Stuff to See!
Prologue
The civil war had plagued Intrepidoria forever as far as anyone who lived there knew. Their existence was shaped and defined by this war. This war was not about claims on land, or one side's treachery, or retribution of wrongs done. There were no politics involved, no propaganda. Neither side, objectively, clould lay claim to the moral high ground, or the low. This planet of gunmetal gray, with its cities prefabricated, its terrain untouched, which reflected dully the light of its faraway sun, lay isolated in space as a battlefield, witness to a war which had no meaning.
Populated by robot warrior drones, and their robot leaders of marginally greater awareness (enough to plan and prosecute the war for which they were built), the planet spun in silence. No transmission was sent, nor was one received from the inky void of space. There were no visitors from other worlds, and the events transpiring from year to year across the stars were unknown, inconceivable, on Intrepidoria. There was only the war.
The populace lay divided along arbitrary lines of code, on the one side the Zangwyn Alliance, on the other their bitter enemies, The Sackwine Coalition. The Alliance was built upon one variation of codes; the Coalition rallied around another. They were identical in numbers, in capabilities, in the distribution of one kind or another of drones. Even the terrain favored neither side.
There were casualties of this war, like any other. Those casualties that were salvageable were saved; the rest were recycled. Some of these drones knew how to repair their comrades, and others could construct new drones when necessary along lines well-rehearsed, for Intrepidoria was not a barren world. There were energy sources on hand. The planet's composition was rich in metal and metal ores. And the base level of technology with which the drones of Intrepidoria were familiar was far advanced of what we know. They could apply and replicate what lay at hand, to large extent. But, as of yet, the drones who would build, and those who would repair, were able neither to create new technologies nor to improve those they possessed, simply because their programming did not tell them to think along such lines. Until such a time would come, the war's immediate needs were paramount.
The Zangwyn Alliance produced the 1800-series of combat drones in the 235th year of the war. There were 100 drones to each series, built to supplement the original run of 5,000 assorted drones on either side; and the series were named in numerical order at least by the Alliance. these new drones were functionally, even physically, identical, to their predecessors in every detail, even down to the cobalt-blue eye lenses. this helped sustain the long continuous stalemate. No one would have noticed or cared that one of the last remaining of this 1800-series, the 26th, was among a platoon of drones sent to secure a critical pass (like every other one) into enemy territory, or that these drones walked straight into a death trap.