Chapter 3

Whilst she sent the smaller version of her Osiris chassis scuttling off to find civilization, Skye turned her attention to the skies.

If this world was in the past, then it was likely that the moon was perfectly open for her to assimilate. Construction of an Orbital Launcher was easily handled, an Astraeus being constructed and picking up a single T2 Air Fabricator. She sent it off to the moon with an order packet of total assimilation, though stipulated that if intelligent life was detected, she was to be notified immediately.

Running the numbers just a little, she tried to calculate roughly how long it would take for the entire moon to be covered in air factories, giving up quickly. Starting from just one T2 Air Fabricator, it would exponentially get faster and faster as more factories and fabricators came online, and there were too many variables. The resource pods also threw things into wack, since they were the cost of a lot more than just a few Advanced Air Factories, but produced tons of energy and metal by breaking the laws of thermodynamics over their knees. At a very rough calculation, she worked out that after 30 minutes there would be about 20,000 factories and 60,000 T2 Fabricators.

She then returned her attention to the surface, halting the factories that were expanding steadily. This time she set an order for defensive measures, walls and turrets being established according to where the factories were, using pre-allocated positions and gaps for Umbrellas, Galata Turrets, Flak Cannons and Advanced Laser Defense Towers. The orders she used had been tweaked heavily by the Colonels to work together, meaning that as the factories expanded, they kept in mind where Umbrellas would need to go first and foremost, as well as leaving smaller spaces for the turrets to be slotted.

It did end up making the sprawling complex of factories look a little uneven, but since it was now being covered with an array of weaponry, she found that she didn't really mind. And now that she knew how to, she disabled the tech that let her see her own and enemy structures, only using her visual optics to confirm that yes, all of her buildings were invisible. That didn't mean people couldn't physically bump into them, and if they sustained damage that wasn't repaired promptly, it would leave a visible mark, but otherwise, for all intents and purposes, her entire base was entirely invisible.

Her proximity to the base that had held her however meant that it was likely enemy forces would show up to investigate. She set the idle factories a pre-fabricated order which would produce a defense force made up of Hornets, Horseflys, Kestrels, Phoenixes, Wyrms, which were supported by Angels. And those were just the aerial units. There was no water nearby so nothing naval, unfortunately, but she had Slammers, Mends, Locusts, Gil-Es, Bluehawks, Stitches and Booms wandering around for the bot-side of her forces.

Finally, her land units. Vanguards, Storms, Shellers and Levelers were rolling out, dozens of each being produced by the immense economy of resource pods located right under their treads. Mixed in were Skitters, Spinners, Strykers, Infernos and Drifters, the other units deemed unnecessary. Between all of these units, she doubted any force on this world could stop her.

Relying on her orders, the units grouped up into strike forces, air, bot and land units being tied together. All the groups had at least one Angel overhead for repairs, a handful of Skitters and Stitches for mine-detection, as well as a few of the Anti-air units. Most of the groups of course had that and plenty more, but that was the baseline for a strike force.

By segmenting her units, she was able to more easily get combat updates, rather than trying to figure out what was wrong with a moshpit of all of her units she could have the groups apart from each other and easily manoeuvre them around. Not that she'd really need to do that either, the Colonels had set up the orders so that when not directly commanded by her of one of the Colonels, they would guard friendly structures and non-combat units like fabricators.

Manually requesting a group of Phoenixes, she set them to follow her. One thing the game limited was that fighters couldn't engage ground, probably a balancing choice since they had the Horsefly which directly strafed ground targets. The Phoenixes were able to attack ground, she'd checked with them, so if she needed fire support for some bizarre reason, they'd be able to give it to her.

Of course, she was stood in the middle of her base surrounded by defensive walls, turrets, and all manner of units. Settling herself down on her chassis she refocused on her infiltration model, which was now approaching a cluster of houses. She could hear the curious sound of gunfire, sending the infiltrator towards it as she redirected a strike group to head that direction, slowing her perception of time down as she used the infiltrator chassis to look at the buildings.

They were all a rustic European style, so that reinforced her belief that she was on Earth, but back in time from what she was used to. As the infiltrator skittered down the road, it came across a...well the best way to put it was that it was a gun with legs, a Strandbeest was the closest and easiest way to describe it. The gun itself looked like a Maxim gun from the First World War, or maybe a Vickers, they were too alike for her to ever be bothered learning the difference.

