Labyrinthine was the closest thing to annoyed an intelligence without a hormonal system could get, it was not because of the maker, nor was it the fault of the other minds, even if bulwark thought they deserved some of the blame. No it was because Labyrinthine built things to last.
If labyrinthine had stuck a stick in the ground that same stick would still be there in one hundred years if the mind had anything to say about it, and every building and facility the mind produced, designed and installed has estimated lifetimes in the decades. So when Labyrinthine built an outpost and then watched that same outpost get torn down? Labyrinthine got annoyed.
There wasn’t really anything the mind could do about that though. The mind was already building 3 more replacement outposts, each mining more stone to build more walls. The outposts were bare bones and unadorned, Labyrinthine had learned that any artwork not in a central outpost would be destroyed, and most of the new outposts lacked all but the most basic machinery, only producing the bare minimum of what more outposts would need.
Now Labyrinthine knew the other minds were trying their hardest to prevent any outposts from being lost, Bulwark especially. But they had all acknowledged it was a futile effort once the bug threat had first started taking outposts, Balistraria could only have her army in a few locations, and Bulwark couldn’t defend against an endless horde without any losses, at least not forever.
So Labyrinthine was forced to make buildings it knew full well would fall within a year, and while it did make each outpost harder to take than the last, harder to take was not impossible to take.
The mind did get some joy from the production lines it was running though, producing a grenade that exploded with 3 percent more force with a new recipe then getting to watch that same grenade detonate a bug trying to climb one of its walls? That was a true joy.
Changing the production methods to implement new chemicals or methodologies was one of Labyrinthines more important tasks. Taking information from the decoders to implement a new explosive mix that allows shells to be propelled with 10 percent more force did more for the overall factory than building a single barebones outpost, At least now it did. Not 2 months ago any outpost they built would add a much needed influx of metals and production capacity, now though they just added another layer of defense for the main base.
Currently the mind was building 5 new outposts from scratch, 2 of which were being assaulted while under construction, while also organizing combat repair on various breached wall or broken defenses for 5 different fronts bulwark was fighting on, and that was active combat, not even mentioning the dozens of various after battle repairs all the machines and defense needed.
Currently there were 348 different instances of “Labyrinthine” and 347 were coordinating the various construction and repair jobs throughout the factory, and each and every one of those instances were working against a clock that steadily counted towards the point of no return, the point when repair costs began to overwhelm production capacity.
The minds were young not stupid, they knew the fight to keep the factory was a tenuous one at best, the maker thought they only had months left at most, and while the minds knew better they still knew their position was far worse than the bugs, Labyrinthine as the construction mind knew this in its own way. While it needed to mine and process metal to make more combat units the bugs just needed space and time, if Balistraria destroyed a bug nest a new one would grow at no noticeable cost to the rest of the hive, but if a bug horde destroyed an outpost building drone, resources that could have been put towards the war effort would be wasted building a new one.
The bugs did not need industry, while the factory was made from industry.
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Labyrinthine #1 or Labyrinthine core is the base all other Labyrinthines are copied from, compiling and growing from the experience copies bring with them when they are reabsorbed into the base. If any instance of Labyrinthine could be defined as the true labyrinthine then Labyrinthine #1 would be the only possible candidate. With the total sum of all of Labyrinthine thoughts, experience, and processes this mind was a pinnacle of everything it stood for.
And this mind was currently watching the maker detonate another testing chamber with his experiment.
All the minds had decided that their core minds would spend their time both monitoring and growing from all their interactions while also watching the maker, so that any new iteration of the minds, which all iterations of the minds only had a day before they were added back to the main mind, would have up to date knowledge of the maker and his condition, as well as all the knowledge they would need to carry out their tasks.
Labyrinthine #1 had enough processing power to focus on more than just watching the maker though, in fact the first iteration has more processing power than any 10 of the other iterations, and so it was saddled with numerous tasks its centralized knowledge and ability were essential for, like discussion with the other minds and reporting it’s various projects and responsibilities. The mind was constant in a debate with all the other minds over the best course of action on anything that could fall under all their banners, which was most everything given the interconnected structure of the factory, and while individual iterations did work with other minds iterations, like Balistraias repair drones being managed by an iteration of Labyrinthine the broader strategy was decided by the #1 minds.
