“On the lookout for cheap whores? Fresh drugs? A mix of both? The Rose Carpet is where it’s at, brother. Or sister, we serve all!”

- Rose Carpet Advertisement, 2052

My new drones were quite different from the rest of my army, by design. It had been costly, and I did have to reduce the number of Nanite clones I planned to get by one, but I thought it was worth it.

Well, first things first. The two Nanite drones that I did get, the Mark XVI Quasi-Sentient Hive, were just as awesome as advertised. Perfect copies of my current body, they were advanced enough to even mimic my behaviour, at least to a degree. I was pretty sure Kaysa was having a lot of fun trying to frustrate me with my own behaviour. Not that I minded, actually I loved it. Already I could imagine a lot of potential shenanigans.

Each of them had cost me 2180 points, although for one of them I had to grab an additional Mark III General Utilities Nano Swarm AIO. Technically I could have the one do the job for both, but it was hideously inefficient, and I wasn’t hurting for points, so the 270 points weren’t an issue.

Each Nanite drone had enough nanites dimensionally stored to replicate even Chloe in full size, and if I combined them both I could make a perfect replica of Dominium Fortress, giant Mech armor included.

As we had discussed, Kaysa had full control over them. I got their feeds, and could technically override Kaysa to take control myself, but that would kind of defeat the purpose.

Despite their awesomeness though, I only looked them over briefly, before I looked over to the real treasure of this haul. My own personal squad, consisting of five drones. Originally I wanted a sixth, but even with my ridiculous point gain that was out of my budget. Each of them individually cost over 2000 points, which was just stupid for their use, but I wanted to make sure I was prepared for whatever the xenos might throw at me.

If not in combat they almost looked like normal people, a squad of sexy women to follow me around. Of course, if one looked closer they would realise that the clothing was made out of fur, chitin, and some Nantire swarms specifically for that very job.

Not that I planned to have them parade around, all of them had full stealth capabilities and could hide in plain sight. It had made it quite difficult to fit all the other things in that I wanted, which is why they ended up so hella expensive.

In combat they could produce two additional arms, and a tail, both hidden behind chitinous plates that could organically fold out. It meant that I had very limited space to work with on the inside, which was why they looked so curvy. Even with dimensional shunting, which I only had very limited access to until I got another token to upgrade my Mythical Kitsune Catalogue, I could only fit so much in the regular body mass, while still keeping enough space for all the biologically needed stuff.

Anyways, besides the additional arms and the tail, each of them had an array of weapons and tools, although those were not the same for every drone. I had two dedicated assassins, meant for high burst damage potential to neutralise any threat as fast as possible. They couldn’t tangle with big threats over a long period of time, but they could kill even a model Twenty-One quickly and decisively if they got the drop on it. Of course, that wasn’t a guarantee, but it was better than the alternative.

One of them also had the biological equivalent of a sniper rifle, for long distance work, although since I would be the one aiming, since they were still part of my Hive-Mind even if they had a lot more independence than the rest of my drones, I wasn’t counting on it too much. Maybe once I got a proper targeting system, or maybe even training.

Another two drones were meant for heavy defence. They could deal with the small fry, anything up to an M5, but they weren’t meant for fighting. Their task was to keep me safe, no matter the circumstances. That meant heavy armor, shields, shield projectors, basically whatever I had at my disposal to put between me and the aliens. That had actually been the biggest challenge to do, considering that I wanted them non threatening looking outside of combat, and able to fully stealth. Luckily Dominium Fortress had an item in one of her catalogues that had enabled this, otherwise I would have been shit out of luck on these ones.

And lastly, of course, I had a dedicated healer. It had the ability to buy any item from my medical catalogues, which basically meant a blanket approval from me to allow Kaysa to buy whatever was needed for me, if I was not capable of doing it myself. Technically Kaysa wasn’t allowed to give a drone full purchasing authority, even on my say so. It also had a built in training chip to be able to perform basically whatever medical task it needed to on a human body.

Something I hadn’t counted on, but was very happy to hear about, was that over time, as my Hive-Mind grew and I got properly connected to all my drones on a deeper level, this training would become part of my own knowledge base, which meant that I could skip one of the biggest issues such downloadable training usually entailed: The formation of fake memories as the brain tried to cope with the sudden new knowledge.

