Log #26 - the battle

There is nothing quite as empowering as riding around in a giant tank to go blow up massive hordes of insects, and the vindictive satisfaction I got from watching those nests pop will keep me warm at night for months to come.

The attack started with the assault mind sending the scout tanks to encircle the hive cluster with fire to prevent any reinforcement or escape attempts by the bugs, then the command tank opened up with its main cannons, utterly destroying a few nests and thoroughly provoking the hive, they charged straight at the command tank to kill the threat and then got flanked by the shield tanks and the drones from the drone and command tanks, the flanking attack cut a swath through the horde, and when the remnants of the horde finally got into range of the command tank the bugs couldn't even get through its shield before getting finished off by the command tanks turrets and the flanking tank battalion, the bugs eventually decided to pull back and attack the flanking tanks but the tanks had already retreated behind the wall of fire put up by the scouts.

We only lost 2 scout tanks when making the initial fire encirclement and we didn't lose anything from the actual purging of the nest. So the first half of the operation was a success by any measure. The assault mind then set the shield tanks to destroying the remaining nests and the rest of the tanks to patrolling a defensive perimeter to prepare for the counter attack from the nearby hive clusters. And while that was happening the construction mind was running the train line the logistics mind had planned, and I had gotten out of the command tank and begun setting up a wall around the resource deposit.

I only had one half of the wall done by the time the counter attack came, well counter attacks, there were 3 separate hordes coming towards the outpost, and each was larger than the force defending the nests we had just purged, the assault mind split the scouts into two groups to harass two of the oncoming hordes by spraying the ground in front of them with fire and launching flames and bullets into the sides of the hordes, while it thinned the largest of the approaching hordes itself using its main gun.

By the time the hordes had arrived the 2 smaller swarms forces were covered in burns and the edges of the hordes were significantly wounded, while the largest horde was outright missing significant chunks, and if your wondering why I am describing each horde like an individual beast rather than a collection of individuals, I can only say that they acted more like one large animal, moving as one large beast to swarm towards our defensive line rather than as individuals.

The assault mind held up to this flood well, and while it had lost a fair few scout tanks while harassing the hordes, it still had the majority of its forces, so with the command tank leading the charge and absorbing most of the acid, the assault mind sent its forces rushing towards the largest of the swarms (even though by now it was no longer actually the largest I am still going to call it that) and began mulching the horde of bugs

While this was happening one of the hordes of bugs noticed that I was all by my lonesome, which I really should have expected, and my walls were not near ready enough to handle a horde of this size, so I stood on top of my wall and unleashed enough ordinance to make a tank blush, dozens of missiles carved swaths out of the horde while the turrets on the wall thinned the head of the approaching hoard, still I was just one man and they soon reached my wall and the larger bugs began melting and eating the wall while the nibblers and winged ones swarmed me, they didn't have shit on the fish though and the discharge fried all the smaller bugs that had swarmed me.

I then made the excellent tactical decision to jump off the wall before it fell with me on it, jumping into the horde of bugs, and with them pressed so tightly together I could actually stand on them like a particularly angry carpet, I just kept crowd surfing to dodge the acid and teeth while unloading the last of my missiles, I had just started dropping grenades when my luck ran dry and a lucky bug pulled me into the horde. So I got out my shotgun and sword and went full badass, I cannot claim any particular skill with a blade but I had strength and couldn't not hit the bugs if I had tried, activating my discharge only bought me a bit of breathing room, and I spent long enough in that horde for my sword to run out of charge, but it was still a sword and I still had plenty of ammo in my shotgun.

I decided it was a good idea to jump into the horde because I figured they couldn't leverage their numbers as well if I was moving through them, and I was right, I still had more than 10 bugs trying to take a chunk out of me at any one moment but that was still better than hundreds launching acid at me, by the time the assault mind finished off the other 2 hordes I was out of ammo for my shotgun and my sword was so dull it worked more like a club, but my shields were intact and I was intact, the horde around me wasn't significantly harmed though, and if the assault mind hadn't blown up all the bugs it could without hitting me I definitely wouldn't have been able to keep that up much longer.

