Sophia had no idea what was going on a massive metal door had saved her from the wolf that was hunting her but now she was trapped. There was a funny noise and then the dim lights in the room had brightened to the point it felt like she was outside in the middle of the day. She wasn't sure what type of tunnel she was in, but everything was tilted slightly to one side and judging by the fact she had to climb up into a doorway upside down. In many places, the tunnels had collapsed and in others, there were doors she couldn't open. She tried to explore for a few hours before she finally gave up and found a relatively safe looking hole in a pile of rubble. She had to back into it on her stomach to fit but that meant next to nothing was going to come looking for her. She did her best to curl up and stay warm as she hugged her bag of herbs to her chest. She needed to get out of there and get them to her village as soon as possible to help her mother. Austin watched as the small human child crawled into a hole to sleep. He had no ability to look outside or check the local time so he could only guess. Though it must have been rather late for her to be this tired.

He-He was annoyed to discover that he was yes in fact upside down and if that wasn't bad enough what little of the ship, he had access to was broken into three pieces. It was likely that more of the ship had survived but he couldn't directly connect to it. The part of the ship he was primarily based in was near the rear engine module. While the engines had broken away from the ship for the most part a cable connection still remained. He had even managed to establish a wireless connection to another part of the ship. Since it wasn’t part of the three that had a connection to the reactor and its capacitor banks it would be stuck on what limited battery power was available. Which was far more limited than he’d like. He couldn’t try and switch the systems on without risking the connection. Altogether though he was definitely not going to be flying out of this one. He would likely have to build a subterranean facility and scrap most if not all of the ship he still had access to. While relocating any functional infrastructure. His first priority had to be a very simple mining unit to clear out enough space so he could begin to set up the bare minimum infrastructure. The reactor, assembly bays, and refineries, could all be disassembled and reassembled relatively easily with the few construction units he already had on hand. Once he had a way to start processing resources and constructing more complex units. He could worry about expanding his infrastructure and moving himself to a more stable network. He could easily rig up a hardline connection once the AI core was built and just transfer over. Un-until then he was safe enough for now. Thankfully after a few rough tests, he was able to establish that the surviving infrastructure was partially capable of functioning in its current state. It was mostly designed to work in zero gravity so the main refinery unit that refined and processed whatever he fed into it worked. The ability to move resources throughout the ship or make anything more than resource blanks was currently beyond him. It-it was pretty much just dumping the resource blanks in the middle of the room. It couldn't even cool them properly so that was a problem one he had partially been able to account for by setting up a tractor beam emitter to create for lack of a better word a catcher's Mitt. He had prioritized his drones to work their way toward the unnetworked facility to establish a network connection. He was mostly making his educated guess on what had, roughly been where, when the ship was still intact. He was extremely relieved when he discovered what was in fact a drone bay. The old fighter drone bay to be exact. While he had lost his old fighter drones it had a collection of maintenance drones in storage. While they lacked the power cells like his specialized units those units could be used to recharge some of the repair drones. He had one of the larger mining drones still in there, but it was designed for zero G and was more like a small spacecraft. He could probably repurpose it with a little work to be a large scale excavator but that would take time and a lot more complex tools that he currently didn't have. While the bay wasn't large enough to fulfill all his requirements it was a decent start for his new facility. At the very least he could start moving some of the manufacturing bays into the room.

Meanwhile, the one working manufacturing bay produced his first new drones. It was little more than a Power Pack antenna and tank treads with a singular mount on the back. This would allow him to use them for multiple roles and simply swap the tools as needed. He currently had the advanced repair bot finishing the assembly and attached the tools to the small drones. He currently has three types of drones. The cutter drone, carrier drone, and a mining drone. The only real difference between the cutter and the minor was the miner had a bigger battery pack on its laser cutter allowing it to run longer without being charged. The carrier drone used a tractor beam emitter on a small arm. This allowed the small drones to work together to move larger heavier objects. He couldn't really complain about it, he just needed something simple to start with. He had loosely based the design or at least the concept for the drone off of an ant and had made the networking antenna work in a similar manner. With each drone acting like a relay allowing him to expand the network by just having more drones it was crude but effective.