My new personal squad complete, I nodded approvingly. Chloe and Jenna had wandered off for their own upgrades, although what exactly they were getting, or planned on getting, I didn’t know yet.

Jenna’s Mobile Fortress had just arrived and she was busy upgrading it. From the distance I hadn’t realised just how massive the damn thing was, a lot bigger than I had originally thought.

The Legion Enforcer, as Jenna called it, was a bit different from the vehicle from that old TV show. Instead of the four smaller weapons at the front, it had two slightly larger ones, with an additional smaller turret underneath for smaller targets. Since it was meant to act as a primary supply fortress a good chunk of its internals were dedicated to Sentinel Production. Jenna had mentioned that it lacked carrying capacity because of it, but from the little I had talked to her about it she already had some ideas on how to solve that issue.

What really stood out about it though was the clash with the rest of her theme. The Legion Enforcer did have some Egyptian imagery, but instead of the sandy browns, with silver, gold, and violet decorations, it looked a lot more sci-fi, with different shades of grey. It didn’t look unfitting, but at first glance it could be mistaken for a different Samurai’s base.

Chloe for her part had gotten more weapons, which was no surprise. It made me curious where she stored them all, since I had seen her with more weapons than anyone could reasonably carry, and most of them were no longer visible anywhere.

“Oh, that’s simple,” she said when I asked her about it, “I got a dimensional storage upgrade. Was hella costly, but it reached a point where I could no longer reasonably carry them all, and it seemed like a waste to just throw them away.”

We were standing together, waiting for the others to come back. Our assault was supposed to start in a couple of minutes, and even though I tried to keep calm, I was a bit anxious about it.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Or maybe that was just Chloe being so close to me. It didn’t help that I could hear her breathing, her heartbeat. I could smell her scent, almost taste it.

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked, giving me another worried look.

I sighed. “I’m not sure. I hope I am, hopefully all this emotional mess will sort itself out soon. It’s… making it hard to think around you. Honestly, I feel like a teenage boy who’s seeing a naked woman for the first time.”

She snorted at that, giving me a wry smile. “You really got hit in the hormones, huh?”

“Kind of? Not really, to be honest. The upgrade didn’t change my body, it’s more like it’s an echo chamber for all my emotions to bounce to my drones and back.”

My explanation was a bit lackluster, since there had been at least some change outside of that, but it was hard to find the right words for it, and honestly I didn’t want to worry even more.

“Is that the reason you told me that you loved me?” she asked, acting casual but I could hear from her heartbeat that she was anything but.

My face flushed a deep red, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. “Uhm… maybe… not entirely?” I muttered, cursing my current condition.

Before I could say more she pulled me into a hug, “I’m glad. I feel the same, I think, but I also don’t want to rush anything. We don’t know each other that long yet, and I would hate to make a spur of the moment decision that hurts us later on.”

I simply nodded, not trusting my voice at that moment, since my brain was already busy conjuring up any conceivable excuse for that to not matter, that we should just give it a go and see how things went.

Rationally she was right, but that rationality was having a hard time being heard, and I was in half a mind to just screw being rational.

Then again, I was self-aware enough to know that until that upgrade I had felt very similarly. Even if my mind was telling me that I was just dragging my feet, afraid of it all.

Ugh, I hated this. In five minutes we would start attacking a Hive, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to fuck Chloe right then and there, tell her how much I loved and how we should move in together, or whatever else I could come up with given half a second and free reign for my emotions to control me.

Taking a deep breath I tried to center myself, banish my emotions deep into the shadow realm for the time being, lest I get distracted in the midst of combat.

It didn’t work nearly as well as I had hoped, but it was better than nothing.

Jenna coming over to join us didn’t help nearly as much as it probably should. So far I had kind of ignored the quiet woman, more focused on the emotional turmoil raging through me about Chloe. But I would lie to myself if the idea hadn’t crossed my mind. I just hoped that after today we had a couple of days to talk and get things sorted, otherwise I might do something stupid that hurt us all.

“You ready?” she asked us, giving us a curious glance that I could swear held a hint of longing, although at this point I didn’t trust anything my senses told me.

“Yup. I think I got all the weapons I need. I thought about getting my own big fortress or something, but honestly, I don’t think we need it. Both of you got that covered, so I figured it would be wiser to spend the points elsewhere.”

