Alan was reclined in his control chair, his hands on the controls of both of his cockpit like chair arms. His head occasionally turned from side to side with the VR headset. Kilometers away Alan looked with the 'eyes' of drone cameras he had built into it.

"Beat it, you little troublemaker!"

The drone swooped down. The twin-tailed cat-like creature easily dodged the drone. Not that Alan was trying to hit it, just scare it off. He had already found a den of these things last week when he was looking for another location to serve as a warehouse. They seemed to have frequent litters of up to 24 kittens in places like Alan was having Sara excavate for this facility.

Alan had already driven off the creature once before, a couple of days ago. It seemed to be back and determined to give birth in the secure setting for what was about to become Alan's assembly factory. It tried to attack the two drones that were working here already this morning to lay claim to the place.

"Fine! I don't really want to kill you, but I will if I have to," Alan activated the drone's laser weapon. "I'll try a warning shot... If you still don't take a hint, then BBQ kitty it is."

The drone circled around and fired a couple of shots near the creature. The ground exploded with flame and flying dirt. The cat-like creature ran off a short distance for a few moments. It crept back to where the shots had landed and sniffed. It bolted off into the forest.

"Yeah, that's it. Scram!"

Alan turned the drone and taking it slow and easy, he entered the entrance to the new home of the assembly factory. He activated all the lights on his drone and turned them up to max brightness. The room was a massive cube of stone. There were side rooms dug out for equipment that needed to be isolated. There was also a living space dug out for him to dwell in if he needed to spend a bit of time here.

He inspected the grooves in the stone walls where supports would be installed for this three leveled factory.

"Sara, I think it looks good. Go ahead and start construction."

"Construction initiating. BDH-73 is nearly in place to begin testing. Shall I wait for you?"

Alan maneuvered the controls to fly his drone out of the facility. "Yes, please. Send me the coordinates as a waypoint."

As the drone climbed to a higher altitude, an image of a downward arrow along with a target distance appeared to his left. After just a few minutes of flight time, Alan arrived to find the mini hover tank sitting in a small clearing.

It was midday and clear skies. Results would be easy to witness. "Go ahead and see if you can get one of those ugly horned lizard things to come here. If our mini hover tank can hold up in a fight against one of those, I'll be quite happy."

Bizarre sounds of a guttural beast emanated from the hover drone. A sort of mating call of a female of the vattaux species. The sound was played back in a pattern that changed in pitch and tone slightly. The information given to them by Father about the planet's fauna had proved priceless for this sort of thing. The sound ended, and they waited.

Sara repeated the process four more times.

"Maybe this is a bust," Alan said.

Sara tried again.

Alan heard the responding roar loud and clear through his headset.

"Ah... I think I attracted one that is much bigger than we were hoping for!" Sara said.

"Are you kidding me? These things are supposedly huge to begin with! Do the best you can. If I have to, I'll join in with my drone to assist."

Alan pulled up a small vid screen that he could see in the upper left corner of his display to see the hover tank's front camera. Even though the vehicle hovered off the ground, he could tell the ground was shaking as this thing approached.

"Should I bother with the follow up sound like we planned?"

Alan laughed. "Why not? If nothing else, this will be entertaining!"

The tank played a very different sound this time. It was a challenger roar of another male vattaux.

The ground shaking stopped. There was dead silence for a moment.

"Did we scare it off?" Alan still didn't see the creature from the air. "Go ahead and challenge again."

The tank roared again. All was still for a long moment.

Two trees exploded apart and chunks flew and rolled into the clearing as a muscle-bound beast charged in. It stood nearly eight meters tall at the shoulder and was nearly nine meters wide. Its small canine shape head had four eyes and a set of teeth to make a crocodile jealous. A massive horn the size of a small tree crested the top of its head and curled upward on the ends.

"FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!!!" Adrenalin dumped into Alan’s system as he jerked at the controls without thinking in an evasive maneuver. Nevermind the fact that his drone was in the air and out of the way. He circled around to attack from the side.

The little hover tank drone also took an evasive maneuver in the opposite direction that Alan went. Two small rocket launchers snapped out from their concealed positions and spewed out their payload. They snapped back into concealment to reload. Four white smoke trails streamed to the target. The rockets impacted on the creature.

The explosions didn't even slow the creature down as they impacted on the vattaux's right shoulder, back, and right side of the head horn. The rockets didn't seem to do more than just peal away very small amounts of the thick hide of the beast. The attack ensured the hover tank got the attention of the beast.

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The vattaux turned with surprising agility. This was no lumbering giant as thick claws, hard as steel, grabbed the ground like an athlete's cleated shoes. The roar it gave out was easy to figure out. It was pissed off and letting the world know it.

Sara kicked in the side thrusters to quickly change its vector. The angry muscle mass was gaining too quickly. The laser turret whipped around and discharged two rounds. Sara didn't dare a third as it would deplete the capacitor too quickly. She needed that extra burst of power for the thrusters to get some distance. Both shots missed as the creature changed directions to keep up with the mini hover tank.

The mini tank's engine sounded with a high-pitched whine as it converted fuel to power. Alan took note of the sound. He would need to adjust the overdrive of that later. For now, he hoped the thing wouldn't explode at the beginning of the test.

Alan made a few shots with his laser weapon. "Damn, you would think it would be easier to hit something the size of an office building!"

"It moves like a cat avoiding bath time! It's hard even for me to hit! The advanced targeting system can get better predictions based on increased heat signatures of engines and other directional controls of enemy vessels. Tracking unfamiliar organic creatures is proving to be a bit difficult."