She had the infiltrator spray nanites over the gun and the legs to investigate it, though again, the technology was far inferior to what she had access to. Leaving behind the deserted machine-gun, the infiltrator ventured across the village, finding abandoned guns and using nanites to examine them to little effect. What it did end up stumbling across was what she could only describe as a dieselpunk mech.

It was like a pill, but with a giant gun and legs. She didn't recognize the marking on the front, an emblem or maybe a flag, but she still had her infiltrator cover it in nanites to see what could be learned. The nanites quickly found a hole in the back of the mech, and there was a corpse inside that had been shot through the back, answering exactly how the pilot of the mech died, though there was little else to be learned. The mech itself was nothing to write home about, the gun was far inferior to anything her own troops used.

She heard through the sensors of the infiltrator the sound of a cannon going off, sending the machine skittering towards where the sounds of battle were coming from. As it got closer she saw that there was literally mechs fighting mechs and infantry around shooting at the mechs and at each other. Curious, she settled in to watch. She had no idea which side she wanted to support, so leaping in was a bad idea.

The fighting went on for a few minutes, though it seemed the forces who had a pill mech, 'Smialy' according to what her nanites had found, were winning despite less troops and less mechs. As the other force was killed down to the last man, she watched as they then freed some prisoners, mounting up in mechs that were in one of the buildings that still stood as they marched out.

Her infiltrator followed along, stopping and waiting as they encountered and engaged enemy forces. From what the troops and the woman were saying in-between fights, she pieced together that they were Polanians, and were defending their village from a Rusviet attack, who had attacked to draw out the father of the girl who was in charge. What was infinitely amusing to her was that there was even a bear as a part of their unit, not exactly a standard unit in an army, but she supposed that it had happened before.

It also lent more credence to her story. Polania was pretty close to Poland, and in World War 2 there was a bear of the same name, Wojtek, who helped move ammunition boxes in the Polish Army, becoming a mascot for the unit. It was too many coincidences to be brushed away. She hadn't yet found a map, but she expected to see a pretty familiar land-mass when she did.

As they came across a train-station and assaulted the units there, she still held back, not being sure about whether or not to assist. As far as she knew, the Polanians were actually ruthless and used horrific tactics in combat, or this could just be Rusviet revenge for something. That notion was completely blasted to pieces when, after winning the battle and establishing defensive positions to block a counter-attack, the enemy leader came forth.

The words exchanged weren't as important as the fact she had decided that she really, REALLY didn't like the Rusviet commander. Thanks to how long it had taken for this encounter to begin, her strike force had arrived and were now waiting for tasking. Sending out the Horseflys, she had them strafe the Rusviet line, yellow bolts of energy blasting through their mechs and their infantry.

Next she had her Gil-Es pick off any high-value targets whilst the Bluehawks, Shellers and Hornets blasted the area with explosions. After the first salvo, there was basically nothing left of the enemy force. The enemy commander had drawn the bulk of the strafing fire from the Horsefly aircraft, and was in the process of retreating when the Gil-Es put their rounds into his back, crippling the mech and leaving it in the midst of the explosions. Quite amazingly, it hadn't been entirely obliterated by the explosions, though the back was pretty much stripped bare of components, which appeared to include whatever engine was operating it, as the smokestacks had stopped spewing black smoke out.

While this was happening she kept an eye on the Polanians, who just seemed happy that something had assisted them by wiping out the Rusviets. She sent her infiltrator skittering towards their line, manually deactivating the camouflage systems as it approached. Several of the Polanians raised their guns on instinct, but didn't fire, probably worried that she'd turn her guns on them.

Activating the auditory system in the infiltrator, she spoke through it. "I don't know if you can understand me, hopefully you can. Uhh, hello there!" The Polanians looked between each other, before the woman who seemed in charge stepped forwards, the bear that seemed to be her partner doing the same. "So, you're in charge here?" She nodded.

"Yes, but before we do anything, I need to find my father. But, thank you!" With that, she then ran off towards the train station, leaving her outside with the Polanian soldiers, who were now relaxing and rejoicing that they were still alive. A little bit curious, she wandered out into the field of dead Rusviets, spraying nanites on the various mechs that were available.

