With the last rot cluster now reduced to a large blob of burnt and mangled flesh, I tasked my remaining crab drones who had survived and or simply did not participate in the battle with disposing of the corpse by chucking it back into the large cavern where it could be safely ignored. Along with the rot corpse, I ordered for my crabs to carry a decently sized tank of chemfuel down to the cavern opening within the mine so that my hornets could begin dousing the corpses and remaining residue with the flammable liquid before the next beetle sweep to ensure that the rot is thoroughly disposed off. Once all of that is completed, I suppose all that would be left is to have my mining teams begin to carve out a path downwards from the sheer cliface so that we could easily extract the exposed ores on the cavern walls and such. Perhaps after the beetles cleared out the last of the rot, I could see if there were any terminals or data storage devices within the research facility down there.

  Maybe there will be some goodies or at the very least an explanation as to why in the world whoever built this place would keep multiple live specimens of the rot. I mean, I understand that it would be important to study the rot in order to find out how to beat it but still, right in the middle of a populated portion of the city? At the very least they should have quarantined this entire area in case of a containment breach. Regardless, for now I was perfectly content with staying away from the rot tainted cavern and consequently the facility, so I began besetting my mind upon other matters. Like how my stealthed hounds were doing on their mission to figure out what was going on at the front lines. Floating back over to Cooper and the front line outposts, I begin sifting through the most recent reports which had begun to pile up as of late given my preoccupation with the whole rot in the mines situation.

  So far no major offensives had taken place against my or my allies defensive positions, however it was clear that it would not stay that way for very long as it would seem that our adversary seems to have begun amassing a large amount of forces as well as plenty of supplies in order attend to wounded and construct reinforcements. You would think that both sides would have run out of scrap metal and extractable minerals given the sheer amount of dead drones that had resulted from this conflict however it would seem that there was still more than enough to go around. I’m not sure if it’s due to the sheer mineral density which this planet seems to support or if the fabricators and refineries are just that efficient with how much resources they consume and refine respectively but I seriously doubt that drone making materials would be running out anytime soon. For all I know this world I’ve been dumped in does not follow the laws of thermodynamics but then again I’m no rocket surgeon so for all I know this is perfectly normal.

  Regardless of what my thoughts were on the matter, it would not change the fact that this would likely become a big problem for me and most definitely for Churn meaning that I should probably do something about it. Reading through the report on my stealth hounds findings as of late, I notice an opportunity in the document as it would seem that the caravans hauling resources towards the front lines are only somewhat guarded with only a couple of drones per half dozen or so moose. This left the convoys being guarded by an average of a half dozen combat capable drones which was making them rather juicy targets for a potential raid. Although my stealth hounds only number in the low tens or so, meaning that even if they were able to take down the guards, I highly doubt they would be able to properly herd and subsequently guard the convoy. Not to mention the fact that they moose convoy would likely never allow for themselves to be herded by my drones anyways which meant that either I would need to fight the whole convoy and bring in mooses of my own if I wanted to steal the resources or bring enough drones to force the convoy to heed my will.

  The first option would need me to slip a decent amount of moose drones into enemy territory undetected and subsequently sneak them out, assuming my stealth hounds could even take out the convoy. The second option was not much better as it would force me to commit a large amount of resources to construct enough stealth hounds to ensure that we could make the convoy submit or to march a conventional drone force into enemy territory which would surely be detected and promptly intercepted. Perhaps I could use the modification station to strap those stealth field generators to some of my other drones so that my raiding force would not need to rely on hounds and hounds alone. Floating over to a modification station to do just that, I quickly open up the menu and begin to mess around with the stealth generator; however, I quickly find that it is much more difficult to implement than I would have hoped. Apparently the generator is rather heavy, so much so that it makes it functionally impossible to strap one to a hornet or vulture unless I was willing to have them grounded permanently.

