A Robotic Overmind for a Dungeon

The first of my drone teams to engage were the two flanking groups who were immediately set upon by their counterparts. My two teams both consisted of three hounds and two ants and their opponents looked to be a mix of hounds, termites, and ants who numbered at five and six respectively. The right most advanced team was the unfortunate drones who had to face off against the larger enemy force but thanks to a shot from one of the scorpions who had taken position near the team, the battle had evened out nicely.

While the vanguard teams fought in a stalemate, the main force braced as the hoard of MAI drones charged across the large street which they were positioned at. Most intimidating of the hoard were the triplet of battle crabs who still had scorpions perched on top of them. This, of course, netted them the honor of being the main targets for the initial barrage from my remaining scorpions who had not given aid to the advanced squads.

The volley managed to, at least temporarily, halt one of the crabs' advance and had taken a scorpion or two out of the fight for now. Then the remaining enemy scorpions opened fire on my drones who were still entrenched behind various cover points for this exact reason. However it still managed to clip one or two of my hounds, each one of them elevating my chances of losing this engagement.

Then, before the hoard could fully reach my hurriedly recovering, my fire beetles released waves of fire which held back the enemy drones for a few moments giving ample time for my own to fully shake off the stunning effect. Unfortunately soon after they did, the enemy's battle crabs strode forward and reached over the fiery barrier and attempted to strike blindly at my beetles who were hiding behind their flames.

The crab managed to hit one of them which caused a gap in the wall of fire, one that the enemy drones were all too happy to fill. One of my drone teams quickly ran in to plug the hole and began taking the brunt of the onslaught of enemy drones who decided that charging through fire only to be engaged with a squad of my drones was less appealing than just attacking the ones defending the breach.

As this continued, my beetles decided that they had delayed long enough and began an orderly withdrawal while continuing to blaze fire across the battlefield. Upon reaching their assigned drone team, they cut off their continuous stream and climbed onto one of the ants. From this vantage point, my beetles were able to release more controlled blasts of fire which were much more concentrated than the previously displayed spray.

Focusing back onto my hornets, while my infantry drones fought down at the ground my hornets were rearming themselves in preparation of the next volley. Due to the reduced range, the EMP hornets could not aid in counter sniping the enemy hornets and thus settled for swooping down towards the ongoing melee and fired off their munitions at the largest target they could hit. The enemy's crab drones expansive build made it an excellent target and the scorpions still perched on them was the cherry on top as they were able to fry both of their systems with a single shot.

In total, the shots from the hornets managed to take one of the crabs and some scorpions down which greatly relieved the infantry squad holding that particular segment of the line. Not long after my EMP hornets made their staffing run on the MAI infantry, my standard hornets finished reloading and so they let loose their volley of fire into where their counterparts last fired from. This managed to garner at least a dozen hits on the enemy hornets but they quickly let loose their own barrage of spikes which hit more than a few of my own.

Sending for some repair spiders to come tend to the critically wounded, I once again switched over to my flanking teams who were looking worse for wear. That is not to say that they were handedly losing their battles but they were taking some hefty hits. While the left side managed to fend off their counterparts well enough, only losing two drones in the process, but the right side had to fight a rather uphill battle once the stunned enemy drone regained the ability to fight and joined their compatriots.

The right side faced serious casualties as they had lost three of their number while only having taken out one and partially injured another. Seeing the possibility of a total collapse, I order my reserve vultures to take off and beeline it to the right hand flanking team. As my vultures rush to take off, I order my drones to hold the line and to focus on just staying alive until reinforcements arrive which my drones were happy to comply with.

The two remaining drones that make up the right side flanking team, a hound and an ant, stopped attacking and began focusing on creating distance and avoiding ant attacks coming their way. This continued on for a half a minute before my vultures finally arrived and subsequently slammed into the exposed rear of the MAI drones.

With the newly arrived aerial reinforcements in play, my flanking team quickly took advantage of the distraction the vultures made and began attacking their opponents with a renewed determination. When all was said and done, the rightmost flanking team had only completely lost a vulture but sustained many minor injuries and one major.

As they were doing this, the left flanking team finished off their final opponent and were already moving into the next objective which were the enemy hornets who were holding up in a large rectangular building with a series of windows dotting its walls. Thankfully the hornets inside had already fired off their spikes towards my own hornets so the flanking team was able to slip in unhindered.

Floating back to my main infantry force, I see that it was slowly shifting to the MAI infantry favor. Even though we had managed to already stunned two of the crabs down, the last remaining one still managed to push the balance just enough the enemy hoards favor. The disparity slowly grew as every time my drones managed to take out two of their opponents, three of my own fell in turn.

In total, I had lost around a dozen drones which were growing by the minute Thankfully, further respite was found in my scorpions who had finally finished overheating and had already begun lining up their next shots. Then, several beams of light shot out from the various pieces of cover my scorpions were hiding behind.

These beams managed to hit most of their targets, those being two shots firing on course towards the crab walker and the remaining aimed at the various infantry drones all clumped together nicely. The two shots aimed at the crab walker both hit, taking the beast out of the fight for at least a minute or two until the stunning effect wears off. The various beams which were pointed at the MAI infantry drones managed to hit two out of three times which was good enough for me.

With both the final crab walker and a couple of the front line drones falling victim to my scorpion's stun lances, the melee flipped back to my favor and allowed my drones to fight with a renewed spirit. Not long after the most recent volley of scorpion beams, my hornets finished reloading and quickly loosed another barrage of spike shots which slammed onto the building housing the enemy hornets. My EMP hornets performed another strafing run as well which cemented my drones advantage.

Speaking of hornets, my two flanking teams met up at the base floor of the building which was filled with enemy hornets. More accurately, the remains of the right side drones reinforced the minimal casualties which were accumulated by the left side. Nevertheless, the now singular group of hounds and ants began the process of slowly clearing out the first floor of the building.

As they were doing this, my hornets barrage hit the building like dozens of cannon shots peppering the walls. For the most part, the first floor was clear of any still whole hornets and so they moved up into the second floor. Unlike the first, which was made up of a series of rooms which all seemed to have a window, the second floor had a corridor which was littered with hornets all lined up and preparing to fire.

Quickly counting them all up, there were about a dozen or so hornets lining the corridor with at least another half dozen hornet corpses strewn about. Shortly after my drones discovered the line of hornets, said drones fired their salvo before quickly falling back behind the walls of the rooms which were lining the inside of the corridor, presumably to take cover while reloading.

Now that the hornets were no longer in the corridor, my drones stormed up the stairs and into the first room on the left. Inside the room was a pair of hornets who were loading a new spike into their internal ammunition storage. They barely had enough time to raise one of their pairs of arms in defense of themselves before my drones quickly swarmed them. This continued for the rest of the rooms and had only caused one of the more injured of my drones to suffer a critical hit and their systems sadly gave out.

However, with the enemy hornets neutralized, my own hornets were completely free to let loose torrent after torrent of spike shots into the defenseless forms of the MAI drones. Who, upon realizing that their hornets support had fallen, decided living was the better part of valor and surrendered.

With that, a resounding cry of success rang out from every drone in the compound.