Particularly interesting was the big mech the commander was using. When the nanites got inside, he was actually still just barely alive, though that didn't last long as they identified him as hostile, and...well, biological matter doesn't hold up well against nanites that can eat away metal doors. What was interesting though wasn't exactly the mech itself, it was the metal arm located within.

It was actually pretty complicated. Nowhere near as complicated as herself and her own creations, but still pretty well-made. The EMP potential was also quite strong. Against unshielded creations like a Boom or a Dox, it would actually work pretty well. Anything bigger would be resistant to it, and a regular unupgraded commander chassis would be immune to it, meaning that her upgraded main chassis would ignore it easily. There was also some kind of transponder located within, that seemed to be tied to an IFF system.

After copying it completely, she had her nanites melt a hole through the chassis of the mech, carrying the metal arm out and putting it between the two teeth-like protrusions on the head of the Osiris chassis, then carrying it towards the train station. As it approached, the Polanian leader came out of the building with reddened eyes that widened as she saw the infiltrator approaching. "You...that's my father's arm. He's bleeding out, can you help him?"

Skye lowered her head slightly. "Possibly. I'll need to let my nanites examine him, but hopefully they'll be able to recreate his blood whilst re-attaching this thing to him. Only problem if that because I don't have the original connections to work with, this'll probably end up being a patch-job. You'll need to find whoever put this arm on him and get them to attach it again, properly." The woman shook her head.

"Just saving his life is fine!" Skittering into the building after the leader, she led her through the train station to a dimly-lit room where her father sat propped up against a wall, his arm wrapped with a coat but still visibly bleeding through it. "Can you help him?" She asked again, kneeling beside her father who was on the verge of losing consciousness.

Skye raised the left arm of the chassis, spraying a small burst of nanites at him after identifying him as friendly. "I don't know, I might need to bring an Angel over here, they'd probably be better at this than me." She said as her nanites examined his skin, his bone and flesh and blood, as well as the broken cybernetics that were in his shoulder, the control components, regulators and everything that kept the arm working properly.

After he had been examined, she sprayed another burst of nanites, which entered the open wound, working their way through his body and turning themselves into perfect replications of his blood, ensuring he still had enough to not die of exsanguination. Next, she had the nanites take the metal arm from between her and carry it into position. This was the difficult part though, since her nanites weren't sure what was used to connect the metal arm to his body.

In the end, they settled on using whatever connective material they could, whatever seemed applicable, which meant that the guy ended up with a few bits of tech in his arm and shoulder that definitely weren't there before, since they were components used in her own systems. She had to keep adding extra sprays of nanites as more of them were turned into blood, the process of re-attaching the arm taking a good quarter of an hour.

While she worked, another force appeared, one of Polanian reinforcements. One of them was apparently the uncle of Anna, which was the name of the leader whose father she was in the process of saving. While understandably suspicious of the arrival of forces he'd never heard of before, he was seemingly withholding his judgment until she was done trying to save Anna's fathers life.

With a final spray of nanites, she finished joining the arm to his shoulder, nerves attached with new components acting as the nervous system. If her nanites had done it correctly, he could possibly even see an improvement to the reaction time between thought and action with his arm. "That should do it I think. Though like I said, you're going to want to find whoever gave him this arm and get them to do corrective work, since my nanites had to jerry-rig together a few parts from my own systems to make up for missing parts."

She was a little surprised when Anna then hugged her. Sure, she wasn't like 12 meters tall, but still, being hugged when she was literally a mech made out of metal and electronics was a little bit bizarre. Carefully, she reached her own articulated arms up and hugged back extremely gently, since the arms contained servos plenty strong enough to crush her. "Thank you." She said quietly.

"You're welcome." Skye broke the hug and turned her attention back to her patient, who had fallen unconscious during the operation. "The nanites should have killed off any bacteria that got into his body, but just in case keep an eye on him, if he takes a turn for the worse then get him to a doctor, and if they can't help him bring him to me, I might be able to purge his system." Anna nodded along at her words, and with the help of her uncle lifted her father up.

