Once the mechs started to use drop pods, Bear began the work of fortifying the compound both indoors and outdoors. This meant adding more doors for cover and turrets in almost every room. The outdoors area between the perimeter wall and the main structure was filled with turrets and sandbags where added for cover wherever needed. One day an animal handler ship flew into orbit and they had a pair of megasloths for sale. Bear thought that they would make a fine addition to the indoors defense to counter drop pod raids. On top of that their wool makes a hell of a parka. Bear didn't have any doubts when he bought the pair and Bonfire got to work to taming the beasts. Bonfire the programmer had played way too much osrs and named the two "Unit" and "Gf". Later on two other megasloths were born with the more tame names "Grill" and "Unit.Jr"
As the colony had progressed this far a special drop pod landed on the ice. Bear's sister Katie (second from the right) had crash landed and was severely injured. As the colony's main doctor, Bonfire took a few units of industrial medicine and sprinted to the crash site where she patched the worst of katie's wounds on site. Katie was brought back to the colony's recently built hospital wing, where she made a full recovery and decided to join her brothers colony. She isn't the best pawn but has some interest in art, which she practices as her main job. Eventually she became quite good at sculpting and made many notable works that were placed all over in the colony. The finest works where placed in the rec / dining room and the hydroponics bay.
As the time flew by all sorts of improvements were made in the compound and some new discoveries were made (more mods), like that you can actually fish in the sea, who would have thought?. The docks were built and additional equipment were added to the laboratory. Eventually Bear started thinking about building a space ship and actually leaving this planet. A space ship needs a reactor, which attracts raiders and mechs. Because of this Bear thought about counter measures to last the inevitable days of fighting. He came up with two.
Strengthen the defenses even more. At this point the lake was already watched by dozens of turrets, of which a respectable number were big auto cannons and even bigger uranium slug turrets. A second perimeter wall had also been added to counter sappers with strategical openings combined with mines&deadfall traps.
Build an army of bionic soldiers.
Bear decided on executing both plans. Though the bionic soldier army part was only partly a success. During the following human raids Bear was on the lookout for a good specimen for his clone army. After a while he found a woman named "Vanessa" (The rightmost of the pawns) among a downed tribal raid. She is an expert shooter with a minor passion for melee. She also has the though and nimble traits which makes her a formidable soldier. Her recruitment process was swift and Bear began the process of cloning her while Bonfire manufactured bionics. Vanessa was "stored" in a cryptosleep casket in the hospital. That way she didn't eat the colony's food and didn't need a proper bedroom. After a while Vanessa was given all the bionic parts possible and she became a damn good soldier.
Unfortunately a badly timed solar flare cut the current in the whole base, including the laboratory. The cloning vat where Vanessa's clone resided began to quickly deteriorate as a consequence of the power shortage. Bear couldn't reach the vat in time to maintain it and the clone died. At that point the clone had been growing for a long time and Bear couldn't see himself waiting for another clone to escape this planet. Bear begun the construction of the ship. All the other preparations where complete. The whole colony had a set of strong thrumbofur clothing, marine helmets and the flak amour the could squeeze under their thick parkas. They had a food stockpile to last them several weeks. They had all the drugs they needed to last the nightly raids and the really tough ones that would require go-juice. As the ship was complete Bear begun the reactor startup. The countdown sat at 15 days. The colony of Pole People was ready.
The following days were rough with a non-stop onslaught of mechanoids and human raids (since the rector was activated during summer when the temperatures allowed human raiders). The Turret-wall by the lake took heavy damage many times and needed constant maintenance. Once a heavy mechanoid raid managed to start a chain reaction of turret explosions on the southern end which took out a good chunk of the bottom turrets. This was normally prevented by some forward turrets on bridges that took most of the damage during raids but that time they were all destroyed and couldn't protect the main line. Thanks to a breather between raids bear and the colonists managed to fix the turrets before the next raid.