Switching to my scout rat's vision, I could see that whatever was spying on me was too fast for my scouts to catch. My rats were able to get a glimpse of the thing which resulted in a few frames depicting a metallic drone, similar in shape to a dragonfly, that was buzzing above the ground. Ordering my scouts to attempt to follow the strange drone, I focus back on other things.
With the ferals taken care of, I and my drones not assigned to guard duty began the trek back towards the outpost, this time nearly entirely undisturbed. Once back at the outpost, I left my drones to their duties and slipped out of my vessel and over to the warehouse outpost.
While my drones and I were battling it out at the ferals drone works, the outpost had gotten their delivery of fresh supplies which I immediate began distributing into my drone works as I ordered up a sizable garrison of a dozen ants and hornets each along with a group of eight spiders to bolster the rather lacking on-site repair team.
Slowly but surely my drone works began fabricating the sizable order of reinforcements while I began planning out where to place the servers. It was not much of a decision, there was almost nothing of infrastructure blocking the construction of the servers, but I decided to simply order my spiders to begin building the servers in an empty corner of one of the warehouses.
I only had enough materials left over from the drone orders but it was enough to begin the process on a couple servers. I guess they will just have to wait until the next shipment of resources. Speaking of which, I switched perspectives to the factory where I promptly ordered up a baker's dozen new moose.
These moose would split up to join the already existing caravan and to create a new caravan specifically just to do close shipments between the mining outpost and the factory along with making the occasional trip to the vulture nest and tower trib for whatever reason may arise. Speaking of the tower tribe, I have recently been informed by my rat scouts that tribal citizens are starting to get restless after their leaders banned them from meeting with GW-3N for whatever reason.
This has resulted in more than a couple arrests according to my scouts but the tower tribe guards are beginning to chafe against their leaders as well. While this was interesting, it is not exactly my problem and thus I don’t put too much more thought into it aside from making a note to order my drones to potentially avoid the area while the tension is high.
Before I could begin considering doing anything else, my scout rats sent a message to me stating that they have tracked down that strange drone. Switching to their vision, I see that they were positioned in a high up building overlooking a compound of drones who were going about their business. From the perch which my drones were looking down from, I could see that these drones had a greenish hue to their joints so they were not MAI remnants which was good.
What was less good was the fact that there was now a new faction who, by the looks of it, were positioned a not significant distance away from me which was slightly worrying. They have not done anything hostile yet I remind myself. MAI might be the outlier rather than the rule. This did not stop me from ordering my drones to continue monitoring the compound, hopefully without being detected, but if they do get found out I did ask them to try and create a at least neutral diplomatic stance.
With that being said, I began counting the number of drones in the compound which ended with a garrison of around sixteen drones. At least twelve of the drones were of familiar design, that being a bunch of hounds and a couple hornets, but the remaining four looked to be something resembling the dragonfly drone which was spying on me while I was back at the feral drone base. I guess this is ment for reconnaissance if they have that many drones which I think are scouts of some kind.
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After watching the compound for a few more moments, I eventually decided to leave my scouts to their duties and so I floated back out of them and began managing my various outposts while I waited for something interesting to happen.
———
A few hours later and the majority of the spiders who will be working to construct the servers have finally finished being fabricated. Now that the new spiders were ready and the moose caravan had dropped off their cargo, I could now properly begin the construction which I promptly laid out the blueprints for.
With the blueprints down, my spiders immediately began work placing down and connecting plates, wiring together ports, and other technical jargon which I did not entirely understand. Above the construction sites were icons either saying that the server would be completed in a half day or that it was in queue and thus was not being worked on yet.
Based on the fact that I ordered a dozen servers for the first cluster and that only three of them were not saying that they were on queue, I deduced that it would be at least two days before they were all finished. I hoped that I would not need them before then. Grim worries about the possibility of an incoming war which could result from the soon to be contacted AI aside, I was happy to see my drones stationed at the warehouse outpost finally doing something productive aside from just protecting the outpost from feral incursions.
Anyways, with the warehouse outposts taken care of I switched my conscience over to the newly conquered autonomous mining center which was steadily gaining resources. The mining automatons had continued to work as if nothing had happened which was a stark contrast to the haulers which seemed to be lost now that their drone works were gone. The haulers stood stock still when there was nothing to do but when a miner dropped off their load or the refinery released a ingot of metal, the haulers all but threw themselves at the work as if they were starved for it which was not too far from the truth.
In order to combat their boredom, I had a few of my drones fetch them and bring them over to the newly formed caravan for reassignment which the automatons did not seem to mind. Despite the now diminished work force the automatons continued their work with only a minimal decrease in efficiency which was well within the acceptable margin of error.
The output of the automatons was unfortunately a significant portion less than the mining outpost due to the fact that the automatons were mining a much less resource dense area, however free metals are free metals and I am more than happy to supply a small garrison to the area against ferals.
Speaking of which, the amount of feral attacks has significantly decreased after my drones and I dismantled their drone works which was not too much of a surprise. This has left the garrison stationed at the water treatment outpost to go into a paranoid frenzy due to the fact that whenever drone attacks slowed, they were usually followed by large scale incursions which resulted in more than warranted amounts of paranoia in the garrison.
This state of affairs was slightly concerning but mostly harmless so I decided to leave them for now, even sending them to a few days of relaxation will do some good while my attack group subbed in for them. Never guessed robot PTSD was going to be a problem but here I am. Maybe I can transfer them to more peaceful areas like the factory.
Before my train of thought could continue down its track, I got a message from my scout rats stating that they are seeing something that I should take a look at. Switching vision to my rat scout, I could immediately spot what they were referring to as a sterile white figure strode into the compound which my scouts were monitoring.
The figure was of similar shape to my own vessel, although the comparison is made slightly moot due to the vessel's extensive modification. Those modifications that I could see from where my scout rats were watching from included a leaner form compared to the standard vessel along with what I think looks like small radar dishes which were constantly turning and adjusting.
An odd design but I am sure there is a reason for the modifications, honestly I would not mind having them. Perhaps they are meant for better sensors or maybe to control local drones more effectively. I stopped my musings once I noticed that the figure was now staring in my general direction. We’ve been spotted.