Derelict 3, Chapter 15.

Chapter 15.

“What thoughts did you have for our Derelict layout?” Pixi asked. Slater wanted a meatgrinder, but it also had to be entertaining or he wouldn’t hit the rankings he needed to. He would keep the shipboard theme but bump up the danger as much as he could. There was still some anxiety over whether his cybernetically enhanced MOBS would be affected by the disruption beams, so he would need to keep a blend of enhanced and regular MOBS for the time being.

“The boarding area is going to be a little difficult to mount an organized defense, given that the contestants can pay to alter the door locations,” Slater said considering some alternatives. Since the entry compartment could face danger from any direction, he would keep things free flowing. As far as design, Slater went with what the room actually was, a battleground.

Burned out cargo containers, remains of drones, and cargo machinery were scattered about. For his MOBS, Slater decided to keep his bilge rats as the main threat, eventually adding a new variant he was working on. A score of normal bilge rats wandered about the compartment, ready to react to any threats. In addition, he had four of the smaller, stealthier grenade rats ready to run up and explode any invaders. He also kept the damaged reaper drone in the corner, unsure how much it would add to his defense, the contestants would likely know of the trick by now.

The new variant of bilge rat would be designed after he finished researching the first round of orcs. It was a simple swap, substituting the grenade for a claymore mine. The mines shot out a wall of ball bearings upon detonation, a more focused and devastating attack than a simple grenade. His challenge would be that the rats had to face the side of their body with the mine toward the enemy, giving their foes more time to find and engage them before they could explode.

After the entry compartment, the enemy would enter the engineering bay. The compartment had machinery and conduits restricting access to only a couple of paths through the maze of obstructions. His resources were still somewhat limited, so the obstructions were made of relatively weak and thin materials. A determined attacker would be able to bash their way through with little challenge and while the obstructions offered concealment, they didn’t offer cover. This made the compartment a perfect place for a half-dozen of his regular orcs to fight inside. They could get in close and do some good work with both ranged weapons and melee where they really shined. His new cybernetic orcs may replace them at some point, but they weren’t ready yet. He equipped his orcs with shotguns, large boarding axes, and heavy body armor.

The competitors that made it past the engineering bay would next enter his cargo hold. This time, his bilge rats would be augmented by kobots standing on elevated platforms at every corner of the room. The idea was to pin the intruders down with sniper fire, allowing the rats to close in undetected. With their impressive accuracy, his kobots should inflict some serious casualties on any intruders. With the typical mishmash of cargo containers placed to hide his rats, the competitors would have some concealment from the snipers, but like in the engineering bay, concealment wasn’t cover and the powerful rifle rounds that his kobots fired would pierce through any cover the enemy might try to use.

His barracks would follow the cargo hold, and this time he could finally fortify the area properly. The barracks consisted of a row of bunks with footlockers in between. When an enemy entered, the bunks would be pushed over to create a wall across the room that provided cover for his troops as they fought. Four regular kobolds, four orcs, and a pair of kobots formed the main line of defenders. A rat with one of the mines would be placed at the doorway once they were ready, with orders to run across the hatchway when it opened and detonate in front of the attackers. He hoped it would surprise them and buy his forces time to setup their defenses. There was no holding back, and every one of his MOBS would be fully armed and armored throughout the Derelict.

The final compartment in the first row would be the chow hall. Tables and food dispensers would provide cover for the half dozen orcs and four kobots placed here. It was when printing up these MOBS that Slater finally began to feel the strain on his core. He could command many more, but it did remind him there was a hard limit of control he would reach at some point. With the need to provide construction drones to build the ships, he might reach that limit sooner than he would like. Grenade rat surprises inside the trashcans by the entry hatch had served him well before and he repeated that trick here.

Contestants would then head to a side hatch that would lead them to the last five compartments. Here, Slater wanted to add more showmanship to the fight, choosing a medical lab as the next compartment. A pair of kobot “doctors” would be working on the corpse of a defiler, one of the terrifying creatures that the mad Admiral Lopez had used. These were creatures that begged to be enhanced, but they would have to get in line after the orcs and gnomes. Even in their current state, the defilers were powerful melee combatants. Tables with three other defilers were added, giving the room four defilers and two kobots to defend it.

