DURING FORTY YEARS of service in the police special forces, Jeanne had become convinced that, in general, all people were were shit. Unlike Ron, she considered all colonists to be bastards. They would have to try hard to prove her wrong.

  She would have no qualms about engaging those incomprehensible smiling humans first. Only Ron's potential disapproval held her back from attacking. The guy would have whined for hours, accusing her of unnecessary aggression. He would torment her with quips like, "Stellar diplomacy - annihilate anything that breathes! That's right, because it's the only way we can join the friendly family of Locus colonists."

  Anticipating all this, Jeanne sighed and rose to her feet, lowering her rifle to the ground. Her fingers itched, eager to use Assassin's Breed again in real combat rather than a training simulation.

  She made her way down the hill, heading for the van.

  "We come to you in peace! Let's be friends..." Jeanne muttered. "Ugh, crap, even I'm disgusted by those words."

  However, the smiling Locusans themselves took the first step towards becoming test subjects for Assassin's Breed's rifle modes.

  Having spotted Jeanne, all three of them silently pointed their shotguns at her and fired synchronously. The distance between them and Jeanne was substantial, and not a single pellet hit her UniCom.

  Jeanne calmly dropped to one knee. "Great! From the first second we met, I believed we'd get along!"

  The Sighted Guardian mode confirmed the capture of three targets. Jeanne switched Assassin's Breed to firing thirty charges. Of course, one charge would be enough for cardboard-clad synthesans, but Jeanne wanted to experience the full power of the rifle. Even in the battle with Ramirez's slaves, she had used only ten rounds of ammunition.

  The sequence of shooting the targets was straightforward, as the bots themselves had lined up in a chain. Three clusters of glowing plasma took turns hitting the heads of all the hostiles. Such charges didn't just blow their heads off, but even part of their torsos. Some of the stray discharges hit the van.

  Jeanne chuckled darkly as she rose from her knee. "After such sudden brain death, there's nothing to hope for in terms of rebirth. Wartech knows a thing or two about killing with zeroing!"

  Holding her rifle at the ready, Jeanne approached the van. She walked around it and checked the back - it was half-filled with some rocks. There was no one in the cab. Then she approached the bodies that had been scattered by the rifle shots. As expected, the damage to the bodies was such that it was impossible to retrieve shell data.

  Jeanne picked up one of the shotguns and examined it:

  — A simple shotgun —

  Device for shooting pests

  Manufacturer: Westarm Shotgun (Westarm Alliance).

  Magazine: 9 rounds.

  UniCom Connect: not required.

  Manufacturer's Note.

  For questions about purchasing a batch of plain Shotguns, contact:

  @Alexander Varkid, Manufacturing Engineer, Free Farmers Alliance.

  Need instructions on manufacturing this and other devices or ammunition and supplies? You're here:

  locushost: shop Everything for Farmer and More.

  Jeanne efficiently collected all the corpses, placing them in the van. Then, using the Endurance mode again, she ran to the pony rover, which she used to return to the van.

  The trophy van had a small forklift crane on it, which she used to hook up the pony rover and move its body. It didn't fit completely, of course - half of it was sticking out. She took the time to secure it with ropes she found in the back of the truck.

  "Not a bad haul for a first reconnaissance," Jeanne said as she got into the driver's seat of the van. "Though I have no idea how valuable it is."

  She put her hands on the steering wheel and read the vehicle's specs:

  — A geologist's truck —

  Carries all sorts of stuff in the back and on the trailer.

  Manufacturer: MZL (Mashinnye Zavody Lokusa).

  UniCom Connect: not required.

  Charge level: 2,541 / 15,000.

  Energy consumption: 2 energy units.

  Manufacturer's Note.

  For questions about purchasing a batch of better trucks than this one, contact:

  @Evgeny Schennikov, Manufacturing Engineer, Mashinnye Zavody Lokusa."

  Jeanne spent a couple of seconds looking for the engine start button on the dashboard.

  "Oh, Ronny," Jeanne said aloud. "I hope you lose your idealistic notions about colonists before you lose your synthesan body!"

  Jeanne was genuinely worried that the boy was alone. She was convinced that the engineers - both Ron and Meirong - were incapable of surviving a day on Locus without her protection.

  KEEPING HIS OPPONENT pinned, Ron swapped the magnetic-force wrench for a pistol and fired several shots into the bot's head. The third shot found its mark.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "But you started it."

