[center] [img]http://wiki.datarealms.com/images/1/14/Dummy_Tech.png[/img] The dummies prepare to do some door to door sales [/center] Only a day had passed and yet, thanks to the work of its tireless drones, the site of the CPU’s forces’ emergence had transformed from simple fort to sprawling complex. Vast walls bristling with defenses and watchtowers now surrounded a not insubstantial area. Inside dedicated manufacturing buildings had begun to pump out dummies, weapons, craft and some of the dummies relatively limited composition of ground vehicles. Hover tanks, armored cars and falcon attack craft now sat in hangers, ready to power up and rush to defend the complex. It also had a large central comms array, something that had been jury rigged from it’s own unit’s communication hardwear, forming a large frankensteinian tower of hundreds of simpler coms units melded together to increase their transmission and reception capabilities. At the center of it all the original base the original bunkers had been massively extended, the brains now buried deeper within the earth, each separated from the surface by a different long, twisting, boobytraped hallway. In total there were 12 Dummy brains in the base, 6 in the center and 6 more spread out around the more external reaches of the compound to avoid an eggs in basket situation. With relatively harmless wildlife providing the only resistance it had encountered so far in the local region, the watch towers having spotted no intruders and its manufacturing capabilities now outstretching the amount of resources the node could output, it was high time it engaged in some commerce and expansion . It now had a larger selection of its prebuilt craft brought up from below ground and it had built a number of short range transmitters that it had installed on some of them to help it establish communications with other reasonable groups. Other than the mercenaries there had been several other encrypted transmissions over the past day that and while they had not been successfully decoded, they did give away the presence of their signalers due to their different encryption methods. For the purpose of contacting them it would be sending out some scouting groups so as to avoid revealing its base location with directed radio transmissions. Each exploration group included 8 rocket pods carrying: 2 brains(one to stay with the landed craft and one to go lead the interaction group), 1 Diplomacy Dummy augmented with communications equipment for text and verbal interaction, 1 dreadnought to protect the craft and 25 dummy escorts with various weapons and tools that would accompany the Diplomacy Dummy and build simple fortifications to protect the landing site. Escorting these would be two Falcons equipped with twin heavy nailer cannons. Each groups where a relatively low investment in resources, intended to primarily protect the two valuable brain unit’s retreats in case of hostility rather than for fighting a pitched battle. As the first decad of craft launching themselves skyward in blasts of rocket fuel and soared towards the nearby nodes around which it had detected activity, the CPU turned its attention back to the task those missions where preparing the way for. Around the outskirts of the compound a far larger, slower moving expedition was taking shape. Riding in gun toting dropships and harrier twin prop transports was a veritable army of Dummies, weighed down with a multitude of weapons and tools. Escorting this convoy would be falcons, gunships and hover tanks. The entire ensemble had one goal in mind, the capture of the center of the array. There were two reasons for this: First was based primarily on the vague notion that the center of things, the heart of a place, was generally important. Also, the oddly symmetrical ocean with its perfectly central island where an incredibly artificial construction in an already rather artificial environment, which probably meant it was built that way on purpose. Those two suspicions combined meant that the CPU though the place bared invitation as they might indicate something interesting was there. Secondly, it’s centralised location held a lot of value for a business AI like itself as a communications and distribution point for Array wide commerce. Also, in the event that conflict erupted across the entire Array, it would be a place of strategic importance which it could either sell to the highest bidder or simply use as a fortress island from which to wait out the war. For this expedition to go smoothly it needed to know that it would be able to travel through the intervening air space unmolested. This was the primary concession it wanted out of those it discovered on the way to the island, if any were indeed to be found. As the last of the scout groups launched skywards without issue the CPU took a few moments to watch them go. The bright dots of flame rapidly vanished into the distance as the CPU pondered what it would find. [color=Orange]Cautious optimism: Profit hopefully[/color]