There’s a comic like this of the Among Us imposter being mistaken for a goof by one of the astronauts.
And yes I love unusual intersections of magic and technology that aren’t weird cliches. There’s this neat book “how to raise a robot army” in the same class as “how to survive a horror movie”, and it talks about how to use radar and other systems when fighting werewolves, vampires, etc. So now I’m thinking about other possibilities.
[influenced by Asimov’s Victory Unintentional]
The machine was obviously built for war; it was of stocky build, perfect symmetry, painted in digital woodland camouflage. It loped along a stone corridor on ball-socket legs. It carried a bullpup rifle with a top-loading magazine. It scanned the area, pinging the ancient environment with an ultrasonic proximity detector. The cameras didn’t see anything, just flashes from the lightning outside, but that didn’t mean the threat didn’t exist.
She was designed with a silver-painted spiked helmet to protect her array of cameras and observation systems behind a transparent aluminum visor. A-1, printed on her torso, was designed for use in confined spaces, where Euclidean geometry was merely an option. She wore a robotic tactical vest for her equipment. She reached the end of the corridor, following marks in the floor outside the visual light spectrum, and approaching a spiral staircase.
A-1 slung her rifle and stuck her head in for an instant then back out, faster than any human. She had a detailed image of the inside. The cameras couldn’t see the figure suspended in the ceiling cavity, but the ultrasonics outlined him.
She shifted back, reorienting herself and backpedaling. Her arms rotated 180 degrees around, grabbed the rifle, and came forward again. “Have at you, beast of metal!” the figure shouted and swung down into the corridor.
A-1 switched on her ultraviolet light beams and the figure screamed. Smoke wafted off his body as he shrieked. A-1 fired a burst of bullets, severing his leg. With him immobilized, she walked forward.
“Whoa, wait, hold on–!” the man scrambled back, revealing his pointed canines. A-1 stalked forward mercilessly, and seized his collar. He screamed in rage and pain again. Her touch burned him, and he recoiled from her visor. Her stubby thick fingers were painted in silver, blessed by the faith of their designers(for it is the faith not the symbol that makes it powerful).
“Horatio Fitzgerald?” She droned.
“Wait, h-hang on, this isn’t–” She scanned him with her secondary camera array; he didn’t show up in the primaries but the secondaries were pinhole cameras, using the camera obscura effect. Light came through a tiny hole in a tiny box in her head, a pixel-sized camera took another picture of that projected image. No mirrors were involved, and neither was the camera seeing him. She got a blurry but acceptable look of the figure. He fit the profile. “…how it’s supposed to go!” He finished, a milisecond having passed.
She pulled a wooden stake out of her vest and stabbed him. The creature shrieked a final time, then dissolved into a man-sized pile of dust and debris.
A-1 did not even slow down. She entered the stairway and grabbed a rope ladder hanging from the center. She thought it would hold her weight.
Her builders, operating at a distance, knew they had some redesigns to make.
A-1’s systems came back online in the bowels of the castle, below where the records said the catacombs would be. Slowly she sat up, assessing her systems. She was in a pile of rubble. Moonlight came down from the top of the stairwell, leaving her visual cameras blind. But it was a mild inconvenience. Her sonic sensors crackled, hearing a growl at bearing 189.
“What’s this? A hunter come to find me? Only to be too heavy?” A voice sneered. A-1 rotated her head like an owl. Then turned over onto all fours, keeping her eyes on the speaker. The speaker was a tall, dark, and furry creature. He glowed in the dark of her infrared lights, his eyes like a jack-o-lantern. It moved towards her, and tilted its head. “Well, little hunter, I certainly don’t mind–” His voice caught in his throat.
A-1’s body moved like an insect, not fluidity but a solid maneuver. Inhuman even to the werewolf. “Identify yourself.”
“You are…” the werewolf mumbled. It twitched and winced, “What are you?”
A-1 rushed forward with her bayonet on her rifle. She stabbed the werewolf in the chest. He screamed and clawed at her, then only shrieked more. He tried to bite her head, and the spike took out his fangs; and the damage burned like fire.
Touching her chassis made his flesh burn, her very gaze caused him pain. Her cameras under the transparent aluminum only narrowed, as she fought to end the threat as quickly as possible.
He finally managed to get a grip on her, and hammered at the side of her helmet. But it was too late. “Are you… made of silver?!” He hissed, and collapsed. “Consecrated… robot…”
She was not consecrated in the traditional sense, but she wouldn’t tell him that. Besides, he was dead.
A-1 moved deeper into the catacombs. Her ultrasonic was dislocated. She could use radar, but the ultrasonics were needed in certain environments.
She entered a chamber of bodies. Two pillars held up the room, and there were cavities set in either side of the chamber holding bodies. It seemed to have been used as storage, with a lot of crates stuffed into the corners. A-1 moved forward cautiously.
A-1 was just about to stop and calibrate the ultrasonic when a vampire lord attacked.
He didn’t survive this long by being stupid. He popped out from behind one of the pillars as she passed. He swung a huge chunk of concrete and struck her across the back. A-1 was knocked forward and hit the ground. She crashed into a stack of crates, shattering delicate contents. She rotated her arms back, her torso still facing forward, and he knocked the weapon aside.
“The hunters haven’t tried something like you in a long time…” He said, and moved in for the kill.
“Not since me,” a voice said. A-1 tilted her head back. A small creature, shaped like a doll and perhaps 30 centimeters in height, climbed out of the crates. No infrared signature, but it was clearly armed. With a long butcher knife.
“Hell’s bells, how did you get loose?!” The vampire lord demanded.
With a maniacal giggle, the humanoid creature leapt forward, bounced off A-1’s head, and launched herself at the lord. She slashed and cut his face, laughing all the while.
A-1 scrambled to her rifle. The lord finally used his strength to grab the doll and threw him across the room. A-1’s bullets ripped into his chest. She flicked on the ultraviolets and he shrieked. She pulled out a stake.
The doll giggled again, and dove on the vampire again, this time swinging a fragment of crate. The lord’s faze froze in horror and anger, before collapsing in a heap.
The two combatants stood there, verifying that the monster was dead. The doll picked up her knife and wiped it off on the lord’s coat. “I haven’t seen something like you in a while.”
“Are you an infiltration model?” A-1 asked.
“Of a sort,” the doll said. “Something like you, I should think.”
“Affirmative. We should continue with our mission.”
“Clearing out the vamps and doggies?”
A-1 offered her a ride on her shoulder. They continued on into the depths of the catacombs. “You must be water-cooled. You don’t show up on my infrared.”
“Huh? Your soul must be a bit loose there, friend. But no wonder. I’m not sensing any mana off of you.”
Both made mental notes to send the other in for their own health when they got back to base.