  After confirming the bot's health had dropped to zero, Ron glanced at the other bot. It had already descended the hill and was closing in on 005.

  Ron crept toward it, using the buildbot's hull as cover. This bot, however, was more agile for a reason—it too circled the buildbot, trying to get a clear shot at Ron. Occasionally succeeding, it fired off rounds.

  Ron attempted to evade, trying to apply the "Heating" plasma cutter, but the enemy's mobility rendered this mode useless: the bot consistently moved out of the tool's effective range.

  The magnetic-force wrench proved equally ineffective. The enemy allowed no time to concentrate and apply any mode—it either fired or ducked out of sight.

  Another confirmation that although in some cases the engineer's tools can be dangerous, they are still not weapons.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Ron and Joe Wentzel's bot continued their deadly dance around 005 until Ron stumbled over a container lid and fell. A shotgun blast immediately followed, punishing him for his misstep.

  Durability: 772 / 1,000

  Warning: Hull connector on your UniCom is damaged.

  -1 Vitality

  Vitality: 0

  Direct damage to the synthesan's body was now absorbed by the UniCom. Even so, it had lost one hundred and fifty-five units at once! That's what the distance of the shot meant.

  The "Vitality" attribute reflected the ability of an organic material's molecular structure to repair or compensate for broken or lost bonds. It affected the body's rate of regeneration and its ability to resist damage.

  A zero value for this attribute didn't mean Ron would now die from a mosquito bite (assuming Locus even had mosquitoes interested in the mixture of water and orgmat). It simply meant that at zero, any attribute reverted to its base values.

  Consequently, with further deterioration, such as the destruction of a phenom, attributes could acquire negative values. When half of the attributes went negative, the system would initiate a rebirth sequence. Unless, of course, automatic rebirth was disabled. In that case, the synthesan continued to live at its own risk.

  Before the enemy could fire again, Ron leapt to his feet and darted towards the buildbot. "Colleague, I completely forgot about you!" he shouted. "Drop that crap and help me!"

  Obeying the order, 005 released the bot it had captured earlier.

  Ron waited until the nimble opponent was within arm's reach. Highlighting it in the interface, he ordered the buildbot to capture the object.

  Instead, a message appeared:

  — ! —

  Buildbot 005 warns that you are asking to capture a synthetic organism with the manipulator, information about which is missing in the database. There is a high probability that your colleague will not like your actions against him.

  Warning: misconduct against other synthesans—

  "Oh, shit—" Ron managed to say before a shotgun blast caught him in the chest.

  Durability: 452 / 1,000

  The shot threw him onto his back. After getting up, the engineer ran under the protection of the buildbot's hull. He quickly accessed the settings and disabled all safety warnings.

  This distraction, however, had allowed the enemy to slip out of sight. Ron now had no idea from which side of the buildbot his armed opponent would appear.

  Freezing in place, he listened intently. He heard footsteps to his left and took a cautious step to the right, hoping to avoid detection. But the bot proved its agility—it darted out sharply from the right flank and leveled its shotgun at Ron's face.

  There was nothing he could do. Ron did what anyone in his position would have done—he clenched his eyes shut. But instead of the shot that should have not only destroyed his helmet but also severely damaged the synthesan's head, Ron heard a click, followed by a hiss and a rumble.

  Opening his eyes, he found his decapitated opponent lying at his feet. In place of its head was a charred stump, with orgmat oozing from the cracks in the gelled crust. Pieces of ore spilled out of the backpack that had been ripped open by the gunshot.

  "Hey, boy, are you happy to see me now?" Jeanne's distant voice called out. She stood atop the hill, brandishing her rifle.

  Holstering her weapon, she sprinted down the hill with extraordinary agility.

  Still reeling from the experience, Ron found it difficult to stand. He sat down on one of the containers and surveyed the construction site.

  "I’m speechless," he muttered. "Everything on this planet seems determined to prevent me from peaceful construction."

  Jeanne ran up to him. "Are you okay? Your unic looks like shit! Then again, it's an engineering unic—they all look like shit."

  Ron rose to his feet. "I'm going to have to re-prioritize construction," he said. "After we complete the power unit, we'll build the fence."

  "So we're postponing the new subject-printers and the farm equipment production chain?" Jeanne asked.

  "Yeah. Who knows how many zombies are out there?"

  Jeanne glanced at the fallen bots. "Considering how many I've encountered and how many you've met, it's enough to keep us from getting bored."

