Derelict 3, Chapter 7.

Chapter 7.

“So, Slater, why don’t we check out the new digs,” Pixi said. Slater sent a drone to inspect the hatch leading to the main corridor. To nobody’s surprise, it was locked down way past anything he could bypass. A cursory check of the walls of the compartment he was in showed they were absolutely swarming with active sensors. If he tried to eat his way out, the station would know instantly. He instead directed his nanobots to keep to the surface of the compartment, where a thin layer was left for the core shards that was free of any warning sensors, just enough space for them to exert their influence, but not enough to pull salvage out from. The hatch he had entered was sealed up tight, but the one on the opposite bulkhead was unlocked. A pressure plate on the door itself allowed it to open with a touch.

Slater delayed having a drone enter the next compartment until he had full control over this one. Things were tight with the two construction drones and the pair of reapers packed in with the podium holding his core. The compartment wasn’t much larger than a small bedroom, but it would be home for the time being. His nanobots expanded quickly, like they had in Ixlab’s storage room. There was no salvage inside for his drones and nanobots to work with and, at least for now, he would have to rely on the small stack of resource bricks that had been stuffed into any open spaces in the containers that his drones had been packed in. The containers themselves were well on their way to being broken down by his drones for their base materials, every little bit helped.

His mind still couldn’t handle any additional drones or MOBS, so Slater had another two of the construction drones back at Ixlab’s place recycled. Thankfully, his previous research in range extenders for his drones and MOBS had stuck with him, and he could link up and command the drones back in the dregs as easily as the ones in the room with him. He couldn’t access the materials gained by recycling the far-off drones, but it did free up enough processing power to create another reaper. The salvage bricks and containers disappeared as the construction bots used them up to create a third reaper drone. The third reaper didn’t have quite enough material for its buildout, and consequently, it only had a single, thirty round magazine for its integrated weapon.

Each of his reapers had one arm replaced by an assault rifle with an extendable bayonet. The reapers walked on four spider like legs with a humanoid shaped torso on top. The other arm ended in a grasping claw that the reaper could use in melee to pound or crush any enemies it could reach. These were earlier models of his reapers and he knew there were more powerful versions just waiting for him unlock as his core healed. Slater ordered them to cross load the ammo, leaving each reaper with 180 rounds. If the audition contained swarms of contestants, he might be in trouble, though the reapers were no slouches in melee, it wasn’t the best way for them to fight.

After doing everything he could in his core room, it didn’t take Slater long to become impatient and order a reaper drone into the next compartment. The next compartment was much larger than his little core room. It was a plain, square shape with smooth metal floors and no salvage in sight. He would need to create some defensive positions, traps, and obstacles when he was able to locate more salvage. His nanobots were still working on permeating the core compartment, so it would be some time before he could view the new compartment other than through the eyes of his drones.

He pushed the reaper into the next compartment, unsure how large his little empire would be. The new compartment was a mirror of the previous one, along with the same lack of salvage. Another hatch was on the far side of this compartment, each of them lined up exactly with each other, which made him a bit nervous. It was never a good thing to let you enemies have a straight shot into your territory. The next compartment saw the end of his allocated territory. Slater had a grand total of three good sized empty compartments, his core room, and no salvage to speak of.

“Not a lot to work with, Slater, I guess we’ll just have to pry the salvage from the cold dead hands of our victims, eh?” Pixi offered.

“Yes, I suppose we don’t have many other options, and if that red flashing light means what I think it does, I believe we’re about to get visitors,” Slater said. A red light in the far compartment began to flash and a countdown timer was projected on the wall, counting down from a hundred, one second at a time.

His control over the reapers was limited, but since they were going to be judged by how far any competitors made it into his territory, he would try to stop them here in the first compartment. There were two ways to enter the first compartment, a hatch in the ceiling and one on the far wall. There was no way to open the hatch from Slater’s side, so he assumed that it was a one-way entrance. His reapers took up a defensive position that allowed each of them to cover both entrances without getting in each other’s way. The reapers waited, switching their aim from one hatch to the other, ready for the first challengers to enter. The assault rifle arms on his reapers gave a satisfying clack as the first live rounds were chambered.

Both hatches opened at the same time, and from the ceiling a pair of dwarves jumped down, barely keeping a grip on the laser pistols they held when they hit the metal floor of the compartment. Out of the main hatchway a flood of dwarves poured in even as the first blasts of rifle fire rang out. The reapers may not have had the heavier weapons that Slater had equipped them with back on the Franklin, but the human based assault rifles proved more than up the task. The rounds had no trouble punching through the unarmored dwarves, their explosive cores doing horrendous damage with every hit.

