The next two days were tense. It was the very quintessence of 'Hurry up and wait'; nothing to do but pass the time as two inevitabilities came closer and closer.

On one hand, the AC was slowly being pieced together, the internal components being fabricated at a steady pace.

On the other, the nebulously distant but slowly closing in group of Dosers, which could handily ruin everything.

The deadline versus the vague.

I'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop the entire time, for a group to show up before we could finish what we needed to finish. For random, cosmic chance to fuck us over.

But it didn't.

The assemblies finished one after the next. First was the control systems, normally the most complicated part of the mech considering what was required to translate Human impulses into such fine control over these machines, but the Coral interface we'd been making was significantly more simple and just as effective.

Next was the FCS. It was an IBIS model; the IB-C03F, which was specifically adapted for Coral data transmitters. Technically, this production was unnecessary since I did have a spare FCS chip from another AC wreck, but that one was... basic. Very basic. Would it have worked? Yes. However, I had spare production, and the FCS chip required most of the same systems as the rest of the Coral interface, so simply doing a batch production run hadn't actually decreased the amount of time the control systems would take to build.

The generator was the last, and much like the FCS, it was an IBIS model. It even came from the exact same design program; IB-C03, though in this case it had a 'G' appended to the rest of it rather than an 'F'. This generator was technically an internal combustion engine, but its fuel was Coral, and so it bore as much in common with an ICE as a fusion reactor did with a fission one.

Both of these were the simplest parts of the entire IB-C03 line. Simple, in this case, was misleading, as the IB-C03 production line was the final unit that had been produced by the Rubicon Research Institute.

It was the one and only unit of the entire IBIS series that was intended to be piloted. It was one of Nagai's masterpieces, a machine built as a final safety measure against the 'Collapse' that he so feared. Exactly one had ever actually been produced, and he'd promptly sent the thing off out of Rubicon alongside a boy who he'd intended to spare from the Fires.

I did not have the facilities to produce the rest of the unit. I might be able to manage the boosters, but the weapons and especially the actual mech itself? Forget it, there was no chance of that happening without some quite precise nanofabrication systems.

I had other options for what I could have built. The IA-C01 project line was started as an AC design and finished as one, so it was fully compatible with Core Theory and could easily be adapted to this, as such. It would have been quite a bit simpler, too.

Two problems, though; the IA-C01F was an FCS designed for very close range operation, to the exclusion of everything else. The IA-C01G was, in pretty much every respect but simple weight, a much worse generator than the IB-C03G.

Production times weren't that different between the two, either. The IA-C01 components would have taken two... maybe three percent less time, at best.

So, IB-C03 it was.

There was... one other reason for it, though. A simple one, but I couldn't deny the appeal of it.

The sheer irony of using something Nagai built to destroy us just in case he couldn't manage it completely in order to protect us.

Oh, that was poetry, wasn't it?

Hah...

The final assembly took another hour once it was all done. Every part, refurbished as best as I could get it, which was unfortunately not back to factory new, but it was at the very least still functioning at the standards expected of ACs.

Following that was a long, two hour session where we put the machine through stress testing. That was the final, most critical moment. If there had been any problems with the construction, any failures anywhere in the machine, that is where it would have been revealed.

All the tests came back green. Fully operational.

We had an AC.

It was a piece of garbage, but it was an AC.

BASHO standard frame parts, complete with a Kikaku booster that BAWS had developed for the frame. The paint, what was left of it, was a deeper red, alongside the running lights. Both wouldn't have been difficult to change, if not for the minor fact that I had no paint on hand. The lights at least were a simple RGB change, but... eh. If I couldn't change the entire colour scheme, why bother customising?

As for weapons, I unfortunately could not equip it as well as I wanted to. I had a distinct lack of parts laying around that met the standards for mattering in AC combat. I had exactly three, as a matter of fact, all of which had been taken from the wrecks already in the area.

I had a shoulder mounted missile launcher, a laser blade, and a burst rifle. For the first and third, I had 30 spare missiles and 106 bullets, out of the respective maximums of 108 and 375. Not only was I missing two thirds of my potential ammo, I was also missing an entire shoulder mount as well.

All of that was less than great, but even if I ran out of ammo entirely, I still had the laser blade. Since it pulled energy straight from the reactor, it was never going to run out. The only problem with it would be cooldown time, and cooldown only matters if things survive the first hit. A Heavy MT might and most ACs would, but Light MTs? No.

Hahahaha. No.

Still, that was a problem for the future. Now that we actually had an AC and could be reasonably assured that we wouldn't die if anything looked at us funny, we turned our attention to actually getting our shit together again.

