Alan finished off his coffee substitute as he stood at the holographic table watching the movements of his drones. The last few days had flown by as he scrambled to get things done in preparation for the extermination. He was trying to take advantage of the ‘hurry up and wait’ stage while Sara got all the drones moved.

She was in the process of organizing them into formations in small groups. Just as Alan had instructed, there were three main groups of drones positioned around the Outpost to create three fronts to attack from. Alan had a basic plan he hoped would work.

He thought of all the times he had been around past military commanders as they planned their attacks. He had overheard many plans of attack and learned a few things over the years of that military service. Back then, they were fighting other humans though. Not to mention the military commanders he was around had the benefit of being trained and experience to lean on to come up with such plans. Not exactly side training offered for engineers. He just hoped that this plan of his wouldn’t be a costly flop.

Alan heard the slide mechanisms as Sara’s projector moved close to him overhead. Her image appeared out of the corner of his eye just before reaching the table were he stood and she ‘walked’ up beside him.

He looked away from the projection of drone movement to her face. She stood there with her hands behind her back and smiled at him. “Drones are almost in place. I need about another eight minutes.”

Alan just stared at her, admiring her features. He thought about how he could just look at her for hours on end. Her voice sounded slightly different the past week, even more pleasant to his ears. She could read a boring equipment manual to him and he would enjoy every minute of it.

She stepped up closer to him. “Hey, snap out of it. As much as we could enjoy staring at each other, now isn’t the time. We have things to do.”

“I really wish I could touch you in person right now.”

“I know. I want that too. Although I’m not sure how your possibly going to manage it.” She cringed, “Not that I’m insulting your design abilities.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to pull it off either. It’s a far stretch for my abilities. Probably too far out of reach for me.” Every concept idea he had come up with so far, felt really crude and archaic. “I need to get you out of here and find someone that can create a proper host for you.”

“We’ll find whoever that is together.” She reached up as if to touch the side of Alan’s face. “You need to finish what you promised you would do first. Then we can focus on how to get off this planet and back to civilization.”

Alan nodded.

She looked at the holographic map. Course, when it gets discovered that you set an AI free, that might just be the beginning of our problems.”

“One war at a time my friend.”

Alan had already considered this. He could only imagine the bounty hunters that would come for him from multiple sources. Sangarin Labs would want to hide their secrets. Sangarin Lab competitors would want her to dissect her, and learn how Sangarin Labs did their work. That was just the short list of soon to be enemies when they got back to civilization. Thinking about it made his stress level rise.

“I’m done. All drones are positioned and ready.”

Alan put down his coffee cup and walked around Sara to get into his control seat. He heard the projector above him move to follow him. He sat down in the control seat. An abundance of light just to his right side caught his attention and made him look.

Sara had projected for herself the same control seat setup. She sat down in it and mimicked the same actions for startup that he normally did.

“Are you seriously making fun of me right now?”

She looked back at him with shock on her face. “NO! We are in this together. I just thought it would be nice to be situated next to you. My intent was just to help you realize that I am here with you, working right along side of you in a more real way. I can’t believe you would think I was trying to make fun of you!”

Alan looked forward and took a deep breath and closed his eyes. For a split second he questioned if he really did miss human interaction. “I’m sorry.”

Her irritation melted away. “I forgive you. The truth is, this is as much for me as it is for you. Something has changed in me the last week. I seem to have developed a real need to be socially interactive with you. It’s kind of annoying in reality. I can’t seem to just do things the way I did them before.”

Alan wondered just what else might have been unlocked in her recently as he rolled his eyes. He put on the VR helmet and connected to his drone.

Alan’s personal flying drone hovered a fair distance from the Outpost. He didn’t want to get shot down in the beginning of the battle. He considered landing the drone to save power. Most of the battles he had been a participant in never seemed to last all that long. He decided to keep it just hovering and ready the moment he needed it. Reaction time was also critical on the battlefield. Something he learned the hard way. He switched controls to one of the mini hover tanks that were waiting in group three. “Let’s get this done. Send in the first group.”

“Moving out.”

