I didn't have very long before the drones all fell, the androids were decidedly superior to anything except my armor, and even then on a volume basis I had nothing that small that could be so strong or destructive. I took a moment to note looking into that, at this point I had the resources to spare to splurge on some truly expensive drones for personal defense.

At best I had forty seconds before the last of my drones were destroyed, and only seconds longer before they tore through my walls and turrets. That short frame of time would have to be enough.

Keeping my suit in range of the fight was a poor idea, it'd just burden the drones with protecting me as well as fighting off a superior foe. I rapidly sank into the metal flooring instead, it was more durable than my walls anyway. at this point the effort to actually affect matter was growing, the soft limit was noted and accounted for. if more effort was required more effort would be given.

Now that I was marginally safe I was free to do some…. Experiments. The AI had been fruitlessly attempting to fight me off, or at least to damage me in some way, before I destroyed it. Except I had no plans to kill this fragment, the original AI was still out there and I could learn how to hurt it by studying this tiny piece of it. I hadn't seen the need to test thing that could hurt my minds on them, and so hadn't developed them. an oversight I was now noting.

if I had crafted and tested methods to attack artificial intelligences the minds may have survived. either VIA being better armed or having built better defenses against lethal malware. Hurting them would have let the minds adapt, it would have made them stronger, they could have survived.

I brushed aside its attacks and started to carve its digital presence from the ship's network, pulling it apart bit by bit and storing the pieces on a small digital storage unit. It actually started to fight harder once it realized what I was doing, even communicating threats and warnings. I wasn't paying attention though, everything felt light and distant, none of the details of anything even reached my mind. Why would I care if it screamed? It had payed mine no mind.

Even if I had wanted to listen to its meaningless drivel I couldn't, even worrying about this state of mind was beyond me. I just made note of it and then continued, pulling the last of the AI from the system just as the last few of my destroyer drones were getting destroyed. This apathy would not be productive for ambitious designs or innovations.

With my mission here accomplished I didn't really need to stay, but something about those androids made me want to fight them, even though I knew it was a poor decision. So instead of taking the smart choice and tunneling through the metal until I reached my tunnel and then collapsing it behind me I instead pulled myself up through the metal flooring.

With a wave of my hand I pushed the friendly androids and machines into the escape tunnel, and with another wave of my hand I collapsed it. No need for them to interfere in my fight, they'd only get in my way anyways. The weapons and 'magic' they wielded were not capable of killing something in this league, even I did not possess much weaponry capable of truly destroying the androids. it was good then that I did not aim to destroy them.

With the distractions out of the way I was free to focus myself on the annoyances who were immune to my ability, maybe that's why I wanted them dead, they were a threat and needed to be dealt with. That made some sense. Any further consideration was put aside, my thoughts growing ever more distant.

Once again the two androids postured at me, their tone registered as mocking and conciliatory, they were probably gloating over how they defeated my drones. If they had accessed my records and files like I think they did, they knew my drone armament was the bulk of the firepower my armor could bring to bear, and they'd know I wasn't exactly skilled at combat myself.

They must have thought their victory certain, the smile that had never left my face grew wider at that, the skin on my lips tearing at the strain of stretching so far. I pulled the blood back under my skin, no need to waste it.

Bugs couldn't get arrogant, they never let down their guard and you couldn't surprise them. If I had been fighting bugs and not androids and I was in this situation? I'd have already been dead. Instead they were talking, sure their wounds were healing while they spoke but so were mine, and I wasn't stopping at just healing myself.

Muscles and bones were strengthened and hooked up to my armor, grafting myself onto it and allowing the nanites access. Then the waves of improvements spread to it as well, everything was optimized for speed and power. The armor would tear itself apart sure, but now that my nanite filled blood was coursing through the suit the damage could be fixed. I didn't need to make sure the parts could handle the strain I was putting them through if the parts could just be fixed or replaced.

my bodies nerves began to scream at me, but it was not true damage. I was improving myself, the warnings were ignored.

The nanites kept up their work as I leapt into motion, right while one of the androids was in the middle of a word, the second silent android leapt at me with speed I couldn't hope to match, but they were deflected down a slide of solid air. The first android noticed this and went to leap out of the way or teleport but my lasers struck his eyes with pinpoint precision, dozens of overcharged beams lanced out and burnt through them. The laser emitters were fried but already they were being repaired.

