Deep in the ruins of an overgrown and ruined city an android was on a mission to scavenge some rare parts. It was a fairly common mission as the resistance always needed more supplies, and you could still find plenty of materials scattered throughout the city, either debris from battles or broken down machines, and the rare piece of human technology.
So it was a fairly standard trip androids would make when they needed more cash or supplies, at least it had been.
Robinseye could only reflect that the mission that this trip was as far from standard as it could really get as he watched a YoRHa android direct what looked like 50 pods in the task of disassembling a skyscraper that had been teetering on the edge of falling for years now. And as hundreds of other pods, or pod like things, flew throughout the street, grabbing everything under the watchful gaze of yet another YoRHa android, their outfits as flamboyant as they were distinct.
He had the brief thought of leaving the safety of the building to ask the YoRHa androids what they were doing, before common sense took hold again. Outside of the resistance camps, talking to a member of YoRHa was just asking to get caught up in a fight, and without their weapons and durability to ensure survival. And with their superior attitudes and professionalism it was doubtful they’d even tell him anything.
His decision to stay in cover was vindicated as a group of machines turned down the corner of the street and immediately began firing on the drones, destroying a few before the YoRHa androids could react.
He watched as the drones nearest the machines fled into cover and a few larger ones swarmed down, firing some new variant of laser that fired rapid bolts, gouging small holes in the machines armor and disabling a few while dodging the machines return fire. It was only a few seconds after the machines engaged the armed drones that one of the YoRHa androids practically teleported into the fight, dodging the machine's attacks with grace while ignoring the drones attacks, each of which missed her by the thinnest of margins.
The second she had arrived the fight was essentially over, the machines were rapidly torn apart by the barrage of sword strikes and laser fire. And she ended the fight without a scratch on her, the combat drones themselves only lightly marred by shrapnel thrown from where the machine's attacks struck soil.
The drones that had sought cover, the one with the white covering rather than the red, left the moment the last machine was disabled, grabbing both the destroyed machines and broken drones to haul them off somewhere. Before they resumed work at clearing up the streets. The second YoRHa agent hadn’t looked away from the drones taking apart the building for more than a second before dismissing the machines as a threat entirely.
With how machines likely being drawn to this location and YoRHas own scavenging efforts there wasn’t any reason for Robinseye to stay, and if he was lucky he could trade in the information on YoRHa’s behavior for cash, there were rewards for important information, it just needed to actually be important information.
Still most of the valuable scavenging had probably already been done by those drones, he’d just need to hope this information was important enough that he wouldn’t need to go searching for scrap in a more dangerous area of the city.
-------------------------------------------
44B was enjoying this mission far more than she thought she would. It was just guard and escort duty, sure, but it was guard and escort duty directly from a real flesh and blood human, not just a message or recording.
After the engineer had gotten through the portal and subsequently refused escort to a resistance outpost, on the stance it’d be safer near the portal where he could retreat and that appropriate defenses could be constructed quicker than he could be escorted to an outpost. All true from what she’d seen, and when commander white, who had taken personal command of this mission, saw that the human wasn’t going to be moving she instead ordered her and her team to stay and clear the area around the human.
That had only taken a few hours, the drones the engineer had sent “to learn how to fight machines” as he’d put it, had been excellent at dealing with or distracting the more numerous weaker machines while she focused on the stronger opponents, it had been unnerving to have friendly laser’s pass close on occasion, but the drones never hit her and rarely missed. By the end of the few hours she and her pod were fighting with the group of 5 “destroyer” drones like a task force that had been fighting for as many days.
By the time she had cleared her section the other battlers were fighting with their drones at the same level, each orbited by a group of 5. They had gotten back from their missions at about the same time and were walking back to the portal together.
The defenses on this side of the portal were…. Lesser than those on the bug infested side, she could understand why, it wasn’t like there was room for extensive defenses and the explosive or heavier rounds the turrets tended to use were liable to bring down buildings, but it was still lesser. The walls were shorter and while more drones patrolled the turrets were fewer and smaller.
Inside she had seen the engineer poking at a seven foot tall suit of armor with 16S, one that housed 32D. She’d have been jealous if emotions weren’t forbidden, and she could see 4 more suits of armor in the back of the testing range.