A Few hours later, he had cut another path to the hangar bay and had begun mining in it as well as setting the groundwork for the new facilities. Unfortunately, this process was going to take a while so for the time being he had to work with what he had on hand. Even with the growing swarm of the Gen One Ant drones, the ship wasn't exactly small to start with, and with all the add ons over the years, he had converted it into a true super capital class warship. He had taken full advantage of this by both decentralizing the ship systems into multiple blocks and creating specialized blocks. Thankfully he had had enough sense to keep one of these blocks close to his own core. His core was both the deepest and most heavily armored part of the ship. Meaning even if the entire ship was decimated, he could detonate the explosive bolts and use the stripped down remains of the original ship to rebuild.

Austin was pulled from his musing when he saw the child crawl out of her little improvised din. He didn't have any food on board well he might have something left in the old mess hall, but he doubted even the emergency rations would still be any good. Who knows how old they are now? He could try and help her leave but who knows how far away the nearest settlement was. True, it was unlikely a human child would travel that far from their home settlement, but she was being chased by that wolf creature. If she was the only survivor of the settlement well, he just be sending her out to her death and he had no idea what was outside. He was relatively sure his position was safe for the time being but well how long would that last? He needed knowledge of the outside world, most of his drones were designed for deep space. His specialist drones were equipped to be able to move in gravity, so they have been able to function relatively well, but he didn't have any other drones like that available. His ant drones were not capable of tending to or defending the human. He would have to make a decision quickly as he could not let her go but he could not force her to stay. As if to make matters worse he got another alert about something entering the ship.

He quickly sent several of the Ant cutter drones in and found a Beatle but one the size of a house cat and was it eating metal? Even though the creature was not a threat to the human it was a pest he could not allow to propagate. The cutters opened fire into Austin Shock its carapace was actually made of metal managing to absorb the cutter's lasers. Well, at least the short less concentrated bursts he had figured would have been enough to kill off the creature. Cranking the cutters up to the same output he would use to cut through bulkheads he could burn through it easily enough. That wasn't the last of them it seemed like the death of their brethren was the equivalent of a dinner bell for them as more porred through the gap created by the first one. While others tried to eat their way through and create more openings. He'd redirected all the minor and cutter drones he had. What followed was a war of attrition he had barely cleared a path, so the drones were bottlenecked their only advantage being their superior firepower. With the cutter's beams able to burn through several of the insects in one firing unfortunately the cutters could only run for about a minute before they had to cool down. In some of the more open corridors, they could move to the side so another cutter could provide cover fire. However, in the tight path they had cleared so far pretty much once the beam ran out the drone was lost. He had only produced about fifty of the blasted things up to this point. Thirty five cutters and fifteen miners. The miners held up a lot better than the cutters. Their more powerful beams had actual heat sinks and were able to fire for much longer allowing them to hold corridors almost by themselves. They had already been pushed back three corridors and lost ten cutters and two minors. Why they seemed to be avoiding chewing on the walls or wires confused him. They did seem to be quite eager to eat his drones or their own fallen brethren. Because of course, they'd be cannibalistic regardless it didn't matter his cutters were currently working on freeing an internal defense turret. With only two corridors left he really wished he had something with hands but he was going to be melting those blasted beetles down the moment he got the chance. Once he had proper combat drones those things were going to be priority one targets along with any of their kin.

With one final cut, the covering gave way with a snap the turret rose from what at once had been the ceiling. The internal feed system was jammed so the gun only had as many bullets as was currently loaded into the belt. Once the bugs were dead, he’d send out one of the repair drones with a drum from the Armory. Well, once he managed to crack one of them open and rig up a new feeder thankfully the ballistic ammo Was meant to be the turret's secondary firing mechanism in case the ship lost power. He didn't want to use it because he was currently on battery power. If push came to shove and he ran out of bullets he could turn the laser down low and start blasting. Space marine armor was a heck of a lot tougher than whatever The Beatle's exoskeleton was made of. He doubted even on its lowest setting the turret lasers wouldn’t be overkill. With the turret online he did some quick reconfiguring of the firing parameters. It was a single barrel liquid cooled automatic rifle, unfortunately, it currently did not have any fluid in the feed line so it couldn't fire in Full Auto for long. Also, it only had a little over a thousand rounds in the current belt so a spray and pray firing type would be inefficient. Since the corridor in front of it had a working blast door he could open. He had set firing parameters to be single shot to anything in the next corridor. If anything made it into the corridor where the turret was currently stationed it would be met with burst fire mode. With the turret programs loaded and ready to fire he opened the blast door. His drones were already in a full fighting retreat. During the time it took him to free the turret he had lost another four cutters, nearly six if the miner hadn’t open fire as the blast door opened. He wanted to give them a clear and open path to pour through, he didn't want them eating through his walls.