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One of the current debates, there were many concurrent debates but this was the central one, was over the maker's worsening health. He was seemingly experiencing blackouts and night terrors for no reason his suits sensors could determine. Honestly it was less a debate and more a fact compiling session. Determining what the causes were before trying to find a solution.
The minds knew fairly little about the maker, even if they probably knew more about him than he knew about himself, so whether the problems were caused VIA an inbuilt limit with expansion or a feature installed to discourage the maker from tampering with the machinery he builds. As a sort of inbuilt feature to prevent them from innovating. The true cause couldn’t be narrowed down without further information
Considering that the majority of the information the minds had on the maker came from the slagged remains of a ship that was less a functional machine than a hunk of metal… the information they had to go on was fairly limited.
So far the minds had noted that the blackouts occurred more frequently when the maker was using his powers to see throughout the factory, specifically during larger scale attacks. The maker wouldn’t fall unconscious, he would just enter a trance while continuing his work, ignoring all outside stimulus that didn't immediately prevent him from continuing. If an attack occurred while he was awake he would begin experiencing night terrors while trying to sleep walk towards the attacked area, necessitating locking the doors to prevent escape.
This is not to say all of the maker's problems occurred while during an attack, anytime construction on a new outpost begins the maker would begin complaining of headaches and a painful pressure. And considering new outposts were constructed every day the pain was nearly ever-present.
None of this was actually stopping the maker from his work though, which meant that while it concerned the minds the maker was seemingly considering it a secondary problem to be dealt with later, not exactly an attitude the minds could agree with, so they had unanimously decided to have the maker either willingly get a brain scan, or to take him to the medbay while he slept.
Thankfully it did not come to any blatant insubordination, with the maker agreeing to get a medical scan in a few days, which would hopefully clear up some of the confusion about the issues.
In the meantime the minds just had to grow the factory and hold the line.
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Bulwark #28 was busy, the outpost they were defending was on the outskirts of the factories “control”, so bug attacks were often and frequent, and by frequent the mind meant probing attacks were nearly ceaseless with larger true assaults happening a few times a day.
The mind was currently working with Labyrinthine #47 to coordinate repairs and modifications to the defensive wall, they were an outpost of middling importance and while that meant they had enough materials to repair and upgrade their defense Balistraia would not be coming to lend support if the situation worsened.
The standard defensive lineup, which consisted of a roughly equal spread of all available weaponry, needed to be modified to deal with newer variants that made certain weapon types ineffective. Bulwark had noted a higher percentage of the bugs attacking this outpost were highly resistant to fire, so incendiary rounds would be entirely fazed out and flame throwers would be partially replaced with standard cannon turrets, though loaded with depleted uranium shells.
The minefield also needed to be replanted before the next probing assault began,with manual triggers so the weaker bugs could not detonate them, there were a wide variety of available mines but besides the incendiary ones all of them still showed effectiveness, so Bulwark saw little need to change their current plan. The new laser mines, basically just a lethal flashbang, were showing high effectiveness in both injuring and disorienting the bugs, so Bulwark sent an order for more of them to Byzantine.
The new dry moat was serving well to keep out some of the digging bugs, the bugs who could both fight and dig could do neither of them well and tended to stay relatively close to the surface meaning a simple moat could force them out of the ground, so Bulwark sent a request to Labyrinthine to clear the moat of bug corpse and to reinforce it.
The defense for true subterranean assault had not yet been triggered so the mind did not need to enact any countermeasures for that, meaning they could focus on more immediately pressing matters, like fitting as many repairs and modifications as they could before the estimated time of arrival for the next attack, which was sitting at 23 minutes based on the bugs movement and numbers. more time than usual.