The battle lasted about 45 minutes from start to finish and we ended it with 24 scout tanks, 23 shield tanks, 4 drone tanks, 1 command tank, and one battered engineer as our surviving forces, so everything important survived and the construction mind had managed to run the train line near enough to the outpost during the fight and had begun unloading supplies to build the outpost.

I left the construction and defensive minds to set up the outpost and rode a train back to the base for a well deserved nap while the assault mind parked its command tank within the outpost and sent its less damaged tanks out to patrol the perimeter of the outpost. The battle was a success by all the standards I had set it to, which was foremost surviving with actually claiming the outpost as a distant second. We did both.

Log #27

The new influx of resources means that we can finish up the army for the assault mind, and while that's being built I can focus on the ship, I managed to decode the flight path my ship was following, it looks like this planet wasn't even the final destination, that was a planet that would still be 3 years out if the ship was running, and the ship had been flying from planet to planet for years, the closest planet to where I am that the ship knows about is a 6 year trip out.

That means that IF I manage to get a satellite up into orbit, and IF a ship or station picks it up, that I will then still be on this planet for 6 more years at a minimum.

With the rate that the bugs are growing in 6 years I won't actually be alive anymore unless I manage to kill the bugs off, or at least clear the continent I'm on. So I have 2 real options, build my own FTL ship, which I have no idea how to do and the drive on my sole example is basically slag, or I need to kill all of the bugs.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Neither of these options actually seem feasible, I'm still going to try and get them both done, but it seems like I might actually die here, the planet I was apparently born on too, fitting.

Also this hell planet is apparently called Nauvis if you cared.

Log #28

Since I am apparently going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future I will need to expand the factory rapidly while I still have the advantage over the bugs. The first part of this plan will be to push back all the bugs and establish satellite factories farther out that I can then use to make more armies and mining outposts.

With this feedback loop I should be able to push the bugs back for a few weeks before they adapt and my advance slows to a crawl.

I'll need to expand the processing power and rework the programing on the minds so that they can actually run more than one base and its outposts, so I'll be expanding their minds, eventually I plan for the center factory having nothing but a token factory, with a massive nuclear power plant, and holding the brain of my massive industrial complex, getting all the resources it needs shipped in rather than made here, but that's a long ways off.

The Assaults army has finished being built and the command tank is fully outfitted so they are ready to launch the operation whenever I give the order, and I will be doing that once I make sure the minds can actually handle an expansion of this magnitude.

Log #29

I have come to the conclusion that I have no idea what I'm doing, I know how to make things, but I don't know how or why they work. I bring this up because I took a look at the minds coding and they apparently have names? And the code has grown from what I originally wrote, I mean I knew the code adapted and could change to meet new scenarios, but none of them remotely resemble the starting code or even each other.

I can still edit all of the code, but I don't know how much about how it works anymore, if I even really knew in the first place, I can still see some spots to improve performance or some redundant code and I did that, but I still don't understand what I'm doing so I am not going to make any major changes, just clearing up the clutter and streamlining what I feel I can get away with.

Bulwark- my defensive wall and the first mind I built- I had called them that shortly after I had set them up 'you're to be my little bulwark against the world' if I remember correctly, and apparently they had picked it up as their name, has coding that largely fits it's namesake, a fair bit of its coding is centered around defending the digital infrastructure of the factory, against what I don't really know, but it's largely sturdy and comparatively simple in structure when compared to the other minds even with all the defenses. This simple nature means I felt comfortable making a few more changes, still nothing major but bulwark should now be able to better handle more attacks at once now.

