The figure in the sky, which I now could fully identify as a large bird looking machine, swooped down towards my scout rats with a predatory gleam in their eyes while the sun shone off of their metal skin. My scout rats correctly interpreted this as an obvious threat and immediately began racing back towards the factory doors while I regretted having my scouts move away from the factory in order to interact with those colorful cats.
Evidently the large bird was faster than my scout rats as it soared down and scooped up one of my drones with a set of sharp claws. Up above the scout rat I was inhabiting, I could hear the sickening crunch before I heard the bird prepared to swoop down again. And so it did, this time grabbing the scout rat I was seeing through and lifting it to the air.
My scout struggled and bit against the bird which, now that I looked at it closer, resembled a vulture but unfortunately it proved to be ineffective before the vulture landed on a rooftop of a building, raised my scout rat up to its beak and chomped. Then everything went dark.
———
"Ugh, not again." I groan to no one in particular as my non-corporeal form struggles to focus through a headache which should not be possible seeing that I do not have a head but here I am. Eventually the pain dissipates and my eyes begin working again which allows me to see that I am in the same room that I had originally started in when I first awoke here.
As much as that sucked, it's good to know that I do not die with my drone if I am inside of them at the time. Still sucked though. I grimaced as another wave of headache pain washed over me for no particular reason. Eventually I got up and floated over to the drone works where I ordered up a couple replacement rats since I had lost two of them.
Thankfully, one of the rats had managed to get inside the factory and the vulture thing did not follow inside. So, as reward for being the only one of its squad to make it back alive, I decided to leave the rat in command of the two newly rebuilt drones and told them to keep an eye out for when that vulture leaves and to begin searching the surrounding area once it does.
With them doing their thing, I began roaming around the factory grounds, occasionally pointing out a chunk of scrap metal which I could direct my spiders to haul over to the refinery. At one point I made my way down to the still being constructed core, spotting GW-3N laying down in their little room, where I found that the core still had two hours left until it would finish.
Huh, that's odd, it could not have been more than a half hour since I ordered it. Oh wait a minute, had I been unconscious for a whole hour? With the implications of being knocked out during something important or dangerous fully digested, it further incentivised me to not look through my drones eye’s in a combat situation. Then again, watching the robots fight is cool enough that I might want to stay.
Telling that part of my brain where to shove it, I spent a couple dozen minutes just watching my spiders go through the slow process of repairing the core until I was so rudely interrupted by a message from those scout rats who had departed not twenty minutes ago.
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Looking at the message, it reads that they had discovered an anomaly which I should take a look at which I was slightly hesitant to do with the last incident still fresh in my mind. Eventually I gave into my curiosity and slipped into my scout rat’s vision and was immediately greeted with what was so easily encapsulating my drones attention.
From the partially collapsed ruins of a particularly tall building, my drones stared fourth towards a several story tower which stood proudly in the sunlight. And, more importantly, on one of the sides of the tall tower was the same symbol which Red and GW-3N had on them. I began slightly regretting not stopping Red from running away.
Welp, it’s not like I can change the past. I internally sign to myself while ordering my scouts to keep an eye on the tower while they continue searching around the ruins. For a few minutes the less cautionary part of me decided to stay in the drones vision for a time, curious for might be in the rubble.
Eventually I find my curiosity was not misplaced as my scout drones and I spot a glimmer of light emitting from one of the rubble piles. My scout rats slowly approached the source of the light and eventually we saw that it was coming from somewhere underneath the outer layer of rubble. Carefully, my scout rats dug through for a time before the leader, the one I was watching from, fell down as the ground underneath them gave way.
Once the dust cleared, I could not help but smile as I laid my eyes upon the source of the shine. Covered in a thick layer of steel, with large hydraulic looking mandibles, and a set of six heavy duty legs was a robotic ant the size of a large dog. My scout rat scuttled towards it and I could see that the thing was not online and would likely be safe to touch.
Then my scout rat’s eyes began emitting a grid of lights which began panning across the ant’s limp body. A couple of moments later and a screen spreaded right in front of me and on the very top of the screen read the Armored Carrier Arthropod.
Reading further, I see that the Armored Carrier Arthropod, or the ACA was a medium sized low distance hauler meant to move large and usually heavy crates or other such containers. However they were extremely slow due to the extra compensators which were required to allow the ACA to not crumple underneath the weight which they were designed for.
Additionally they were used as a strong defensive drone to protect from animals farther away from the hive cities reach which I could understand after all the same hydraulics which keep the drone standing under pressure can stomp onto an unexpecting wolf or fox. It also states that due to its slow speeds it can often be prayed upon if it is without an escort. Lastly it says that it needs to be constructed in a Medium drone works which unfortunately do not have.
Well then, I suppose I’ll have to wait until I can find a Medium drone works. Maybe there’s a blueprint for it somewhere around here. Ordering my scouts to continue to search, I retire back into the factory watching the various spiders meander about.
———
A few hours later, once the sun had nearly set, my scout rat’s reported that they had found something. Switching to their vision, I saw that they had found a factory section which looked to have been connected to the upper floor of the one which I had started off in. The connection looked to have collapsed down into a heap on the ground and it certainly would not be working anytime soon.
it’s not like I would have been able to get there seeing that the stairs up to the second floor are still covered in rubble. Nevertheless, there is definitely something within the factory segment and my drones are here to find it. My scouts scurried forward and soon found an opening in the wall of the factory segment and began to wriggle through.