I was roused from my sleep by one of my spider drones who looks to have been prodding me for the better part of four minutes. Standing up and looking across the landscape, I watch as my many drones hustle about, performing their duties with diligence. Over by the main road, which leads to the subway station, I could see my caravan of moose who were quickly approaching the outpost. Perhaps a tad too quickly.
As they got closer, I spotted what had gotten them in such a hurry. A small group of s8x or so feral hounds were close on their heels and were steadily gaining on my moose who were slowly getting tired. With those feral hounds approaching, I quickly scramble a wing of hornets and some scorpions to prepare to engage with a few hounds who were guarding this side of the facility.
My moose caravan barrels towards and past my drone lines right as my hornets open up the battle with a quick salvo which only a couple of them. Then my scorpions fired off a few stun beams hitting another two which was shortly followed by my three hounds charging forward to finish the job. Once the fighting had finished, I checked on my hounds to find that, thankfully, they had only taken a few scrapes and bites from that engagement.
With that all taken care of, I walked over to my small caravan of moose who had begun off loading their cargo. I called over some of the scorpions who were beginning to disperse and order them to help haul these materials inside. As they grumpily begin to haul the components inside of the outpost proper, I notice my brand new equipment.
Picking up my replacement blast shield and mace, I give it a few swings to get used to the weight and length of my new weapon. I get the temptation to whack a few feral hound corpses to see how hard it hits but I decide that it would probably be counter productive to be destroying recyclable materials which could be turned into more drones. Looking over to some nearby buildings I get an idea and begin sifting through them.
Soon enough I had a wooden cabinet out on the open road acting as my makeshift practice target, although I do not think it can get much more complicated than just swinging the mace at the target and hoping it crumples. Taking a few steps away from the cabinet, I quickly burst forward and smashed my hammer into its rather fragile wooden form. The mace went through the cabinet like, well a metal mace through a really old and frail cabinet and wooden shrapnel sprayed all over.
"Well this will certainly do" I mutter to myself as I store the mace into my satchel. As I walk back to the entrance to the facility, I see the moose caravan running off back in the direction of the subway station along with a half dozen hounds following alongside them. Entering the outpost, I begin walking through the snaked corridors all the way into the production room.
Opening up the large drone works, I use up the majority of my newly derived supplies on a pair of armored variant crabs. I also spent the remaining materials on replacing the last few drones who were lost at the ambush site along with a squad of spiders to be garrisoned at this outpost. With all the drone fabricators doing their things, I exited the facility and began to help out around the outpost with various tasks and scaring off the occasional feral.
———
An hour and a half or so after the first armored crab came online, I got a notification from one of my ant gate guards that something might need my attention. Popping out of my vessel and over to the main factory base, I see nothing obviously out of the ordinary. Floating over to the gate guard who requested my attention, I find them conversing with a lead rattling scout.
They both notice my presence and snap to attention and so I ask, "what was the matter? Something wrong with the solar panels or something?" The two drones shake their heads and the rat scout drags over a tablet and types out a short message which read that their subordinates have been reporting odd rumbling sounds within the subway tunnel and they are now requesting permission and a mole to dig around where the noise is coming from.
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After a few moments of deliberation, I give the go ahead and my scout bows their head and scurries off to presumably begin marshaling the rest of their squad for the incoming mission. I turn away to go and order up a mole for the scout rats but my ant guard chitters to get my attention.
Looking over to the drone curious, I ask, "I'd there something else that needs to be discussed?" The ant then plugs one of its legs into the tablet, using the same kind of USB transformation that I had used, which then began to display a request for additional reinforcements in the case that what is making the noises coming from the subway tunnels turns out to be less than friendly.
I considered how well the current garrison could factory base before coming to the conclusion that it would not hurt to have a few extra drones on standby. I inform the ant guard that I would see to the construction of a few extra troops before gliding over to my drone works.
Opening the menu, I take a few minutes to decide on what might be helpful in the garrison before deciding on a wing of five EMP hornets, a half dozen scorpions, and two squads of five hounds each to patrol outside of the barricades and retreat back if they spot hostiles. I briefly considered constructing a crab or two before deciding against it since they could not do anything that one of my other drones could also do.
The only thing that I could think that they would be helpful with would be tanking some of the hits that might have been directed at my ranged drones but my hornets could fire from quite afar and my scorpions could stick their tails over the barricade while keeping the rest of their body in cover.
Not seeing anything else to do and not having much reason to go back into my vessel just yet, I drift over to my mining outpost. Immediately, I could see that the new crabs have arrived and are already being put to work. The crabs have been working hard and the large pile of metal is the budding fruit of their labor.
They have been clearing out the mines to the point where I might have to begin worrying that I will deplete the massive ore vein that my moles have been mining so far. Not that I am complaining about having too much resources, it could never hurt to have a sizable stockpile of materials.
With the moose caravan on its way back, the on site storage building has been filling up with no one available to move it. Shifting back to the factory I decide to order up another batch of five cargo moose on top of the drones already in queue which have just hit the halfway point on producing the first two hornets.
Hopping over to the warehouse outpost, I see that the nomadic tribe have begun packing up to begin the trek further south, away from MAI. My drones garrisoning the outpost look to be a little upset about having to go back to guarding the area that the nomads had been taking care of but they give the robots a farewell before going back to their duties.
With all of the other bases covered, I begin drifting back over to the newest addition to my outpost collection, the water treatment facility. Opting to float around for a bit rather than walking around in my vessel, I surveyed my scattered drones who were patrolling the outside of the facility. The abnormal abundance of feral drones have been constantly prodding at my defenses which has unfortunately caused a few hounds to be severely injured or killed from fighting off large groups of ferals.
My hornet force has been relatively unharmed as they only had to deal with the occasional sneak attack from a feral or two while they were landed on various roof tops and thus have only taken light damages which are repaired easily enough. The scorpions were in the same boat as the hornets except the scorpions are better melee fighters and more often than not a hound or two are close enough to offer assistance.
Lastly, the ants have been patrolling with the hounds but, due to their heavier armor, they have sustained much less injuries than their canine counterparts. Ordering up the replacements for the lost hounds, I tell my ants to stay in front of their less armored comrades in the hopes that the ants will take the hits rather than my hounds biting the dust.
With all that taken care of, I begin making my way to my vessel drone before I get a sudden fairy of alerts from the drones in my mining outpost. Shifting myself to the outpost, I am immediately met with my drones scrambling around as familiar red glowing drones charge from out of the ruins and wreaking havoc on my unprepared drones.