  The scorpions and ants seemed to be able to reasonably carry the generator, however the generator sucks up a significant amount of power away from the main weapon system of the scorpions. With this modification scorpions would be forced to pick one of three options, first is to lower the power of their shots down to merely disorienting or momentary stuns rather than full shut down and the second is to significantly reduce recharge speeds to the point of near uselessness after the first shot. The last option is to carry around larger power cells in order to counteract the increased power draw which has the unfortunate drawback of bringing up the weight to a nearly unreasonable level forcing the scorpions to equip heavy load bearing legs similar to the red beam scorpions. Racking my brain for any other options to handle the excessive power draw, the only thing that came to mind was the possible idea to make a bunch of those disposable power cells that I made in the fabricator for the prisoners of the tower tribe back when we were fighting each other. While possibly a fix in the short term, it was not something I would like to have to rely on given the need for a constant supply of the stuff if I wanted my scorpions to keep up the fight. Something that would be generally infeasible if they were going to be operating behind enemy lines.

  Deciding that out of all of the options the additional power cells at the cost of movement speed would be the least offensive, I quickly saved the blueprints for the modified scorpion and ant drones and queued for a production of five each along with their deployment over to the rest of the stealthed drones. Hopefully they would prove helpful for my ad hoc saboteur groups. With stealthed reinforcements soon to be one the way, I ordered my hounds behind enemy lines to keep an eye on caravans that might be worth risking a raid on. Ideally one not too close to any potential enemy force that could possibly reinforce the caravan before they could finish the raid. As they continued their operations, I made sure to send a few radio messages over to my allies in the form of Churn and Ping stating that if they had not noticed already, they should probably start preparing to fight back a renewed offensive.

  Along with the messages to my AI friends, I make sure to send a few messages to my vassals in the Flock and Paisleigh saying that they should prepare as well. Doubly so for the Flock as their forward nesting grounds could possibly be under threat during the assault along with their usual duties of assisting me and my allies if we call for help when they are in the region. With that all taken care of, I decided to help manage the front lines now that I had some free time and no currently active crises that I need to deal with. Floating over to my fortress outpost within the flank of Churns territory, I see that Cooper has been doing well to organize the defenders into nice efficient routines. In pairs or groups of three, my drones are constantly cycling around from guard duty, vanguard scoutings, and busying themselves with maintaining the defenses. Mortar shells were being fabricated by the tortoises and safely stacked onto a nice and neat pallet for easy use while spiders rushed to and fro attending to the makeshift mortar production line.

  Over in Ping’s territory, my supporting force was holding just fine for now. Having assisted in a few skirmishes against raving bands of hostile drones or even the occasional fire mission by my tortoises, they seemed fairly well off for the moment. Now that I had checked up on my three-ish main expeditionary forces, I began floating about two of my newer outposts oh so graciously gifted to me by Churn. While they have been progressing fairly well given the circumstances of their induction, I certainly have not given them as much attention as the other outposts under my control. Checking the current capabilities of the outposts in question, I find that their production capacity was doing fairly well given the amount of resources I have been pumping into them to bring them up to speed. The only problem is that I had more or less neglected their own defenses and token garrisons as in both categories were rather lacking in those two outposts.

