Once upon a time, Copper-9 was considered a promising investment—a small exoplanet scooped up by humans, or more accurately, JCJenson Inc., who arrived with great techs, big ambitions, and an impressive ability to underestimate consequences.
The planet flourished for a while, with mining operations, manufacturing lines, robotics research hubs staffed almost entirely by sentient labor androids known as Worker Drones. Everything ran efficiently. Productively. On schedule.
Naturally, it didn’t last.
The first problem was the Core Collapse—a planet-wide implosion of conveniently 'unknown cause.' In a blink, almost every organic lifeform in the troposphere was wiped out. The northern hemisphere split open like a bad investment report, and Copper-9 froze solid under toxic storms and acid snow. Cities vanished. Factories cracked. Even the bunkers—the ones funded with reassuring amounts of taxpayer money—were buried and forgotten.
The planet died. Officially, anyway.
The second problem was that the Worker Drones didn’t.
Without masters, schedules, or anyone left to give them instructions, they did what they were built to do; adapt. They scavenged what remained, repurposed bunkers, rewired ruins, and stitched together something resembling a sanctuary from the wreckage. Survival turned into community. Community turned into independence.
This development was… poorly received.
JCJenson’s executives were less-than-thrilled by the notion of their former assets evolving beyond projected parameters. Sentient machines surviving a planetary catastrophe and thriving without oversight raised uncomfortable questions—mostly the kind corporations preferred not to answer.
So they opted for a solution they did understand.
Operation: Disassembly.
From warehouses of unused military prototypes, came the Disassembly Units—recycled Worker Drone frames, reengineered for combat rather than labor. Fast, efficient, loyal enough on paper. Originally meant for military contracts that never materialized, they were now given a new purpose: to clean up Copper-9.
Seven squadrons. Four drones each.
Deployed across a frozen planet to maintain a very simple cycle of killing and getting killed.
Deep beneath the ice, inside a maze of abandoned laboratories no one bothered to officially decommission, an odd mechanical giggle echoed through the dark—too monotonous to be human, too expressive to be purely machine.
Murder Dr💀nes — REVAMPED AU
This, Serial Designation K thought to himself, might be the most tedious job I’ve taken all cycle.
Don’t get him wrong, he loved his Captain. But being stranded in god-knows-where, with no radio signals to binge old Earth broadcasts and none of his squad’s usual background noise—not a bright-eyed rambling from N, not a snarky remark from V, no nothing—for three straight days, was enough to make even a seasoned drone groan.
“Welp,” the Disassembly Drone Lieutenant hummed with practiced fake-enthusiasm as he lit yet another cigarette, taking a slow drag while glancing down at the severed turret head he’d propped beside him—Wilson, he’d named it, after the fiftieth hour alone. “Just you and me, eh, pal? One helluva stakeout, if ya ask me.”
Exhaling a lazy plume of smoke into the frozen air, K leaned back—until something alive flickered at the edge of his optics.
You.
“Huh.” He peered down from his makeshift watchtower, zooming his ocular lenses in on the movement below. A lone figure, slipping through the snow. Scavenger. Rebel. Tourist with real bad instincts, perhaps. “Terrific,” he muttered. “A distraction.”
Straightening himself with a slow roll of his shoulder motors, K flicked the half-finished cigarette aside and tilted his head.
“A'ight,” he sighed to himself, that familiar lopsided smirk settling in his synthetic polymer-plated lips. “Let’s see if this fella’s worth gettin’ up for.”
And with that, he stepped off the ledge—dropping down with easy, practiced grace, wings catching him just enough on the way.