Several minutes of walking later, the group came to a halt as they all began to hear a high pitch buzzing sound coming from around a bend in the tunnel.

“What is that?” FarShot whispered.

“It sounds like a swarm of mosquitoes. Really big mosquitoes,” ShadowRunner answered.

“You’re supposed to be a stealth type, right? Why don’t you go forward and scout it out for us? Just peek around the corner, then come back and let me and your sister know what’s ahead.”

ShadowRunner looked to his sister, who nodded in agreement. He shrugged. “Yea, I guess that makes sense. Be right back.”

Bob and FarShot watched him move toward the bend in the tunnel, with exaggerated slowness and careful steps. The he stopped, stiffened, and turned to run back to the other two.

“Shield and turret now! There’s a bunch of floating thingies coming!”

Bob responded quickly by deploying the shield against the left wall and dropping the turret against the opposite wall. As they finished deploying, the buzzing noise got quite a bit louder as the ‘floating thingies’ came into view. About two dozen objects floated into view, flitting about through the air in complex patterns without the aid of wings. They ranged in size from several inches across to a couple feet, and they definitely weren’t friendly. ShadowRunner ducked behind the shield with them, as the mysteriously floating objects began to open fire on them with projectiles of varying sizes, and Bob’s turret responded in kind. Bob stumbled back and fell on his butt, the wind knocked out of him. ShadowRunner and FarShot hunched behind the shield.

“Bob! Are you okay?” FarShot asked, looking worried.

He looked down at his chest, where he felt pain, actual pain. A small, shiny piece of metal was embedded in the fabric of his body armor, along with numerous slivers of metal. He pried it out, and looked at the deformed bullet. “Yea. That was unexpectedly painful. Let’s shoot these things down.”

The siblings nodded.

Bob pulled the spare shield from his inventory and deployed it next to the current one, which was blocking the constant hail of projectiles, giving the trio a bit more room. ShadowRunner popped up and started firing wildly, and the firing began to focus on him. FarShot peeked above the barricade and fired off a couple shots before dropping back down, then Bob did the same, but with less than stellar results.

ShadowRunner ducked back down after a couple more seconds, his face bloody, and his chest covered in tiny slivers of metal.

“These things are really hard to hit, the way the keep moving around like that. FarShot, can you focus on taking down the bigger ones? They’ve got the bigger guns and are most dangerous to us, though I think they’re focusing on Bob’s turret which is wrecking all the little ones.”

“Got it,” she said before popping up and firing off a couple more shots.

Bob glanced at his turret, and sure enough, it was getting bombarded, though its armored body seemed to be holding up well — for now, at least. He popped back up and fired a couple more shots, this time focusing on the larger ones. His shots hit a circular shape that projected from the thing’s side, about where he’d expect a wing to be, which caused it to spark and smoke, then careen into the ground as it lost control. He ducked back down as he was peppered with a barrage of much smaller projectiles.

He popped back up again a few more times, but was not as lucky with his shots, and ShadowRunner did not seem to be having much luck either. FarShot, on the other hand, was steadily putting their enemies down, while Bob’s turret cleared the air of smaller enemies.

“Ooh, my rifle skill just went up!” FarShot cheered as she downed another flier.

“Oh, shit, what’s that?”

Bob popped up to look and saw a much larger and slower object float into view. This one was about the size of a wagon, and was attended by a swarm of much smaller fliers, which streamed towards the fallen to ferry bits and pieces of them back to the larger one. This one lacked the peculiar bobbing motions of the smaller ones.

Bob heard the chime of a quest update, then it clicked in his head. “I think these are the rogue drones we got the request for, and that’s probably the mother drone.”

As he said this, he heard a loud hum build and then a crack.

Bob’s turret tumbled backwards, a smoking hole in its armored shell. He pulled out his spare turret, and tossed it out in buckshot mode once more, then stood to take a few shots and get a better look at the mother drone. It was covered in sleek gray armor, with glassy domes peppered around its surface. On the underside of it was a long, boxy protrusion with a hole in the end of it, which was swiveling to point at FarShot while she was taking her own shots. He heard that building hum again, and ducked, pulling her down with him.

*CRACK*

A small chunk disappeared from the top of his shield, and the two were splattered by the glossy goop that coated the shield.

“Thanks!”

They both returned to firing.

“Uh, guys, I’m running out of ammo here. I’ve only got like two magazines left,” ShadowRunner said.