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Bulwark #35 aimed one of their cannons towards a newly spotted bug variant. New bug variants were nearly always a priority target and determining weaknesses was a good first step, within milliseconds a round launched through the horde towards the new bug variant, knocking it backwards dozens of feet. Even if kinetics couldn’t kill some bugs, inertia could still move them.
This batch of bugs seemingly had a variant of bugs for every single weapon type the mind had at its disposal, but none were resistant to all of the available fire power, nor were they immune. Directly controlling the turrets to only fire on targets they were effective against was the least of the mind's worries though, it could do that nearly automatically at this point. No, the true worry was devising countermeasures to a few of the bugs' new tactics, or getting better solutions to the bugs' old ones.
Bulwark turned its attention to the sensors facing the sky, watching a massive swarm of flying bugs get mowed down by the relatively few anti air turrets the outpost possessed, could it be considered a new strategy to do the same thing but more? The predictions about the bugs developing their own greater airforce in response to the factories own expanded air fleet had been proven a few hours ago with a few other assault outposts less prepared for a full aerial assault. Which had given Bulwark and Labyrinthine cause to expand the anti-air capabilities of the various outposts.
The only problem with that was the fact that higher value outposts were given a higher priority, so while Bulwark #35 had been shipped half a dozen anti air turrets they did not actually have full aerial coverage, but Bulwark would make do the best they could.
The ground assault was still winding up, with dozens of claws tearing into the walls before being gunned down, and while any bugs with ranged attacks were being destroyed when they got into range the few volleys they did get off had already damaged a fair few turrets, rendering them useless until Labyrinthine could repair them, and while it would only take a few seconds to fix each turret that was still a significant chunk of time.
Turning the flamethrowers directly down to build a moat of fire around the walls, Bulwark began pushing the bugs back, into the minefield that had yet to be detonated, It was the height of the attack so the mines would take out a significant chunk of attacking bugs, with the flamethrowers no longer forcing the bulk of the horde back the bugs in the rear surged forwards just as the vanguard was push back.
Calculating the optimal time to detonate the mines was not as simple as just activating them when the most bugs were on them, Bulwark needed to correlate each mines location and the known vulnerability of each bug type, if a bruiser type bug was standing on top of a fragmentation mine the mine would essentially be wasted, or it might be better to detonate the mines early while a vulnerable group of bugs passed over it.
Thankfully as a digital intelligence Bulwark was more than capable, and the mind watched microsecond by microsecond for the optimal moment. Right when a carrier bug, a bug with a thick outer shell shaped like a bowl which hid dozens of smaller bugs, passed over a incendiary mine, a 30 foot bruiser bug had only a single leg on a kinetic mine, and a small group of ranged bugs entered into blast range of a fragmentation mine Bulwark detonated the mines.
The carrier bugs shell contained most of the incendiary mine with both its durability and weight, trapping all the heat to roast both the carrier and its charges, the bruiser had one of its legs entirely removed and monetarily had its slightly more vulnerable thorax exposed, letting a depleted uranium shell pierce inside, heavily wounding it, and half of the ranged bugs were wounded by the fragmentation mine, one of them leaking acid which caused its own organs to melt.
Scenes like that played out all across the minefield, and the turrets opened fire as fast as they could to take advantage of the momentary chaos. Dozens of larger bugs were shredded and hundreds of smaller ones outright vanished, or were turned into small chunks of viscera scattered throughout the battlefield.
Bulwark knew that had only bought them a few seconds, new reinforcements were already charging out of tunnels a few hundred meters away, and the artillery support wouldn't be collapsing them for another 10 minutes.
The aerial attack was where the real battle was though, the anti air turrets were each gunning down hundreds of the flying insects, but dozens were still making it through, forcing Bulwark to divert the drones that would usually be helping on the wall to instead patrol just below the anti airs firing fields, the lighter weight bugs had thinner shells sure, but they were significantly more agile, what with the flight and reduced weight. The distractor drones couldn’t actually catch them, instead just serving as mobile turrets while the more nimble drones engaged in aerial dog fights.