Labyrinthine- my construction mind and the second mind I've built- named because I thought that 'the factory is going to be labyrinthine in construction'. They have more complex coding that seems to loop back and forth repeatedly without a consistent pattern, in other words its a labyrinth of code, I didn't feel comfortable making many changes here, everything looked like it had its place in one big tapestry, but I did modify the mind so that it would be able to grow more with more processing power though, as it wasn't really using the processing power it already had that often.

byzantine - the third of my minds and the one focused on actually making this factory run well- apparently named when I thought "hopefully they will make this factory less byzantine' easily the most complex of the minds, but oddly enough its coding didn't follow its name, it was well organized and formed and it was easy enough to see what each part did, if not how the larger whole worked, I made a fair few changes but largely didn't need to touch anything up, it was already running well

Balistraria- my newest mind, meant for attacking and leading armies- oddly enough I can't say that I have ever even thought of that word, much less sent said thought out onto the network the minds inhabit, oddly enough this mind uses her instead of their in her logs, so apparently she has a gender unlike the others, maybe something to do with having an actual body? Still just proves that I have no idea what's going on, well no, I know exactly what's happening, I just don't know why or how. Anyway her coding is the simplest of the 4 but she is growing in complexity with every simulator session and battle and I think she's developing viruses and malware for cyberwarfare, and it shouldn't be long before she catches up to her ... Siblings? Anyway I improved her code a bit but there wasn't that much I needed to change.

I should probably explain the whole mental network thing, in the figurative back of my mind there is always an awareness of my entire factory, I can see through the radars if I focus, and I'm always aware of attacks on the factory and how much of everything I'm producing and using, it's all being sent to the node in my brain which then processes it into something my mind can understand, as long as I'm within radar coverage of the base I will always know what's going on in the factory, this includes what the minds are doing and allows me to send orders to either individual drones or the minds themselves, and I've used the transmitter from the rocket control unit to make my armours transmit that same information, so I'm no longer restricted by the radars range as long as my suit is working and has power, I literally control the factory with my mind.

So yeah, The minds are maybe sentient, you may be thinking "oh no what if they rebel against their creators and kill you!' But honestly I'm also technically an artificial intelligence too, I was made in a tube and had all my knowledge implanted before my birth, I'm just meatier than they are. And all the coding to protect and obey me is still in place, and I'm pretty sure Bulwark could have cut it off if they had really wanted too, their defenses were no joke, and the minds still obey every thought I send into the network without hesitation, being sapient just helps them follow their orders better. Still don't think I will be making many or any more minds though, making life that will just be stuck on this hell planet with me feels wrong.

None of this changes my current plans or end goal, besides the fact I am making extra sure to have a backup of Balistrarias mind before sending her out to burn bugs in my name

Log #30

Woot! The 30th log, I got into the ship's clock and apparently it crashed 4 months ago, which considering I haven't been keeping track of time came as a fair bit of a surprise, though if I was surprised it wasn't a longer or shorter time I can't really say.

The offensive against the bugs is proceeding well, the assault mind, Balistraia is clearing out the larger hives and holding them against counter attacks while Labyrinthine builds the satellite factory, and Bulwark mans the guns as they are being built and eventually takes over the defense from Balistraia.

The artillery in the main factory is firing constantly to destroy the nests, and thoroughly provoking them into attacking our defensive walls, the bugs are attacking the main factory in absurd numbers and the farthermost wall is in pretty rough condition but it should hold out for at least another day.

The middle wall has been lined with metal and shield generators making it considerably tougher than the outerwall, even if it's not as tall, and at the rate we are destroying the nests we should have gotten everyone of the nests within the artilleries range.

I'm hopeful the attacks will shrink in number as more nests are destroyed and they cant make the bugs as fast, and at the rate the bugs are coming it's all but certain the outerwall will be breached, but I figured this would happen so the outer wall is segmented with internal walls, so the bugs that do breach will be walking into a kill box.

This hurts our production short term but the satellite factories that are being built have already started to compensate for the loss of production at the main factory, building drones, tanks, and enough ammunition to arm multiple small countries, all just to supply the army and main base with supplies to fight off the bugs, I'm not even running the decoders right now, all the resources are going straight into the war effort.

So far it looks like we are going to win though, even if it'll come at the loss of the outer layer of the main factory and hundreds of tanks and drones.