It wasn't until the next day at nearly noon that they finally got an official update from Uncle Lu.
[Due to some technical difficulties with the new material production process, we have been unavoidably delayed. Production of the second unit is expected to take at least one more day, though the first unit will soon be ready for its final testing.]
"I knew the old man wasn't reliable. I should have barged in anyhow and made him work." Nico complained when she saw the message.
The researcher beside her gave the angry cyborg a hug. "There's nothing you could do, the problem is with the power system in the Moon Base, you see. Look here, we have been monitoring the energy fluctuations like you asked, and it looks like the material replicator systems keep going into thermal overload.
That sends the cooling system to full capacity to bring them back online, and then the whole power grid fluctuates when they're both running at maximum capacity. It's a magnetic field interference issue that seems to have been caused by the upgrades to the Materials Replicators."
"Bah, unintended side effects are the bane of my existence." Nico muttered as she looked down at the drone that they had developed.
It was a masterpiece of technology, equipped with six flexible dendrites from the tech adept harness, and both the new pattern variable disruptor and a six lens laser emitter.
In addition, the arms were equipped with both grappling hands and a small gravity beam emitter to hold objects in place around them. Then, the body held a full Mecha Repair toolkit, as well-equipped as any repair rack, and a small replicator.
That way it could produce parts, bombs, or even spy drones if necessary.
While it wasn't a master at any particular task, it would be capable enough at most of them to be sent out as a general purpose support unit on its own.
It only needed one final touch.
"How is the work to miniaturize the Void Shield generator coming along?" Nico asked the workers of team three.
"Fairly well. We've cut the size in half and the shield remains at full efficiency. We're just starting another round of miniaturization now. Hopefully, the materials hold up to the power flow, but if they do, then this should fit the packaging requirement for the available space in the drone." The team leader responded.
The full drone was only three metres long, so there wasn't a lot of room inside of it to begin with, even after the smallest available Antimatter Core was used to power it.
That meant that the drones also lacked a Warp Drive, with the space sacrificed to more weaponry and the material storage for the bomb bay, but Nico was considering adding a dorsal fin to hold the Warp Nacelle.
That actually gave her a great idea. She could repackage the drone to look like a shark, then she could have killer attack drones flying around her and biting the enemy before blasting them apart with the disruptor. It would stop the enemy from running away, and it would free up the prehensile dendrites to be used as tentacles.
Yes, the killer shark drone with six tentacles was the perfect drone.
Once she added the warp nacelle to the top of the hull and began to place the dendrites where the front fins would normally be located, Nico became more sure that she had the perfect design.
Even if she needed to sacrifice some of its compact size to make the lines flow a bit better, it should be fine.
"If we're going for sea creatures, why not a crab? The dendrites could be the legs, and you could add a pair of crushing claws up front." One of the researchers suggested.
Nico paused for a moment. Crabs weren't scary, but they were well suited to the task of working on Mecha, with their wide bodies to help them hold large parts. A large domed top would also give them more room for a Void Shield emitter.
"That's a wonderful idea. Let me finish this addition to the shark, and then we can start working on a crab drone." Nico agreed with great pleasure.
The researchers further back in the room sighed. She had been bored all day, and she had just gotten bad news, so they knew that nobody was going to bed until Lead Researcher Nico had her crab drone on the table in front of her.
The first, and most obvious thing to do was to study various crab species, to see what one they wanted their drones to look like.
The clear divide was ornamental and aggressive crabs versus food species. Because being attacked and torn apart by a food species just seemed so much funnier that a large portion of the crew was unwilling to let the idea go.
Finally, they decided on the Dumont Emperor Crab. It was glistening red on top, with a pale bottom the colour of dead coral, or a white sand beach, which matched well with the usual colour scheme for Terminus Trading Company Mecha, other than the ones which now had adaptive camouflage paint on them.
But its claws and lower legs were glimmering gold, a shiny counterpart that made them look like an Emperor walking with their red cloak billowing behind them.
The shape was close to the usual oval of most crab species, so it was fairly simple to package the necessary parts inside, and the extra shell space allowed them to mount a split warp nacelle down the outer ridges of their top armour.
The actual species was only the size of a man's hand, but the drones were three metres across, and the legs could extend out to five metres from the single metre of their retracted position. The drones could also be conveniently stacked, and made ready for transport.
Overall, Nico was very proud of their support drones, and was looking forward to seeing the look on Max's face when he actually saw them for the first time.