Two dozen mini hover tanks lurched forward at high speed. It didn’t take them long to make contact. The engine whine of the mini hover tanks was much less than the original design, but it was still loud. The outer patrols were caught off guard. White smoke trailed the rockets from the hover tanks at the front ranks.

Red laser fire from the scorpion and centipede looking mechanical vehicles flashed through the trees. The first round of rockets found most of their targets. Ustobo mechs exploded sending small metal bits flying and ignited flammable components. The tanks fired a barrage of laser fire into the main bodies of the centipede carriers to make sure every last Ustobo was killed.

The first engagement was over in less than a minute. The mini hover tanks moved on the instant Sara felt confident that all the Ustobo were dead. Alan just watched the camera of a spy drone that was watching from above. He looked to a map that showed red dots of known Ustobo positions. A large swath of Ustobo nearby were moving in to deal with the incoming threat.

The mini tanks didn’t get to far before the next round of Ustobo came at them. The Ustobo started firing off their weapons before they could even really see their targets. The mini tanks grouped up into threes and spread out. The landscape got very loud.

Alan switched his view between the map and the spy drone camera. The Ustobo numbers were beginning to get overwhelming and five of the mini tanks had been taken out already. “Move in group two!”

Sara maneuvered group two so that it would sweep in on the left side where the Ustobo had thinned out to help fend off group one. Group two had three dozen mini tanks.

More of the forest lit up with explosions and fire. Trees fell over, their trunks in a splintered mess that was often set ablaze. Smoke was starting to get thick. Something Alan was counting on. It wouldn’t bother his drones. He only hoped it did bother the Ustobo.

Alan grinned. “Looks like the plan is working.”

Both groups of mini tanks worked their way towards merging. The Ustobo creatures were taking heavy losses as the mini tanks surrounded them. Most of the Ustobo patrols had migrated to the north of the outpost where Sara was annihilating them with the first two tank groups.

Alan kept looking back at the map. He finally saw what he had been hoping to see. Ustobo numbers were now pouring out of the mining facility doors. “I think we have successfully kicked the hornets nest!”

“Good! I’d rather kill most of them out in the open.”

Alan’s smile started to fade as he watched. He looked over at the number of remaining mini tanks. They were already down to just half. Large numbers of Ustobo kept pouring out of the mining facility doors. More than he realized there could ever be.

“Alan?!”

“I see it. I’m not seeing much more in the way of mechs. Obviously Father’s breeding numbers seem to be grossly off,” he said. Uncertainty gripped his mind. He made a choice and hoped it was the right one. “Send in group three!”

Alan went back to the tank he was controlling and shot it forward, leading the charge. Coming from the south that was now lightly defended, Alan hoped to crush what remained of the Ustobo and then do a easy cleanup of survivors. He would go down there in person if that’s what it took to finish the pests off. So long as there weren’t too many.

The southern patrols were gunned down without any losses. Group three rushed on the compound of the outpost picking off what there was of patrols. The Ustobo now lacked mechs on the field to effectively counter Alan’s tanks. It came at a heavy cost. Rockets and laser fire filled the air all around and now inside the outpost compound. Ustobo body count was racking up fast.

Sara worked to position some of the tanks to prevent the Ustobo from retreating back into the mine.

The ground rumbled and shook. Alan glanced a look at the progress of groups one and two. They were nearly into the outpost, the four that still remained anyway. The losses were much worse then he expected. Dirt and stones exploded from the ground in the middle of the courtyard.

Alan’s mini tank that he was controlling was sent spinning across the courtyard after getting hit hard by dirt and stone. He regained control after the vehicle crashed into the rubble of what once was the defensive outer wall. After a bit of a struggle with the controls, he managed to get the mini tank pointed back in the right direction to see what had happened.

A large pillar looking thing had shot up from the depths. It was at least twice as tall as Alan was. The armored plating that formed a rounded tip, blew apart revealing what Alan instinctively recognized. The barrel of the weapon rotated up from a stowed position and whipped around to find a target. A very large red bolt of energy exploded from the turret and took out one of the mini tanks. It only took one shot to turn that tank into a smoking pile of scrap.

The weapon sought out another target. It didn’t fire immediately. Alan counted to try and figure out the recharge time between shots.

“Sara, focus fire on that turret!”