The miner held the line while the remaining cutters pulled back into the turret room. By that point, the miner's barrel was already beginning to overheat. Before it too was forced to retreat under the watchful eye of the turret. As the first insect entered the room it was met with a resounding crack before it exploded into a pool of gore. Followed by the next thirty five with more to come within the next minute the turret was nearly firing in Full Auto taking less than a second to reposition to the next target. By then though the cutters had reformed into a wall in front of the turret. Anything that tried to get into the corridor with the turret would be met with a wall of cutters along with a single tractor beam that was working to clear any debris from the corridor. the miner moved into position along with another one right behind the cutters. The miner's beams were longer ranged allowing them to fire down the corridors where the cutters had to be practically in melee range. Austin watched in what would in any other situation would be absolute interest as a small war broke out in his own corridors. As hundreds of The Beatles poured in another two miners came to reinforce the firing line their beams cutting swaths through the enemy lines. As the number of dead Beatles ticked into the thousands the turret's ballistic ammo started to run dry. It was then a massive beetle barely small enough to fit down the corridors emerged. Crushing it still live compatriots under its lumbering bulk he quickly switched the turret to full auto and peppered the beetle's armor. Its last hundred or so rounds vanished in a few seconds leaving the beetle injured but alive. Just before it could cross the threshold into the corridor it was met by a combined attack of the cutters and miners, he wasn't taking any risks with a beast like that. Not seconds after the large beetle had died a horde of more beetles swarmed over the corpse devouring it and continuing on. Unwilling to let The Beatles use their larger counterparts' corpse, as a shield the turret fired off a laser shot at half power. The corpse absorbed it, its metal shell rapidly started to melt before exploding from the internal vaporization of its organs. The smaller beetles started to retreat it was at that moment he used the opportunity to push his advantage.

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Multiple tractor beam drones rushed into the room and started clearing the corridor. The corpses were to be moved to processing as quickly as possible the damaged drones if they could be repaired were to be repaired. Once the repair bought that had been working frantically to open up one of the armories arrived with a canister of ammunition for the turret.

If these bugs were going to give him the opportunity he was going to establish and push forward a proper battle line. Meanwhile his fabricator finished producing the first combat Ant drone. It wasn't much different than its smaller compatriots a little under twice its size. The extra space was used for additional battery packs to power what was essentially a built in light laser turret. He then installed a charging section for the ants in the turret room. While the new combat ants should be able to not only hold the line but push back against The Beatles' swarm. While this was good for now it wasn't enough for the long run. The ants were useful but overly simple and something he wanted to advance upon in the future as a basic worker.

However, he needed a proper combat unit even if it was little more than an armored scout. Reviewing what he currently had available. He had more turrets he could pull from other corridors and make use of, but he'd rather bring them back online in case the bugs found another way in. He had a nonfunctioning reactor that should be moved and back online in a day or two. So, while he had to be careful about his current power supply, that wouldn't be an issue for much longer. Next, he had the human girl, he still needed to do something about that, the sooner the better. He knew they couldn't live long without water so the sooner he could get her above ground safely the better. He also needed to explore the surface as well. Not only to look for more threats but to protect the humans and see if he couldn't locate any human settlements. He had a large collection of dead or destroyed drones and bots so he could easily pull any of the mechanical components he needed off of them. While he rather not he could take time away from the assembly bay to produce something. Though he'd like to keep it making ants for as long as it was possible. At least The Beatles would be a constant source of metal though he hoped they hadn't gotten too deep into any of the other sections of the ship. For whatever reason they seem to think him a threat and thus would likely keep delivering themselves to him. While he would like the resources, he'd much prefer any functional equipment he could salvage as it would take time and far more resources to fabricate new ones or the needed infrastructure for them. Right now, since the drones he was making were relatively simple his fabrication bays were more than adequate to produce them as they could make everything but the laser lenses. Thankfully those were not in short supply as he currently had a supply room full of them and could produce more, once he had the time to divert resources to growing more. While an advanced endeavor that needed infrastructure it was a relatively small scale project compared to more advanced components like microcircuits or fusion power cells. Which reminded him he had that one damaged but functional repair bot it's power cell was still functional. This means he could likely cannibalize it for parts for his combat unit.

