I shuffled around a bit on the field, the tips of my feet carving massive holes in the grass as I walked along the impact trench. My left-middle leg accidentally stepped through the corpse of a large livestock animal, the several dozen ton limbs cleaving through the body with little resistance. The large, brown and somewhat furry quadrupeds lying around the field appeared mostly intact from the outside; the shockwave from my cylindrical, multistory transport pod impacting from orbit likely liquefying their insides.

Inspecting my limb in panoramic view as I continued forwards, the viscera had cleanly slid off, barely even leaving a trace apart from the tip of the leg being slightly shinier in the sunlight. In the event my beams and railguns were disabled, my legs and sheer mass would be a deadly weapon on their own. Not to mention whatever else I was fetching from the pod.

I didn’t want to climb back into the trench, having struggled quite a bit to get out, but it would be good practice to learn how to climb a bit better. It would be quite embarrassing for my high-tech, walker self to lose to holes on the battlefield. While I doubted the enemy would prepare several story deep pitfall traps, it never hurt to be prepared.

Standing a bit from the edge of the trench, I decided to go about my descent in a somewhat more intelligent way than tipping into the ground face-first. I focused on my mental, humanoid body, trying to move my arms. I managed to switch modes much faster than my first time in the trench, my forelegs raising independently from the other four legs. I then crouched down and started stabbing the sides of the trench.

The brownish-black layers of dirt and clay were actually quite stable, despite it being near vertical on the walls of the trench. Still, with some wedging and fulcrum action with my forelimbs acting as spades, I managed to collapse large sections of the trough’s wall, the chunks of earth and grass breaking into a heap at the bottom. I repeated this until a space as wide as my leg span had been pushed into the trench and somewhat leveled.

The entire process had taken less than a minute; my arm-legs capable of putting out surprising speed and strength for their size. I now had a ramp, which I crouched and scuttered down into the trench. A bit further to my left was my transport pod, the cylinder rammed diagonally into the ground where it eventually came to a stop. A good portion of it appeared to be buried quite deep into the ground, suspending its opening at about the height of my head.

“Your drop pod has all the extra equipment the brass deemed necessary or useful for your mission, in addition to some stuff you can personally request. It’s up to you what you want to take; mech pilots have almost unlimited discretion after they land, as long as they don’t try to sabotage the mission or kill fellow pilots.” The tutorial said, the old veteran voice I had randomly swapped to after I awoke reappearing.

“Look directly at the pod and press the interaction button that pops up.” The tutorial continued. “Most allied entities can be accessed this way, with the main exception being your fellow walkers; those use a profile system. Even your packaged resources have a network tag built into their casing if you want to find some additional details.”

The entire cylinder had highlighted itself in white, and an outlined box labeled appeared over it. I mentally activated the button, and a 3d grid appeared on my screen, filled with objects. I could cycle the transparency between each layer with my mind, seeing cutaways of some items that spanned multiple layers. The grid was cylindrical, likely representing the interior volume of the pod. More than half the slots were empty, the grid hollowed out in the center. That was where I was packed, probably. I stuck an arm-leg into the cylinder, watching the slots fill and empty in real-time as my leg waved around.

“I’d recommend unpacking your couriers first to help with unloading. The pod’s logistics system can shift things around, but it takes a while for the finer grain items. It can also dump everything out the front, but you’ve got some heavy ordinance and somewhat delicate items that I wouldn’t suggest dropping a dozen meters, “ the tutorial voice said, while it highlighted some chunkier sets of blocks along the sides and bottom of the cylinder.

I focused on one and a box popped up with information. It was a , taking up a 5x2x1 space. There were also and versions near the bottom, though the single large unit was labeled a . Each box had a basic stat screen, with the unit’s weight, fuel type, and consumption rate, in addition to some pictorial icons which probably indicated their special capabilities.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

I went back to the small courier I originally looked at and pressed the button on its info screen. It traveled up the grid, before getting spit out the front. The grey rectangular box landed end-first on the discarded cap of the drop pod with a clang, before falling over. I hoped it wasn’t broken, as I attempted to inspect the box. Luckily, the option to interact appeared, and I selected it.

The same stat screen as before appeared, but this time was replaced with . I selected the option and the box broke apart at its grid delineations, one line splitting down the middle and four across around the box. Inside was a black millipede-like robot folded onto itself, which unfurled and self righted. Its segmented plating slid around, the entire bot expanding and legs unfolding before it turned to face me, wiggling its oversized antennae.