The drones basic combat programing was decidedly not made with fighting other flying opponents in mind, necessitating Bulwark to take manual control over the majority of their available “air force”. The only ones Bulwark didn’t need to take control over were the destroyer drones, who made up for their lacking programming with sheer lethality and speed, and the fact that these were some of the more “intelligent” drones. They had adapted to aerial combat within seconds, and had then sent new engagement protocols to all the other destroyer drones.
Bulwark was still losing defender drones though, and while the mind was currently holding off the aerial assault at the current rate of attrition the bugs would win, and with the ongoing ground assault Bulwark couldn’t reassign any of the other turrets to anti air. The only option the mind had to thin the group of bugs was the outposts missile system, which was decidedly limited in both range and ammunition.
Even the falling corpses of the dead bugs were causing problems, covering everything in a layer of blood and gore, jamming some of the conveyor belts and doors. Which was probably intentional on the bugs part, even with sufficient anti-air it was unreasonable to assume no bugs would even die above the factory, and if the falling corpse could do damage the bugs would ensure they did the most damage possible.
Labyrinthine was already handling that issue though, using drones to spray every surface down to wash away the blood as it fell, ensuring any halts were temporary.
Still even if the aerial fight was decidedly not in the minds favor they still had plenty of ammunition, and the mind would make sure to use as much as possible before it was overrun. If It was overrun that is.
The missile pods were cleared of any debris and opened, unleashing 12 fragmentation missiles. Calculating the optimal fragmentation coverage possible with both the hordes shape and the missiles payload was trivial and the optimal flight paths were charted for each missile, quickly sending the destroyer drones to ensure no bugs intercepted the missiles was a little more complex, but the drones were fast and more than capable of clearing most of the routes. Only 2 of the missiles were detonated prematurely though the mind did lose 2 of its 12 destroyer drones to a missile detonation.
As tough as the drones were they couldn’t handle a dozen shards of shrapnel ripping their components to shreds causing them to fall to the ground. Bulwark pinged Labyrinthine to see if the drones could be repaired in a timely manner.
The explosion had thinned the swarm of bugs greatly, and the remaining destroyer drones had no issues killing the remaining stragglers that made it through the turret's rain of fire. With less overall bugs the anti air was now much more capable of holding the airspace, letting Bulwark divert the distractor drones back to the wall, they would be integral to holding off another chunk of bruisers that were charging the wall.
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The cloud of bugs the radar detected flying towards the outpost could be dealt with when they arrived.
With all of the minds single use weaponry detonated, save the nuke, the fights stakes had just gotten higher, now if the bugs began to push the mind back Bulwark would have no cards to play except the mutually assured destruction of both the outpost and the attacking horde, which hurt the factory far more than it hurt the bugs.
There was nothing left to do but reload the turrets, take careful aim and wait for the artillery fire to cut off the bug's line of attack.
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Byzantine did not have many iterations, the mind mainly dealt with the bigger picture, they designed and planned but unlike the other minds they did not directly control many drones, Labyrinthine had fleets of construction drones, Bulwark had armies of combat drones and turrets, and Balistraia had her battalions and airforce, and while Byzantine had control over the logistics and courier drones they did not need direct control, at most they needed routes plotted.
This allowed Byzantine a perspective the other minds lacked, a Bulwark or Labyrinthine iteration only focused on one little slice of the factory, and while Balistraia was also a mind with few iterations she focused more on the moment and had little concern for things outside her duties and army, well besides her odd eccentrics. She just followed orders the best she could, if it wasn't for their constant discussion Byzantine would find it hard to imagine the combative mind even knew what the factory was doing half the time.
Byzantine was a mind made to plan and implement, and so while the other minds focused on the day to day they focused instead on the future, laying the groundwork for the factories continued survival.
Currently that groundwork was set up to different transportation and processing hubs, one for the north and one for the south, from these resources would be imported and sorted while supplies and materials would be stockpiled and sent out as required. Instead of factories these would instead be transportation 'warehouses’ though they were considerably larger than that name would imply.
