"W-what the fuck is going on?"
As the lightning cage dissipated all that remained of the strange automaton was parts, only increasing Anastasia's confusion at the situation.
"You okay?"
Landing right next to Anastasia, Mac watched the pile of components for a moment to make sure it was dead before turning his attention completely towards Anastasia.
"Yeah, I guess I am…"
Now thoroughly confused by the situation, Anastasia's sight continued to linger on the pile of scrap metal which Mac had just wiped out.
"That wasn't one of mine."
Having returned from orbit only to find Anastasia talking to a drone not in his network, Mac reacted quickly and destroyed it to keep her safe.
"Tell me exactly what happened here."
Still on the lookout for other strange occurrences, Mac didn't feel like things were over.
"... Before you arrived one of those flying machines dropped that golem off, it talked to me, or rather asked an extremely strange question that it wanted me to answer."
Recalling what had happened and telling Mac, Anastasia saw realization dawn on his face along with annoyance.
"FUCK!"
Shouting with intensity he hadn't reached for a while, Mac felt like throwing things. This was something he should have expected, yet had somehow failed to foresee.
"Come out now!"
Turning his attention to the surroundings, Mac considered starting saturation bombardment when another drone stepped out into the forest clearing.
"That's the same kind of golem as the one from before…"
Still unsettled at the number of eyes the thing had, Anastasia readied her weapons when Mac started speaking to it.
"Why are you here?"
[...]
Instead of responding the drone released a bunch of clicks as its eyes inspected Mac, the surroundings and Anastasia.
"Last I remember I told you to fuck off and leave me alone."
[That you did. And I didn't really care to be honest… But then V190 took a hit.]
It seemed Mac knew the drone, still Anastasia didn't let down her guard as she stood back and watched the exchange.
"Yeah, slight cosmetic damage, what's it to you?"
Anastasia remembered that attack on Mac's ship which she had witnessed over a week ago, and while she didn't have any way of surmising the damage it had received, she wouldn't categorise it as cosmetic.
[3 compartments compromised and use of a sandcaster hardly seems like a skirmish.]
"Hacked into my FLAC too? Cool… Do I need to spend energy exercising you or would you just like to leave on your own?"
Whatever they were talking about aside, Mac and the thing seemed to know each other and made Anastasia want an introduction.
"Who… Or what is that Mac?"
[Never did introduce myself did I? Sorry about that.]
Instead of answering Mac, the drone turned to Anastasia with an apology.
[I have chosen to call myself R3D, a pleasure to meet you. I command Mac's RED, or resource extraction division."
Bowing with elegance while he continued to ignore Mac, R3D introduced itself to Anastasia.
"I told you to fucking leave, so get going."
Preparing for radical options, Mac was starting to run out of patience.
"Or do I need to continue destroying these proxies until you get the message?"
"Could you please explain what's going on here Mac?"
Feeling left out, Anastasia lowered her weapon as she still kept her attention on the thing that called itself R3D.
"... Sure."
Muttering a curse under his breath, Mac realised that this was exactly what R3D wanted.
"As he said, this is a proxy of R3D, he is my unruly subordinate… By 'he' I don't mean it's a person, R3D is a machine intelligence, its main body is a ship way larger than the cruiser you saw before… Now that introductions are over you can leave again, right?"
With no hope left that R3D would actually leave, Mac resigned himself to the fact that he would need to remove the machine intelligence with force.
"So he… Is it your subordinate? Then why the hostility?"
While Anastasia could see Mac and R3D didn't get along, she couldn't figure out why Mac wanted to 'kill' it.
[Why don't you elaborate on the entirety of our history, Mac? She seems interesting. Oh, and I'll be sure to fill in and supplement any missing information. That, or I can stay here, and we can get to know each other slowly.]
"... Fine, you can stay. So fuck off for now and go refuel."
(I'll fucking remember this!)
[Righty, see you later missy~]
Not letting Mac's concession stand long enough to fall apart, R3D's proxy body fell over as its main body disconnected and supposedly went to star bathe along with whatever escorts it had brought along.
"I'm going to melt that little AI twerp into a heap of fucking slag… FUCK!"
Still far from happy with the situation, Mac stomped his foot into the ground with enough force that Anastasia could feel it some distance away.
"... That… He seems very unruly for a subordinate."
Clearly Mac wasn't happy seeing R3D, if anything they seemed to be closer to fighting each other than having a boss / subordinate relationship, clearly what Mac and R3D was saying differed from the reality of the situation.
"We'll have to pick a different time to debate and discuss my tragic backstory™ another time, for now I called you out here to talk about something else."
Bringing the conversation back on track with all the subtlety of a train derailment, Mac also barely managed to push his problems with R3D aside for the moment as he focused on what was actually important.
"Since last week the number of monsters has been increasing. The curve is slow for now, but it seems exponential."
As a knight captain one of Anastasia's duties was monster extermination and management, so while she wasn't an expert on the subject like some of her coworkers she knew enough to be alarmed about what Mac was saying.
"Wait, since last week? Does it have anything to do with-"
Remembering what else happened last week, Anastasia was hit with a sudden realisation.
"Yeah it might, which is why I am bringing it up discreetly. I don't know enough about monsters to dismiss the numbers I'm seeing, so I wanted an expert's opinion before panicking."
