[~Shoggoth, are you busy?~]

I switched to the private channel Drag-On setup. [~I can talk. What’s up?~]

[~I’ve discovered where that beast came from and the tide from before. A hive in the valley under the lower city. Headquarters wants it checked out. You seem to be the one best suited for such things. Would you be so kind as to go down and scout it out at least sweety?~]

[~Oh that, yeah, kind of busy. Yeah kinda. I mean you know we’re dealing with at least three more Twenty-ones right?~]

[~I’m aware. I’ll pick up Bomberman and we’ll pull in somebody with good optics who can help but this is important. There’s concern that another titan of plant kind may come up out of there and not having a warning would be bad. You’ve got the best specs for scouting down there that's in decent range right now.~] Drag-On was soft but urgent in their speech.[~It’s bad enough something was there long enough to grow something like that Twenty-Five. My contemporaries are worried there may be something bigger down there.~]

[~Fine. Do I have five minutes to repair and replenish?~]

[~Sure thing Sugar!~]

[New Plan Shoggoth, Drag-On is picking me up.] Bomberman sounded aggravated as well as winded as he sent a digital communication. I had to wonder if he was using voice or subvocal instead of just thinking about talking like me. Oh wait he’s still mostly human, probably subvocal.

I had already started moving my active shoggoth that approached to get new optics and mass into starting to drag what was left of their fallen comrades to get repairs. If I was going into the belly of the beast I was going prepared. Enough so that when it came time to turn emotions back on again I’d at least have some mitigation to the terror I was sure I should be feeling. Instead, I focused on rebuilding my forces as quickly as possible while still outputting search drones for stealth units. Probably need them below. It was either the apprehension or the lack of confidence that was telling me to stick around and keep checking Shelters. Both of which were good reasons to go down anyway.

So ten minutes later, back at my full twenty-five fully kitted subordinates, I went to the designated location marker. Not that I need it. I just followed the trail of destruction.

At the top of the hole I found an incline that led down and to my left, following a wall of concrete bricks. A retaining wall for dirt based on the leakage. Instead of splitting up and sending a few down alone, I simply linked all of the nanite-heavy drones, big and small, into one large mass before plunging into the hole. Which went down three hundred fifty meters vertically across most of a kilometer of horizontal distance. Being one giant version of myself seemed like the smarter idea considering some of the things that had come up from here.

As I descended I passed through layers of machinery interspersed with vast areas full of storage vats. At one point I could see the far side, eight hundred meters away. Somehow I knew this was a river valley that had been taken advantage of. Old knowledge surfaced at the oddest times. But it was proven true when I hit the bottom and found myself facing a sluggish polluted body of water. One that supported a myriad of plant growth roots as big around as a hover bus in some cases. The rest of the space was just a concrete spillway with pillars of the stuff holding up the ceiling every so often.

There was an absolutely huge hive there, just around the corner, all but blocking the river. It had to be old to be that big. And it caught me with my pants down. As soon as I rounded the corner and saw it, it saw me.

[Damnit, should have sent scout drones first. I should fix that problem. I am not cut out for this. Should be more cautious. Are you getting this Drag-On?]

I got no reply even as a metric fuck ton of plants with anger management issues that had been milling around turned on me.

Instead of being stupid and retreating, drawing them to the surface where nobody was prepared. I sent a single mini Shoggoth, with a record of what happened to that point, up the way I came as fast as it would go. Then I charged right back at the plants. All the while pumping out every scout drone I had stockpiled. No way was I getting caught with my pants down again.

Not that I was dumb about it, I retracted as much as I could into my extra-dimensional space and pushed all the drones to the front. Between that and the fact that there was nothing I didn’t recognize currently down there, I did better than one would expect early on. There were just a lot of them.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

[Estimate on how many there are? Suggestions?]

<>Approximately two thousand based on the staging area we can see. Eight hundred by eight hundred meters, a fifty-meter clearance above, pillars every fifty meters, at least a kilometer clear of them behind us of the same dimensions. You should be fine, most of them are Model Tens, and a fighting retreat would keep them from overwhelming you. Tens are hive tenders and are not as skilled or geared for combat. Continue your “Blender” maneuver. I would recommend adding plasma fire as well, but if you do keep it angled down. The upper surface doesn’t look like it’s been maintained in a while and the concrete is crumbling.

