The starfish mechs dragged me up the wall. There were hangers there, where AI 615 assembled the HAMMERHEADs and SHIELDWALLs. I stretched my arms out, hanging between two of them. Hydraulic fluid drip from the bottom of my body on the floor, the noise barely audible over the roar of the forest fire outside. With an audible noise, the red emergency and alarm lighting disappeared, replaced by the sterile white florescent light.

Black smoke drifted off the bottom of my body. I sent a signal that turned off my face display. Then I tapped into the feeds controlling the starfish bots. At once, hundreds of them moved.

The crash destroyed many. But enough remained operational. They began to mechanically sort the pile of mechs in the center of the room. 03 was underneath them, several starfish mechs burying him in a pile of metal.

I commanded even more out of the side of the ship. They moved like liquid, a wave of black metal, accompanied by the sound of hundreds of legs impacting the mental side of the ship. It sounded like machine-gun fire.

The ship’s exterior was a mess, the crash shattering into three sections; our point of interest occupied the section nearest the nose. The doors were unresponsive to signals.

03 pinged on the network.

He tried to stand, sending starfish mechs scattering across the room. Doesn’t spell all around him, working and broken, bouncing off the floor. Then he toppled backwards, smashing through one rack for starfish mechs, and slamming back into a wall. He sent a command over the network, dozens of starfish mechs rushing to support him and lift him from the wall.

615 sent him a compressed situation brief.

His drone bay opened, sending a half dozen flying drones out of his chest. He moved with a limp to exit the ship, walking on improvised legs made of interconnected starfish mechs. His drones rose above the ship, providing us imagery of their feeds. Smoke grown so thick that it choked out the air. As he walked to open a lot of factory doors, 03 also evaluated the land around us for construction.

//Query: Time to create replacement HAMMERHEAD and SHIELDWALL units

“ETA: 24 hours to complete a batch. I need an additional hour to render down the captured Qilin. Reprocessing fuel reserves into DP for defense and repair.” 615 replied.

It was a long time to be nearly defenseless. One of our active HAMMERHEADs trailed behind 03, following as he manually released the lock on the gigantic hatch that contained the autofactories.

It took all four of his arms to lift an open. The hydraulics pushed the door open once 03 unjammed the latch. He took in the inventory. As long as just one of our autofactories remained operational, we could repair the rest within a day or two.

//Get the blanket.// I instructed Mathias.

He swallowed, wiping his hands on his pants.

“How are the others?”

“There were no human casualties in the initial crash.” At 615 replied.

Mathias stared at her for a second. There was an unspoken subtext. One human died after the crash. I followed him on the feed as he stalked his way through the ship’s corridors, freeing the blanket from storage. 615 had been instructing the acolytes to stay in their rooms. The ships ventilation systems roared, flushing smoke out. This had the unfortunate side effect of also sucking smoke in, a black cloud hanging in the ships ceiling. Mathias held his arm above his eyes, laying the blanket out.

The HAMMERHEADs assisted him, using their long articulated tails to drag the headless qilin onto the blanket.

I hadn’t even needed to instruct him on what to do. He raised the first of the monsters, then looked up at the HAMMERHEAD.

“I don’t have enough mana to raise the other. These ones were leveled when they died.” His eyes flicked nervously at the monster corpse, then out the open door. “Where the hells did we land?”

615 replied through the HAMMERHEAD’s speakers. Then she chatted with an acolyte still in one room, waiting. Their door slid open, and they unbuckled themselves from their seat, fumbling to stand before walking down the hallway to join Mathias.

The headless metal qilin rose to its feet with twitchy movements.

/AI615: Qilin raised within the bounds of the dungeon as undead appear to function as dungeon monsters.

/Does that mean we can make them more powerful?

There was a pause. I felt 615 take a moment longer to respond, likely parsing information. I watched over the feed as the headless metal qilin changed. It was subtle.

The monster’s body was like a halfway point between a large cat and a horse, smooth curves of its metal body bending light around itself. The change was something that a human wouldn’t notice. It became less curved and organic, just a little less smooth and a little more rigid.

/AI615: Conducting experiment. Results pending.

Mathias directed the other acolyte in processing the Ghost Qilin. The damaged body part was tangible, but its limbs were not. HAMMERHEAD04 had to pick it up and move it a few times at Mathias’s direction. The tangible portion of its body was beautiful white fur, though the blood that had erupted out of it clung to and matted it, staining it with a red and brown splotch.

The whole time Mathias held a haunted expression, hardly blinking, but still working regardless. Like the other monster, a second after it rose, it shifted. Its translucent limbs, especially at the joints, seemed just a bit mechanical.

03’s report came in.

2 of the autofactories were working.

More than we had hoped for.

/03: Beginning sampling of ground materials for metal contents.

The starfish mechs dragged their broken counterparts. The long line of them stretching across the ship towards the autofactories functioned as a conveyor belt, each starfish picking up and pushing the broken bodies of their dead cousins forward to recycle them.

/It will take too long.// I said over the feed. No, there was no way we would finish repairs before something else attacked us. Other Qilin, the Templars coming to finish the job, or any other threats that lurked in the woods.

/AI615: Assessing the ship for non-essential materials. Highlighting all facilities not essential to long-term ground shelter. Highlighting areas where rooms can be compressed. Ship deconstruction authorized.

We would have to harden our position. Entrench ourself here while we stripped the earth for metal and the trees for wood.

The autofactories spun to life.

A Qilin roared in the forest, only a few dozen feet away from 03. More roared back at it.

We were under attack. Again.