Not a single dwarf got a shot off, each one dying long before they could even take aim, the trio of reapers rarely missed a shot. At one point, the swarm of challengers in the main hatch threatened to push past the wall of fire, but the reapers switched to full auto and hosed them down. The entire attack couldn’t have lasted more than thirty seconds, the floor of the compartment was littered with dwarf corpses. Smoke lingered in the compartment, his nanobots hadn’t made it this far into his new home yet, so it took while for the station’s air recyclers to clear it out.

The pair of hatches automatically closed, and the reapers switched to their last full magazine even as the pair of construction drones began harvesting everything in the room. Slater could see there would be a lot of biomass, but the clothing and weapons of each dwarf would also allow him enough salvage to at least give his reapers a full load of ammo.

“Hey, Slater, look at our processing power. That little fight did wonders for us, we’re all the way up to 30%,” Pixi said. Slater could feel more control over himself and more important, he could command more construction drones. He ordered the drones back at Ixlab’s shop to build another pair, giving him six there in addition to the two inside the arena. While he wanted to beef up his defenses, there just wasn’t much in the way of raw materials to work with, unlike the cluttered Chixturax repair shop. When he healed up a bit more, he would see about either another reaper, or if his only resources continued to be mostly biological based, he could cook up some kobolds or something to aid his combat drones.

“Slater, you have passed the audition with flying colors,” Hixrax said over comm device hidden near his core.

“It wasn’t exactly a difficult fight; those clowns were poorly armed and equipped. They didn’t stand a chance, it was pure murder to let them just run right into our gunfire,” Slater said.

“True, these first challengers were a group of criminals that were offered pardons for their crimes if they made it to your core room. I don’t even believe their weapons held a charge. The next challenge should be a bit more difficult; you’ll face a coordinated group looking to make a name for themselves in the games. The administration hasn’t given timetable on when the next run will be, but if we’re told anything, I’ll let you know. Let me pass on some ranking information, you’ll see we’re rated last of all the core shards, but I’m sure that will improve as we gain more notoriety,” Hixrax told them.

“Any word on a location for our ships?” Slater asked.

“No, we have a couple of place we’re scouting out, and I believe the elders will have something for us in a few days,” Hixrax replied.

“Very well, our focus will be on defeating challengers until I hear back from you. When you can, send over any schematics you have for a Chixturax ship. I need something to start with if you don’t want a human starship,” Slater replied. Hixrax agreed to look into it and cut the comm off, they wanted to keep any contact short, just in case the arena administration was monitoring comm channels in the area. Slater expected they would have some kind of surveillance, if just to keep the people watching live from giving away free broadcasts of the games.

“Hey, some good information in here, Slater, take a look,” Pixi said, pulling up the data sent by Hixrax. Slater sent a quick note to Hixrax to keep the data coming if rankings changed.

Sarton Station Ranking for the Hixrax core shard: 274/274.

Total views: 0.

Victory/Defeat: 1/0.

Total kills: 14.

Favorite MOBS: Automated drones.

Fan favorite MOBS: n/a.

Number of fan followers: 0.

Credits earned in last match: 0.

“Not very impressive yet, I assume we’ll have to improve our popularity quite a bit to start making any money,” Slater said.

“Yeah, I doubted that many folks would be that interested in the audition round for a new core shard, given there’s 273 other ones with better shows going on. Still, I had hoped at least somebody would have wanted to see a new core shard in action,” Pixi replied.

“Maybe not, they might have not even advertised it since they were unsure if we were the real thing or not. They wouldn’t want word to get out that they were fooled by a fake core, that would not only be embarrassing but it also might encourage others to try and scam them,” Slater added.

They didn’t have much else to do, so Slater watched the construction drones salvage everything they could, a small pile of biomatter bricks began to stack up in his core room. Almost all the salvage was required to fill the ammo hoppers on the reaper drones, leaving him with only a partial brick remaining after everything was done. Nanobots continued their expansion along the narrow path left to them, encompassing the core compartment and the one after it. He was just starting to permeate the next compartment when the red lights flashed once again. New challengers were arriving.