Jenna nodded at Chloe’s comment, “That makes sense. Between the Legion Enforcer and the Najav I think we have all the big ticket items we need. Although I have some things I plan to get later on, once we got some more free time and I get the chance to talk it through with Cleopatra.”

“Oh?” Chloe asked, giving Jenna a curious glance.

“Cleopatra mentioned something from the Sentinel Legion Catalogue while we talked about mobile bases. It would be a much bigger purchase, but would allow much more upgrades. It’s called the Legion Corvette and is basically the Enforcers bigger, flying, brother.”

That had even me raising my eyebrows, distracted for the moment by the sound of that.

“That does sound very useful,” Chloe said, thoughtfully.

“Indeed,” Jenna agreed, “I think it’s worth the expense, although it really is a big expense. Roughly 70k points to fully upgrade it, some of which need some higher tier stuff that I don’t have access to yet.”

“You think we get that many points today?” I asked, a bit sceptical at the idea. We managed to make quite the profit today, but even then I at best made 45k, probably less. And I doubted that the Hive would amount to that much.

“Oh no, but I don’t need to. The base Corvette costs 12000 points, roughly, which I should be able to comfortably reach with points to spare. I’m close to it already, but considering that there is no way for me to get it topside after we are done here there is no point getting it yet. Even the Enforcer will need to be brought up in two sections.”

“Makes sense, I suppose,” Chloe said with a shrug, then looked down at me again, “Anything you plan to get once we are done here?”

I shrugged, “I won’t have enough for the body mods I want. If I’m lucky and I let my drones run clean up I might get an additional 10k, at best, but I doubt it would be that much. Might get more of my Nanite drones, though. They seem really useful.”

“Those are the pendants you got for us, right?” Chloe asked.

She had seen me play around with them, before they both returned to the necklace that formed the basis of the item. It looked similarly to my Nano Swarm AIO Necklace, although a bit larger. One of them was around my neck, while I had given the second one to Jenna, since the both of us were the most weakly armored. They could still run around in their drone forms, but for the moment I kept them to the Necklace, ready to deploy as emergency armor if need be. Better safe than sorry.

“Yeah. Since they are Kaysa controlled I don’t need to worry about them doing stupid shit just because my brain is too muddled.”

“Like your War Drones looking at me like they want to kiss me?” she asked wryly.

“What?!” She was right, my drones were all watching her and it took me some effort of will to make them stop. “Sorry…” I muttered, brightly flushing again.

She chuckled, “No worries. It’s kind of endearing, you know?”

“I thought you were worried about me turning into some strange alien thing?” I challenged good naturedly.

“Oh, I do. But your overly emotional side is kind of adorable, I have to admit. Makes me want to cuddle you all day.”

“Like yesterday? That was part of the reason you came to me, right? Cuddle the day away?”

This time Chloe was the one blushing, and I smiled victoriously, before I got on my tippy toes and gave her a quick peck.

“You are just as adorable as I am,” I said with a smirk.

“Is that a challenge? Should we find somewhere quiet and leave Jenna to work things out with the others?” Chloe replied, still blushing but with a mischievous smirk.

I looked Jenna up and down, “I mean… If she isn’t against it, I don’t mind her joining us. Tell the others to settle things without us, while we have some fun…”

Chloe gasped in mock shock, “I thought you wanted me, not her? Am I not good enough for you?”

I gave her a critical look, “Hm… I think I can do better. Jenna is nice, sexy, and she knows more about this. Maybe I should settle for her, leave you behind?”

“You do realise I’m right here, right?” Jenna asked, still looking the same as ever, although from her heartbeat I knew she wasn’t as casual as she made out to be.

“Yep. So, will you join us or not?” I asked her with a winning smile.

“It could be fun,” Chloe agreed in a tone that made it clear that she was very much on board with the idea.

Finally Jenna blushed, although faintly, “I don’t think it’s the time for this.”

“We got time until the others are done with their preparations.” Glancing over to Shrapnel and Dominium Fortress they had just started to walk over. “Which I guess is now, too bad.”

“You ready?” Shrapnel asked, forestalling any more banter.

The three of us nodded.

“I think we are,” Chloe said, then threw her thumb over her shoulder towards the Hive, “Ready to blast some aliens to pieces?”

“I thought you'd never asked,” Dominium Fortress replied, her voice full of gleeful anticipation.

Shrapnel looked at each of us for a moment, before nodding. “Good. Let’s roll out then.”