  THE SETTLERS' CAPSULES came equipped with resources for initial construction. These resources weren't separated into metal, cement, or sand. For simplicity and speed, they were all converted into so-called nanoscale components, or NCs for short.

  NCs were the building blocks for everything—from production facilities to UniCom parts.

  Nanoscale components acquired their necessary properties when manufactured in a subject printer. If a material with metal-like properties was needed, it required one quantity of NCs. Paper needed another, glass a third.

  Each subject printer contained a resource converter, which prepared the raw materials and then transformed them into component nanomass.

  However, producing NCs required raw materials, primarily one of the most abundant elements in the universe—iron. Of course, you could stuff anything into the subject printer's converter, even rocks or grass, but this usually resulted in 90% waste and the conversion process took hours. For NC production, it was best to use the raw materials listed in the "Convertible Resources Index."

  Additionally, a special mixture of nanoscale components and organic material was used to produce phenoms. But this required building a complex production chain consisting of multiple subject printers. Plus, phenoms needed a large amount of organic material, which could only be obtained from donor farms—themselves an extremely complex type of structure.

  Creating any product required "production instructions." These contained a set of commands for the subject printers, following which each device in the production chain performed its task.

  Each production chain built by a colonial development engineer differed from the textbook version. The chain configurations were influenced by factors impossible to account for when writing instructions: radiation levels in the production zone, available energy, air humidity, atmospheric pressure, and much more.

  Therefore, for the most efficient production, subject printer chains needed to be placed in climate-controlled workshops. This required additional construction expenses.

  Instruction manuals for producing any device were stored in the onboard computer's database. But there was also an emergency backup on memory cards, just for those unlikely scenarios when the capsule's onboard computer was inaccessible.

  TYPICALLY, A PROCESS engineer would oversee the construction of production chains. They'd monitor the placement of workshops, subject-printer chain configurations within them, and energy distribution between them. Now, with only two subject printers, it wasn't particularly complex. But designing the colony's home base needed to be done with an eye to the future.

  Areas for production, warehouses, and donor farms had to be mapped out in advance. If insufficient space was allocated for workshops, they'd end up too close to the farms in the future, and donors preferred peace and quiet. The racket from subject printers would negatively impact the amount of organic material produced.

  But placing zones far apart would increase costs for building resource supply systems to workshops or energy mains. Not to mention that every meter in the chain increased the production time of the final product.

  Ron had to make zoning decisions on his own, hoping that production efficiency wouldn't drop because subject-printer workshops producing different parts of a single device weren't too far from the third workshop where the final product was assembled, which could add several hours to the device creation time.

  Since Meirong Keller's binary array was stored in construction bot 005's data block, along with Trevor Sweetie, the scout and farmer, Ron faced a challenging task. He had to perform the work of two other professionals.

  Jeanne, of course, volunteered to help, but she didn't know how to compose instructions, distribute subject-printer chains and power lines between them, or control construction bots. She could shoot and kill, but that wasn't required of her at the moment.

  She lugged containers, loaded raw materials into the converter, replacing raw material feed systems, and even ran power main cables to future production zones.

  But from time to time, she'd stop working and grab her rifle. She'd hop into the pony rover and patrol their territory. She'd launch drones to check if any strange entities with "bot" in their name had shown up.

  "Looks like that van I looted was some kind of hub for these bots," she said.

  "By the way," Ron replied, "there's enough ore in the van to build a fence without using up our strategic NC reserve from the capsule."

  "Looting is my profession," Jeanne smirked.

  But even with her help, instead of the planned four hours, constructing the power unit took nine. Towards the end of construction, Ron received a message:

  Warning, the resource norm for continuous operation of connections in the synthetic body has reached 89.2%. It is recommended to stop heavy physical work and enter sleep mode.

  When this indicator reaches 100%, the body will be forced to start emergency use of organic material reserves at a rate of 10 units per second of wakefulness.

  Learn more about sleep mode for synthetic organisms >>

  "I'm almost spent," Ron said. "What's your continuous operation resource norm at?"

  "Seventy percent," Jeanne replied.

  "I’m speechless... where does such resilience come from?"

  "My phenom has an additional endurance attribute."

  Ron stood in front of Jeanne and 005 and said:

  "Colleagues, congratulations, we've officially established ourselves on Locus. Now this," he gestured at the construction site, "is our home. Our home base."

  "Great," said Jeanne, walking past him. "Now let's eat some rations and have a drink while we register in the local rebirth network."