Chapter 32. Battle Testing.


    Before they began testing the two MOBS, Watkins had several extra body armor panels fabricated. A drone was pulled off salvage duty to erect several armor stands and place the newly manufactured body armor on them. It would give Watkins a chance to test out not only the effectiveness of the armor, but also the plasma weapons that he was able to produce.


    “We’ll start with the rifles, have each take a shot a center mass on the armor,” Lani suggested. There were two armor stands for each of his MOBS, and they both leveled their rifles at the targets. A hissing thump was issued from the plasma rifles as they fired, both shots were wide of the mark, with the halfling missing completely, and the kobold barely clipping the right side of the armor.


    “Not exactly encouraging, given that they’re using a rifle and the target’s only forty feet away,” Watkins said as the two minions lined up their second shots.


    Both fired again, and did a bit better. Both were still off the mark but had hit the armor. The hits burned completely through the thin polymer armor, which made Watkins want to add another feature to the firepower test. He printed up shipsuits that were mounted underneath the armor. He wanted to see if they mitigated the damage at all.


    The wait for the shipsuits to be completed gave the rifles time to recharge the two shots they were able to hold with the limited internal storage capacity. The next two rifle shots hit the armor and confirmed that while the shipsuit might have some protective qualities, it wasn’t going to help stop a plasma bolt. Even these relatively weak ranged weapons were able to overcome the only armor that he could currently produce.


    “I’d have to say their about tied in their accuracy,” Lani said as they fired more rounds at the targets. The pair of MOBS then switched to their pistols, which, as they suspected, cut down on both their accuracy, and the damage dealt. Most shots could penetrate the armor with easy, but a glancing blow would be deflected, which gave Watkins some hope that future upgrades to his armor design would be reasonably effective.


    “I agree, they’re about even on ranged firepower. How about we move to melee,” Watkins said.


    “Sure, do we want them to use knives, or natural weapons?” Lani asked.


    “Let them be armed, that way, we can see if the armor, or the shipsuit helps, and how their natural attack abilities stack up against each other,” Watkins decided.


    At his command, both minions, which were only about six feet apart, launched themselves at each other. The halfling proved a bit quicker than the kobold, driving his knife into the chest armor of the reptilian MOBS before being swept off his feet by the kobold’s tail. Jumping onto his victim, the kobold began stabbing at the halfling, his target was the lower stomach just under the halfling’s chest armor.


    Blood poured from the wounds, but the halfling wasn’t giving up. Watkins realized that would be one big advantage that his MOBS would have over real opponents, they didn’t quit due to the pain of a wound, and they didn’t get scared. The halfling’s head shot forward at the next stab, his jaws opening wide as the tooth filled maw of the small humanoid latched onto the hand holding the knife.


    Swinging his head back and forth caused the teeth to cut into the kobold’s arm like a saw. Any protective qualities its scaly skin or shipsuit had were negated by the powerful bite. In seconds, the arm was severed and the kobold responded by biting off the ear of the halfling, who was now stabbing wildly with his knife at the side of the kobold.


    It was the halfling that died first, followed by the kobold a moment later as blood loss took them both out. Once again, it seemed that the two MOBS were pretty much evenly matched. He didn’t see any reason to delay the research by switching it from halfling to kobold.


    “I’d call that a draw,” Watkins announced.


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    “Well, my kobold survived a bit longer, so I’d say I was the winner,” Lani replied.


    “Maybe, but other than bragging rights, I don’t think there’s a prize for you,” Watkins said. It was nice to just banter with Lani, the bet, and their MOBS test was a nice break from just monitoring the repairs.


    “How many halflings are you going to fabricate?” Lani asked. It was a good question; he still needed more drones than MOBS for the foreseeable future. Looking at his command limit, Watkins was pleased to see that it had increased. The additional work on the ship, and the corresponding improvement in his Core Processing Power, had boosted his Command Limit to 24.


