Chapter 287: Into the Strange Facility - III

What remained unclear was what they had actually been doing down here.

The DASF squad pushed farther into the underground level, and the rooms ahead finally started answering that question.

The corridor opened into another large section where the rooms were noticeably different from the maintenance spaces behind them. Several reinforced doors stood open along one side, while the opposite wall contained wide observation windows looking into separate chambers.

The DASF operators cleared the nearest one before moving on.

Engineer Three entered after them and stopped at the door.

"Now this looks interesting."

Large metal frames occupied most of the chamber.

Some stood empty, but others still held thick slabs of material between heavy clamps. One plate was nearly as tall as a person and thick enough that Engineer Three stopped trying to compare it to anything from an ordinary laboratory.

Shallow depressions covered its surface. Another plate had taken something far harder near the center, leaving a deep crater without punching through.

The Engineer moved closer.

"That’s one thick test plate."

Another Engineer joined him and looked over the exposed edge.

"Composite laminate."

Engineer Three glanced at him. "I can see that."

Several layers were visible along the damaged section. Dark metal sat between lighter material, followed by something that looked almost ceramic before another metallic layer began underneath it.

Layered materials weren’t unusual by themselves. Armor and high-load structures already used laminates, bonded plates, welded sections and ceramic-metal combinations.

The interface was the strange part.

There were no bolts, no brazed edges and no conventional weld bead. Instead of meeting along a clean flat boundary, the different materials folded into one another in a fine wave.

Engineer Three ran his scanner along the edge.

"Explosive bonding, maybe."

The other Engineer leaned closer.

"Looks like it."

"Except I’ve never seen it this clean across something this thick."

He stared at the interface for another moment.

"DAEDALUS really did enjoy showing off."

"Well, it’s ours now."

Engineer Three grinned. "Show some respect, you fool. Someone’s going to end up putting this into our armor."

"And by someone, you mean you."

"Stop stating the obvious."

The DASF squad continued into the next room while the Engineers moved around the chamber.

More samples sat along reinforced racks near the rear wall, most of them much smaller: metal bars, circular plates, blocks made from several materials and thin sheets bonded together.

Broken pieces had been stored beside intact ones, their numbered tags still attached to the frames. Some fractures went straight through. Others stopped halfway. One sample had split across its outer layer while everything underneath remained intact.

Engineer Three picked up one of the smaller pieces and felt its weight settle into his hand.

He looked at it for another second.

"You’re coming with us, dear friend."

The Engineer beside him took out a collection container.

They couldn’t identify every material by sight, and there was little point pretending otherwise. But none of this looked like ordinary military stock.

The Tech Center could worry about the exact composition later.

The next chamber made the purpose clearer too. Most of the room was empty except for a massive fixture in the center.

Heavy supports surrounded a thick platform sunk partly into the floor. Reinforced panels covered the walls, and several damaged sensor housings pointed toward the middle from different angles.

One of the DASFs stood beside a large circular indentation along the far wall.

Engineer Three approached.

The indentation was several meters across, but there was no penetrator channel or fragment buried inside it. The material simply deformed around the center before the cracks spread outward.

"Impulse loading."

Another Engineer was already beside one of the nearby mounts.

"High-speed cameras."

Engineer Three followed the mounting positions around the chamber. Pressure sensors, strain gauges, measurement rails and several empty fixtures all faced the central platform from different angles.

Engineer Three understood the arrangement. Whatever happened on that fixture, they didn’t only wanted to know whether the material survived. They wanted to see how it behaved during varying kinds of stress.

The strange part was the scale. Whatever happened on that central fixture, they hadn’t only wanted to know whether the material survived. They wanted to see how it bent, where it failed and what happened during the brief moment between the two.

Engineer Three looked toward the broad indentation again.

"Dynamic impulse test chamber. Blast loading, pressure waves... probably more than that."

The other Engineer studied the cracks spreading away from the indentation.

"And the materials that built the chamber took it repeatedly."

"You thinking armor?"

"I’m thinking I want a piece of the wall."

They continued.

The next laboratory contained equipment that looked less violent.

Several enclosed machines stood behind thick transparent panels, connected to hydraulic lines, electrical systems and material-feeding mechanisms. A workbench nearby still held several unfinished samples.

Engineer Three picked one up.

Two visibly different metals ran through the same piece.