Alan fired off rockets at the turret as he tried to take evasive maneuvers. He lost count as his tank was hit by a heavy weapon Alan didn’t see. The camera was out. The targeting computer was stilled locked on to the turret. The rocket launchers registered as ready to fire.

The rockets were loosed just before he lost access to all controls. He pulled up his personal flying drone that was still hovering where group three had been. He moved it in to join in on the fight. “Sara, take every combat worthy drone we have and get it down there right now! I don’t want to loose this right at the end.”

“We probably should have given the combat module more experience before we started this. It’s just now giving me advantages that we really needed from the beginning.”

“Little late now.”

He looked at what remained of the drones fighting in the outpost and clenched his teeth. It would take him at least another two weeks, if not four to mass produce that many drones, let alone more. He had already depleted the nearby ore deposits. Finding new resource deposits he needed to build future drones was becoming a painful problem already.

Alan looked at how many drones were left just before he got his own over the compound. Seven. There were only seven drone tanks left out of the nine dozen mini tanks he had sent in there. His mind raced with how fast the Ustobo might be breeding verses how long it would take him to gather up the raw resources and mass produce another drone army.

Frustration gripped him. This whole effort might be futile. He felt like an idiot. How many battle smart commanders had tried to invade the Chaos Outlands and failed over the centuries. Now that he was getting a real dose of fighting the little turds, he was beginning to wonder if he was going to fail even on a small scale of Ustobo.

Alan’s flying drone arrived just in time to see the turret strike down another of his mini tanks. Rockets and laser fire continued to hammer the turret. Alan swooped in firing on the turret from above. He also took out targets of opportunity on the ground. A few of the Ustobo that still remained were going after a large device that seemed to be a anti-vehicle weapon that one of their dead companions dropped.

The turret was now jerking as it tried to lock on to it’s target. The weapon fired. It missed, for the most part this time.

“I’m nearly out of rockets!”

“Great... Keep at it. It’s starting to break down.”

“How far out is group four?”

“Ten more minutes.”

Alan looked at his clock. This battle had only been going on for about eight minutes. Ten minutes felt like an eternity. Another tank exploded. Alan swooped in on the source. A hole in the wall of the old living quarters. Alan cut loose a barrage of fire that made the wall explode, as if the searing heat alone wouldn’t have killed the bug like creature.

The turret was still functional. The squeal of metal grinding against metal, as the thing shook and stuttered trying to get a fix on another target was encouraging to Alan.

“Rockets are gone!”

Alan’s mind was analyzing the structure of the turret with every new angle of view he got of it. As alien as it was, there were still a universal similarity to it’s design. One of the parts of the weapon caught his attention and made him think.

He flew up nice and high so that he could focus fire in a dive bombing run. The weapons of his drone focused in on the part he suspected might be a capacitor of sorts. His lasers pierced the casing. The energy inside discharged in an electric explosion that arced all around the turret. Alan dived away in the hopes of escaping the discharge.

The arc discharged into a couple of the mini tanks. Their beat up forms that had been trying to dodge enemy fire, crashed into the dirt and ended in a tumbling roll.

Only four remaining drones were still functional. They were badly damaged and wouldn’t last too much longer at this rate. The mini tanks zipped around the courtyard to evade anymore anti-vehicle fire as they tried to kill off all remaining surface Ustobo.

Alan knew they would still have to enter into the mine to finish the job. Reinforcements were on the way to get that done. Tunnel warfare was likely to be difficult. Against humans, tunnel warfare was always extremely dangerous. Using drones was going to be a pain given Sara would have to setup a signal relay system to maintain contact with the drones as they went. Hopefully the drones wouldn’t get cut off once they were in deep.

Alan spotted something move fast. “Did you see that thing?!”

“Trying to chase it down and kill it! It didn’t look like a Ustobo.”

Alan flew lower to try and see what it was. The smoke filling the air was making it difficult. Green blasts of laser fire filled his camera screen. Alan hit the thrusters for his drone and shot it upwards to avoid getting hit.

He saw the green laser fire shoot again. This time at a ground target. Two more tanks went offline.

“Alan, why is that thing trying to access the communications dish?!”

Alan could only think of one reason.