His drones chambered rounds and moved to the entry compartment, ready to repeat their earlier performance. This time, Slater knew the opponents would be a bit better prepared, but he was confident in his reapers to get the job done. Both entry hatches opened and instead of a pile of dwarves, several grenade-like cylinders were thrown in, gas billowing out to quickly fill the compartment. If his nanobots had permeated this room, Slater wouldn’t have had any trouble detecting the intruders, but he was reliant on his reapers for now, and their sensors seemed to have some trouble cutting through the smoke. The smoke grenades must have had some IR blockers as well, preventing his drones from detecting heat signature of the invaders.

A light flared in the smoke, the beam of a laser rifle cutting through to hit one of his reapers. The combat drones were well armored, and the laser didn’t do much other than burn a divot into the chest armor. Four other beams lashed out and Slater sent an order for his drones to target the source of the light beams. The sounds of laser fire were overwritten by the booms of his rifles. Slater had never liked the sounds of lasers; they had a high-pitched squeal that didn’t sound right for a weapon. Heavy rifle rounds sounded different, they sounded like a real weapon should, they sounded like victory.

“I’m hit, oh no, my arm! Kelsar, help me,” A voice called out from the smoke. The sound attracted the fire from one of the reapers and the screams cut off. More lasers fired from the smoke, and a reaper’s assault rife was burned from its housing. Without pausing, the reaper charged its way into the smoke, its metal claw ready to smash any enemy in reach.

The rifle-armed reapers slowly walked around the perimeter of the compartment, firing rounds at any sound or flash of laser fire. A flurry of rapid-fire laser blasts sizzled in the smoke, illuminating the image of his damaged reaper pounding its claw into a humanoid figure. Slater felt the connection to the reaper terminate as the lasers burned into something vital.

His surviving pair of reapers belted out continuous fire into the area the laser blasts had come from. As the smoke began to clear out of the compartment, the fallen forms of the contenders and his reaper began to take shape. Not leaving anything to chance, each body was hit with several more rounds. The armor piercing bullets cut deep into the armored bodies of the invaders before exploding. No survivors would walk away from this fight.

The hatches closed once more, letting Slater know the assault was over. He sent the construction drones in to salvage everything and replace his destroyed reaper. It was a mixed bag of attackers that included a large orc in heavy body armor that had carried an oversized riot shield and a laser pistol. The shield reminded Slater that his reapers used to also carry those into battle, an oversight he intended to fix with the gathered salvage. Two of the intruders had been dwarves, who had so far seemed to make up a sizeable percentage of the station’s population. The final attacker was a gnome, it must have been the one that had been screaming about its arm since it was the only attacker missing one of those particular limbs.

Like the previous engagement, Slater felt much better after the battle, a quick look at his status screen confirmed that he was up to 42% processing power, his recovery somehow supercharged by the act of defending his core. More of his mind unlocked, the data dump was focused on his MOBS along with the upgrades and developments he had made to them. Was the unlock due to his MOBS being in battle, or was it some random occurrence?

While the invaders had been fewer in number, they were much better equipped than the previous attackers. Each of the bodies wore various body armors, none of which seemed capable of protecting them from the armor-piercing explosive ammo that the reapers used. The designs for replacing the assault rifle arms on his reapers with a heavy, belt-fed machinegun were now available. He upgraded his reapers and then issued them shields to hold in the other hand. They would be short on ammo once more, this time, each held a belt of 200 rounds out of a maximum capacity of 2500. With the machineguns having a single fire mode, he felt it would be sufficient to handle the next round of challengers. It was more important for him to have the extra protection granted by the shields than to have full ammo loads. The shields had also been scaled down a bit, not as thick as he would have liked, but more salvage from the next round would fix that.

“Hey Slater, look at what Hixrax sent, we’ve finally gotten noticed,” Pixi said, drawing his attention to the data sent by the Chixturax after their last fight.

Sarton Station Ranking for the Hixrax core shard: 274/274.

Total views: 49.

Victory/Defeat: 2/0.

Total kills: 19.

Favorite MOBS: Automated drones.

Fan favorite MOBS: Automated drones.

Number of fan followers: 5.

Credits earned in last match: 50.

They sure didn’t make much off that match, but Slater was confident they would continue to move up the ladder now that he was getting into the swing of this once again. His capacity to command MOBS had improved and he built another pair of construction drones back in Ixlab’s shop. He was out of salvage here in the arena, and while he could have printed up some kobolds instead of the construction drones, he wouldn’t have had anything to arm them with.

“What do you think they’ll throw at us next?” Slater asked.

“I don’t have any idea boss, but I suspect we’ll find out shortly,” Pixi said as the warning indicator lights and invasion countdown began once more.