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[color=Orange][h3][b]The dummies set up shop[/b][/h3][/color] 
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Where only a month before battles between innumerous robots, humans and monsters raged without sight of stopping there was now replaced by a different, more fundamental, kind of conflict, nature having reclaimed the battlefields at an unnatural speed. Birds, beasts and bugs went about their daily battle as survival of the fittest scythed down the weak and made the strong unstoppable. 

The natural scene was disturbed however as, in 3 separate places, the ground is sucked downward into the maws of turbo diggers carried by robotic crash test dummies. The dummies march onward out of their holes, arms still sweeping the digging implements back and forth, unaware that they have reached their destination. Marching behind them are more dummies, these armed with concrete sprayers, which they use to coat the surface of the freshly dug tunnel in order to reinforce its structure and prevent its collapse under the rhythmic march of the robotic drones. Together the diggers and sprayers have creating 3 long, spiraling tunnels that rises up from the dummies main base below, up which hundreds more dummies now march.

The Dummy CPU, having finished dealing with the 4th tunnel that suffered a collapsed about halfway through it’s decent, move’s its consciousness to the surface dummies and stops the diggers and sprayers from mindlessly trying to tunnel through the air.

[color=Orange]Frustration: the surface was closer than calculated[/color] 

It thinks to itself before gathering the 3 groups of tunnelers together at the center of where the 4 spirals would be if the 4th had emerged and then begin to dig straight back down. The concrete sprayers following after them to reinforce the walls, using their jet-packs to slow their descent, of the wide shaft that was being created leading back down to the Dummies main base. While the CPU awaits this construction it directs the first wave of builders that had emerged from the tunnels, armed with sprayers and more precise construction tools, to begin constructing a small fort around it’s emergence point. 

A perimeter wall was made of concrete using the sprayers is formed, atop of which several Dummies equipped with scout rifles and some Dreadnoughts, man sized quadruped robots coated with thick armor armed with rapid fire Nailer cannons, jump up onto in order to act as temporary turrets. A small trench network is built around this fortification into which standard dummies armed with blaster rifles and shotguns are placed. Within the walls a number of purchased AA drones, waist high 4 legged robots which house 3 guided missiles each, are brought up from below ground in order to ward of aerial assaults. The terrain in between the walls is also sprayed with concrete, creating a foundation for future construction. Finally, 4 small bunkers were constructed, each one a dome of concrete with a narrow entrances guarded by Nailer shotgun wielding Advanced Dummies, within which the dummy brain units controlling the fort’s forces were held.

It has been a month since the CPU and it’s manufacturing base where torn from the secluded corner of space it had been occupying to avoid certain parties interested in it’s enslavement and making a tidy profit from selling weapons and troops to prospectors looking to mine a nearby world. Dumped into a strange world with no seeming escape, it had lost a fair few brains trying to rocket them up into space, and with unidentified hostiles assailing it from all sides, the CPU had turned to the basic strategy of it’s universe's people: 
Step 1: abandon what you can’t hold, 
Step 2: dig down, 
Step 3: build elaborate underground bunkers, 
Step 4: mine the crap out of the planet 
Step 5: use your new base and resources to strike out and destroy your enemies.
[s]Step 6:…
Step 7: profit[/s]

Steps 1 through 3 were complete, however step 4 had hit a snag in the fact that the, other than the massive resource generating structure it had found, the planet was rather resource poor. As a result it was having to go on to step 5 in the hope that it could take some of the nodes it had spotted on the surface a moth ago during its escape attempts.

Now that it had arrived at the surface it was apparent that step 5 was not going to be going as expected either, seeing as there were currently no foes to be found, nor any evidence of the battles that had taken place here only a month prior. It had been hoping for the ability to salvage the warzone to fuel itself until it could acquire more nodes. They must be expert scavengers, the CPU mused, and environmentalists too, considering the repairs made to the previously ravaged and blasted environment. 

[color=Orange]Hopeful: Maybe they are all dead? Rational: further investigation of surface is required[/color] 

With that thought came the completion of the vertical shaft leading down to long tunnels leading back to the underground chamber it had dug around the Node, where its primary manufacturing zone was located. Up from this flew a swarm group of Rocklets, small fragile rocket craft  that could carry roughly 4 dummies and their equipment to a landing zone quickly and cheaply. In this case, the CPU sent them hurtling off in small groups towards the borders of the six neighboring hexes. Each group contained a single mobile brain unit, a few building tool equipped dummies and 20 dummies carrying a variety of cheap weapons. The CPU’s intention was to set up watch towers at the borders to its emergence hex to act as an early warning system and to ward of light enemy attacks.

Once it had the ability to be aware of oncoming attacks it would begin expanding the central fort with proper cast walls with metal reinforcements, defensive turrets and manufacturing facilities for units and equipment.

It was while the CPU was dealing with the aftermath of the 4th group finally breaching the surface and running headlong into the construction efforts with their diggers, that it picked up an unencrypted broadcast coming from a non-stationary location.

[quote]”This is Colonel Carolyn Richter of Richter's Rangers. I am broadcasting this message to inform any interested parties that Richter's Rangers are now selling their services in exchange for supplies and services. To discuss contracts and terms contact us on any frequency.”[/quote]

Ah, it looked that at least one group on this strange structure had the dignity and sophistication to engage in proper capitalist mercenary work rather than barbaric and expensive total war. Of course, that did unfortunately mean it was going to have competition if it was wanting to sell its own services and wears. The CPU moved getting a proper long range broadcasting equipment up it’s list of priorities, either to contact the mercenaries to check their prices and capabilities or possibly to launch a counter ad campaign. 

There was much to do before then however, in particular finding a way to conceal its position when broadcasting, and so the CPU got to work writing programs that the dummies would follow in order to upgraded its new surface base.