After the medical lab, the experiment storage room was placed. In here, Slater hoped to swarm his enemies with aggressive defilers while kobots stationed on top of the cages poured fire into their foes. Eight defilers and four kobots were created, the strain on his core becoming more pronounced with each new set of MOBS he created. He held off on adding any grenade rats, wanting to make sure he had enough power to populate the final two compartments of his Derelict.

After the labs, the ships armory would be found. In here, five orcs were lined up as if they were gathering weapons and gear to repel boarders. An armored weapons storage compartment held a pair of regular kobolds who would man heavy machineguns to pour fire into the enemy. The armored storage compartment was essentially a large box with firing slits, and it used up much of his remaining salvage. Both biomass and salvage were nearly gone, but Slater only had one more room to populate, the bridge.

Like before, his bridge featured armored workstations that would be manned by a half dozen regular kobolds. The “captain” of the ship would be an orc with a pair of pet bilge rats. The captain would have an automatic shotgun and the kobolds would have a mix of shotguns and rifles to fight with. With the final compartment completed he found that there was enough biomass to print up another half dozen bilge rats, which he added to the chow hall.

Salvage was almost gone, and Slater used what was left to create some grenades and special weapons for some of his forces. With his mana at full charge, and his other resources exhausted, Slater felt they were as ready as they could be. He wanted to do something to protect his core room. An idea began to form, a way he could actively participate in his own defense, but that would have to wait, there was too much else he needed to accomplish first.

“The first pass on the cybernetic orcs is done, Slater, what do you want to work on next?” Pixi announced as Slater fiddled with positioning of the various objects and MOBS in his Derelict.

“Let me take a look,” Slater replied.

The new orcs were impressive, but he could tell there were a lot of improvements still to be made. They were even larger than the normal version and the alloy reinforcements for the skeletal structure made sure they were much more durable. Surprisingly, only a simple targeting array was installed in one eye socket, less refined than the one the kobots used, the targeting array would at least make his orcs have the same accuracy with their weapons that a trained solider would have. One arm would have a ranged weapon installed and the other arm was mechanical but resembled a normal orc arm. It would hit like a sledgehammer, and the grip strength would be enough for them to easily crush most foes.

“Should we replace the regular orcs with these guys?’ Pixi asked.

“No, we still need to see how the kobots hold up to disruption beams. We also don’t have salvage on hand, these new orcs use even more in their design than the kobots do,” Slater added. He would weather this first attack with his current mix and his victory rewards would likely include enough salvage to replace regular orcs with the cybernetic ones.

“Can I name these? You got to name the kobots,” Pixi asked.

“Go for it,” Slater replied, not caring unless Pixi chose something too off the wall.

“I think we’ll call these guys Cyborks. Yeah, simple but catchy, the fans will love it,” Pixi said.

“Not bad, I guess we now have kobots and cyborks in our MOBS lineup. Why the ‘k’ in the spelling? Wouldn’t cyborcs be more accurate?” Slater asked. Sharing a mind meant he both heard and saw what Pixi was thinking.

“Nah, these guys are going to be on the fight card and my spelling will just look cooler for the viewers,” Pixi replied. Slater wasn’t sure if it made of difference, but he’d go with Pixi’s suggestion. Slater’s received a notification that the Chixturax reactor upgrades were complete. The new efficiencies would help both of his ship designs. With the Derelict design complete and the construction drones working on building his MOBS, Slater directed his attention toward the ship designs.

His allies may not want to automate their systems, but Slater would work it into the design regardless. He added a portion of his research toward automated systems for the Chixturax ship design, leaving the manual interface intact so they could switch it over during an emergency of if they lacked the crew to man everything. His orc research was replaced with creating his claymore mine bilge rats. Being that it was simply replacing a grenade with a slightly different shaped landmine, the research would progress quickly.