"So, now that that's done with, just who on earth are you? Tesla maybe might have sent some of his TF-377's to assist, but you, I don't recognize." Sighing, Skye skittered her infiltrator out of the building, bidding them to follow her. Once outside, she activated the teleport spike gun on her left shoulder and fired it at the ground, marking it. Once done, she cut her connection to the infiltrator and returned to her regular chassis.

Activating the teleport module within her, she connected with the spike, the AI in charge of defending her forming the portal in front of her and allowing her to step through it. As she did so she broke her camouflage, her full twelve-meter-tall frame visible for all to see as she strode through the portal. "Who I am is complicated. What I am, that's the easier part. I'm an ally."

If she had lips she'd have smirked at the surprise evident on the faces of those present. Her size wasn't actually that amazing, not when the mech of the enemy commander was like 10 meters tall. No, it was probably the fact that she had just teleported. "How...is that even possible?" Anna said hesitantly, her neck craning to look up at her. Skye was amused as she looked between the much smaller Osiris Chassis she'd been using and then at her main body.

"That doesn't really matter. What matters is this. I've decided that I don't like Rusviet, and so I've decided you all are at least temporary allies, though that can change if you want it to. To that end, I'll be assisting you lot in your fight, depending on what actions you take. Killing civilians and looting, I have a very dim view of, just so you're aware." The Polanians seemed pretty angry she'd even insinuate that, which was good since it meant they likely weren't lying to her about it. "Just warning you."

It was then that Anna's father stirred a little, standing up under his own strength though his daughter moved to support him immediately, as did his brother. "It's not Rusviet you want then, it's Fenris." Turning her focus to him, she waited for him to explain. "That lizus isn't working for Rusviet interests, he serves another master. Fenris are trying to get access to the Factory, Tesla's factory, and they know that I and Heinrich are the keys to the factory. We need to get to Kolno and warn him before Fenris realizes their prized Rusviet pawn is dead and sends another agent to capture him."

"Right, do you have a map that I can use somewhere?" Anna reached into her coat and pulled out a rolled up map, unfurling it. Levelling her fabricator arm, she sprayed a small burst of nanites towards it, which swarmed over the map and scanned it. "Awesome, that'll be useful." She could see Anna was a bit dubious about the nanites currently clouding the paper she was holding, making Skye laugh. "Don't worry, you're all marked as friendlies, the nanites won't hurt you."

As she said that the nanites finished their scanning and turned themselves into air, appearing to disintegrate before their eyes. "That's impressive." Anna's father said as he looked at the map his daughter was holding. "Am I to take it they have just transmuted themselves into some kind of gas in the same way they formed these cybernetics?" he said as he lifted his arm up and turned it.

"Pretty much."

After Anna got her militia organized and had an argument with her uncle and father, Skye ended up with her sat on her arm as they crossed the country, Wojtek asleep on her other arm.

Their plan was two-fold. According to Lech, the commander of the unit of Polanian reinforcements, the city was being blockaded and the occupants starving. They planned to steal a train loaded with supplies and smash through the Rusviet blockade, relieving the stranded forces. Of course, in this plan both he and Anna's father had no intentions of letting Anna anywhere near the fighting, leading to their argument.

The second part of the plan was of course that they could warn Heinrich Steinmetz of the threat now posed to him by Fenris. Just as Anna's father, Piotr, had a transponder in his arm, Heinrich had one located in his artificial eye. If Fenris managed to get ahold of it, they could get past the defences around Tesla's factory. Even though Kubov, the guy she'd killed, was dead, that didn't mean Fenris lacked agents who could instigate an assault on the factory.

If they gained access to the Factory and to Tesla's designs, Fenris would be practically unstoppable. The reason Tesla didn't control the world was because he had no intentions to use his creations for warfare. Initially, he designed them to take some of the strain of hard labour, plowing fields and hauling cargo, relieving people of their hardships and letting them focus on more creative pursuits. But the automachines were too effective as weapons of war, so he withdrew to his Factory, closing himself and those who lived there away from.

It was a shame, and part of the reason why she didn't try to replicate and improve the weapons the Polanians were using. Put a shovel in the hands of a monkey and it'd be as likely to beat you over the head as it would try and dig a hole. That didn't mean she wasn't working on a humanoid chassis she could use. Her infiltrator was useful, but she would prefer to be able to appear as a human.