“Neither of us are really doing anything to it, only FarShot’s gun is punching through its armor,” Bob replied, as he ducked back down to reload.

“Well, then I’ve got a crazy idea. And if it works, I’ll be the hero, if not, I’ll have to deal with an hour of death penalty. Try to bait out another shot from that big gun it has first.”

FarShot nodded, then popped up and started firing repeatedly. The smaller drones had been cleared by Bob’s turret, aside from the tiny ones that were picking up all the drone pieces scattered all over the tunnel and ferrying them to the mother drone. Bob stood and took a few potshots as well, keeping an eye on the mother drone’s reactions. The big gun pointed towards FarShot, and began to hum with power. She dodged out of the way just before it fired and bored another hole through the portable shield.

ShadowRunner leapt over the barricade and ran toward the mother drone, and dove onto it. He only had one pistol in hand now, as he was using the other hand to grip at one of the shattered glass domes for a handhold. The mother drone, seemed to freeze at this unexpected move, which gave him a moment to line up the pistol in his free hand with one of the holes punched by FarShot’s gauss rifle, and start pulling the trigger. The mother drone began to shudder as he did this, then, with a hiss and a clanking sound, an armor panel on its side fell open, revealing a partially finished drone, one of the larger ones, but with an only partially finished armored exterior. It drifted free of the mother drone, and turned and started firing on ShadowRunner as he frenziedly emptied his pistol into the mother drone’s insides.

However, the unfinished drone exploded in a shower of sparks and broken parts as Bob and his turret fired on it at the same time.

Then, with a final shudder and a loud pop, the mother drone dropped from where it was hovering as if it had been held up by strings that had just been cut. The impact jarred ShadowRunner loose, and he fell to the ground, a puddle of blood slowly spreading from where he’d been shot by the half-finished drone.

Another pop and a cloud of bluish smoke emerged from the mother drone.

“Huh, that’s convenient,” said ShadowRunner. “When you level up, it removes status effects.” He groaned and sat up. “Almost out of health though. Don’t suppose they have healing potions or the like?”

Bob shrugged. “Not that I saw, but if they do it probably has some strange name. Even the healer class is named weird, it’s called a ‘Medic’ for some reason.”

FarShot shrugged.

Bob checked his quest journal, and confirmed that all the requests except the retrieval one were marked as complete. “Do we want to keep going and try to finish that retrieval quest, or you want to just call it good and head back?”

ShadowRunner was about to answer when he stood, and placed his hand on the inactive drone mother to casually lean against it, then jumped back. “Wait, what? We can get loot from these things? Its giving me a list of available loot.”

Bob looked at him quizzically, but ShadowRunner didn’t notice. He moved over and touched the wreck of the half-finished drone. “Huh, same list of available loot. So is it the loot for the whole battle then? That’s convenient.” As he said this, the mother drone and the remains of the other drones all dissolved into a swirl of dust.

All three received notifications for items received. Bob quirked his eyebrow at one in particular, which he opened his inventory to inspect.

Small Rail Cannon

This electrically driven cannon fires high velocity tungsten sabots with high precision. It is currently tooled for integration with an automated system. This weapon is prone to over-heating if proper coolant subsystems are not installed.

Power requirements (minimum): 700 Watts

Power requirements (recommended): 1200 Watts

Rate of fire: 15 RPM

“Oh, wow. I want to make a turret with this thing.” Bob shared the cannon’s details with the other two.

“That would be awesome,” ShadowRunner said.

“I ended up with something called a part printer and assembly bay. Everything else was labeled as some variant of Drone Component. I guess we can just sell it off for credits and upgrade our gear,” said FarShot.

“Makes sense,’ her brother agreed.

“Look it up on the WIK first, you never know if it might be something useful.” Bob deactivated and gathered up his items, and retrieved his damaged turret. “So, keep going or not?”

“I say we head back. I’m like one solid hit away from dying, and I’m about out of ammo. Gotta make sure I really stock up next time.”

FarShot nodded. “Besides, it’s probably nearing time for dinner,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

“Right. I suppose I should figure out how to repair my stuff. I hope it’s not overly complicated.”

After a brief walk, following their Nav screens and only running into a few mutant rats and cockroaches along the way, they exited the tunnels of the Yellow Zone into a a warehouse filled area in the Green Zone of Servo City. After a brief farewell, the siblings disappeared in a glowing swirl of light.