Sparks shot out of his processing course as he ran various calculations and scenarios and annoyingly, he got a heat warning relatively early on. He’d probably need to check the heat sink system the turret wasn't being cooled so he probably wasn't being cooled either. So, he needed to end this quickly or slow it down dramatically. Tha-thankfully he had come up with a relatively simplistic design before the heat warning got too bad.

The large beetle's armored carapace was almost completely made of an organic steel. Now while it was nowhere near as durable as the dura steel his hull was made out of. It was shockingly good at surviving weathering and harsh environments. Gathering up the armored shells of The Beatles he ran them through the refinery converting them into resource blanks. He then produced several cut armor plates which were coded in this organic alloy giving it a shiny almost purplish matte black finish. He then pulled parts from not only the responsive repair bot but also another destroyed one. Lastly, he cannibalized a broken turret. This turret was a heavy sentry turret. With a tri barrel Rotary cannon, a plasma mortar, and a long range beam sniper. Considered overkill he primarily used them to protect the most vital areas of the ship, in fact, it had previously been stationed in his own AI core. Its mount had been completely destroyed but the gun itself was still functional though and would save him a lot of time and effort. As this original one will be far more advanced than its following counterparts since he was going to send it to the surface as the child's vanguard and his scout, he felt it was warranted. Plus, once he was a little more well established, he could produce this version as an elite variant. Anyways he already had a version for mass production designed. It was a cross between a heavy infiltration drone, basically a mobile gun turret. The spindly but highly functional limbs of the repair bot. Packaged in an insectoid form similar to the beetles. If anyone looked too closely, they could easily tell it wasn’t one of those bugs, but some form of natural camouflage would be useful. The thing had four robotic legs on the end shoulder and the elbow of the leg was a wheel mount for a tank tread. When the four legs were folded up it would make a triangle tread pattern in which the tank treads could roll on. However, in limb mode, a small clamp would extend allowing for retraction of the tread and a slightly limited quadrupedal walking motion. The front of the bot had two omnidirectional cameras/flood lamps. While it was fully capable of seeing both in nocturnal and thermal format the humans were not, and the modification was simple enough. Though their placement was more form than function. A horn resembling a rhinoceros beetle was placed on its front. This acted as an armored housing for a scanner and sensor sweet. While a secondary radar based sensor suite was included in the main body this one was for scientific purposes. Lastly was the rear shell resembling the armor of a Beatle. Within was housed the turret multiple mechanical limbs including grasping claws, a laser cutter, drill, welder, and multi tool. When deploying the gun turret, the front would fold back into the armored shell allowing the turret to swivel forward and use the shell as a turret shield and thanks to the salvaged fusion power cell it could handle all but the turret's power load. However just in case of power failure, he included a small deployable solar panel and capacitor array it wouldn't be enough to power the turret, but it could at least keep the bot functioning if the power cell ever went offline.

The hardest part of all this though came from reprogramming the bot. Unlike his drones, which were just extensions of himself, the bot needed to be able to function autonomously if it ever lost connection to him. So that part took the longest. Thankfully he could work on the programming while the thing was being assembled. It was crude, and oversimplified but effective, nonetheless. The bots’ priorities were as follows. Provide protection and aid to any human if required once no longer required proceed to the last known location of the base for repairs.

Once finished his focus went back on clearing corridors and pushing back the seemingly endless Beatle hoard. As while he was yet to encounter another giant beetle. He hadn't had much luck pushing them back beyond the corridor that led to where the turret was. Thankfully he hadn't had any further losses either mostly that was due to the small mountain of dead beetle bodies clogging up the corridor. The tractor beam ants had managed to collect a couple hundred of them so far and it was clear the Beatles were eating the ones on the other side. Every once in a while, when the pile shrank enough, they’d make another push only to be met by the small army of combat ants waiting on the other side. At least with the threats subdued for now he could focus on gathering the available resources he had and establishing a base infrastructure.

As soon as the beetle bought came online, he sent it to meet up with the little girl. She had tried to explore a little further only to finally figure out she was trapped in a few looping corridors. Austin had sealed all the blast doors in and out to keep her as safe as he could. When one of the doors opened, she was noticeably relieved, that was until a giant in-insect like robot crawled into the room.