That... was going to take some time, now that a decent chunk of our 'workforce' had been destroyed. Still, we were set up now, and we did have a fairly decent supply of resources just waiting to be used, more than enough to fabricate some replacements and repairs. From there, we could expand into other options. We'd have to be careful, with the PCA and the Dosers and everything else happening on Rubicon, but what had changed there?

So, naturally, it was only a few hours after we'd started getting everything else together that the tram alarms rang out again.

"I... Why is it that it's a relief now that we know when they're coming?" Ezra asked.

"Fear of the unknown is among the most potent kinds of fear. Having a deadline that will be kept to significantly reduces general dread because it focuses the mind on a single point." I explained.

"I see."

Another five hours, and we'd have our next set of guests.

The trams were the same throughout pretty much the entire network. There were different means of transportation, most of them bigger than the trams, but all were usually quite a bit slower than the trams.

I could, in other words, expect roughly the same level of transportation capacity. A single tram could be carrying up to thirty Light MTs in a pinch. Realistically, it was closer to twenty five, and one should subtract five Light MTs for every Heavy MT. Heavy MTs were, however, significantly rarer, meaning that more than one was quite the stretch.

The odds we'd fought before, ten Light MTs and sixty drones versus twenty Light MTs and a Heavy? That was a scale very roughly balanced.

With what we had now, though? That scale was tipped.

"... Can I pilot the AC?"

"You know what? Sure."

An hour passed. The alarm rang again. Another hour passed. The alarm rang once again.

Half an hour passed. The alarm went off outside of schedule, and this time, it was a slightly lower pitch and went for a few seconds longer.

Ezra and I looked at each other confused, or at least, as best we could for a pair of beings without eyes or indeed bodies in general.

A moment later, we were pouring through the system again, checking everything. The new alarm, it turns out, was a simple one; basically the same as before but this time it meant that multiple trams were incoming at the same time. The sensors of the Grid, once we checked them, registered two, following two and a half hours behind the first.

"Is that... good?"

"It is strange for a single group to not send all three trams at the same time." I answered, though I wasn't too sure of the meaning myself. "Splitting up one's forces like that seems... less than sane, if they're expecting trouble."

"And if they're not expecting trouble?"

"Give it a little bit, and we can confirm the matter."

Eventually, the first tram came close enough that I started to sense the presence of Coral. Much like the Walruses, there were distinct, subtly pulsating masses of it, key indicators of Dosers. There seemed to be less of them, and I also couldn't help but notice that there wasn't a single larger supply. They weren't carrying any more of their 'drug'.

Why?

More time passed, and they came into sensor range, and we were able to start picking up on their transmissions. They didn't have a whole lot going on, but there was enough that we were able to eventually break into their network and start listening in.

"-ot any threes?"

"No. You've got any fours?"

"Hah, this round is mine!"

Which would have been great if they were actually saying anything useful. Instead, there were a few voices that seemed to be playing a game of some sort, while the rest were mostly quiet. Better comms discipline, at least.

Bad for us, though.

Eventually, their route locked in. It was in the upper areas, of course, but now we knew which bay they'd be going through in particular.

Ezra took control of the AC, and put it at an upper area of the bay, out of direct line of sight, but within a kilometre of where they'd be arriving. Safe for the AC, very dangerous for them.

The tram came into the station. Their chatter cut off as a new voice spoke up. "Alright, no fucking around. Head straight to the next tram. I don't need to tell you all what will happen if those fucks catch up to us, right?"

A wave of affirmations followed. The doors opened.

All Light MTs, eighteen of them. They were damaged things, some of them showing scuff marks that couldn't be anything but recent. Battle damage, not yet repaired.

There was enough of a colour scheme among them that I checked it against the RLF's broadcasts. I found a match for a Doser gang, and then a match for two of the Light MTs. Lieutenants, both, listed as part of a gang that was meant to have three Heavy MTs and close to eighty Light MTs in its forces.

"That's not nearly enough for their gang." Ezra noted. "A split? Two trams is about right for the rest of them, if they're trying to catch up."

"That... fits, but I'm not sure it's true." I considered. "They've got battle damage- and no supplies, either." Indeed. All of their mechs were combat units. None were carrying more than ammo and guns.

"It seems like they're trying to pass through." Ezra stated. "Should we let them?"

I looked back to the RLF's data, checking their list of crimes. It was... long.

"No. If we let them go here, they're going to menace someone else. You're free to engage."

"Alright." He took a moment to run a check on all of the AC's systems. Greens across the board.

The enemy group moved forwards, hanging in a loose collective. Not as safe as they thought it was.

"Main System: Activating Combat Mode."