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Chapter 13 (New companions) Part 2

I racked my brain for a moment. Just because the box itself was ill-suited for travel didn’t mean it didn’t still offer good protection. I needed some way to improve its mobility. The drone’s rotors turned as I looked around the area, spotting a pile of pipes about twice the diameter of a human’s arm. I couldn’t tell their origin other than they seemed in relatively good shape and had a faint green tint to them. An idea struck me. I ordered the NUS units and B1 to gather a pair of the more intact pipes and bend them so that they had a slight slope and were sealed at both ends.

The two girls watched in mystification as a NUS bent down, placing its arms under the crate to lift it slowly and allow a pipe to be passed underneath, with chains wrapped around it. The process was repeated on the other side, and soon the box lay on a pair of makeshift skis, which, though still sinking into the snow, offered much less resistance to movement.

Watching the scene from above, I felt a mix of pride and embarrassment. I wasn’t sure if it was the most practical solution, but there was something about a sled in the winter that made me strangely happy—even if it was carrying a fission core. Perhaps my perspective had gotten a bit mixed up since waking up. Coughing lightly in my mind, I flew closer. Now that the plastic seal inside the crate had been opened, there was a little extra space inside. However, I decided against offering it to the girls. Besides the fact that I wasn’t sure how safe it was to sit next to the core, the box itself offered little protection against the elements.

At the same time as I was dealing with the logistical issues of transporting the core in person, I was receiving a steady stream of information from the base’s management team. One notification caught my attention:

“Attention: Parts required for project completion. Requesting assistance. Current estimated time to completion: unknown.”

Switching my focus back to the base, I saw, through the armory’s camera, a hectic scene. Metal parts were scattered profusely. An NU walked below my line of sight, each hand grasping one end of a thick metal grate. The bot stepped by B2, who was bent over a device with a seemingly endless amount of wires coming from its underside into the tank. Walking over to the tank, the NU connected the grate to another that ran along its tracks, forming one long line of grates extending the length of the tank. The grates were about a foot away from the tank’s main body. Several armored plates had been removed, exposing the inner workings.

Seeing the complicated construction and silently comparing it to my own creation, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Shaking my head internally, I looked over a list of components flashing through my mind. Some of the missing parts for the tank matched objects I had seen in the warehouse, so I decided to have the NUS units gather anything that matched before leaving.

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After giving one last glance to an NU pulling a long, flexible hose to the rear of the tank, I switched back to B1 and walked over to where the girls were quietly talking with a visible mixture of nervousness and excitement.

“I’m just about ready to leave. Can you two walk a little longer?” My slightly unsure robotic voice mixed with the wind, causing the two to turn around and look at me. The black-haired girl seemed lost in thought, while Olivia’s eyes sparkled with a faint glitter as she jumped into the snow.

“Good! Let’s get out of here already,” she said, her voice quieting as she added, “I wonder what else is there.” Her gaze trailed toward B1’s arm as her words faded.

“Olivia, did you make sure to check you had everything?” the black-haired girl asked, cutting off Olivia’s mumbled musings. Olivia’s face froze as she quickly patted her clothes.

“Yeah, I already checked, Lise…” A slight flush grew on her face as she began to look around quickly before sighing. “Umm, I left my notebook back when we were hiding.”

As she finished her words, it looked like she was about to take off running, so I stepped forward slightly, coughing—which came out as a static sigh—about to offer to look for it instead. But before I could, a slight suppressed laugh interrupted me.

“You mean this?” Lise pulled a leather-encased notebook with yellowed pages from under her jacket. Olivia’s flush deepened as she lightly took it.

“How many times do I have to tell you to look after yourself?” Lise said, turning to look up at B1’s faceplate. Hesitantly, she spoke, “Could you gather some of the mutant beasts? Umm, their hides can be used for warmth, and their meat…” Her face twisted slightly as she pushed the last words out. “Their meat is edible,” she finished, saying the last word like it was sour candy.

I was slightly caught off guard—not only by the implication of eating those things but by the fact that I hadn’t considered food before this point. Though I didn’t like the idea I couldn’t exactly think of a better plan so replied accepting her advice. “I’ll take as many as I can then,” I replied, glancing at the pack on her back. “Do you have other food?”

She nodded lightly. “About a week’s worth.”

I had a feeling her version of “a week’s worth of food” might be slightly off, but I decided against questioning her on this point and added the beasts to the growing list for the NUS units. Slightly thanking them for their hard work, the three of us watched as they made repeated trips out of the building, each time adding to a growing pile of items.

A stack of bloody, mostly intact bodies—the remnants of the beasts deemed uncontaminated enough to take—lay next to a pile of boxes wrapped in plastic sheets. Some of the boxes contained circuit boards, while another held two large glass ampoules with wires inside, along with a mix of other items I was glad I didn’t need to understand to use.

Olivia wrinkled her nose at the growing pile of corpses but said nothing as she turned her attention back to the snowy landscape. Lise, meanwhile, inspected the items quietly, occasionally casting an unreadable glance my way.

Once the bots had finished their work, I gave them a final order to secure the sled and load everything onto it. The makeshift sled groaned under the weight but held steady as the robots fastened the chains and ensured everything was secure.

“It’s ready,” I said, turning my attention back to the two girls. “We can start moving, but stay close. The sled isn’t exactly fast, and if anything shows up…I’ll handle it.”

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