Joining two materials with very different properties usually left something behind: a weld zone, a brazed interface, a bonding layer, mechanical fasteners, or at least a clear line where one stopped and the other began.

This one barely gave him anything.

Engineer Three turned the sample under the light twice before he found the transition. Even then, the boundary was so smooth that he had to follow it with his scanner to be sure.

"Damn. It really is that clean."

"Feeling jealous?"

Engineer Three tossed the sample over. "Shut up and scan it."

While the other Engineer analyzed the new material, the rest continued and found more of the same.

Dissimilar metals joined along unusually clean boundaries. Reinforced cartridges held powdered material, while dense blocks changed internally from one side to the other.

Several ceramic-metal pieces had also been deliberately fractured, exposing the complicated layers beneath their surfaces.

Some were obvious test coupons. Others were larger and more complicated, but still too small or oddly shaped to belong to any finished machine.

Engineer Three had seen enough prototype work to recognize the pattern. Make the difficult part first. Break it. Cut it open. Find out what failed before wasting material on the full component.

DAEDALUS markings appeared everywhere now.

They were stamped onto equipment housings, material racks and several of the larger testing systems.

The DASF squad reached another heavy door and opened it into a long industrial bay.

Engineer Three followed them inside.

A rail ran straight through the room from one end of the industrial bay to the other.

"Huh. They moved the heavy stuff underground too."

Several large machines stood beside it, each separated by reinforced barriers and thick blast doors. Some looked like presses, although their housings were far heavier than the equipment he had seen in ordinary factories.

Others were harder to identify.

One enclosed machine was built around a heavily sealed central chamber.

Another had what looked like replaceable containment panels around its working area.

The walls nearby carried old blast marks.

Engineer Three slowed beside the first enclosed chamber.

Multiple locking rings sealed the working area. Thick power feeds disappeared through the floor, while the inner surfaces were lined with panels that looked replaceable.

He looked at the neighboring machine, then at the old blast marks across the wall behind it.

A normal press held pressure. This thing looked built to survive it arriving all at once. And then do it again.

"Oh, I definitely want this one."

One of the DASFs called from farther down the bay.

"Engineer Three."

"What?"

"You may want to see this."

Engineer Three left the machine behind and followed him into a side section connected to the main rail line.

A large structural assembly occupied the center of the room.

Most of its actuators and external equipment were gone, leaving behind the frame itself and several heavy mounting points attached to a testing rig.

Engineer Three looked over it once.

"I think you wanted me to see this so I’d make you one."

The DASF frowned at him.

The assembly was clearly articulated.

A massive joint connected two structural members, followed by another farther down. Reinforced attachment points surrounded both sides, while several empty housings showed where actuators once connected.

Another Engineer entered behind him.

"Why don’t you make him one, then?"

The geometry was meant to move like a limb.

Engineer Three walked around the lower joint. Even without the actuators, the structure showed why it belonged in a place like this. Different materials surrounded the load-bearing sections, while layered reinforcement thickened around the joint without making the entire assembly equally massive.

Several sections had also been cut open after testing.

"Articulated platform structural test."

The other Engineer nodded.

"Want to give the boys some mecha?"

"We’d need a Research Director who actually knows this stuff."

"Well, we already have one, right?"

"Overseer Kordula? She could help. High Command still has to decide if they even want one."

Large piloted machines already existed elsewhere in the world.

What caught Engineer Three’s attention was how the frame had been built.

The same material techniques used throughout the facility appeared here as well: layered composites, graded structural sections and unusually clean transitions between materials that normally required separate joints or reinforcement.

Someone had been testing how all of it behaved when concentrated loads repeatedly passed through a moving joint.

Engineer Three tapped one of the exposed structural sections.

"So that’s where some of this was going."

A smaller plate attached beside the assembly carried another designation—VULCAN.

He looked at the armor mounting points around it.

"Find one of them, and the other usually isn’t far behind."

"Already thinking about putting one together?"

"I’m thinking High Command is going to want everything in this room."

He opened the channel.

"Southern Command, Engineer Three. Add large articulated-platform structural work to the list. Probable mecha application. We also found VULCAN integration markings."

Brandon answered shortly afterward.

"Document everything and send it to High Command."

"That’s going to be a long report."

Engineer Three looked back at the exposed frame.

The Tech Center was going to have a lot of work to do.