AN: So in the terms of full disclosure I did borrow an idea from
Black-Aengel-01 Fanfic
40000th Catalyst
A day later I had to change my plans slightly, I overlooked something that could have been disastrous if I ignored it. The Borg rely on nanoprobes for many things, including keeping the drones functional. Fortunately, I remembered this in time and managed to produce a basic charging outlet that I tapped into a power conduit to power. I also made a note to find another way of maintaining the body of a drone.
After that minor set back I returned to my task at hand. I needed a simple, reliable, but powerful weapon to arm my drones, for that I turned to my leader's hell pistol, injecting it with nanoprobes I analyzed the tech and was amazed at what I discovered.
I knew that imperial las tech was simple and that a medieval civilization could maintain them; but the entire concept that you could build them with a bastard file, a screwdriver, and a pair of vice grips as well, shocking and impressive.
The power pack, on the other hand, was anything but simple; at its core, it was a liquid metal battery, a fairly simple-to-understand tech, one that was just beginning to be researched in the 21st century.
That was the easy part, the hard part was its charging system, which was a conversion field, something that allowed it to take any energy source, and convert it into another, I won't lie I read about it in a fanfiction once, but I dismissed it as being fanon, seeing it in person, on the other hand, made me question many things.
The fact that the Borg have never encountered a species with conversion field tech was mind-boggling.
Anyways, the good news is that the materials I needed for the power packs were actually quite common, however, what I needed for the conversion field wasn't. However, that being said the good news is that with a power conduit handy I could just charge the power packs the old fashioned way.
Having several of my drones stop with the building of infrastructure I sent them on material collection duties. The good news is that finding a source of salvage in the under-hive was extremely simple, the bad news is that it tends to be very dangerous, as you sometimes are required to fight other scavengers for said resources.
With that in mind, I made sure to order my drones to avoid conflict and focus on getting the easy stuff.
A week went by and I have to say I'm quite pleased with the progress, my original gang all have las pistols, though I did instruct them to keep them concealed, my las pistols are several times more powerful and energy-efficient than the standard imperial las pistol, and my original calling of the mechanicus as being nothing more than a cargo cult has been vindicated, I literally did nothing to improve the las pistols power, except for realizing that for whatever reason the power pack's connectors were made from sub-par materials, something that I could easily fix but made me question exactly why they made it like that.
That fact alone made me resolve to assimilate as many members of the cargo cult as I could just so I could show them just how wrong about everything they are.
Other than that, my influx of drones is continuing nicely, the majority of the brothel district is under my control, my infiltration of the three major gangs has begun, though from what I can gather from the minor members it's going to be difficult.
My original information on The Takers was correct they are the smallest gang with only 1100 members, whereas the Pillagers and The Tears have 10,435 and 15,657 members respectively, along with the fact that they're far more paranoid of infiltration than they have any right to be taking them over will be fairly hard.
Though I do have to say that particular thought did raise a question, what were they paranoid about? The Spire Hunters only came down in small teams, while I knew that gangs would often unite to fight chaos cults I haven't seen any evidence of them at all, not even in the brothels were one of expecting to see them.
That fact along with how the sump seemed to be void of life made me fear that a Genestealer cult was present, a fact that worried me as right now I only had access to 329 drones not including myself.
Thinking about that number really made me realize something, none of the females and males in the brothels wanted to be there, they were there because it offered something that they couldn't get anywhere else.
Safety.
When I said that rape was a common crime in the under-hive I honestly didn't realize just how prevalent it was to the point that many would willing join a brothel just for something approaching protection. Something that no one else could offer.
Except for me, that is; while they were still part of a hive mind, I did allow the ones who deserved it to be themselves, the scum however was drones plain and simple, a fact that the other members of the collective were content with.
It's sort of an amusing thought when I think about it, in Star Trek the Borg were considered a fate worse than death, yet here in the under-hive, the Borg are considered to be better than most of the residents.
Going back to my work I noted that in less than three weeks tribute collectors would be here for nonexistent slaves.
I already had a plan in place to deal with that, several of my drones had friends and family that were enslaved by the gangs and they were anxious for payback, as such they offered to be 'tribute' which after assimilating the collectors they would be taken to the gangs HQ and would work on bringing the existing slaves and any gang members they could into the fold.
Right now my biggest bottleneck is raw materials, I don't have the resources to buy what I need from the black market, nor do I have the manpower for full scavenging operations, all that's left to do is just wait and build up my numbers.