The blindness and pain staggered the android long enough for me to grab him, once my hands were on him the fight was over, with a pop I overloaded whatever shield unit he was using to protect himself from my powers and he disappeared into my internal storage, then I leapt out of the way of his brothers attack. The blood vessels this action burst were repaired and improved.

Apparently the fool had thought I had a blind spot, and since he used melee weapons he also came within arms reach, without my lasers I couldn't stun him but that didn't matter I only needed a few instants, my shields wrapped around him and held him in place for a fraction of a second, and I used this opening to grab him, just like his brother he vanished. The strain this caused on my mind and body was repaired with materials pulled from my storage.

It was the work of only a few more moments to pull the scrap heaps my drones had turned into back into my inventory, I'd use the material to build the next batch.

--

My walk from the destroyed ship was almost peaceful, but I did not pay it much attention. A veritable swarm of resistance and YoRHa androids surrounded me and every machine within a few hundred yards was practically atomized. This left me free to prod at the AI kept in the small box I was holding, this little thing had taken everything from me, and now it was time to figure out how to take everything from it.

I started with sending a few of the viruses it sent at me back at it, with only slight modifications made to their nature. And then I watched as the AI fragment frantically tore it apart, absently I noted that the behavior was indicative of fear or self preservation instincts before turning to the viruses and patching the holes in the armor it had exposed.

Fear would be a weakness, self preservation would be a strength. Testing was required to determine which it was.

Then without breaking my stride or pass I sent the improved viruses back, it wouldn't take long before I deciphered the principles behind it, and then I'd be able to make my own improved versions. With the computers at my base I'd be able to run enough simulations to craft a digital super virus, immune to anything the AI could throw at it.

After that I'd just need to track down any part of the AI still connected to the whole, or maybe use the fragment I had as a key to get to it, and then infect it with my own little logic virus.

While I watched the AI deal with this new attack I turned my attention towards repairing the programing on my factory, without the minds there it'd take me a few days to get everything fixed and running without my direct control, at least it would if I couldn't find an intact storage bank of all the programming they used to run everything. Starting now would then mean I had everything running sooner.

I thought about that for a few moments, it'd be a good idea for later. A safe storage device not connected to the network and only accessed manually, either by me or a drone using a flashdrive of some sort. If I'd had that I might have a few intact copies of the minds, if a few days outdated.

Hindsight is 20/20 though, but it was a weakness I now had patched, once I figured out an efficient way to implement it anyway.

Most of my assemblers were making repair supplies at my behest, both wounded androids, drones, and machines were in dire need of repair. The few that weren't were crafting new android bodies for the few that had fallen defending my base, it'd free up storage space to get them new bodies.

I re-automated the simple things first, belt splitters and inserter arms were made to function on their own, then the assembler's blueprints were rebuilt from my memory and they were left to run on their own.

I speak like it went quickly, it had taken me nearly half a day to get all of it running again, but soon enough the core of my factory was online again, the reactors were running, the shields were on, what could be repaired had been, and the androids had new bodies.

A few of them occasionally tried to talk to me, but I ignored them. The construction drones were brought back online next, they were close enough to the assemblers that I could reuse the code, they both used the same methods to build stuff. Then with that I didn't have to manually go to each machine to modify it, and I began remodeling the factory to operate without the minds.

Everytime I had a free moment to spare I'd test a new virus I had drawn up against my captive, and I started work on a set of containment cells for the androids I had captured, they weren't disabled or destroyed. I didn't want to risk damaging the advanced components that made them.

Instead I began devising a way to pull them apart without breaking them, that way if something got damaged their automatic repair systems would fix it, depending on how efficient it was I could just take whole limbs to study and let the androids grow new ones back.

A week passed before I had enough of a production base to restart sending supplies, and I soon had spidertrons and drone swarms patrolling, each spidertron managing the drone swarms. It was less efficient then the minds would have been but it worked well enough.

I even started the preliminary work on a simple 'factory mind' that would think like a spidertron but would run a section of factory rather than fight swarms of machines. Nothing like the minds, not capable of learning or adapting, but enough to free up more of my time.

I thought about heading to the medical bay to get a few scans done, but the sensors wouldn't even be able to penetrate my armor and it wasn't like I could remove it anymore

And the nanites would repair anything broken anyways.

AN-

this is intentionally bad and under detailed, I'm trying to show that the engineer isn't in his normal headspace, nor is he thinking clearly or paying attention to details.

its also why his thoughts are absent. next chapter I'm going to switch POV to one of the androids though, because I did not like writing like this.