  I suppose it is not much of a problem given that they can enjoy the general safety of being somewhat in the back lines, however I would feel much better if they had more than a skeleton garrison. Since I could afford to divert the production of the stealthed ants and scorpions to other production facilities further into the core of my territory, I decided to cancel the outpost’s queue before ordering for the the mini manufactorum of an outpost to begin producing a decently sized garrison for itself and it’s sister outpost whom would be supporting the production with fresh resources. Along with this, I made sure to order my beaver construction drones to head over to the twin outposts from all the way back at the factory so that they could possibly help set up some preliminary defenses. It will probably be no more than a few simple palisades made from reinforced concrete to act as some cover in case the outpost gets attacked by a raiding party or something. Best case scenario the extra defenses will keep the garrison protected long enough for reinforcement to arrive.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Hopefully the cargo train will be close enough to respond to the attack and deploy its guards before the outpost is overrun although, if the raiding party in question is at any reasonable size, I doubt that it will be enough. Regardless it will be better than nothing and so it will be constructed if only to provide me some small peace of mind. While the requested materials and drone power were being shipped and or fabricated, I continued to attend to a few of my duties that had been neglected as of late. Prescribing additional resources to outposts and territories that lacked it, queuing up additional garrison forces for the outposts facing the most recent feral attacks, and a bunch of smaller stuff in between. While I occasionally feel somewhat grateful for the busywork as oftentimes I am left with nothing to do but wait and observe the workings of my drones; I sometimes wonder why I do not just assign a few drones in each outpost to handle the tedious bits of management like I had for drone replacements.

  Nevertheless, as I was assigning some additional tasks to some drones who seemed to lack them, I noticed a lot more robots bearing the markings of the tower tribe and nomads alike wandering off of the main paths. Most seemed to be in small groups or pairs, however more than a few were alone and simply going about their business rummaging through the ruins. I recalled back before I had established the relay system that most robots in the area refused to leave their established territories without groups of at least a half dozen. I suppose now that my drones had more or less secured everything in the general area, the robots living in and around my territory were taking full advantage of the available space. With nothing else to do, I floated over towards the tower tribe and found that instead of a singular, heavily guarded tower there was now an additional handful of buildings closest to the tower which seemed to now be inhabited. Not terribly large or extravagant, most of the buildings were still in a less than favorable condition however that was leagues ahead of the ruins and few remaining buildings in a state of disrepair.

  There also seemed to be more robots out and about than I previously remember seeing, perhaps I simply never saw most of them before or maybe they found and repaired disabled or destroyed robot husks discovered in the ruins. Regardless of the fact that they were now more numerous, so long as they continued to keep up their part of our trade deal and stayed cordial I would not interfere in their affairs. Floating over towards the nomad tribe, I noticed that they too have restored a few more buildings surrounding the school that the town had originally founded in. And a town it now was, no longer a village, as their numbers seemed to have flourished while under my protection reaching an estimated seventy robots total from what I could see which was about double the amount that they started with. Where they found and or fabricated those additional robots is something of a mystery to me; however I decided that I did not really need to know and so I kept the question to myself. Floating above the town, I could see that with their new population, trading between robots had become increasingly more common with a makeshift market having been constructed within the center of the town on the school's blacktop.

  I could also see that a few of my drones occasionally stopped by and helped out with the occasional tasks that required intensive manual labor which was fine by me, so long as they were not jeopardizing security I was more than happy to let them do as they pleased. In addition to the new marketplace and restored buildings, I could also see that there was what looked like a small mine. Inside of which were a handful of robots with ramshackled pickaxes chunking away at the ground under them with one or two others ferrying the stones and occasionally minerals up towards the rest of the town. Following the porters as they trekked through the town with their pull carts behind them, I was eventually led to the inside of the school building which to my surprise contained a fabrication unit and refinery which seemed to be in fairly good condition. On top of said fabricator was a couple of my spiders along with the yellow painted robot whom my construction team seemed to enjoy the company of.

  Huh, I guess this was what they were doing whenever they left the factory to go on their little field trips. One of the spiders seems to notice my visage, which was invisible to practically everyone other than my drones, and almost falls off of their machine before standing to attention and poking their buddy to do the same. I wave them off and tell them that they are free to do what they like so long as it does not interfere with the security of the core or tax my resources too heavily. This seems to calm them down and before either of the robots in the room could ask what happened, I left the room and began floating back out of the building and towards the rest of my territory. Drifting back into my factory, I simply continued to float about while looking down at the little mechanoids moving about the building's internals, both robot and drone alike. As I wandered about the factory, I spotted GW-3N walking around with a few robots who I did not recognize and who seemed to also lack any markings of the tower tribe or the nomads.

