Looking over to the desecrated corpse of the drone which had charged into my drones, I felt a slight bit of disappointment because I would not even be able to extract the blueprint from the drone's corpse which was now a smoldering shell. Oh well, not much I can do about it any more. Walking up to the hole in the black and green wall which my crab had drilled through, I quickly scanned the room for any more hostiles before moving into the room with my drones quickly following close behind. The room was decently large however it looked quite cramped as the majority of the room was dominated by a large amount of crates and pallets which lined the walls causing the room to look smaller. One thing however caught my eye as in the far corner of the room was a large object which was covered by a tarp and seemed to be kept separate from the rest of the crates and racks.
First focusing on the large quantity of pallets and crates which upon closer inspection held a small wealth of alloys and other such components which I quickly ordered my drones to begin hauling away back to base. These materials could probably push me the majority of the way to completing the funding for the monstrous project that is the construction of the train tracks which had been eating into my store rooms. Focusing on the second object, I noticed that it was dwarfed in volume by the sheer number of crates and shelves which held the rest of the room's contents yet it seems that whoever had placed it here had made sure to give it adequate spacing. I briefly wondered why the person had put all of this stuff into this room underneath the ground with no particularly easy way to access it.
Obviously they did not want anyone else from getting to the materials which had been hidden away in this room as the drone stationed here put up one hell of a fight but I could not see too much reason to stuff a bunch of metal underground along with a drone set to kill anything that tried to breach the box. I suppose this would mean that whatever is underneath this tarp is the reason for the lengths which this person took to hide all of this. Unceremoniously tearing off the tarp, I was greeted by the sight of a gargantuan snail which was twice as tall, a decent bit wider and longer, whilst still being significantly more filled in compared to my crab drones. Alongside the extremely large Snail like construct was a small in comparison terminal which looked to be powered by the same energy source as the lights which dotted the ceiling of the room.
Walking up to the terminal, I found that upon reaching a distance of about three feet, the terminal burst to life and on its screen stated that it had detected a suitable AI administrator and that it was awaiting connection. After a moment of searching, I found a small port on the side of the terminal which I promptly inserted my USB finger into which seemed to be good enough for the terminal as it began displaying a few files on its main screen. Accessing the first of these files, I began to read a report on how the Rot had been spreading from the very outer regions of the hive city which I was standing in and that measures to stop the spread should be considered.
Looking into the next few files, they seemed to paint a similar picture although they seemed to be spaced out a couple of months apart from each other as the last report stated that the rot had begun to seep into the lower middle sections of the hive and that countermeasures have been deployed to initial success. Then, the files seem to have skipped a few months as the next report seemed to be more of a warning that the rot had just reached the upper low sections of the hive had been breached by the rot and that drastic measures would be enacted, one of the measures being a complete evacuation and or sterilization of the rot infested regions along with creating a buffer zone between the middle and lower hive sections.
The files seem to continue to report that the drastic measures had seemed to have been successful as the spread of rot had stopped spreading as rapidly although there was no way of reclaiming the lower sections of the hive anytime soon. The sterilization and quarantine continued going well for the next couple of files however very suddenly a breach was made and the middle hive levels were being quickly overrun and the last of the countermeasures were being deployed in hopes of salvation. One of the countermeasures was the strategic deployment of AI into the lower hive layers which had been more or less abandoned by the rot as it continued its path to more biomatter. Material and drone supplements had been inserted across the areas where AI had been deployed through various methods which would hopefully give the AI’s some extra assistance.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
As a note, the files stated that the supply drops, while being made to assist AI’s with their mission of taking back the lower city section, were designed to be air tight in order to not risk any rot infection if any rot still remains. Additionally each supply drop was equipped with a number of drones which were set to take out anything that attempted to breach the supply drops in any way other than the in-built terminal which should have been located on the outside of the supply drop. All deployed AI’s should know how to properly access the supply drops so the drones should never become hostile to them. I suppose that explains why that drone attacked me. Sigh, I should have asked Ping if they knew what this was.
Checking the dates on the most recent files and the possibly unreliable time date which the terminal said was the current time, the files seemed to be multiple decades old by now. This made me wonder how I fit into all of this. Those two people, Angelica and Dominic if I recall correctly, were the reason I am here but why did they make me an AI? Whatever the reason may be, I will probably never get the answer to my questions as I doubted that those two would magically come down from the heavens to give me an explanation. Regardless, it was pointless to think about such questions since I had no real concrete plan to ever find out why, what I did have was a general idea of where I was now so that is a plus.
I also now know that the Rot is rather obviously the reason there are no people aside from the few AI’s I have met and all of the robots which seem to have defaulted to a tribal setting. Focusing on the present, I looked up to the extra large snail which apparently is part of this supply drop and should be ready for me to take control of. Looking around in the terminal, I eventually found a way to access the drones systems from the terminal and so I accessed the snail’s systems and began the process of booting up the drone. The lights flickered for a second as nearly the entirety of the power which the supply drop generated was quickly funneled into the large snail drone which slowly began powering on.
As the especially large snail continued to siphon the power supply which the supply drop seemed to be generating somehow, I began searching for the description of the drone inside of the terminal which I was still plugged into. Eventually I found a file which explained that the drone in front of me was the marauder pattern mobile foundry or the MMF for short. The description stated that the drone which was powering on in front of me was designed to be one of the most advanced utility drones to be designed to date and unfortunately the drone's design was never released into the market meaning that I had no way of replicating the drone. The MMF was designed to be practically a mobile base which could slowly but surely traverse long distances and fend off small to medium sized attacks without an escort although the description advised having just that.
The MMF was equipped with a pair of energy beam ball turrets that were located on the two sides of the snail drones shell which could deal a decent amount of damage along with a set of a half dozen flamethrowers which were placed on tendrils which were placed on the sides of the snail, two on each side with one on the very front and back. These weapon systems, while formidable, were not the main threat of the MMF as at the snail’s shell like hull held a quadruplet of repulser drones which while designed to be harvesters that would collect and retrieve materials, could use their plasma saws to wreak havoc onto anything brave enough to attack its parent drone.
These smaller harvesters, while decently armored to protect from collapsing debris and other such environmental damages, are still relatively vulnerable compared to the heavily armored hull of the MMF and thus are able to be reconstructed by their parent drone given enough time and materials. The MMF, as the name suggests, are not made for combat however and are much more suited to resource gathering and refinement of said gathered resources inside of the internal refiners which is the majority of the MMF’s internal machinery. Lastly, the description stated that due to the size and sheer weight of the drone, the MMF is incredibly slow and thus requires an escort in case a large enemy force decides to attack as the MMF has close to a zero percent chance to be able to evade.