To that extent, she was designing it so that all the internals would be obviously mechanical and whatnot, but the surface, the skin and the blood and all that would be maintained by nanites. They would be constantly working to keep the surface of the chassis looking human, including imitating emotions with skin colour changes like reddening cheeks. That would be a lot harder to do of course, she would need to do a lot of tweaking and probably set a bunch of Colonels to help her do it, but she was confident she could pull it off.

She'd also rigged up a basic autopilot system which would keep her main chassis marching along while she chatted to Anna and worked on her humanoid chassis. She also tweaked the blueprint for all the factories and updated them, adding a cluster of resource pods under each of them which would give more than enough economy to support the factory and any fabricators they built. She also added nanite repair pods to them all, which the AI would be able to use to repair themselves or other structures nearby. Finally, she upgraded the fabricator arms that the factories used, changing each arm from 1 fabricator sprayer to 4, thus quadrupling the rate of production for units.

Skye had plans to upgrade the units themselves, but decided she could leave that to the Colonels instead. Once they saw the enhancements she had done already, they'd probably then jump to doing it on their own, upgrading the factories and the units, maybe even making generalized, multi-role units that had multiple weapon systems like she did. Maybe a Kestrel with two Gatala Turrets attached which would protect it from air attack.

Anna had asked her whether she was able to produce mechs for them to use, and that led to her making copies of the Smialy and Straznik mechs, as well as mimicking the Kolokol and Ognivo mechs the Rusviets used. The mech that Kubov was piloting was too advanced for any of the Polanians to pilot, so that one she didn't try replicating, but for the various Polanians who could pilot mechs, she made their requested models as they travelled.

Behind them and above them her units followed along invisibly, ready to act if needed. She had her Phoenixes and Horseflys doing air patrol in the surrounding areas, keeping an eye out for any other forces. A small detachment of planes she had already sent to recon Kolno, showing a city that was blockaded and occupied by Rusviet forces. The high-tech sensors on the aircraft let her see quite clearly that the people were starving, obviously not getting the supplies they needed to survive.

Sure, Anna's father had told her it was Fenris she wanted, but she highly doubted all the Rusviet soldiers were secretly a part of a shadowy organization like Fenris, yet they were still letting it happen. But, she supposed that was just part of humanity, to put others under-foot and enjoy doing it. There were certainly a few instances she could see through the sensors of her aircraft where the Rusviets were taking their frustrations and needs out on the Polanian populace.

Having forgotten to do it already, she had a cluster of Orbital Factories directly above her base which were working on producing Advanced Radar Satellites, Avengers, SXX-1304's and Omegas. These units painted her the picture she was looking for in crisp detail, that she was in fact on a planet with landmasses identical to Earth, and with major cities in roughly the correct locations, just with different names.

Anna had told her the year when asked, it was 1920, so almost a hundred years in the past from when she had been living. She'd also told her about the past few wars that had happened, one of which killed her mother, though her father never spoke about how exactly it happened. Thanks to recent revelations, she believed that her mother and her father had been working with Tesla and died when the Rusviets attacked the factory back in 1906, since it fit the timeline perfectly.

Quite amusingly, when prompted to talk about Wojtek Anna cheered right up, talking about how she'd cared for the bear since he was a cub and how he, in turn, protected her from harm. He even carried around medical supplies and munitions in the pouches strapped to him, which certainly had endeared him to the troops that now followed her. That didn't mean that it hadn't pissed her off when her uncle effectively trying to take command of the men who had helped her defend the village, and Skye definitely agreed.

That didn't mean she didn't also understand Lech's perspective. It was 1920, and to his eyes, women had no place on the battlefield. It was an utterly ass-backwards way of viewing it, but that was just how it was. Didn't mean she had to listen, and he wasn't exactly willing to argue the point when, with Anna now sat on her arm, her position in the argument was made non-verbally clear. She supported Anna's decision to fight for her country, and if Lech's didn't like that, well he'd just have to grit his teeth and deal with it.