Sophia had tried and failed to stifle her scream when she saw. She wasn't sure what the thing was, but it looked like some new type of steel shell beetle. She had seen those more than a few times when they had harassed her village, they weren't a general threat, just a nuisance. So long as you remember to put away any metal tools they more or less would leave you alone. The village guard had only ever had to deal with them a few times and that was just to run them out of the blacksmith. Though mostly they weren’t even that much of a nuisance outside of the mating season. As her village was relatively poor, they didn't have much in the way of metal other than the stuff hunted off the steal shall Beatles. The mettle was good for tools but not much else, it was for that same reason the blacksmith was even able to stay in business. A careless farm hand would leave a shovel or a hoe or a pick out in his barn and find it eaten the next day. They would kill the offender and have the blacksmith melt it down and make him a replacement for a few coppers. She had never seen one like this, its armor was much thicker and heavier. Even if it wasn't one of the giant ones seen once every few years. Mostly because the guards hunted them down whenever one was spotted. Her only hope now was to try and sneak back to her little hideout and hope the creature would pass her by.

Before she could make it through the first corridor back Austin had sealed the bulkhead in front of her leaving her trapped with his new beetle bot. He quickly found two flaws with his plan. The first was discovered when he attempted to make first contact. He had forgotten to put any form of speaker into the bot. He had been so focused on its practicality and functionality that he had missed something that he would normally classify as a low priority component. So, his bot currently lacked a voice on top of that it could not understand anything the clearly panicking human was yelling at it. He had managed to steal more than one translation software in his time raiding ships. This language matched nothing in his vernacular database. In order to begin translation without this he needed a large pool of data points to begin translation which would also require a large number of processing hours. So, he needed some form of surveillance capability to capitalize on whatever population they were able to find. Mildly annoyed, he ordered the bot to come back, it clearly required further modifications. The installation of a basic speaker system was easy enough but to further its surveillance capability he would have liked to build something a bit more complex and stealthy but he lacked that at the moment. The best he could do was small blueberry sized Spears containing a simple gyro, thermal conductive glass that acted as a solar panel for a singular small camera and microphone. They were fragile and easily destroyed and also easily hidden and missed. Unfortunately, he couldn't squeeze a long range antenna into a small design instead he used some micro storage units he had on hand. They are a common part of most automated systems but we're currently in a limited supply due to their extreme minimization. Each could hold roughly a cycle worth of data though, so he wasn't worried. They could be planted just about anywhere, and the data could more or less be safely retrieved at any time hopefully this would be the last modification as he was running out of space in the bot shell. He had originally hoped to use the space as a storage unit for gathering samples, well it could still house samples though it was a very minuscule amount. Thankfully the changes didn't take more than a few hours and soon it returned to the scared and confused girl. Who had done her best to barricade herself in one of the room’s corners. Seeing this it just beeped at her before turning and producing another beep while flashing its lights and seemingly causing the door to open. It then rolled on through, turned back, and watched her hoping that his crude form of charades would be enough for the little girl to figure out what he was trying to do. Cautiously while using what was left of a support strut as an improvised club, she followed. He doubted the girl could damage the bot but just to be safe he kept his distance. He didn't want to be presented as a threat but regardless he had a long way to go. It seemed like every step forward was met with a new hurdle or obstacle. Well regardless if an entire alien empire couldn't stop him. A few bugs, a broken ship, and a terrified little girl wouldn’t either.

(Wreckers news and announcement) : On the wrecker corner stage Wrecker works away on his laptop. “Hey there everyone for those who don't know this is closer to what I do for a normal author's note. I know I didn't do this last chapter, but I have a story called Wreckers Corner. In which my OC character Wrecker yours truly along with characters from my stories answer questions. Unfortunately, I haven't got enough questions for a chapter 2 yet so it's just sitting there at the moment. If you want to leave a question just tag the question with Q&A. Now as for this story, I hope you all enjoyed it and I'm hoping to keep up this pace of posting one chapter every other week. It might not be a chapter of this story but yeah, I'm hoping for an every other week post schedule. If I can manage to keep this up, I'm looking into maybe starting a Patreon let me know if any of you guys would be interested in that. I already have two chapters that I just need to finish editing for post. Lastly, any feedback you guys can give would be a huge help with this or any of my stories really. So now I hope you enjoyed, this story and this is Wrecker signing out.”