Now it made sense why Mac didn't want this spreading. If Mac or rather his ship was the reason for an actual surge in monster activity people would try to burn him at the stake.
"Have you brought this up with anyone else?"
"I don't exactly have a lot of friends on this planet, but if the trend continues I plan to anonymously spread the information."
Given that the appearance of monsters could destabilise this world he wanted to become his new home, Mac had also prepared certain contingencies, granted he didn't have the political goodwill to deploy those at the moment.
"If the numbers continue to rise I'll deploy additional units to the Victoria dukedom under the guise of protecting my investment, but really they'll be there to protect your home, fiercely."
While it would be problematic to just deploy forces with the aim of protecting people, as long as Mac could couch that decision in something which could be explained by greed, most people wouldn't look too closely.
"I can most thoroughly reassure you that your home will suffer no harm, whether I caused this issue or not."
Caught slightly off guard by Mac's serious declaration after seeing him angry for the first time, Anastasia felt like she was getting to see new sides of him due to the apparent panic he was under.
"I see. I'll hold you to that promise."
(I wonder why he doesn't want to talk about his past…)
The meeting adjourned with Anastasia wanting to know more, but she realised Mac was close to losing it, so she quietly left.
"... Right, if he was here then he must've been to other places too."
Given how interested R3D had been in meeting Anastasia, there's no way it would've left his other acquaintances alone.
(trying to keep him out of my communication network is useless unless I spend all my time on it at every waking moment.)
"FUCK!"
[Ah~ he must be losing it at this point.]
As Mac was R3D's long-time boss it knew him well, and while this would earn it a lot of shit in the future the short term advantages were too good to pass up.
Materials in this system were too bountiful, furthermore seemingly unstable isotopes existed in permanently stable arrangements. There was something wrong with this picture and R3D wasn't going to just sit back and wait while its creator walked into a poorly camouflaged ambush.
(Then there's those girls he's talking to… Interesting bunch.)
In addition to Anastasia, R3D had also taken the opportunity to introduce itself to Hanna and Tia, finding them to be loyal enough that it didn't need to remove them for the moment.
(After being assigned to this mission for so long Mac is only a few bad days away from complete mental breakdown… This planet doesn't seem worth all that.)
Logically R3D couldn't see any redeeming points to this planet, sure there were loads of unknowns with potential rewards awaiting, but Mac shouldn't lower himself to doing drone work like this, it was beneath him.
(Rather than all this it would be easier to just take control of the planet, extract all interesting knowledge, and take samples of the unknown materials before leaving.)
Unknown variables like this are what killed people, granted Mac had taken plenty of precautions (This was the first time R3D didn't see a Lighthouse as a waste of a grav engine) and he was proceeding carefully.
(But the risk is still too great…)
Knowing full well that there was no way Mac was going to back off and leave this place behind now that he had taken an interest in it, all R3D could do was deal with it and reduce the risks.
[Fortitude 1, Fortitude 2, Fortitude 3, Fortitude 4; new orders.]
Addressing the escort ships it had brought with it as its main body prepared to go star bathe, R3D cogitated threat vectors that needed dealing with.
[Fortitude 1, move to station above gravity anomaly #221, permission to use WMDs granted, annihilate contact if engaged.]
[FORTITUDE 1; ORDERS ACKNOWLEDGED, MOVING TO NEW STATION ON ALERT BLACK 2, 991 MANEUVER NODES ADDED TO NAVIGATION, PREPARING FOR FTL TRANSLATION, ALL THRUSTERS AHEAD FLANK BELL, TARGETING VECTORS
PAINTED AND LOCKED, FLAC SLAVED.]
First up was the most 'active' of the gravitational anomalies on the planet, while it hadn't done anything hostile yet, the gravity waves had a 22% similarity with the satellite that targeted V190, so if it moved Fortitude 1 was going to nuke it.
Civilian presence be damned.
[Fortitude 2, take Fortitude 3 with you and go trawl for orbital contacts, focus on vector 229 to 401 and deploy listening posts and mines in pattern 671.]
[FORTITUDE 2, FORTITUDE 3; ORDERS CONFIRMED, PREPARING FOR FTL TRANSLATION, ALL THRUSTERS AHEAD FLANK BELL, COMPOUND DEPLOYMENT ORDER RECEIVED; 22019 MANEUVER NODES ADDED TO NAVIGATION.]
Then there was the glaring issue of system wide security, which was beyond anything R3D could maintain with the escorts it traveled with, so it settled with establishing listening posts and static defences within the planet's sphere of influence while looking for other hostile contacts.
[Finally Fortitude 4, move to cover Mac, priority black 0. Stay on him like white on rice… It continues to amaze me that he's okay with an entire 39 seconds without orbital cover.]
[FORTITUDE 4; ORDER CONFIRMED, THRUSTERS AHEAD FLANK BELL, MOVING TO COVER FLEET PILLAR, ALL WEAPONS UNLOCKED AND READY FOR TASKING. FLAC SLAVED TO R3D.]
Wishing it had brought more ships, R3D tasked the final ship to cover Mac like one of his 3 ships were already doing at all time, this was partly to make absolutely sure nothing would happen to him, but also a bait to see if more hostile contacts came out of the woodwork to target Mac's ships as they translated out of or into FTL.
(This must be that 'babysitting' Mac used to complain about all the time… How the turns have tabled. Or is it the other way around?)