The engineer quickly turned towards her and the other battlers when they entered the workshop, having been guided there by a few drones. “Ah your back, and uninjured that's good. 16S and I are just trying to figure out how to make a good control system for the armor. These ones are made to be controlled by a human nervous system, and well… you guys don't exactly have one, still should have that fixed within a few hours with 16S’s help.”
44B nodded at that, if the drones were this helpful a set of proper armor could only be better, and she’d never gotten to use a flight suit before so she was excited to try out a suit of armor, a glance towards 32D who she now realized was trapped and unable to move, …. Once all the bugs were worked out.
13B who had been walking just ahead of 18B and herself spoke up “sir we have accomplished the mission to clear out the nearby machine presence and are now on standby, do you have any new orders for us? Command stated in absence of any direct commands we are to defer to you.” that wasn’t quite true, they were supposed to avoid upsetting the human but they were expected to refuse orders that compromised YoRHa or put the human in danger. They had been told if the human asked them to do something they were supposed to it, if it didn’t go against either of the prior though.
The engineer looked thoughtful for a second before speaking “the construction drones could probably be guarded while the work, usually I leave that to the combat oriented drones, or better yet tanks, but you could go out and guard them” a pause as he turns and pokes a part of the suit, causing the limb to slightly move, “or you could stay here, I don’t really have anything I need you for yet”
13B nodded again “we will head out to guard the drones, what areas are we needed?” 44B was momentarily annoyed that 13B had spoken for her and 18B but that quickly passed, 13B was her senior and 44B would have gone to guard anyway.
The engineer just shrugged “Balistraia will send you where she needs you” the moment he finished speaking she’d gotten a message containing a map and a route to follow.
That’s how she ended up here, watching a few dozen construction drones disassemble and cart off the pieces of a few old world cars and an old world truck. Her destruction drones orbiting her pod as app of them scanned the street for anything that could be a threat.
44B could freely admit she was not used to just standing around and waiting for something to show up and attack her, usually it was her going out and hunting something else down.
Just a hundred feet away 18B was doing largely the same thing, just with a bunch of construction drones disassembling a building that looked like it could fall on the street at any moment. 44B had brought up the worry about just that to ‘her’ construction drones and a mind she’d yet to talk to, Labyrinthine, had sent her a message.
“The building will not fall without a significant storm or a few more months of decay, and now that my drones are working on it when it does fall it will not damage any of the surrounding buildings. The end goal is to make it fall safely now, so it does not fall and break something later.”
That just served to remind her that each of the construction drones were part of the same intelligence, like a pod across many bodies rather than one. But apparently the destroyer drones weren’t? Or they listened to one of the minds but weren’t directly controlled? She wasn’t exactly sure.
The resistance Android that had been watching them for the past few minutes moved a few windows closer, but as long as he didn’t bother her or the drones she was content to ignore him. Resistance androids tended to have odd opinions about YoRHa agents and she was bad at dealing with them, so she wouldn’t.
———————————
32D was having a great time, sure when she was stuck in the suit it had sucked a little but it hadn’t been long before she’d gotten out and it wasn’t long after that that she could get back in and actually use the thing. Apparently it didn’t actually have any “modules” yet so no shields, lasers, or enhanced strength but it still made her feel giant and like she could tank through just about anything.
Right now she was just making sure the armor didn’t impede her movement any and that it could keep up with her speed and reaction times. And it was doing just fine.
It was just her and the engineer now, 16S had left in one of the ‘spidertrons’ to go guard once the suit had gotten operational, and she’d never seen a more excited scanner model before he hopped inside.
The engineer himself was just staring at her while she did simple motions, apparently he had a mental interface that let him see all the armors sensors and he was making sure everything was working one hundred percent.
“Looks like everything’s good, I’ll go over each of the modules and the benefits of each before we go about adding any” she nodded, even if she planned on just getting shields there was no reason not to hear our other options. They were just inherently less appealing than the ability to protect everyone else for longer.
She had asked to be a defender afterall.
———————————
The mark one power armor was nice, it could fit more modules than a tank and was more durable than the standard tank in the first place. Not that I had used or built more than 10 standard tanks. The armor on a mark one had been improved from the standard design, but the internals stayed the same as the original designs. I didn’t actually understand how modules worked, I just knew how to use and upgrade them.