[Got it!] I passed off my large quantity of plasma guns to drones at the front of my mass and used all the plasma weapons I had to add fire to the scrum.

Instead of staying static or charging further, I began to kite the enemy by moving back away from the entrance as well as the hive. Having time, I observed the hive itself, looking for anything that might stand out. Things were going well enough, plants were being mulched, roots I crossed too. I focused ranged fire on the hive, popping the placenta sacks I could see by boiling them. None of them looked big enough or thick enough to birth something like that Twenty-Five again.

I had this in the bag, or so I thought.

While I was distractedly focused on what was in front of me the river burst upwards, spewing toxic water and garbage everywhere. It also disgorged something that gave me a run for my money on the ‘Fucked up Eldrich thing’ and was immediately just as mean. Whatever it was looked like three octopus bodies connected together at the top, covered in tentacles tipped in barbs or blades. Some of the appendages were large, some were delicate but they all looked wicked.

[Motherfucker looks more like a Shoggoth than I do!] I took exception to that. Shifting myself to be a bigger meaner-looking version before lunging at it.

<>It’s a Model Thirteen. They’re hive defense units. Your scouts are sending back broken images of more swarming under the surface of the water. I can’t get a clear count but this is not looking good.

[Fuck. Fucked fucker. Fucking fuck fuck!]

I struggled briefly with the thing, it had more pointy bits than I did at first. My ability to convert mass was what saved me. That and the fact I had a lot of blueprints. I rapidly shrunk as I added more nodes to my hard drone cores, each adding Murder Ribbons. I need a better name for those, really. The other plus to my form was that I was mercurial, it was solid all over. I could rend it limb from limb, but it couldn’t really do the same to me. I just popped out new ones. Soon enough it was down, even with the small horde of lesser units still crawling up my ass and my steady retreat. That didn’t save me much when four more crawled out of the muck.

[Fuck, fucking, fuckety fuck!]

<>You are certainly displaying the range of that word. You have amassed a significant number of points. May I suggest utilizing them to purchase another forge body and build several more advanced plasma weapons?

[Fuck!] Apparently Naille took that as the Agreement it was meant to be. I was a little too swarmed to answer appropriately. I was losing at this point, badly.

Without strong emotions like fear, it wasn’t so bad. I was able to focus completely on the attack. Enough so I was able to wipe out the pissants attacking my back before the Model Thirteens bore me down. The extra Forge body and Plasma Weapons certainly started helping as soon as they arrived but it wasn’t enough. I was losing mass faster than I could regain. I could feel my brain boiling at this point, sped up too fast for too long even with the new implant.

[Naille. Sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to make it. Two more of those defense plants just showed up. Just give my points to Gravitas. Tokens, and blueprints too. If nothing they should go to boosting someone rather than being lost. I’m about baked. Core temp reads way too high at one oh two. I should be dead soon.]

<>Thank you for your service, but I wouldn’t count you out yet.

The last active central drone core was speared by no fewer than three tentacles from two different defenders. The only thing left was my true core, hidden in a pocket dimension. One that can still be destroyed because it had interface machinery on the real-world side. Instead of letting it happen easily, I hardened what I had left, turning the Nanites into layers upon layers of armor. It would buy time if nothing else. While they were focused on me they couldn’t swarm up the ramp.

With my inactivity, they seemed to start dragging me around, bashing me into things. What few sensors I still had, altitude and gyroscopic eventually indicated I had dropped again. At least twenty meters down and was rapidly moving in the direction away from the hive. My armor was being abraded and eaten away by whatever was outside, vibration sensors indicating different returns as things impacted my surface.

[Huh. Where the hell are they taking me?] Extruding an eye would only weaken my armor so I didn’t, simply hunkering down to try and outlast.

<>Perhaps upstream to a lake? Records indicate Lake Coeur d’Alene in this direction. I believe it was paved over but never drained.

[Oh fuck. There could be a gargantuan hive down there.]

<>I believe you are likely correct. But why would they be bringing you there?