The neat green fields gave way to scruffy grey hills and stands of evergreens as I progressed towards the . The ground gave a unique crunch as the tips of my legs sank into the ground while I moved, the holes quite a bit deeper than before due to all the weight I was carrying. I perhaps felt a bit more resistance while moving my rear legs, but the quite leisurely pace I was forced into meant whatever systems responsible for my movement were operating well below capacity. I briefly wondered how fast I could go fully unburdened, as I was quite anxious to get to the battle, which had cooled down significantly over the past dozen minutes. That wouldn’t happen though, since I had never actually fought anything before and had no confidence in my abilities during actual combat. I would be relying on the mass of robots following me to do that, which meant staying at their speed.

The chunky, armored crab-frames of the medium combat robots were the biggest offenders, only managing to scuttle sideways at around 30 km/h. Since I now had 4 of them, there was also no chance of me being able to carry the things despite my structure-sized stature. I already had all my module slots filled by logistical courier bots and weapons, in addition to five small couriers literally clinging on my sides. Three other small robots sat on top of my carapace, a small, six-legged scout I named that had been incredibly useful in providing map coverage and listening in on wireless communications, a dragonfly-like flying scout drone, and an amphibious combat robot with stubby legs and a long, flat tail who’s back housed twin racks of micro missiles.

“Air scout, [Hover] and [See What’s Ahead], “ I said, wanting to get a better vantage point on what was ahead. I and my escorts continued walking on, as nothing happened.

“Err, “ I said, scanning the multiple columns of icons representing each of my robots. “, [Fly]?”

That had felt right, the sequence of words clicking in my head as the flying drone began hovering, staying in relatively the same spot above where it sat originally. Its profile had also lit up. I attempted to press it.

The moment I did, a picture-in-picture popped near the bottom of my screen, showing the forward view of the drone. I also felt a third arm appear out of my back, quite disconcertingly, but after a few wiggles, translated directly into the movement direction of the flier, I was able to lift the thing into the sky.

By focusing on the frame I was able to zoom in depending on how hard I squinted. Since the mechanical body I was piloting had no eyelids, this was effectively however much I could mentally tolerate. With my new super-vision, I was able to more closely inspect the industrial sprawl ahead of me.

One thing I immediately noticed was that most of the structures had been absolutely shredded across the top. It varied from jagged collapses lined with bullet holes to the wilted remains of white-painted metal beams and plating blackened and melted by beam fire. Panning over to the right, I could see the rear of the factory zone being absolutely torn apart and filled with craters, though there was movement behind what appeared to be temporary fortifications that popped up here and there. I could’ve immediately lobbed a tactical missile in that direction, but I decided to hold off until I met up with the others to see what our plan would be.

The tracks I was following veered off towards the left, making a wide curve around the outskirts of the factories, right up against a tree-line. I decided to go that way, not wanting to barge straight through what had been a constant warzone for longer than an hour. To that end, I diverged from the path and cut straight towards the trees, saving some distance.

With me focusing on the drone footage, I didn’t notice the planes zooming past ahead of me until I actually heard the roar of their engines, followed by one of the rear ones exploding into a ball of flames. The other two of the triad of jets pulled sharp turns as a pair of winged black rods zoomed towards them, incandescent trails of light following the missiles as they pulsed their engines to land an intercept. One jet arcing towards our formation buzzed its autocannon and raked a line across the trail of robots, only managing to shred a single small combat robot before the missile got close enough and burst into a flaming cloud of shrapnel, the jet tumbling sideways before its wings ripped off from one of its engines failing. Some of the shrapnel pattered and sparked off a few of my robots, but did no meaningful damage.

The other jet dove straight down before pulling insane G-s to lift up barely over the ground, the missile slamming into the earth and failing to detonate. A big [AUTHORIZE AA TACTICAL MISSILE LAUNCH] button flashed in the center of my screen and I figuratively slammed it several times in my mind, the pair of launchers mounted on my flanks swiveling upwards and alternating in flinging three black cylinders into the air. Each had white jets of gas spray near either end to rapidly turn and rotate each missile as they traveled upwards inertially before their engines ignited and the missiles raced off towards the jet attempting to escape over the trees, trailing dense clouds of off-white smoke behind them.

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The smoke blocked most of my vision looking at the rapidly shrinking objects racing off towards the distance, but my minimap automatically zoomed out, showed the missiles gaining on the bright red isosceles triangle, diverging into a three-pronged interception as they inched closer and closer. They suddenly were X-d out in rapid succession, the fighter-bomber zooming away unharmed off the edge of the box.

