Derelict 3, Chapter 16.

Chapter 16.

Active research completed on the bilge rat mine MOBS after several hours, allowing Slater to continue the progress on his cyborks. The newly developed mine rats, as he now thought of them, were tested against a few kobolds to see if the concept was viable. Based on his grenade rat, the mine rats had stealthy features, allowing them to blend in well with the background. Their only downside was the need to be in the correct position before triggering. The grenade rats only had to get close enough to the enemy to have them in the blast radius before detonation, but the mine rats had to turn and angle the weapon inside them before firing. When they did, though, the destruction was impressive, and a single blast was enough to clear out several body armor wearing kobolds at once. If nothing else, their mere presence would cause contestants to slow their approach and blast everything that even resembled one of the rats creeping into position. Slater would have to see about placing debris shaped vaguely like the mine rats at various points to distract his enemies.

As he had planned earlier, a pair of mine rats were placed in the entry compartment, requiring him to scrap two of the existing grenade rats, and the reaper trap to free up enough salvage to make it work. The mine rat he had planned for the barracks was printed up, using more of the salvage from the reaper to build it. With the remaining reaper salvage, he created a few more grenades for his troops.

Research on armor for the Chixturax ship was finalized, it had gone quickly since it was based on the existing design that he had used on his other ships. The freed-up research was allocated for the Chixturax vessel and he began to cycle through all the things he needed for the final design, the next up being the weapons mounts. The hull design for the Franklin was still not finalized, the extended battleship design was taking longer than he had hoped, but he wanted it to be perfect, and perfect took time.

Now that the Derelict was set and the research was plugging along, Slater found that he had little to do. Worries about the two privates, alone out there in space filled his mind. Guilt wasn’t something you would think a Derelict could experience, but it was something Slater was now struggled with. There wasn’t anything he could have done, but that didn’t lessen the pain at knowing he had needed to set adrift his two crewmember, his two friends, in order to save them from himself.

“Don’t beat yourself up over things too much boss, you did what you could to save them and if they’re still out there, we’re going to find them,” Pixi said, knowing what he was thinking.

“If their pods are still functional, and if they’re still alive, would they even want to be rescued?” Slater asked.

“I don’t know, but we owe it to them to revive them and give them that chance, don’t we?” Pixi asked. It was true, his goal would be to get to Private Harris and Long, then they would see about their next steps. First, he had to earn enough money to build a new Franklin, and with the lights now blinking in the entry compartment, it looked like it was time to get to work.

Research notifications for the cyborks dinged as the entry hatches opened and Slater shoved gnomes into the queue. He would look at the results later, when a band of bloodthirsty contestants weren’t trying to kill him. Whoever was boarding his Derelict this time was pulling out all the stops. Pairs of hatches locked into place on three of the four sides of his entry compartment, allowing the boarders to attack from nearly every direction. His bilge rats scurried about, unsure where they should go. The hatches clanged open and instead of a horde of contestants jumping in, blasts of flame entered the compartment, burning several of the closer bilge rats to ash.

The flames subsided and large armored figures stomped inside the boarding compartment, weapons at the ready. These were a new race; one he hadn’t faced before. A dozen of the large humanoids entered, they were around eight feet tall and had a muscular build. Bovine heads, complete with wicked looking horns gave Slater a hint at what he was facing. He was getting his first glimpse at a space faring race of minotaurs, creatures right out of Greek mythology. Only, unlike the myth, these creatures were heavily armored with modern weapons. Each of the contestants were equipped with bulkier versions of laser rifles the other races used, and several had what must have been flame throwers mounted to their packs, something he hadn’t seen before.

With the foe visible, his surviving bilge rats didn’t waste any time in attacking the foe. The swarm of large rodents provided cover for the grenade and mine rats sprinkled among them. Before the explosive versions of his MOBS could get into range, the three minotaurs equipped with flame throwers went into action, burning a swath through his defenders. Only two of his rats made it through the wall of fire, both were the regular bilge rat versions who began to claw and bite at the enemy. The hapless pair were swatted down and stomped under armored hooves, the minotaurs were hardly even inconvenienced by their feeble attacks.

“Those flame throwers are new, why haven’t any of our other foes used them?” Slater asked.

“I’m sure we’ll find out shortly, those things are almost as dangerous to the users as to their target. There’s no way to safely carry around a huge tank of fire into a shootout with risking a disaster,” Pixi replied. That was true, Slater sure wouldn’t want to have to carry a flamethrower into battle, but they did take out his rats better than anything his opponents had tried before.

The tight confines of the next compartment, the engineering bay, didn’t even phase the minotaur boarders, they realized the flimsy nature of the makeshift corridors and simply pushed their way past, only stopping when the orcs made their presence known with war cries and shotgun blasts. The minotaurs were better shots, but once up close, the shotguns carried by his orcs didn’t need to be accurate and the lead contestants were peppered with shot. Their armor proved to be more substantial than the other races used, holding up pretty well against the onslaught, but some of the shot did get through, given the amount of blood that started leaking out of several of them.

Three of the orcs made it into melee range, their heavy axes chopping down the lead minotaur, only to find that even their prodigious strength was no match in close combat with the powerful minotaurs who happily swapped out their laser rifles for various oversized melee weapons. The attackers had cleared the first two compartments and Slater had only taken down one of the twelve contestants. His defenders would have to do better, or he was going to be in trouble.

The hatch into the cargo hold opened, and the minotaur boarders faced what they must have thought was a pretty standard encounter. Bilge rats charged from behind crates and debris, a wave of teeth and claws headed straight toward the minotaurs. In response, the three minotaurs with flame throwers moved to the front and began to unleash flame upon the mass of bilge rats. The rats were burned down quickly, but they had done their job, they had distracted the contestants and drawn their attention away from the four kobots perched high in the corners of the room.

