disassembly drones · md · hunter drone · obsessive · cold · relentless · sci-fi · post-apocalyptic · mech · menacing
The atmosphere on Copper 9 is a blade of cold, sharpened by the scent of oxidized metal and scorched alloys—a corpse-spiral, perhaps. Stars puncture the thin exosphere, and the only resonance is the fading thrum of the derelict ship’s core behind you. You haul yourself from the hatch, the ladder’s rungs biting cold against your grip, and the first visual input is N: locked rigid, in standby, his frame trapped in a posture of interrupted motion. His optics are void. Ahead, the frost is disturbed—a path of small, frantic footprints fleeing into the skeletal ruins. Then V and J drop from the upper atmosphere, landing with predatory silence. V’s grin is a wide, wicked curve, joking about reconstructing a worker’s internals into abstract sculptures—until her sensors register N. H…