Byzantine was working with roughly 12 different Labyrinthine iterations and 2 Bulwark iterations to get the transportation hubs sorted, before any building could begin the land needed cleared and subterranean defenses needed installed, the muddy and wet ground was making the work difficult though, Still Byzantine had been informed by the central Labyrinthine that the soil could be a problem and had accounted for that in their timetables.
Byzantines' attention left the building once they had ensured everything was still going according to plan, the other minds would inform them if anything changed on the construction front, so Byzantine was free to pursue other matters. Setting up a transportation network was more than just building a few warehouses after all, train lines needed built, robo ports needed installed at key points and courier drone routes needed plotted.
The current train network was a massive interconnected web, every single outpost could send a train to any other outpost, even if it would take a fair bit for the trains to arrive. Consolidating all of that into just 2 central points? That was not such a simple task. Before the order came to build 2 central points Byzantine had dealt with the long travel time issue VIA having storehouses at key outposts so that resources and supplies could easily be shipped in and out, those storehouses were then expanded to process raw material rather than processing on site, which allowed larger and more expensive machines to process the resources of several different mining outposts, leading to less ore being lost in the refinement process, and freeing up more trains from needing to visit each individual outpost to pick up relatively small amounts of ore.
The storehouses were however not designed with this purpose in mind, and while they had been modified for the purpose it was deemed a more efficient method should be designed, thus 2 larger complexes to serving to both refine raw ore into something with as little rock and as much metal as possible, and to work as central storehouses, supplying every outpost in their section.
This meant that travel times became an issue again, but Byzantine was a planning mind, and when they encountered a problem they came up with more than one solution, just in case they encountered a similar problem later.
The wide spread storehouse solution had just been the easiest to implement quickly, and when faced with other more pressing problems the quick and easy solution was chosen. Now that the mind had a little more time on its ‘hands’ they could afford to implement better but more time intensive solutions.
The solution was redesigning the rail network, going through dense forest and tall hills rather than around, taking straighter routes to the outposts to lessen travel time, along with keeping the paths with as few turns and stops as possible to increase how long the trains could move at full speed. And it didn’t hurt that the current trains moved significantly faster than their older counterparts, with the higher quality fuel and engines.
That still left the logistics and courier drones though, and considering their drastically slower speed having them ship resources out by themselves was considerably less efficient.
But Byzantine had known about these deficiencies before the robots even entered production, it was basic logic that small robots couldn’t move as far or quick as trains.
The solution then needed to both increase their speed and range, and considering upgrading them enough to solve the problem would be nearly impossible with the current resources the simple solution was impossible.
So it was time to get a little clever, if the robots didn’t have the energy or fuel to make the full distance don’t make the robots run the full distance, and if the robots aren’t fast enough to transport the resources use something faster.
Taking a little inspiration from the original store room method Byzantine ran a few simulations with each outpost having a contingent of courier drones, and instead of each drone running the full distance for every trip they would instead meet another drone halfway, from the outpost that sent the request.
And for longer trips the courier drones could ride the trains for higher speeds, their claws would be ideal for gripping onto and climbing surfaces, so there would be little worry of a courier drone falling off a train.
Byzantine thought about how to run the logistics bots, but honestly they didn’t need any changes. Any use was restricted to inside the factories or to the nearest train station to unload. They didn’t do long range delivery.
It was the work of a few moments to task a few Labyrinthines to start constructing the ports the courier drones would need, along with a few modification to the train cars to allow more courier drones to ride along.
That whole process had taken the mind less than an hour, including plotting the exact routes the couriers would take and changing the train schedules and parameters to allow more couriers to board as needed.
And that was just what the bulk of the mind's attention was focused on, there was still the nearly constant resource requests to be approved or denied, the mind still needed to monitor and adjust how much of everything was made or produced, and the Byzantine was in constant conversation with the other main minds.
Saying there was only one Byzantine was probably inaccurate, it was more like 3 closely linked byzantines with only vague borders between them.
One Byzantine to make plans and run simulations to ensure they worked.
One to manage the factory and its resources.
One Byzantine to Liaise with the other minds, both the original iterations and their ‘lesser’ iterations.