A new icon appeared on the middle left of my screen, a green box with a miniaturized top view of the courier curled up into a spiral, segmented into green parts like my much larger body status boxes above it. I clicked a flashing backpack icon on the left of my screen and pulled up a window with 8 separate, single-slot boxes, in addition to some extra buttons.

“Try interacting with the cylinder again. There should be new options available now that you have an inventory.” Said the tutorial, closing the inventory window.

I went back to looking at the cylinder. This time, after I pulled up the storage grid I found extra commands listed at the top. I selected the most relevant one: . My small courier turned towards the cylinder as an icon next to its status box appeared, shaped like a triangle of 3 square boxes. The small robot lifted up its trunk and stood still facing the pod’s entrance far above it, after which some of the machinery near the top unfolded and extended a thick cable down to the ground. The tight rows of legs on the courier locked together around the cable, and it zoomed up through the entrance of the cylinder, disappearing into the darkness.

While I watched it snake through the grid searching for single-slot items, I quickly flipped through any other packaged robot I could find and ordered them unloaded. The pod only appeared to be able to extract one at a time, shifting around the densely packed objects to open up paths for the large, multi-slot robots to exit. I let the smalls fall to the ground like the original, but I attempted to catch any medium or large packages with my forelegs. I dropped the first medium after it slid off my arms while I was lowering it to the ground, but I managed to successfully transfer the other three mediums to the ground.

It was actually somewhat difficult to move the large packaged robots, as their containers were both irregularly shaped and incredibly bulky. Each one was about the size of two of my legs put together, and my rear legs wobbled and sank into the ground as I received them. The first one I almost managed to get to the ground, but I hit my snout again due to being in panoramic mode and it fell on the ground with a thud. The next one I purposefully let fall sideways after carrying it about halfway, as its size meant it pretty much reached the ground already.

In total, I was left with 7 small couriers, not including the unpackaged one, 4 small scout drones, 2 medium couriers and 2 different medium combat robots, a large courier, and finally, a <-Sentinel- Heavy Assault Bot>. The name of the large combat robot didn’t particularly make sense to me, but it was the first one I saw that had an actual title. I was halfway through manually unpacking the smalls when the tutorial chimed up again and told me there was an button that automatically sends the command to all nearby packaged robots.

That done, I was left with a formidable group of various sized bots standing over mounds of package casing which the couriers had swept up into neat piles after the bots unpacked. The small courier I dispatched to loot the rest of the pod’s contents had also been busy, unloading many one to two slot items onto the ground over several trips. I wasn’t sure how it managed to fit the larger items into its inventory of single slots, but I assumed it was some trait given to the bot to simplify logistics.

Even after the trips of the small courier and the unloading of all the bots, there were still many loose items piled at the bottom of the pod, some of them quite large. I gave the command again while I inspected what had been brought down so far. About half the couriers, including the large, moved to face the cylinder, which cycled some more machinery to deploy various climbing platforms.

A single extra cable was deployed for the light couriers, while a thick, flexible netting was deployed that the mediums began to climb up sideways on their crab-like legs. A crane-like system with winches was extended from the top edge of the cylinder, from which several cables slightly thinner than the small courier ones were lowered together. These attached to various points around the four-legged, turtlely large courier and raised it into the pod.

The remaining robots just sat in the formation where they moved to after being unpacked. I didn’t know how to actually move them, so I just stepped over the light robots to take a look at the growing pile of items.

The one-slot items were mainly packed resources, 100 units to the block, in addition to ammunition and components. Two-slots were equipment and larger ordinance, mostly four-packs of missiles. A few irregular shapes that fit in a 4x2x1 space were labeled various forms of weaponry. A massive 8x4x4 block the large courier brought down was labeled an . I stumbled a bit as I looked at one of the items innocently sitting on the side of the pile.

<5 MT Strategic Warhead>. A clean and sterile name for the 3x1x1 box. I wondered if I could survive the blast if I threw it as hard as I could with my leg, assuming it didn’t just slip and fall on the floor.

“Your tactical missile launchers can actually fire it in mode if you assemble a booster stage.” The tutorial noted. It highlighted a pair of weapons systems on the pile.

“They attach on your rear external module slots. The standard tactical missiles can be fired directly up into the air in mode, or you can designate ground targets on the map.”

“Does everyone get one?” I asked.

“They get the job done, “ said the tutorial, sidestepping the question.

“Besides, you can always make yourself go boom in a pinch.”