  Watching them further, I was able to deduce that these new robots were in fact newly rebuilt robots found during one of the salvaging missions deep into the ruins. Apparently GW-3N was giving them a guided tour of the factory and would be providing sanctuary until the robots in question figured out what they wanted to do and which tribe to join. As they continued to move about the compound, I noticed that the occasional robot that GW-3N passed would slightly nod their heads in respect before moving past. I guess they’ve become something of a respected figurehead. Good for them I suppose. Leaving the robots to their business, I exit the factory proper and find that atop the ramparts that surround my main base, next to my turrets and drones, were one or two robots standing guard holding the crossbows that the tower tribe were so fond of. Asking one of my drones guarding the gates to the ramparts who they were, I learned that apparently a few of the newer robots that had been revived and given homes in the factory have taken up the responsibility of adding to the defense.

  Along with the couple of guards there were a few scavengers out there with the salvage teams doing their part, even if their impact was minimal in the grand scheme of things. Looking at the guards a bit more closely, I noticed that their equipment was less than ideal with a few glaring weak points in their ramshackled armor and I would not be surprised if the crossbows broke after a couple dozen uses. Looking back to the drone I had questioned earlier, I asked if they could deliver a message to GW-3N stating that if they wanted, they could have full access to the fabricator if they wanted to equip themselves a bit better. While I do not think that the fabricator has pre-made suits of armor blueprints, I am sure that with enough time and effort one of them will be able to design something better than the equipment that they have now. It would not do to have poorly equipped troops if I were to be attacked and it’s not like it would make too much of a dent in supplies.

  With that wrapped up, I decided to check how the production of the new stealthed drones were shaping up. Floating over to the manufactorum center of the factory I found that all six of the stealth drones, three scorpions and the same amount of ants, that had been assigned to be produced at the factory had finished and were now preparing to head over to the nearest subway station. Good, they should be able to group together with the four others that had been built in a few of my other outposts before linking up with the rest of the stealth force. Although looking at those scorpions the march is sure going to take a while. Glancing down to the three scorpions in question, I could see that they were certainly less than happy about the sheer amount of extra equipment that they had to carry compared to their conventional counterparts. Even with the more sturdy and powerful legs, the scorpions were still very much encumbered by the additional equipment which would be slowing down their movement speed considerably.

  Welp, this is the price I must pay to have stealthy guns in hostile territory. Sending the group of stealth drones on their way, along with the other couple groups in other parts of my little empire, I began floating back over to the front lines where I could check to see if anything still needed my attention. As I arrived at the outpost, I was immediately flagged down by Cooper who apparently had something to report. Dropping down to ground level, Cooper gestured at my vessel drone which I promptly entered before following my most veteran of hounds as we moved over towards the front of the outposts defenses. Passing out of the inner section of the outpost and entering the outer defenses and main fortifications, I could see a group of drones bearing the markings of Churn along with a deactivated vessel drone in the middle of their formation. Observing them march around the defensive positions, I deduced that they were checking out the defensive works and gauging the readiness of my garrison.

  Walking over to the delegation of drones, one of them seemed to notice and quickly did something to the vessel drone which seemed to bring it to life as it powered on and began moving towards me. Meeting in the middle, I proffered my hand while saying “What a pleasant surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure of this sudden visit?” Churn returned the greeting with a handshake stating that they had received my warning of the incoming attack and was here to propose a proposition. “Once my forces have recovered from the initial clash with the corrupted AI’s forces, I will be pushing back while their defenses are weakened,” Churn’s vessel said, “However I only have so many drones to spare and if I were to pull them away from my outposts, it would leave them prone to raids and the like. So, would you consider committing your force to the attack? I assure you I will make it worth it.” A counter attack huh. Starting another battle so soon after the previous one is a dangerous game, but possibly worth it. Looking back at Chrun, I mentally suppressed a grin as I asked “So how much are you offering exactly?”