The mini hover tank shifted directions again. The vattaux surprised Sara by whipping around, lashing out with its bone weapon at the tip of the tail. Like a hammer striking an anvil, the tank armor pinged with the impact. A hover thruster flickered on the verge of failure as the vehicle spun in circles, flying across the field like a hockey puck.

Alan kept firing. Few of his shots hit. The creature looked up and spit. Alan jerked at the controls in surprise. "Forgot about that!" His drone dived to the side, narrowly being missed by the sticky and toxic mucus substance.

Sara regained control of the hover tank and was letting loose rockets again while the creature's focus had momentarily shifted to Alan's drone. Laser turret fire mixed in with the rockets.

The creature now had a gnarly torn open side that oozed blood. The beast didn't seem to care as it now charged at the mini tank again. The thrusters of the mini tank fired off again to evade the vattaux. The longer the encounter lasted, the more the advanced combat algorithms analyzed and learned the enemy.

Alan watched as the mini tank gradually had better success at dodging the vattaux and landing more hits with its weapons. Alan was still taking shots of opportunity and still struggling with those.

The mini tank hadn't come out of this unscathed by any means. Mucus had fouled one of the rocket launchers. Its toxic mix was slowly eating away at the metal. Armor plating on one side had been pounded in so hard, it nearly destroy a hover thruster. The other side was now missing a large plate and had vital systems exposed. The engine was now whining so loud at the strain, Alan thought for sure it would explode at any moment.

The vattaux was taking a greater beating the longer the engagement ran. The advanced combat module had been giving Sara updated tactics, maneuvers, and targeting assistance to deal with the creature. The effectiveness of it was showing as the vattaux slowed from all the wounds and beatings the mini tank was dealing out.

The persistence of the creature, or maybe its pride, was startling. The beast stopped a moment and looked like it might actually turn and run. Not that it would get far as badly as it was hurt.

Alan's drone just hovered, watching the scene at this point. "Sara play the challenger sound again. Let's see if it really has so much pride it won't back down and run off."

The challenger sound came from the tank as it glided across the battle-torn scene. The creature responded. It was filled with rage again, tempered only by its depleted strength and mortal wounds. Rage none the less.

"Wow..."

The mini tank depleted its rocket supply. The generator kept whining as it struggled to meet the demand for power needs of repeated laser blasts.

The vattaux was struggling to move as the last of the rockets pounded it. The laser blasts seared deeper and deeper into its flesh. Vital internal organs began to get hit. The beast collapsed under the trauma.

Sara finished it off with the laser turret. The scene fell to an eerie like silence. Chunks of debris smoldered, sending small columns of smoke drifting upwards. The once relatively smooth clearing was ravaged by small craters of missed shots and gouges of the muscle bound beast’s claws. Alan thought about how the area surrounding Aurora Outpost was going to look after he was done sending in dozens of these tanks and aerial fighters. The place might never look the same.

"Instructions?"

Alan pulled up the stats of the mini hover tank. He looked over the estimated damage report and fuel level. The thing was nearly half destroyed, barely hanging together by pieces of bent and twisted metal in places. It was a miracle it was still operational. "Try to drive it back to the cavern. I want to look at a number of things that need to be addressed. If it fails to return, send one of the digger drones to retrieve it."

Alan put his drone on autopilot to return to the cavern as well. He disconnected himself from his control chair and got up to get something to eat.

"Sara, did you ever get that creature harvesting drone built?"

"No, you keep bumping it down the list of priorities."

Alan rolled his eyes. "How long before the new factory will be up and running?"

"Estimated time to completion is eight days and 6 hours. All building components have already been constructed and are being delivered to the site now. Tooling is fifty-seven percent complete. Tooling should be manufactured and stored at the warehouse before the structure is ready to receive it."

Alan was pleased with the progress. The more he built, the faster things could be produced. The next bottleneck would be resource gathering... again. Alan rolled his eyes. Always something holding things up. He also had to take into consideration Sara. Managing everything he was building was going to be pushing her limits. He would need an advanced structures module to help her. That wasn't in the cards. He didn't come to this planet with such a module.

Perhaps Father could help him out. Alan shook his head. No, win the war and get out of here. That was the goal. The thought hit him. There might be an advanced structure module at Aurora Outpost. Assuming it wasn't destroyed already. He shook his head. NO, focus... win the war and leave.

Something thundered in the distance.

"What was that?!"

"Meteor, incoming. Curious, the Saru are not shooting it down."

The ground shook. Alan ran to his displays. "Where did that hit?"

"It impacted near the Aurora Outpost."

Alan pulled up a topographical image. Sara calculated where the impact site was likely and potential displacement of terrain and adjusted the map accordingly. The unverified results showed in blue outlines imposed over the last verified mapping.

"Right close to the outpost. If I were the Saru, I would have let it hit the Ustobo too." Alan just stared at the image for a long moment. "Sara, send a recon flier out there and get us an actual update."

"That curious are you?"

"There are no asteroid belts in this system around the star or any of the planets. So what are the odds that a rouge asteroid just happens to pass by AND just happens to land near an Ustobo Outpost?"

Sara was silent for a while. "Alan, the odds are so astronomically low that it would essentially never happen. So are you thinking the Saru did this?"

Alan stood there and considered it. "I doubt it. I'm worried it might be an Ustobo action."

"Why would the Ustobo bomb themselves? That doesn't make sense."

"Not unless it was something like a poor man's delivery of some kind. Or maybe a camouflaged delivery to prevent it from being shot down?"