It wasn’t comparable to my armor though, or even a mark two suit. But remember how I talked about my factory ignoring conservation of mass, things taking more resources than should be physically possible? Like putting 1380 units of iron, 1660 units of copper and 160 units of plastic going into a suit that weighs less than a hundred pounds? Yeah the mark one is that suit and the mark two only makes the problem worse. I assume the extra material is going into making the armors (magi) tech bits work, but it just kind of fades into the rest of the material as you're building it.
Stolen story; please report.
So yeah mark one suits aren't my best but they definitely aren’t cheap. Modular armor isn’t one of those techs though, it's also not powered unless you add an exoskeleton module. That's just 60 units of copper, 310 units of iron, and 60 of plastic, which now that I think about it also eats some mass, modular armor only weighs some 50 pounds.
You know what, we are done thinking about it. Armor isn’t cheap moving on.
I brought this up, to myself, because I was watching 32D run through some basic armor tests, the minor issue of armor not working on non organics not uplinked to it was solved rapidly with 16S’s help so I sent him out in a spidertron, technically to patrol but honestly it was just so he could play in a spidertron, he’d been staring the spidertron in my workshop every moment he hadn’t been working on the armor.
That one didn’t have the nuke right? And is it responsible to send him out untrained in a heavy combat vehicle?
No, we put a green dot on the nuke ones, and the spidertron can handle the situation if anything does happen, or send an alert to Balistraia to handle it, and if she can’t handle it we might just have to write the situation off and send a spidertron in with a nuke.
How many nukes do we even have?
On us or in the base? On us twenty, in the base I’d have to actually check but probably less than twenty.
You know we can just think and the number pops up right? Its seventeen, most of which are in the command tank, only two are in spidertrons.
Oh yeah power armor and explaining it
“Looks like everything’s good, I’ll go over each of the modules and the benefits of each before we go about adding any” a gesture towards his own armor which lurches into movement “as my armor had every module I will use it to demonstrate” the twelve foot tall creation walks into a testing range before pausing.
I think we need to make a smaller suit of power armor to wear under that if we plan on visiting anywhere, it won’t fit through normal doors.
I mean it will the doorframe just won't be intact afterwards, or we’d need to crouch down
I'm with mini suit, even though it's because I want an extra layer of armor between us and the outside world.
“First the laser defense system, its an active defense system capable of rapidly firing high-power bolts of energy and light, either to destroy projectiles coming towards you or to melt enemies doing the same, or more accurately burn a hole through them. The more of these you have the more lasers fire a second, I have 14.” at that a bunch of what is essentially a more durable metal skeet is fired at the armor from a few turrets in the room. The dozens of metal plates disintegrate before they hit the armor.
I do like the lasers, don’t need ammo and don’t leave blood everywhere
Yeah but they didn’t work underwater and a foggy or rainy day makes them drastically less effective
“You get best mileage from a laser on a sunny clear day, fog or rain can weaken the bolts over a longer distance, it’s also a fair drain on your power supply, with a mark one like yours you can only hold 9 laser mods and you’d struggle to power that many for very long.”
Technically a portable solar panel produces 60 kw with our upgrades and the laser defense uses 75 kw, so if you have 9 laser defense you only need 11.25 solar panels and you can hold 12 panels and 9 laser defense in the mark one.
I hate you and your numbers, also then she wouldn’t have any batteries. Oh no a cloud or a spot of shade from I don’t know one of the few hundred skyscrapers. No 8 laser defense and add 2 mark 2 batteries at a min that's an hour of charge firing nearly constantly.
A mark two batteries? That’s going to add half a day of production time
Two of them so a full day, but just add two more assemblers, I'm more worried about resource cost. At this rate we will need to increase both copper and iron production.
I already knew that, Labyrinthine had already increased production of both by 50%
That’ll drain our resources at a worrying rate, we’ll need to expand again.
Probably along the new train line then?
A glance towards where 32D is watching the demonstration, “I’d recommend having at least one of these as they are fairly useful. Next I would demonstrate the shield but I can’t really do that, I mean I could but there’s no real point, Instead I’ll explain a bit of how it works.” I walk towards my armor and tap its armored chest, “shields make a material impervious to damage, basically anything that compromises its shape or current state of matter, so heat is also blocked, as long as they have charge, how much charge this effect takes varies on how well the substance being shielded would take that damage. If an attack wouldn’t damage the material without the shield then the shield won’t activate, because it didn’t need to prevent a change, and how much charge is used is based on how much change is prevented.” a short pause, even android minds need time to process information. “This matters because you can mess with the system, a thin layer of super dense and durable material can coat your armor and dramatically enhance your shields effectiveness without you needing to use that heavier substance for all of your armor” a nod from the armor wearing android, showing that she’s still following along.