The manta ray like shape of the ship was appealing to the eye, and efficient for what they used their ships for. First off was upgrading their reactors with the new deigns he had just completed. The original had four reactors, and he upped the count to five, a necessary upgrade given he was going to build them more powerful shields as well as several weapons upgrade. The new reactors were smaller, yet more powerful, giving him room for the fifth unit without needing to change the overall layout of their engineering spaces.

With the dual-purpose nature of the craft, Slater made sure the inhabitants had plenty of room to live and additional recreation options, including the VR terminal he had promised to Bexlan and Kraxton. With the design efficiency of a Derelict Core, he was able to make better use of the existing spaces, giving them a more efficient layout that would improve the quality of life for all aboard. A top-notch medical bay would be installed, but he needed more information on their physiology before he could modify his existing designs for the Chixturax.

With shield generator designs straight off a human cruiser, and a new armored hull, the Chixturax ship would be able to resist moderate damage. Their old design would have let far too much weapons fire pierce the hull and the casualties in just about any fight would have been horrendous. Their current layout of laser weapons sprinkled along the hull was garbage. He instead installed turrets in various locations, giving them a collection of both powerful lasers and some six-inch railguns for added punch. The Chixturax didn’t use missiles on their previous design, but he found room in two different spots that would accommodate six launch tubes each. They would have limited magazine capacity with only four reloads, but it gave the Chixturax ship some long-range firepower.

Point defenses were updated and upgraded, from a total of a dozen laser-based weapons to nearly thirty of various types. The strange design of the ship meant that only a portion of their weapons could come to bear on a target, but the increased number meant they had a good chance of dealing with missiles or small craft. As far as their own dual-purpose shuttle craft, Slater would make several upgrades there to improve range, survivability, and offensive capacity. Other than general improvements to minor systems aboard, Slater had a good overall plan for the Chixturax and could get started with construction as soon as the resources were available at the dockyard.

After queueing up the Chixturax research based on when he needed it in the ship’s build order. He thought about the newest version of the Franklin. His databases still held information on the various human ship classes, and he looked at the largest designs, the battleships. What he found was impressive and like with his other builds, each nation took a slightly different approach to battleship design.

The Russian Soyuz class of battleship featured sixteen-inch railguns for their main battery and a powerful array of secondary weapons. It had limited missile capacity and while the number of point defense weapons was impressive, their placement was less than optimal. The Japanese Musashihad the most powerful battery of main guns he had seen yet. The triple 18-inch turrets would find a way into his final design. Other aspects of the ship were sub-optimal but could be improved by further research.

A look at the USN Iowa class and the HMS King Georgewere both contenders as well. The King George was ruled out for a bizarre and ineffective main gun arrangement, but the Iowa had just about everything he wanted in a ship. It featured a good thrust profile, powerful main and secondary armaments, and the best point defense of the lot. It was missing the guns of the Musashi, but he could fix that problem in his final design.

As far as overall size, he was only limited by how far his nanobots could permeate the hull. Slater felt the battleship would be under that limit, so he sought to design a ship that would be larger than the standard battleship. He wanted to hit his limits in every category, to create the most powerful ship to every enter space. Slater wouldn’t stop with this design, though, and though it might take a long time, he was determined to eventually research how to improve the nanobots he relied on.

Most of the systems aboard the previous Franklin were solid, so only a few tweaks would be needed other than the overall size of the vessel. The 18-inch main battery would need some attention, but the layout of point defense and the missile tubes were well placed. As in his previous designs, the newest Franklin wouldn’t need a life support system or inefficient supply storage, giving him more internal room to work with. He would once again be supplementing his Derelict Core with secondary reactors to power many of the ship’s systems, allowing Slater to build a more powerful ship than he could if it were powered by his core alone. Slater reallocated his research, dividing it up between his MOBS and the various ship designs.

Current Research Allocation:

Bilge Rat Mobs, subtype mine carrier, 50%.

Chixturax ship armor, 25%.

Franklin hull design, 25%.