He had each of the others do the same, but changed his mind almost at the last minute when he realized one was the load of solar panels. One good bump or knocking the trailer over could do a lot of damage to some of the sensitive connections.
Almost every vehicle, and of course every cargo pod had solar panels, but they only provided a limited amount of power. The cargo pod ones were also designed to separate from the roofs to be added to the primary solar farm once he had it up and running.
He directed the tractor in on his own, and then made the connections. The first tractor had arrived at the base camp, so he led the last out of the perimeter, and then raced ahead to the base camp to unload and turn them around.
One of the vehicles had the water and hydrogen pod, so he directed it to the edge of the pond. It took him only a half hour to turn the vehicles around and return for a fresh load. He took the time to check the animals; glad they had finally settled down and were doing better. The trailers had been mucked out, He would have to moved them to the outer perimeter and preferably downwind when he had time. Right now they were in the way and were cluttering up the inner courtyard. He ordered one of the robots to run a hose to the pond, then hose off the corralled animals lightly. He would need to separate the dairy animals, so he directed the donks to build three more corrals while he was gone. He'd have to check out the corrals when he returned.
The hydrogen pod was a glorified electrolysis machine, complete with compressors, pumps, and refrigeration. The water pod was a machinery pack that pumps water from the pond, then filters and cleaned it before sending it on to the various things that need fresh water. It even tapped the hydrogen plant, using waste oxygen to clean the water.
Eventually he would have to set up the drinking water module that would tap into the primary module. This would supply his mobile home, as well as the drinking water for the base and animals.
He checked the plan with the tablet. Two of the general purpose robots and two droids he tapped and set them to work unloading the solar panels and stacking them where he had designated them to be set up. Another robot was there, driving metal rods into the ground, and then hanging the panels on to them. He would have to check things over and hook up the electrical lines by hand when he returned.
He smiled wryly as his truck paused at the perimeter gate. “Even on an alien world, a traffic jam,” he murmured, aware his subconscious mind needed to hear a voice from time to time. Ahead of him was a donk unloading the combine. It turned out of his way and set the part it had down nearby. He passed and stepped on the gas to get back to his schedule.
Chapter 2
A week later he had completed and pushed the perimeter out to four kilometers, and even started the first farm. The robot farm tractors had plowed the fields he had designated while he'd been out and about on other projects. Then each had spread the piles of compost and fertilizer he had kept out over them. He had had to wrestle each attachment on to the tractors, and even pull some large rocks out to be hauled off but they looked reasonably good. Once that was done he then had the automated machines sow them with wheat, barley, sugar cane, vegetables, and corn in five designated test fields.
The farm robots were really on their own network now, a small one set up for them to keep them from dragging the main net down. There were the two tractors, attachments, bins, a dump truck, and combine harvester. Once he had the full net up their collective intelligence would be increased.
Right now the farm tractors were towing water trucks back and forth from his pumping station. If they had been free of this task he would have been tempted to press gang them into towing loads between the park and base. He had underestimated how hard it would be to move the hundreds of trailers.
With the perimeter enlarged he had enlarged the animal corrals, redirecting some of the animals with chutes to small pasture areas. The empty animal trailers had been taken apart and reassembled into crude shelters to protect them from the sun and weather.
He had managed to go over his blueprint, glad he had programmed it into the robotic AI before the journey. He was still a little out of sorts when it came to what went where; the plan and the reality were again bumping heads, or at least in his head. He smiled at the thought, and then gazed out to the Northern perimeter. Along the inner ward was the final perimeter, he had one set of robots there.
He still had a token force guarding the park; over forty loads were still there. A rain storm the night before had forced him to remain here at home. He still couldn’t trust the KITT AI to dock the tractors to the trailers properly, and the GP or droids he'd left behind in the landing park couldn’t make the fine connections as easily or as quickly as he could. He sighed at the limit of his technology.
In theory he could have left a GP robot behind and used it in telepresence mode to do the connections, but it lacked fine motor control skills to handle the small centimeter thick cables. Besides, telepresence was just too damn slow.
Each of his GP or General Purpose robots were designed similar to a certain Hollywood robotic star. They had treads for propulsion, and a plastic shell covered grasshopper mechanical body. The head was much more advanced then the Hollywood inspiration, with a much more humanoid look. He knew without them, the donks, and the Andy robots he would be half as far along as he was. Hell, most likely he'd still be stuck at his landing site.
He had three other robots, classic R-2 style for simple chores, and two sets of androids. The largest were the Andy droids, a play on the name Android. The second was a smaller version called the Mini-Me. Both of them were actually based off of a small toy sized robot from before 2010.
None of the three robot designs would do him any good in the first month of set up, they were all geared for indoor or light duty chores, not the heavy grunt work of outside labor. He didn’t have the power for them right now anyway.
His daily chores were beginning to grow as the base took shape and some of the animals hatched or developed. The Tilapia were doing well, he had a GP robot tasked to dump a small helping of manure and fish food into their tanks daily. He had made sure the manure was from the cattle, not his sewer tank on the mobile home or the sheep. He didn't want or need cross contamination.