“You do need to watch out though, being impervious to damage doesn’t mean something can't bend or move you, spidertrons and tanks are often disabled by bugs not breaking the shields but instead by immobilizing them, spidertrons will have their legs stretched taut so that they cannot move and tanks will have their tracks gummed up.”
I’m eighty percent certain this is the longest time we have talked to someone without a response
It is, also talking is hard and I dislike it, making it Balistraia’s job was a good idea so why did we decide to start?
Because we hate ourselves and more accurately we wanted to talk to the androids, I blame the mini skirts and the fact that we are technically in puberty.
We are taking a steroid that's essentially a super testerone too, even if it doesn’t have any mind affecting side effects, I think…
But really why do the androids look about my age, I feel like some deity is conspiring against me
If they are I wish to turn them into a battery or reactor, it depends on if we can use faith or whatever they run off of as anything useful
“You can have 9 of these just like like a laser defense, these only take power when you get hit and recharge as long as you have any power source, just quicker with a full one with 9 shield units and 12 solar panels it’d take 6 minutes to charge, one battery can however hold 2 full charges. So I’d recommend 9 shield units, 10 solar panels, and 1 mark one battery if you decide to go all shields.” another nod from her before she finally asks a question. “How much punishment can 9 shield units take before failing?”
Oh god not math
We already did the math so shut up, also it doesn’t really take much effort for us to do math. Like at all, it’s practically automatic.
“10 hits from a ‘medium biped’, keep in mind that those need to be consecutive and rapid otherwise the shield will recharge. If you can keep from getting hit for more than five seconds you can take another hit fine. Actually it’s more 10 with another 20 every 5 seconds and another 1 every 40 seconds or so” another nod, even though I barely got that explanation.
“What about stronger hits? Or extending the shielding past the body?”
I’m betting she focuses on shields
It’s literally the first one she’s said something about, that's obvious
Should we offer a few mark two shields?
Increased power usage makes them non viable for mark ones without a reactor. And this is already stupidly expensive per unit.
And no we aren’t giving out reactors, they are more expensive than a mark one armor. By a not insignificant amount
“The biped one is the only baseline I have, so I couldn't tell you. And the armor should function like an extension of your body, so just will it and the shield effect will extend wherever you want it, but it does need to be “tethered” to your body, so it can’t go too far. Another nod
“Then discharge defense is next, this is a dome of energy erupting from your armor, it will severely damage anything nearby while also launching them a few meters.”
As long as they aren’t insects who figured out how to negate that
Skeet once more flies towards the armor, this time coming within a few inches of hitting the armor before a blinding flash erupts and chunks of metal are rapidly flung throughout the room as molten shrapnel. A few shards are stopped inches from my face by a solid curtain of air. My distractor drones keep humming for a few moments as the shards drop before the humming slows and stops.
And that is why we made the shield drones, really would it kill us to use a blast shield every now and then?
I think we both know that we will never follow basic lab safety.
“The other features are optional, this one is not. Actually this and one shield unit are not, discharge for safety and one shield unit to prevent frequent repair needs.”
My budget hurts, those are expensive
Byzantine handles that, and we can more than deal with the cost, especially if it saves lives. Resistance androids apparently don’t even have backups, for some reason.
I still hate that
“Then the exoskeleton, or the standard bit of power armor, enhancing your movement speed and strength. You can only fit three in a mark one but it will increase your movement speed and strength by nearly two hundred percent, and you can still have 2 shields or lasers, and the discharge.”
And we use them so we don’t actually need to walk anywhere
It's like being carried in a comfy and soft glove.
“That’s it, or at least that's all the relevant ones, we have robot chargers, things that anchor you in a location, and night vision, but I think you already have night vision”
Her nod paused when I got to the anchor one and I immediately knew what her next question would be about “how much force does the anchor take?”
I had tested this, “about 20 pounds, not very much, just enough to keep yourself in place on a moving surface or help steady yourself in stronger winds. Not enough to make you immovable” a short almost disappointed nod.
Okay now we are practically obligated to upgrade that.
How does it even work anyway? The planet's magnetic field? It's not just making the air harder. We tested