I wasn’t sure what had happened. Something had destroyed the missiles before they hit their target, but I had no idea what that something actually was. If I had been more aware and launched the missiles sooner, the jet would’ve stood no chance, but as it stood, it had gotten away and would likely come back for more. My best bet was still to meet up with the other pilots, to get an explanation for what was happening, and to support their push forwards however I could.

I resumed walking forwards, my group one small combat robot and three tactical missiles less. I attempted reloading the launchers, hoping a four-pack of missiles would get automatically broken up with one somehow stashed in me. It actually worked, with the remaining missile apparently getting repackaged by the medium courier acting as my internal inventory. I cringed slightly as I watched the small couriers swing the two-meter long missiles between each other to set them into the launchers, but they did so quite quickly and most importantly, without dropping them.

I resumed looking through the air scout, moving higher in the air to look over the damaged buildings and potentially see my allies. Out of nowhere, an electronic chiming began as a phone icon appeared in the center of my vision, with a green and red button below it. I tentatively pressed the green button and four rectangular profiles appeared on the right of my screen. One of them was ringed in green as the third (technically fourth) voice I had ever heard rang out.

“Hey, welcome to the group, good to have you join us! I was getting worried the fourth robot they were talking about would never show up or decide to go the other way, but it looks like you made it here just fine.” It was the cheerful but casual voice of a young adult male, not at all what I was expecting. “It looks like you don’t have a name yet, is this your first run?”

Another male voice briefly muttered in the background, before a female one shushed him.

I gathered myself before talking, quite nervous all of the sudden for some reason.

“Hello everyone, nice to meet you-”

My icon wasn’t lit up. I tried again, focusing on the icon this time.

“Err, sorry, it was um, on push-to-talk, I think? Hello?” I was having a hard time getting my words out, despite being perfectly fluent on my own earlier.

“Ah yeah, you can change it to voice activation with [Disable Push-To-Talk Comms] if you want to just talk for a bit and re-enable it with the opposite command words when things start heating up.” The young man provided.

“[Disable Push-To-Talk Comms]” I said, before trying to talk again. “Can you guys hear me?”

“Loud and clear partner.” The female voice said. The name next to her profile read . “If you’re wondering, my first run was on a planet which had an extremely thick atmosphere that had these gigantic floating creatures I nicknamed Sky Whales. Never managed to get near any of them but I decided on the name anyways. Had to change a bunch of characters to actually make it work though.”

The other two’s names were similarly convoluted, but they had sensible nicknames. The younger man was <”Ash”>, short for <”AshAspenBeechBirchCherryChestnutCottonwo…”>, cutting off early. It didn’t seem to have numbers, unlike <”161127624525104631027221627345340”>, or <”Bill”> as he called himself.

“Does everyone have such complicated names?” I asked.

Bill huffs and responds.

“I remember spending what must have been hours repeatedly entering names into the system before saying screw it and putting in every number I saw around me.” He pauses for effect. “TWICE! I had to do it twice since the FIRST ONE WAS TAKEN!”

“My name’s actually more than two-” the other three icons disappearing as my hovering drone dropped out of the sky, one set of wings spinning to the ground after a crack and a snapping sound. I couldn’t see where the shot had come from, but the sudden violence shocked me back into reality. I was still in a warzone, filled with enemies lurking amongst the dense expanse of buildings I could now see ahead of me

I saw a red dot on my minimap and armed both my beams, raking the direction of the buildings for several seconds until the entire area was collapsed molten rubble. There was no more red dot.

I hurried along the path around the buildings, letting the medium combat drones lag behind as the other robots picked up their pace. We were in the battle already; it didn’t matter if the mediums weren’t following as closely since the factory zone was already in range of their guns. Just in case, I issued an order.

“, [Follow Me] and [Attack] ”

The effect was immediate, the multiple thick gun-barrels of the mediums lifting and scanning towards the industrial zone, with some even lifting smaller weapon and scanner systems out of their armor that spun in circles or jerkily looked around at potential target locations.

Passing by a few relatively intact streets, the light combat robots following behind me were tagged by a sudden hail of bullets, mostly ineffective due to simply how fast the tall, thin robots were running along. I heard the thudding of the heavy autocannons on the medium robots far behind as they attempted to shoot straight through walls to hit the red contacts on my minimap. That silenced the machineguns, though I wasn’t sure if they were actually disabled, the red dots disappearing just as fast as the gunfire had arrived. I eventually curved around the perimeter enough to see the edges of a grey concrete fortress I had viewed earlier through my flying drone, which I had caught and was sitting damaged on my head.

Going a bit further, I saw the edge of a leg, before witnessing the reassuring maws of a trio of giant black striders looking back at me. I had arrived.