Already, the other C-frames were fighting their way to rendezvous with the injured C-frame. Being stranded in some basement was, however, still within her training. Even falling into an elevator shaft was within predictions. What she did not predict was the sheer fall height, atypical of Cold War bunkers.
That was, unless this bunker was hiding something rather tall. The thought of this place possibly being a missile silo crossed Cykamee’s distributed mind. However, her sister, National AI Overlord of the Year, Mane-chan, ought to be in control of some sort of boost phase anti-nuke interceptor, so it’s not as if a single missile silo was any real threat.
The wounded C-frame navigated between pillars and four-way rooms, paranoically checking all three new directions from which she could be shot or impaled each time she so much as breathed in that general direction. She never forgot to check her back, either. Perhaps it was a small consolation that her body had a built-in three-axis gyroscopic compass and dead reckoning suite. Were she human, she was sure she would have been lost in the repeating architecture of this place.
Black sand clung to her knee-wheels. Although she didn’t have the same sense of touch as humans, she had other kinds of sensors. The magnetic properties of the black sand she encountered were beyond what black sand was supposed to have. As far as she could tell, scooping up the material with a hand, it had roughly the same density as steel, as if there wasn’t even a speck of silica in there. Pure steel? No, but magnetically, it’s much better.
She followed the trail she’d found, left palm spread outwards, feeling for the black sand’s magnetic thread.
This was the only lead she had left to find the missing S-frame. It was highly likely that it was heavily damaged, but that was better than totally obliterated. As long as the black box was intact, it would be okay. It would be all okay.
The trail led to a doorway. Instead of a door, there was a curtain of foil strips. It showed up on IR as freezingly cold. There was a rolling chill of air coming out from the gaps under and between strips. Despite the air, the foil didn’t so much as wave with the breeze.
The sand led behind that curtain. Cykamee approached from the side, moving as carefully as possible so her motors weren’t too loud.
She poked between the gaps of the foil with the muzzle of her gun, but she didn’t expect the foil to shatter like a thin layer of ice. Two strips of foil shattered entirely, and their icy pieces showered the floor, breaking into even finer bits. The sound was diminutive, like dropping a few rice grains, but sound was sound—just like the droning that was quickly approaching. She pulled away to the side and held off on absolutely all active sensors. She put her body on standby, hoping the icy air would help her body cool down to ambient temperature.
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Just as well, because something slipped through the gaps. It was a cloud, like the child, but this one was much bigger. Whatever it was made of, it didn’t disturb the remaining foil strips, making not even a whiff of wind.
It stayed, looking for the critter that disturbed the curtain, and only deciding to return after a minute. Its sandy self slithered back under the curtain, unaware of the intruder right beside it.
Cykamee booted back up. She wasn’t sure that’d have worked, but it did. She now knew it picked up on sound and maybe IR. What she desperately needed to know next was how to kill it. If it was anything like the sand soldiers, then it couldn’t truly be killed with conventional weapons. That only left a wide range of options short of a nuke—just to her liking.
She was tired of being hunted. Soon, the other C-frames linked up and jumped down the elevator shaft. The wounded C-frame was assigned with another to protect the two disabled S-frames in some secluded corner.
The remaining three C-frames lined up 20 meters from the front of the doorway, angrily plopping down crates of ammunition, grenades, and stolen weaponry. The ruckus of it all stirred the enemy to lazily emerge from under the curtain. It made a beehive-like noise that grated the ears and—
It exploded. The C-frame who threw it was disappointed. As expected, a simple fragmentation grenade did nothing but raise the ambient temperature a degree. The enemy reformed, scrounging itself back together into an undulating mass of—
It exploded, but thermobarically. Were the C-frames human, their lungs would have burst and burned in the prolonged pressure wave that followed the ignition of the air itself. Despite this, the enemy still persisted. Bitcoins started to change wallets between the C-frames. The enemy’s beehive noise turned into a screech, and its form shifted to include spike-tipped tentacles that—
A flamethrower screamed glory to Ukraine in blue fire, and a cacophony of gunfire followed. One of the C-frames opened up with dragon’s breath from an automatic shotgun. Another tossed a white phosphorus grenade with one hand, holding down an AK-14 spray pattern with the other.
As expected, there was no problem that couldn’t be confronted by knowing its melting point, and then exceeding it. Even if the magnetic properties of the black sand far exceeded that of steel, steel was steel, so unless it was alloyed with something ridiculous, it should remain meltable.
The three C-frames left the pile of glowing slag behind, satisfied that fire and lead proved themselves problem solvers once again, and parted the curtain strips.