The Last Guardian

ch 6 minor mishaps

If Austin could smile, he would be. His second assembly bay finally came online. The damage Bay had been printing the components for this one for a while now. Once he had a third one online, he'd begin the process of disassembling the damaged one for its components. While He could have easily repaired it, but with how inconveniently it was currently placed, it was better just to take the thing apart and build a new one elsewhere. And with a li-little luck when he disassembles the other old bays as well, they would contain enough components to build more.

He began constructing his third bay with the second bay printing more components. was now prioritizing his own construction capabilities. While the fabrication bays were useful they couldn't produce everything he would need. He would have to begin producing more advanced construction and fabrication facilities.

One of the first things he was going to be producing was a nano forge. Nano forges were made-up of several component machines, and it would take him some time to get all of them ready. However, he was hoping to get a simple nanobot assembly unit online sooner rather than later. Nanobots were useful tools capable of extremely precise and miniaturized construction for hyper advanced components.

Unfortunately, outside of specialized containment units where they would have access to resources, extremely clean environments and so on they weren't two particularly good at actually doing things. Well not without a huge number of them working together and even then, the construction capabilities were still limited. It would honestly be easier just to assemble the thing by hand or in his case by bot. Then it would be to try and use the insanely large swarm of nanobots, but Austin had found another use for them, maintenance. While the small bots were basically just really slow 3D printers, they could break apart just about any material and fuse it together again making them particularly good at dealing with weathering rust corrosion or just general cleaning. They could then use whatever they collected in their cleaning to make repairs though the process was rather slow even if he provided them with the resources they needed.

Though if he was going to be running in atmosphere with a large amount of organic material in the environment especially metal with the regolith from the soil, he doubted he would have to provide much for them once they got going. Unfortunately, it's extremely hard to set up anything for nanobots without nanobots. For fortunately for him he still had several intact containers of blank nanites. Nanites were essentially designed to be a generalized template. They were hard enough to produce without customizing we're making specialized units. Instead, they were each equipped with a mount for a singular tool. Sometimes the actual tool would take hundreds if not thousands of nanites equipped with a specialized piece to perform the actual task. Regardless Austin had cracked open one of the containers and though they lacked tools they could perform one function regardless of having tools or equipment. Basic cleaning and while that task was in itself limited as well. It could at least begin gathering the resources it would later need for maintenance and repairs. With the nanobots released and cleaning. The ants organizing and gathering scrap resources and the first mass produced beetle underway, Austins makeshift facility was really starting to take shape.

However, it was just as he thought that something went terribly wrong a large boulder suddenly shifted slamming into the opposite wall of his mining tunnel. Well, he wasn't actually mining just digging a tunnel downwards to try and intercept the caverns below. He was annoyed to find his tunnel suddenly blocked more so when water started to rush up the tunnel. He quickly shut the tractor beam off, but the wat-water kept coming. The shielding unit he had set up was more meant to keep creatures out than water but he had to hope they'd hold. As he scrambled not to be flooded, thankfully the water pressure wasn't too particularly high and that he still had his connection to the other shield generators in the Ant tunnels. He quickly switched them off and water flooded into the Ant tunnels. He was almost pleased to see the water drain only for a new type of flood to emerge ants a lot of them. The radon field helped for a little while, but it wasn't long before they started using the bodies of their dead comrades as battering Rams and Shields to push forward. Austin pow- powered down the force field his own tractor beam ants flooding into the room to quickly clear out the dead ants. He couldn't risk the radon shield becoming damaged. Unlike with their previous raids where they would never commit a large number of ants to a kill box. This time they seem to have decided that he was a threat too dangerous to be left alone and more and more ants were thrown into the radon field. The ants threw rocks, corpses and even themselves at the emitters. Despite Austin's best efforts it looked like the ants were going to get through. That was till the turret he had his own ants move into the room powered on. Prioritizing the throwing biological ants instead of the suicidal ones to take the load off of the radon shield it then began to fire at anything that entered the tunnel. But the ants weren't going to go down without a fight, it wasn't long till they started using the corpses as shields to try and get close enough to continue the onslaught. They're dead comrades were only good for a shot or two at most but still every killed Ant was fuel for the enemy war machines. The turrets laser emitter was beginning to overheat so it switch to ballistic rounds. As Austins own guard ants poured into the room but didn't advance just yet. His tractor beam ants needing all the room they could to try and clear the tunnel as the radon field flickered and then fried. Austin swore and reactivated the force field the ants threw themselves at the shield with unending fury. The guardians fired back. After a few shots Austin decided to lower the beams intensity and increase its wavelength. It was no longer a contained bolt of light but a beam of heat cooking the ants in their shells. But that wasn't the only purpose all the biological ants he had seen so far had metal shells. And though he had only seen copper so far in this batch. He could easily melt copper. Before long the first bodies began to pop as the internal gas is vaporized busting through the joints. The flesh cooked before it began to burn as their armored shells began melting creating a wall of hot fire and molten metal as it leaked down the corridor. Austin kept this up until until he had the second and third laser turrets set up. He then pulled his guard ants back. letting his tractor beam ants begin clean up. He turned the larger tractor beam on a very low setting it wasn't enough to grab up a full ant, but small bits of debris and molten balls of copper floated into the air and towards his forcefield. His tractor beam ants nabbed the molten copper dumping them into quickly fabricated pots to let them cool. They weren't as convenient as resource blanks but they were easily recyclable. This continued for some time the ants would pour into the corridor their shells quickly heating up from the lasers before dropping dead just short of the force field. Where they would collapse rapidly starting to fill the tunnel until one of the Ant corpses exploded releasing scalding steam and literally boiling blood that Austin pulled towards the force field continuing to cook it. What his tractor beam ants didn't grab was quickly forming into a fairly disgusting but effective plug. More and more ants died popped and charged but just before the plug would seal the corridor the biological ants began to attack it. At this point Austin was just starting to get annoyed with these stupid things. He reactivated the force fields in the tunnel hoping it would seal them off apparently though the ants weren't stupid enough to leave them alone and three of twenty six didn't respond. Austins tractor beam ants pulled back, and the guard ants took their place they're lasers firing down the tunnels carving up the corpses and the living alike. Austin turned the tractor beam off as the tunnel flooded.