Her father was also opposed to it, but that was even more understandable for her. It was his daughter after all, and for all his life he'd been protecting her. So to know she was going willingly into danger, well that would make any parent have a heart attack. That was what prompted their argument, and why Anna was now not talking to either of them. Of course, Skye had no intention of keeping them from speaking, especially not between Anna and her father. If one of them died without ever speaking to the other, it'd be heartbreaking. She knew well enough that having an argument and anger be the last encounter with a loved one before their death was...not an experience she'd wish on anyone, not even the Rusviets.

But, drifting away from her thoughts, she finished her latest modification to her humanoid chassis, running simulations internally to test and see how it reacted. One thing she'd realized that she was annoyed for not realizing before was that by slowing her perception down to individual nanoseconds, she essentially had unlimited time. One second in real-time was about 1 billion nanoseconds. So from her perspective, over 30 years would pass before a single real-time second passed, during which she could do whatever she wanted.

Using this, she was able to focus just on the humanoid chassis, knowing that she wouldn't miss anything Anna said by being distracted.

By the time Skye resurfaced from her slowed-down perception, she'd honestly partially forgotten the world outside.

She'd spent the entire time within her own mind. First, she constructed a simulation program which gave her a mesh body in the shape and form of her normal human body, painstakingly recreated from her own memories, then inhabited that, so she was mentally present within the program, trusting her autopilot program to keep her body moving if she took very long. She then ended up putting the form she'd been working on into deep storage, cloning her own body and using that as the basis for her humanoid chassis.

She removed all the internals, replacing the skeleton with the lightweight alloy used for her own chassis, placing servos and using the same biomimetic control system that was what the Precursors outfitted the Commanders with to connect them. She then added other components, including a nervous system, nanite pods, small pods of grainlets scattered around the body.

Skye then had to automate the process of nanites travelling through the body to change the skin as needed. She wasn't going to waste the internal space on a circulatory system, so the nanites would mimic biological responses, like blushing, crying, and all of that sort of thing. It took her an extremely long time before she was able to make the nanites accurately do so, some parts like the tongue and her hair were rather fiddly, but eventually she got them working correctly.

What stuck out to her quite early in the development process was that her mind seemed to act...differently when she was so slowed down. Within her newly-dubbed 'development speed', she honestly felt herself enjoying just not speaking to anyone or having anything to do aside from work on her new project. Before, when she was human, she didn't exactly need regular human contact, but she would have probably gone crazy after the first year of increased time. By year 5 she had managed to make a functioning prototype, but she had to tune it quite significantly, as the nanites reacted a bit too hastily to her emotions, her cheeks going entirely red when she grinned and felt elation at having a successful prototype.

That testing phase basically amounted to her giving access to her memories to the nanites, which let them learn through experience what was appropriate and what wasn't. It still took another year of trial-and-error before they started working properly, and another two before they managed to nail it every time, even extremely strong emotions that she suddenly brought on.

Having the nanite skin finished, she then went on to work on all the other necessary parts, spending far longer than would be healthy for a normal human mind. She'd already spent 8 to 10 years, by her own perspective, alone aside from her memories, her simulation and her nanites, yet she hadn't gone insane. That basically screamed to her that she was most definitely not normal, but she didn't really mind it.

By the time the second decade of her perspective finished, she had a fully-functioning prototype. She had even conjured up simulations of her old life and tested the chassis to see how the nanites handled it as she walked around and chatted to people, being surprised by things, getting angry, happy, sad and all manner of emotions, which the nanites were able to replicate at correct strengths perfectly.

The hardest thing she had developed though was an entirely new invention, even for her. It was a modified AI core, and the idea was that she could transfer herself into it, so for all intents and purposes, she would be properly in control of the chassis, rather than just remote-controlling it from her own main chassis. It had dozens of failsafes of course, this was her consciousness and her existence she was messing with, but after more heavy testing, she deemed it acceptable. All she really had to do now was to build the correct transmitter and receiver in her main chassis and she'd be able to freely jump between the two.

When she resurfaced, she acted like nothing had changed, though she did internally call up some of her memory banks to refamiliarize herself with what she knew already. Anna had just finished telling her about the time Wojtek had scared off another bear and protected her, not that she needed it since she had her rifle, but that it was nice and was what cemented their bond.

It wasn't that she'd entirely forgotten, but to be fair, from her perspective, the end of that story had been decades ago.