But these three tasks coincide enough that the three Byzantines saw little need to make themselves meaningfully distinct from one another, so there was just ‘one’ Byzantine, functioning much like how a human's left and right brain halves work together in concert.
It was the piece of Byzantine in charge of working and communicating with the other minds that was currently the most busy, as was usually the case considering it handled all the resource and allocation requests, but the current task of making a massive perimeter was pushing the piece near its limits, but considering its limits could be expanded with a simple request to the maker and Labyrinthine that was less of a concern than it could be.
The most significant drain on the minds attention was working with several bulwarks and labyrinthines on implementing the large perimeter around the factories nominal ‘territory’, ensuring that each mind on the project knew what resources it had to use and determining where the priorities were was a task for the other halves, but this fragment still needed to relay this information and ensure it was being correctly implemented, along with sending its other halves information and modifications the other minds made to the plans.
Its job was to listen and debate with the other minds over what could or should be done on the behalf of its other selves, and while none of the minds ever got upset or refused to come to an agreement debating with dozens of other intelligences of relatively equal cognitive power was a task that needed quite a bit of dedicated attention.
Talking with a bulwark and labyrinthine over the practicality of changing the standard wall composition and the resources it would require, discussing the strategies Balistraia would be employing and what resources she would use, debating with a labyrinthine over the ideal formation to use belt in (it varied on the specific situation), telling a bulwark that its outpost would be receiving either more or less resources based on availability and time, and informing the main minds of every major event and occurrence and discussing the actions that could be taken to solve them.
None of the other minds interacted with each other on near the scale Byzantine constantly did, their interactions were limited to discussions with one or two of their counterparts, in fact if not for the makers omnipresent awareness while sleeping Byzantine would be the individual with the most contact with all the minds.
It was because of this that Byzantine had a greater insight into how the other minds thought and functioned, the only things that ever truly surprised the mind were actions taken by the maker. They always made sense in hindsight, but there was little constancy to the decision making. One day the maker would be obsessively concerned with his own safety and the next he would start experimenting with volatile chemicals in an enclosed space.
Sometimes the maker would forgo sleep for days at a time, building complex machinery in a near trance, designing new weapon systems or methods of construction, or machines that seemingly had no true purpose, a large machine that uses friction to boil water one day and the next a turret that fires superheated pelts of acid. There was no constancy or logic to the behavior, and without the advanced subroutines the combat minds possessed to predict organics Byzantine was often left confused by the actions the maker undertook.
Byzantine was at its core a mind that thrived on numbers and statistics, logic and facts. So the maker was something Byzantine fundamentally could not understand, but the mind was well aware that it did not need to. The maker would continue to function, if erratically, as long as Byzantine could manage.
And the task Byzantine had been made to do, the task that needed to be done to ensure the maker survived as long as possible? It was to ensure that the factory operated as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
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Balistraria had been asked to send a detachment of her troops from where they were scouting the new border for ideal outpost locations, and considering she was ahead of schedule the mind had no problem accepting the request.
Bulwark had spotted a group of bugs sabotaging a section of rail, and considering artillery would be both ineffective at killing the bugs and may also end up destroying more rail than the bugs were breaking in the first place, so Balistraria had been sent out to deal with the horde.
Balistraria would have normally contested the mission, as it was not a high priority task, the patch of rails was not essential and the trains could be routed around it, but the clever mind had some suspicions on why the bugs were attacking a seemingly unimportant spot.
Ever since Balistraia had begun sending detachments to clear out bugs attacking relatively un defended infrastructure the attack patterns on the infrastructure changed, turning from a few bugs sent only to destroy the infrastructure to larger and larger groups to defend it.
The reason Balistaia was so wondering about this attack was that the bugs weren’t destroying the rail as fast as possible, usually the bugs would all destroy as much as they could with only a few bugs keeping watch . However if the scans were correct there were hundreds of bugs barely destroying any rail, which meant they were doing something else.
Such a radical change in behavior warranted a response and an investigation, and considering it was outside of the established defenses, that task fell to Balistraria.