That too would need to be drained soon, he realized with a pang. He sighed. There were over two hundred projects to complete before summer. Some were simple, but many were complex, or just mind numbingly boring... like milking.
Milking was going okay, but still an annoying chore. He really needed to get that automated dairy machinery set up soon. Egg harvesting was also annoying but necessary, or he would have broody hens. The eggs he didn’t use were either fed to the animals that could eat them, or frozen. So far he had kept only a few from each daily harvest back for freezing. The hogs seemed to love them. The cats would only eat them cooked, the raccoons chattered happily when he gave them each one.
He decided to make putting the dairy machinery together the priority, hang anything else. Losing a couple hours a day to milking the animals was just sucking too much out of his schedule. He had separated the herds during the week, the dairy cattle, regular milk goats, and the spider silk goats each had their own corral. He had plans to use the shallow northern cave as the barn, with a path of containers and fencing to the pastures. They would double as walls to help protect his fledgling herd. He knew he needed the animals; hunting in this unknown alien land still gave him the willies. He didn't envy anyone out there right now.
Sometimes he felt quite guilty about not trying to track any of the other humans down. But he couldn't risk it, couldn't devote his resources to trying to find people who may or may not be alive. Hell he didn't even know where to start looking! He sighed and set the thought aside.
After a lunch break he wiped his brow and looked at the machine in pride. It was a pretty neat thing, designed to allow the animals to walk in whenever they felt the urge to be milked. A robotic arm would clean the teats, and then another would latch on and milk the animal. A set o
f tanks and plastic balloons hooked up to the network of pipes would contain the milk, and keep it separate until it could be tested and pasteurized.
Each of his dairy herd had a machine; the largest was the cattle one of course. He had just finished the machine and it was still doing post diagnostics when it had its first customer, an over eager cow stepped through the turn style and into the chute. “Well, well, first customer,” he observed wryly. She gave a low moo as she stepped into the milking bay. He watched as the machinery swung into action, reading her indent tag then setting into feed, clean, and milk her. A second cow was already at the turn style, eager to get some relief. He snorted. “Wait your turn there Bessie!” he called. She rolled her eyes at him, running her tongue up and out then tossed her head and returned to chewing her cud.
After watching the first three cows get milked, and then checking the seals on the valves and piping, he nodded and moved onto the next machine. The goats were much easier, now that he had the hang of it they went together nicely. Running power cable to each was a drag, literally, but a robot did it for him. “Power reserves below twenty percent,” it reminded him.
He nodded then cleared his throat and replied, “Acknowledged. Pass an order to unpack the wind turbines after the last dairy is unpacked.”
The robot turned. “Affirmative,” it replied mechanically. He didn’t even glance back as it trundled off to the next task.
When he finished the final dairy machine he rode his truck to the park. He didn’t even pay attention to the road anymore; the genetic algorithms had long learned the route by heart. He focused instead on the laptop, flicking through the priority list and then over to the overall map. He went over it, sketching in where he wanted the donks to leave cargo pods. He was now confident that they'd carry out the orders so he let his mind wander a little.
The caves were a boon, readymade shelter, needing only minor eviction and some moderate cleaning up. There were six ground access caves, two large ones, one moderate, and three small openings. The longest and shallow one was going to be the barn. It had only one entrance into the cave complex, but it was partially buried in rubble. Next to it in the west face was the other large cave; he had decided the night before to use it as a garage. Twenty meters further south was the moderate opening, an entrance hall he had noted on the blueprints. Behind the main waterfall was a small entrance, but it was about two meters up the sheer face of a cliff. A spur of rock in front of the narrow entrance behind the waterfall also blocked it a bit.
The other two small openings were three hundred meters further south; they led into tight narrow crawl spaces. He hadn’t explored them; one was almost a meter above the water line of the waterfall pool. The opening was quite high, at least four or five meters. The last opening was only a meter high, and over one hundred meters away, but a meter up the face.
The cliff face had other openings of course, like the one where water poured out into the third waterfall into the pool below. There were two openings over ten meters up on the sheer cliff, and the explorer bot had found a vast chamber with an opening up above. The explorer robots were evicting the tenants, that was why he had waited to enter the caverns, keeping most of his gear sealed away. No need to invite critters into it. Besides, he had enough on his plate right now.
Some of the chambers still had windblown snow in them. It was still below sixty out but warming a little so he was now pretty sure it was spring. That was a relief.
At the park he went through the usual chores of hooking up the tractors and checking the perimeter. He had pressed one of the construction vehicles into towing duty now that the hydrogen plant was up and running.
The dump truck couldn’t tow the cargo trailers, but it could tow the fertilizer trailers and tanker trailers. Yesterday had been his first test run with the machine, there had been a heart stopping moment when it had hit the gully and nearly tipped over, the right side wheels off the ground. He had programmed the KITT AI to go much slower from then on, and had nervously watched that crossing each time. He seriously didn't need to figure out how to salvage a load if things went south there.
