A Robotic Overmind for a Dungeon

"Shit" was all I got out after reading the notification. I quickly unplugged the power cord in the hopes that it might make it harder to find me. Grabbing up all of my drones that were not doing anything I send them out so they could grab up as much metal scrap as they could find. I also walk down to the drone works and set up a few more squads of scout drones and tell my existing scouts to search for the position of my new adversary.

As I'm doing this, the pair of moose drones I sent out, return with much-needed supplies which are hurriedly stuffed into storage and with that, the pair is on the move again. Hopefully, I will be able to stock up on enough materials for replacements before the first wave arrives from the other AI. On that thought, I should probably start producing the drones now so that I won't have to during a fight.

Putting a couple of ants onto the cue, I save a chunk of my materials just in case they prove ineffective against whatever my new enemy throws at me. Checking on the rat scouts I find them on stand by and so I send them out to do their jobs.

With all of that sorted, I walk outside myself and start helping my drones pick up the larger bits of rubble and scrap. Glancing up into the sky I find that the bird drones, which I'm going to start calling vultures, are hanging out around the nearby buildings that are less collapsed. They seem to be hesitant to pick a fight with me and my drones but that does not put my nerves at ease.

A dozen minutes of scavenging later, the mosses are back with the next batch of scrap, and this time they grabbed up some of the wrecked drones. Realizing I never looked at the canine drones properly, I pick up the most intact one and pop up the description.

"The Lightly Armored Skirmishing Hunters or the LASH are agile fighter drones meant to get in and out of fights slowly picking at their opponents. Due to their low durability, they are deployed in small hunter groups which are quite proficient at taking out singular large targets. Can be constructed in a Medium Drone Works."

This will definitely be useful if the AI sends anything large. I put a triplet on the queue if that exact scenario occurs. After grabbing up the wrecked drones and hauling them into the refinery I go back to helping the other drones with the scavenging efforts.

After a half hour, my scouts alert me that they have found a large group of flying drones moving in my base's direction. Hopping into the view of my scouts I quickly spot the drones in question.

With skinny arms and heads and a large abdomen with short stinger-like spikes at the end of the lowest part of the body, the drones had a striking resemblance to a small swarm of hornets. With a quick scan of the group, I found that there were 8 of them and they seem to be flying in a formation of 2 scattered columns 4 long.

My scout pans its view over to a building in front of the approaching hornets and in the said building was the same flock of bird drones that attacked me earlier today. They seemed to have created a nesting grounds of some sort in the tall building, to what purpose I have no idea seeing as they can't reproduce. But that is asides from the point for the flock has taken notice of the incoming swarm of hornet drones and they do not look like they were very happy about it.

The column of hornets continue their flight, seemingly having not noticed the flock of birds, and are slowly but steadily making their way closer and closer to the nests. The lead bird drone, at least the drone I assume is the leader because of the larger build compared to the others, seems to have had enough of the swarm moving into their territory like they own the place and screeches into the sky. This is mimicked by the other bird drones and soon after they all take flight and shoot straight for the hornets.

The hornets shift to face the incoming threat and tighten their postures and pointing their stingers at them. But it's too late at the first of the birds clash with the smaller hornets and seem to rip them apart with ease, taking out 2 of the hornet drones. Then the swarm retaliates by suddenly firing their stingers right into the flock, taking out 3 of the birds. Clearly not expecting such retaliation from the smaller drones, the lead bird squawks, and the other birds being to retreat. The lead bird then quickly sweeps down to the closest hornet and deeply gashes it, causing the drone to fall from the sky, after which the lead bird also retreats.

As the birds flee the remaining hornets continue to take pot shots at them to minimal success. As the last bird exits out of sight the swarm of hornets, now down to 5, form up once again and begin moving in the direction that they were originally moving towards.

This is useful info, useful indeed. Shame I don't have any ranged drone yet so I guess I'm going to have to draw them inside so they are at ground level.

Breaking the connection to the scouts I go back to work with renewed vigor knowing that I don't have much more time to grab up enough resources to last a siege.

I glance briefly at the few brid drones perched on top of the nearby buildings watching. Maybe they'll help out too I think with a hint of hope in the back of my mind that I might not be alone in my defence.