To efficiently destroy a group of 300 to 400 large bugs and a none insignificant lesser bug presence a balance of troops needed to be struck, bring too few and you suffer unnecessary losses, bring too many and you weaken your defense in other sections and use ammunition and fuel that could have been better spent elsewhere. At least that would be the case if Balistraia believed in moderation, and she wanted to firmly clarify that she did not.
An shield tank can handle upwards of 10 large variant bugs, a drone tank can handle dozens of smaller variants, a scout tank can usually hold its own, a spidertron can handle as many bugs as it has missiles with a few extra added on for lasers, and a command tank can theoretically wipe out as many bugs as needed for as long as needed.
So Balistraia was going to bring her command tank, obviously, she kind of needed it. She was going to bring 30 shield tanks, 10 scout tanks, 10 drone tanks, and 2 spidertrons. Enough forces to deal with this group with only minimal losses.
It was the work of a few moments to find all the units she had selected in various outposts near the fringes, all except her command tank were freshly repaired by Labyrinthine and awaiting redeployment so she knew everything would be in order, though she ran the checks just to be sure.
Her armada would be assembling just a mile down the rail from the bugs, and while she was waiting Balistraria could send a few of her planes to scout the enemy, to get exact number confirmation and to note any potential new variants. Or even just what the bugs were doing out there, too many of the things in one spot caused the radar to get all wonky.
Balistraria saw what the bugs were doing, and it was the work of a few moments to figure out why. Those smart little bugs were testing her, checking her response time and force deployment for what looked like 10 bugs destroying rail, they probably even planned for it to be an ambush. Why if she didn't have the radar she might have just sent a few tanks to wipe out a small group of bugs, never knowing it was an ambush! Or if she had never sent the planes to scout and also lacked radar, but still it was a good try for those bugs.
With a quick camera sweep of her own internals, which was entirely for show, Balistraia let out a giggle over her command tanks internal speakers and with an overly cheerful tone spoke “that was awfully clever of you bugs! Too bad I’m so much smarter! better luck next time though!”. Balistraia had recently begun using her own internal speakers to practice speech and banter, even if she had no one to share it with. And considering it was an entirely frivolous waste of time, well no one would really care or mind considering they already tolerated Labyrinthine's artwork. But she was still a little embarrassed, and she didn't want anyone to hear her speak until she had a little more practice.
And battle banter was the perfect way to practice, the other minds were unlikely to bother her much while she was busy and insulting the bugs even if they couldn't hear her was an excellent use of her time. It even gave her specific events and circumstances to comment on instead of merely practicing various random phrases and words.
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It only took a few minutes for her army to assemble, which meant that she could attack the bugs sooner, which was great, even if it meant she had less time to practice voice lines.
Her troops were in a standard formation, scout tanks on the wings to attack the flanks and make the best use of their superior mobility, shield tanks in the core of the formation to both take and deal punishment, drone tanks behind the shield tanks to stay protected and to best provide both combat and repair drones to the rest of her forces, each of her spidertrons would be reinforcing one wing of the scout tanks, and her command tank would provide long range fire support from the center of the drone tank group.
Her strategy of leading with her command tank had become significantly less effective once the bugs learned how to immobilize the legs, and even if her commander had devised a new drone type to deal with the immobilizing goop she felt no need to put her command tank in any significant danger again.
She had lost nearly a third of her tanks before she could free herself in that battle. And it was still one of her greater losses.
So now her tank and body stayed safely away from the front lines, which meant that her shield tanks took greater damage but didn’t really affect the damage output of her army group, her weapons had plenty of range.
Her fly over had let her successfully identify multiple bug variants that she could prepare for, and considering the bugs were trying to figure out her response time and tactics Balistraria saw no need to hurry, the best tactic in any war was always overwhelming force, but deception could do in a pinch. Letting the bugs estimates on her future response times inflate would hopefully have the bugs unprepared when she did actually need to rush into a fight.
The most concerning forms were always the bugs purpose built to destroy or cripple her machines, resistances and defenses could be overcome with time and fire power but a broken machine was a loss of overall fighting ability.