The traffic back and forth between the two camps had worn a trail; some of the local wild life were now using it as a game trail. So far they had left the strange metal things alone and he was glad. It was only a matter of time before a predator started stalking the area though; he wanted to be done with the trail by then. Managing three loads a day his seven trucks and five hummers could theoretically finish in two days...that was if the weather held out.
Returning to base, he unhitched the trailers and sent the tractors off once more. The donks swung into action, following his sketched plan, laying the cargo pods out just where he wanted them. The flatbeds were rolled off, he would disassemble them later to stockpile their parts, or recycle them. “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” Mitch said, and then snorted at the whimsy in his voice. “This time we will do it right from the start,” he said firmly. He looked out to the farm.
The robotic farming machinery was hard at work plowing the sixth field; he had designated it for more feed, this time oats. He would need it soon, hopefully the animals could digest the local grass and plants, but he would need to supplement it, and of course have a store for winter. The rabbits were due to birth in a couple more weeks; he was seriously debating releasing a few to the wild just to make it easier on him.
“Damn it, I can’t, going to need them for food,” he muttered darkly, remembering he had predators of his own to feed. The dogs and domestic cats were okay; the usual mix of dry and wet canned food went over well of course. The raccoons were a bit harder to feed, but the cheetah was a different story. Obligatory carnivores, they needed fresh uncooked meat. His stores of meat wouldn’t hold out forever, he knew he would have to do the culling; he just didn’t like the idea. Hopefully he wouldn’t have any still births to feed them. He shivered a bit, and then pulled himself back to the present.
The GP robots were busy with chores, mucking out, feeding, and lugging stuff to locations he wanted things set up. Fortunately he had set up the automated charging station for them and the tractors earlier in the week so he no longer had to designate a robot to do it by hand.
On the second trip to the park his truck pulled up to a stopped tractor and beeped. He looked up startled, and noted the tractor. “KITT report,” he called out eying the area warily.
“Biological obstruction detected.” He flipped the laptop back open, and then linked it to the tractor’s visuals.
“Damn,” he growled. There was a feathery sauropod in the way, obviously wounded from its staggering slow pace and bloody wounded on its flanks. “Damn, damn damn,” he muttered, noting it was limping.
It gave a long soft awkward cry, tossing its head to a distant shape. He looked in the indicated direction, noting the herd of sauropods getting further and further away. “Not your day mate,” he said sympathetically. A rustle in the nearby brush made him look over. The sauropod looked over wearily, and then it thrashed its tail and tried to amble away faster.
“Oh shit, not my day either.”
Out of the brush a giant raptor like creature came, massive, easily four times larger than the raptors. “Oh fuck me,” he muttered as the thing bellowed a challenge. He linked the camera feeds to the log and set it to record.
The creature was just huge. Most of the head was bare scales, from the top of the head back was a white stripe down the spine bordered by a pair of black stripes that tapered into tiger stripes down the flanks. The body feathers were a mix of browns and tans.
It had a massive head ending in a beak. Sharp steak knife like teeth line the rear of its jaw and muzzle. The arms were built like a raptor’s, but without the vestigial wings. The hind quarters were solidly built; the tail was short, ending in a stub of feathers. “T-Rex meet big bird, film at eleven,” Mitch commented, watching the massive thing stalk the now distressed sauropod. A rustle in the bush and another of the creatures stepped out, then a juvenile ver
sion.
“Bring the whole family why don’t you. Dinner is served,” Mitch sighed, shaking his head. Sighing in frustration he waited and watched. He turned his head as they clear the camera view, catching sight of the sauropod as it headed North and possible safety. “Good,” he muttered...”Ah crap, me and my big mouth,” he muttered as a giant t-Rex creature rushed out of the brush on the far side, tearing into the surprised creature.
With a bawl it tried to strike, thrashing its neck and tail, but unable to hit the Rex. The Rex clamped down on the already torn and bloodied neck; a muttered growl can be heard over the saurapods throaty bellow. Its forelimbs tore into the sauropod, latching on with meat hook claws, and began to pull it down. With a shrieking cry and low moan the gentle giant stumbled, then fell. Mitch felt the truck suspension bob as the fall generated a small earth tremor. The herbivore tried to move, but the others arrived and began to tear at it as the ambusher bit down. They tore into the giant, eating it while it was still alive.
Muttering about poor table manners Mitch flicked to the KITT AI and ordered the tractor to get moving. He passed the tractor, keeping it between him and the Rex family. The juvenile looked up interested, mouth dripping gore, but the slurping sound behind it was too much and it returned to the meal in front of it. Mitch sighed in relief.
He thought about trying a double load, but then talked himself out of it. It would just be too dangerous if something would go wrong, especially near the Rex family. Last thing he needed was to tempt fate any more than he had already.
Unfortunately due to the lay of the land he couldn’t detour without adding three to four hours each way to the trip. The detour would expose the convoy vehicles to the grasslands as well. He logged the Rex family as capital predators with the security AI, making sure they kept an eye out for them.
Bootstrap Colony Page 3