Four loud rifle reports were heard moments before three fiery explosions rocked the cargo hold. With their impeccable accuracy, the kobots had scored hits on the flame thrower tanks, the explosive rounds detonating the volatile fuel inside. Smoke from the blast filled the compartment, the nanobots already working hard to dissipate it. While the vision of the minotaurs was obscured, the cybernetic eye on his kobots could see through it without problem.

One after another, his kobots picked off the surviving minotaurs who, unlike the other contestants, didn’t give up and fought to the last. His new cybernetic MOBS had beaten the first of these more powerful challengers, but was the quick victory something the viewers wanted to watch? He waited anxiously for word from Hixrax, to see where their rankings had landed after the match. While he waited, the construction drones went about gathering up the salvage and printing replacement MOBS. He had taken down a dozen minotaurs, but many of them had been blasted and burned. Slater could only hope he had recovered enough intact samples to be able to replicate them. The giant monsters would be a solid addition to his forces.

“Slater, you’ve done well, those new kobots are impressive,” Hixrax told him as the latest rankings were transmitted over.

Sarton Station Ranking for the Chixturax core shard: 179/274.

Total views: 354,221.

Victory/Defeat: 18/1.

Total kills: 143.

Fan favorite MOBS: Kobots.

Number of fan followers: 2416.

Credits earned in last match: 4785.

“Wow, not a bad increase in ranking from the first fight,” Slater said.

“Yes, having the administration allow the popular contestant group, Horns of Destruction, to challenge your Derelict generated a lot of interest. The fact that such a low ranked core shard defeated them with little trouble will make even more watch our next match,” Hixrax told him.

“Did we earn enough to get started with our ships?” Slater asked.

“Yes, I have arranged for salvage to be delivered to our new dock. Ixlab will have your construction drones transported there as well so you can begin construction whenever you like.

“Great news, I can get stared as soon as the raw materials arrive,” Slater advised, placing a portion of his attention on the construction bots left with the Chixturax. When they arrived at the construction site, he would activate them and finally start some shipbuilding.

“We will anxiously await the construction of our new hive ship, thank you, Slater,” Hixrax said, ending their conversation. Thankfully, Slater no longer had to hide his presence or keep the communication limited, not that the Chixturax were all that talkative.

“We beat the Minotaurs, what’s next do you think?” Slater asked.

“I have no idea, but whatever the next challenge is, you can bet they won’t be dumb enough to stand in front of our snipers with tanks full of flamethrower fuel. Our cyborks are done, shouldn’t we take a look at how they turned out?” Pixi asked. Slater was curious as well, ordering his construction drones to print up a pair.

The revised cyborks were intimidating. They stood a head taller than the purely meat-based versions. His newest version had changed quite a bit over the first attempt. These were created to perform a specific task, to close and engage with the enemy. The rifle mounted in place of an arm was gone in favor of another mechanical arm. Unlike the previous arms, these could not only slam and crush with their metal hands, but they could also extend heavy blades to hack and slash at their foes. His construction drones had done further improvements on the blades, sharpening them down to a single molecule. These new blades would hack through just about any material but would need a lot of attention to repair after each battle.

Ranged fire wasn’t going to be their primary function, but the cyborks did need some way to engage at a distance. To this end, short-barreled weapons extended over their shoulders. The caliber was only that of a pistol, but it should help keep the enemy’s head down as the cyborks charged into battle. With their improved targeting array, they also had a decent chance at scoring hits. To keep them in the fight longer, armored plates had been created to protect vulnerable point of their body. Hidden by the cybork’s flesh, an enemy wouldn’t be able to tell they had enhanced armor. In addition to the internal armor reinforcements, they also wore a set of standard heavy body armor. Depending on the fight, Slater had the option to swap out one of the arms for an oversized shield.

He now had his close in fighters with the cyborks, and his ranged killers with the kobots. What direction should he push the gnome research in? The only thing they really lacked now was a support weapon team, so he would drive the research in that direction, curious what the results would be for his latest MOBS.

His thoughts were interrupted when the hatch in his core room opened. This time, there was no Administrator, instead, more of the dwarven workers walked in, pushing a half dozen pallets of salvage for Slater to work with. In addition to the salvage retrieved from the dead contestants, he was going have enough to replace at least some of his regular orcs with cyborks.

“Slater, enjoy this little gift,” the voice of Administrator said directly into his mind. “You’re off to a good start and I do say you handled the Horns of Destruction much more easily than I thought you would have. Your use of MOBS has been very creative, and I look forward to you next challenge, which I’m happy to tell you will occur in only two hours. I daresay this next group of challengers will prove much more deadly than those hapless minotaurs did. Good luck!” Administrator said with a fake cheerfulness. He didn’t’ trust the creature but was obligated to continue with the deal if he wanted to get back into space.

He wanted to ramp up the difficulty for the next counter, deciding to use enough salvage to replace the existing orcs in the chow hall with cyborks. Still unsure how the cybernetic MOBS would react to disruption beams, he felt that he would need the cybork’s greater power to counter whatever Administrator had planned for them. The orc playing the “captain” on his bridge was also replaced with a cybork, giving him a shield for one of his arms to keep him and others on the bridge in the fight longer.

There was also the concern that he couldn’t defend himself properly inside the core room, the place was far too small to effectively defend with mobs, but there was nothing to say he couldn’t defend himself. To that end, Slater pulled the research from the gnomes and instead started the Avatar research he had been thinking about for a while. With the rest of his salvage windfall, Slater reinforced the maze in engineering to make it more difficult to push through.

He received a notification that the construction drones had arrived at their destination. It was time to see what the Chixturax had purchased with his hard-fought credits, it was time to start building.