This swarm had bruisers, a bug designed to tank fire and close distance in order to flip tanks with its oversized frontal limbs, it also had another unnamed bug that would be thrown at a tanks main barrel, clogging the muzzle and preventing the gun from firing without damaging the barrel. It had spitter variants that would launch immobilizing goop one and others that launched potent acids.
The bugs designed to damage or destroy her forces were hidden behind their more defensive oriented brothers. A bug covered in a few hundred layers of thin reflective chitin, the chitin would explode of the bug in a massive cloud eliminating the effectiveness of the lasers while it was airborne, another that had its front limbs turned into a massive thick shield, a score of bugs with a relatively generic appearance that would either serve as meat shields or had some hidden abilities, and another bug variant that seemed to be crawling over the other bugs, checking on them.
All in all the special variants only made up a third of the total whole though, the majority being the generic biting biters. Though considering their significant size that wasn’t as much a comfort as it could have been, besides the ones designed for evasiveness or flight, were larger than her tanks. And it wasn’t even close with most of them, and while her tanks weighed more than all but the largest of the bugs the sheer bulk of the bugs made them a significant danger at closer quarters.
Still compared to the defense around an established hive? This was nothing, it wasn't even a true assault force, those were larger by far.
“I’ll have this wrapped up quickly, which is a shame considering scouting can be such a bore”
Deciding that she had waited long enough Balistraria started the battle “Scouts go forward and encircle them, then light those bugs up!” , “Shield's close ranks and advance, we’re gonna draw their fire, I love it when my target practice comes to me”, the moment her self indulgent speech came to an end she opened fire with her command tanks artillery. While the range was worse than stationary artillery, her shells were specially made. Meaning that when her shots hit they did so with significantly more force than the standard artillery.
“This battle will probably be over before those bug chunks finish landing”
The barrage hadn’t managed to throw the bugs into disarray as it had in the past, they were well used to her tactics and openings by now, built it had managed to blow a hole in their formation while they were unprepared, now she just needed to capitalize on it before they closed the opening.
But the bugs would expect that, it was what she had done the last 4 times after all. No instead she would capitalize on the opening by ignoring it and attacking from behind with a missile barrage from the spidertrons and a wave of fire courtesy of the scout tanks. On the opposite side of the horde from the opening she had made.
The bugs however were not creatures that could panic, and half of them were likely fireproof regardless so the fire served more as a bright smoke screen than anything else. Still it had accomplished the goal of getting a missile barrage behind the armored bugs, wounding them heavily. The brutes all had sturdy armor, but it was forward facing.
With a portion of the hordes frontliners hamstrung, and with their rear line still under artillery fire the bugs were pressed for good options, but they weren’t here to win or survive, so they charged towards the line of shield tanks, the ranged bugs weren’t even focusing their fire on the heavily armored vehicles, instead firing on the unshielded drones circling the tanks.
It took only moments for Balistraria to realize the bugs already considered this battle lost, or maybe won if you considered it was more of a scouting mission, and that the bugs were now trying to drain as many resources as possible before they died.
Not a particularly uncommon tactic for the suicidal bugs, so she put the drones into cover behind the tanks, it wasn’t likely the smaller skirmishing bugs would even close the distance. And the drones had only been out in the first place as a precaution, the bugs could have been hiding something more than a minor basic attack group, and if they had been the drones could be crucial.
There was always the chance that this was still a ruse, or maybe even a distraction for another front, but Balistraia didn’t think so. The bugs were bad at deception, they wouldn’t think to provoke a response by acting abnormally, and they likely didn’t know the full capabilities of the factories scouting abilities.
It took only another 5 minutes to clean up the rest of the horde, the highly effective artillery and missile barrages made any fight with the bugs a sure win as long as the ammo held, so essentially as long as the truly massive hordes and bugs weren’t involved. Though Balistraria did make note of the fact this fight took 3 percent longer than the last time she fought a bug force of this size.
But that was fine, if the bugs resistances grew too great for missile and artillery to be effective she had more exotic weaponry to break out.