:::An average robot chit-chat:::

The night is silent, the night is still. The nightsky is cloudy and the north wind blows waves of cold across the wastes. In an abandoned ruin of a brick house sit 3 machines, beside them 2 racks of empty tubes; these tubes should be filled to the brim with 127mm rockets ready to roar in fiery charge toward their loud & hurtful deaths, but for now, there hasn't been any urgent situation to load them up. In fact, leaving fuzed rockets in launchers put them in more risks of accidents than offering readiness confidence. Instead, for now the machines have stored the rockets away in a dug-out behind a nearby dirt mound. Would have been sleazy of them to do so, if not for the urgency level being low recently.

One of the machines rests its wheels by the wall, absently scratching the beaten paved path with a piece of brick, trying to draw something; another stands by a rocket launching rack, its camera gazes into the vast, tranquil wasteland. The last one, standing in the middle of the yard, has its antenna erected, probably trying to catch a signal.
All 3 are Katie machines, a model of battle-bot specialized in rocket artillery, a role less prestige than tube artillery (the likes of field guns and howitzers), owes to the relatively simpler technological requirements for crafting a rocket, compared to the required advanced metallurgy and barrel drill technology in order to forge a properly sturdy & accurate howitzer barrel.
Nonetheless, both rocket launchers & howitzer operators have been dubbed by the infantry androids & armoured robot tanks as "20 klicks snipers", poking at the fact artillery units in general get to sit in the backline pounding enemies from afar, unlike the frontline units who have to clash with enemies heads on.

The 3 machines are chatting in shortwave signals, on a transceiver platform most educated people would call "faiv-jee"; most robots like to shorten it to "5-G", however. If one has a signal transceiver, he or she would found a heated arguement between 3 tired soldiers.

K#231: Ugh, what are we doing again, sis #229?
K#229: ...Did you seriously listened to me? We are doing tactical war game training. Now solve for me this case: A hostile group is approaching the target from the other side of the valley...
K#230: Was Hivemind serious about this? I know we should be able to think creatively as independent battery squad if, "hypothetically, we got seperated from the Central Command Hivemind". But we are just stationed like, 11km from a Factory Peripheral Outpost radio tower, what could go wrong with with our comms?
K#231: Yeah, and even if radio got jammed, we are still close enough they could just wave us some flag signal or flare signal, for all they've got!
K#229: How should I drill in your CPU the fact that we need to be prepared for any situation? Beside, are you 2 sure that we will stay at this place till eternity and not getting moved anywhere else?

Katie #230 & Katie #231 went silent, for the moment unable to refute their battery-senior big sister.

K#229: Oh and I just forgot to mention, signals are getting weak recently. Those tower climbers seriously need to move their asses and give the transmitters a check.

Katie #231 throws down the piece of red brick, giving up on drawing after finding out that type of brick isn't brittle enough to be a subtitute for crayon.
Katie #230 looks for a topic to sidetrack.

K#230: What's with the Boneyard expedition recon team, sis #229?

K#229's aura projects a looks of disappointment and defeat at her sisters. Non-humanoid robots were made without a human face cannot express emotions like human does, but who to say human facial expression should be the standard? A dog could portray a lot of its feelings through its tail alone. For robots with a 'faiv-jee' transceiver, emotions are also encrypted and sent as signals.

K#229: I am done with this shit. OK, #230, nothing new about the Boneyard expedition. Didn't they just left for just a week or so?
K#231: The Boneyard is all the way in Arizona, I've checked the GPS multiple times; there is no way our Factory airship would get to it in under a month, even taken into account that they would have to avoid the Flying Circus and who-knows-how-many air-pirates on the way there, so be patient, sis #230.
K#230: I am still wondering what would the Factory get from there. Maybe a an outpost there and we start refurbish all the pre-war fighter aircrafts there for the Factory, hehe...
K#231: Be realistic, sis. We aren't even at that phase yet. Maybe they would undersling back a whole aircraft back here and we will start reverse engineering it?
K#229: Sounds as idiotic as ever. My best bet is an intact turbojet engine, maybe several. Its unlikely any of them has any electronics left onboard, consider 1st-ly: they have been sitting there for centuries, scavs had probably unscrewed all of them already; and 2nd-ly: the former Air Force must have stowed away the fragile electronic before laying them outdoor in the desert.
K#230: Hhhmmm... Life is certainly not a dream, damn.
K#229: Keep dreaming, we have no other way to cope.

Silence covers the atmosphere again.