    “Let’s go with a total of six halflings for now. That will give us some ranged firepower and we can always supplement them with the drones if there’s an emergency,” Watkins decided. That meant pulling in two more drones to be reprocessed. At level zero, the halfling MOBS took up 10 biomass and 2 salvage to create. Their gear for the new MOBS was paid for by reprocessing the burnt and battered armor and the stands that the drones had created for their test.


    With his testing over, Watkins looked over the salvage and rebuild progress. The bow of his ship was growing longer as the chunk of debris diminished.  The main gun upgrade was progressing along, and the indicator showed the drones had completed 68% of the work on the first gun. At this pace, he should have both weapons finished before they reached the original location of jump point 2.


    Watkins could feel Lani’s attention shift from the MOBS and back toward directing the drones. She was using her server enhanced ability to boost the group working on the main gun, which was perfect. He wanted to be able to defend their ship if something happened to be lurking at the old jump point station.


    Hours passed and the upgrades and research ticked along. The first main gun was complete, and the second was well under way when more of the stray comm signals were picked up. Lani snapped out of her work on boosting the drones to begin decoding the transmissions. She was getting better at it and a few minutes later, they had what could be recovered.


    “…investigate anomaly at the…Rattler can’t investigate, we need to hunt…system not safe to linger…hungry ones will return…”


    “Not much there, and none of it sounds good,” Watkins said about the rather ominous partial comms message.


    “I wouldn’t read too much into it, after all, I only was able to decode about 15% of what was being transmitted. The good news with the message degradation is that it confirms whoever sent it is nowhere close to us now,” Lani said.


    Watkins was fine with nobody finding them just yet. A new prompt appeared as his research into the ship’s sensors finally completed. Information flooded into his mind, and he could see the changes that could be made to the microscopic devices embedded in his hull that made up the sensors of his ship.


    Unlike most of his subsystems, the sensors could be upgraded passively, as they didn’t require any additional salvage, just updating and reconfiguring of what already existed. Watkins willed the sensors to start upgrading, starting with small patches of his hull at a time. They wouldn’t be functional while undergoing upgrades, so he’d have to take it slow to not leave himself blind while waiting for the upgrades to be completed.


    This upgrade wasn’t as quick as having a drone do the work, but at their current level, his drones were probably even slower with such delicate work. That left Watkins with a free research module. He thought about what to start with next and realized that he had been neglecting two of the more important features of his ship, the fabricator and reprocessor.


    First off, he wanted to get the reprocessor upgraded. That should improve efficiency and limit the waste inherent in reprocessing salvage and biomass. It meant he had to postpone other upgrade research that he wanted to complete, like getting his shields back online, but he couldn’t do everything at once with only two research modules to work with.


    His sensor range was slowly increasing, giving Watkins the confidence to bump up his thrust a bit. As they traveled, the main gun upgrades for both weapons were completed. Looking over his offensive options, Watkins considered what he’d want to delve into once a research module was freed up and there wasn’t something else that needed urgent attention.


    Ship’s Weapons Research Status:


    <ol>


    <li> Point defense laser, Level 0.</li>


    <li> Torpedo Launcher, pending initial research. </li>


    <li> Main Guns, Level 1. </li>


    </ol>


    He had three weapons to work with. His point defenses were less than stellar at level zero, but he was feeling better about his main guns. To really reach out and put the hurt on a ship from a longer range, he needed the torpedo launcher.


    “Lani, I have developmental research listed on the torpedo launchers. Why can I begin to develop those, but not some of the other weapon systems that might be out there?” Watkins asked.


    “I believe it may be due to the fragmented nature of your core knowledge. The basic information on other possible weapon systems didn’t survive the initial damage to our ship and the time spent drifting in space while you acclimated to your core. When we arrive at the main research station, there should be additional data we can recover regarding not just weapons, but other possible upgrade paths,” Lani explained.