty minutes away from my new outpost.
I decided to send over a third of my repair spider with a pair of hounds as escorts to check for anything that needed fixing up so that the subway train could pick up the supply moose to deliver the requested supplies. But after a few moments of thinking, I realize that the crabs or any large drone I produce here likely will not be able to fit in the subway train. Thus they would all be forced to take the multi-day trip if I wanted to send any to the mining outpost or my factory home base.
On that thought, I slip out of my vessel before hopping over to my factory headquarters to begin calling over the spider team station there. I ordered them to begin working on constructing the large drone works in the main factory room but after seeing how large the holographic display of the machine, I realized that with the current drone works where they are it would become quite tight in the room. After a few dozen minutes of my drones reorganizing the placement of my medium and small drone works, we manage to squeeze the large drone works into one side of the room and still maintain a wide enough walkway for the large drones to leave.
As my spiders begin construction, I decided to check up on everything while I am here. Drifting around the base, I remember that I now need a replacement for my blast shield after what happened to it last time. Scooting my invisible form over to the fabricator, I order a new blast shield before absentmindedly perusing the other pre-designed equipment. Eventually my eyes settled on a short but thick mace which would definitely help with smashing open holes, at least better than my javelins did to that spider.
I see that the moose deliveries have been steadily flowing in as around half of the containers in the storage room have been filled to the brim. I also see that Flock patrols have occasionally been seen monitoring the areas around the factory and according to some of my ant guards they have helped out when feral drones try to attack the base. The ant guards managed to convey this to me by having their smaller escorts write on some of the tablets that have been found around some of the buildings which had been deconstructed for materials.
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My guards also informed me that GW-3N has been visited by some people from the tower tribe who had been let in upon request by GW-3N, although with some hesitation and a few drones left to keep track of them during the duration of their stays. Good for her, she likely has been quite bored with only the admittedly difficult to converse with drones for company. On that note, I tell my guards to lessen the monitoring and to give them some privacy by only placing guards by important things like the drone works, the storage room, the solar panels, and the core.
With that taken care of, I drift over to the mining outpost to check up on things over there. Checking the mines first, I see that the moles have stripped a considerable chunk of the ground beneath the outpost which has managed to produce just a little bit less than the amount of alloys being shipped off to the factory. Looking around the rest of the outpost, I realize that it is actually quite sparse for activity aside from the mines. Sure there was the constant patrol around the facility but aside from that there was only the near constant stream of ores coming from the mines and to the refinery and from the refinery to the storage room.
After a few minutes of brainstorming things to do in the mostly empty outpost, I decided to leave it as is and mentally noting that I needed to work on it. With nothing else to do here, I pop over to the warehouse outpost and begin the same usual check up as the last two. Starting with the nomads, I see that they have settled in just fine and seem to have been enjoying the safety which has been provided by the garrison. I also spot that a few of the more able bodied nomads have begun some scavenging of the nearby half constructed buildings.
According to the garrison here, the nomad scavengers have been using the refinery to process the metal that they found and have been giving a portion of their findings to my drones as a sort of payment which I am not adverse to. My drones stationed here have been occasionally activating the chemfuel generator, which has been deactivated since I had not needed to use any of the larger machines, when some of the nomads asked if we had any kind of power source which they could recharge themselves at.
After another quick sweep of the outpost, I find that the crab that my drones had captured is still here. Drifting over to the prisoner crab, I check if I am able to convert the large drone which I assumed was yes after no notifications appeared to halt me from doing so. Perhaps now that I have the large drone works I can convert large drones. I mused to myself. I have one of the hornets ask the crab if they were willing to join me and my troops.
The crab began to look contemplative before rubbing some of their legs together which confused me for a second but I decided to pass it off as a weird quirk that the crab drones have once I see them change color. I get confused when the crab's lights turn multi-colored, half being a neutral gray and the other being my blue. My hornet interpreter relayed to me that the crab had decided to unalign with its previous ruler but had also chosen to join me for as long as I am able to provide repairs and other such maintenance with the one condition being they could leave at any point if they so wished.
Not finding anything wrong with that, I left them to their devices although I did ask a few of my hornets to keep an eye on them, just in case.
Moving on to my newly captured outpost and into my vessel. Opening my mechanical eyes once more, I find that the room I was completely empty of my drones save the ones undergoing construction. Walking back out of the facility, I see that my drones have already begun patrolling my new territory and have already repelled a few feral drone attacks. It seems that this area has an abnormal amount of ferals wandering about, as spotted by my vultures who have been acting as lookouts for my ground forces.
With that in mind, I ordered up a batch of eight ants and a complement of sixteen woodpeckers with the supplies pilfered from the corpses of the feral drones that attacked my outpost. I realize that out of context, that sounds very bad guyish but it is not like saying a bunch of strangers are going to read this on a hypothetical app on a hypothetical device, right? Shoving those ludicrous thoughts aside, I decide to go and check on the drones I sent over to the subway station but as I search for their signals, I find no trace of them. Then I get a glimmer of hope as, for a few seconds, one of my spider's signals manages to slip though whatever was blocking it before swiftly ending.
According to my map, the signal came from around the halfway point to the subway station. Calling over all of my available drones aside from the ant guards and their escorts, who are only at a fifth of their number, I begin to march in the direction of my spider's last location. I begin to have a foreboding feeling that the drones I sent out are not going to be coming back.