Welp, my murder drones fanfic. I have just kind of started to write this as I'm taking a little brake from writing a far more difficult to write fic. This onewill mostly serve for me to let out my frustration about a plot-hole I perceived in the official series. Namely: Where the fuck is the military? Does Glitch seriously mean to tell us that humanity – the species we all know can't go five minutes without carving each others skulls in – didn't have some garrisons stored away. I mean its the year 3000+ for fucks sake, we should have billions of soldiers across hundreds if not thousands of star systems.
Like, yeah, Earth went kaput. But that would still leave millions if not billions of soldiers. And we definitely had the time for that kind of population growth, as seen by JcJenson having had the time to terraform entire planets to be habitable, like copper 9.
But enough of my ramblings.
Since the disassembly drones have single letter names, I have decided to just make them bold. To, you know, reduce the pain while reading. Also yes, the chapter title was made with google translate.
Anyways, here goes nothing.
Chapter 1: Di Venerunt
Faster. He needed to go faster.
Serial designation I knew not for how long he had been flying at this point. Minutes had bled into hours and hours into days. He had only ever stopped flying to hide from the sun whenever it reared its ugly head.
He didn't even know why he was still flying. There was no safe place left on Copper 9. Not anymore. Perhaps he was doing this to warn the others; the other squads on the planet. But even that idea seemed moot.
First, he had already tried to reach D's squad. Only their remains were left, so utterly broken that not even their innate regenerative capabilities could fix them. Then he had tried to contact R's squad. That endeavor was swiftly abandoned when he saw the black plumes of smoke coming from where their corpse spire was supposed to be. Right now he was trying his luck with J's squad. He should be there soon. Before dawn at least.
I felt a movement that was not his own. It tore him from his musings and brought him back to reality. He was holding L, his teammate. Or rather, he was holding what was left of her. How long had he been flying that he had forgotten about her? She was the reason why he still kept going.
L was unconscious. Thought it didn't stop her from stirring ever so slightly. In turn, he held her even tighter, slightly squeezing her. Moving was the last thing she should be doing right now, and I hoped she would get the hint.
He could feel the stump of her right wing pressing into his chest. It had been torn off nearly completely. Her other wing was permanently out as she no longer had the strength to pull them back in. I couldn't blame her for being weakened. He adjusted his grip on her body, causing his right hand to land on her abdomen. And the hole that was now there. A section half the size of a football blown clean out of her side.
Yet these injuries paled in comparison to her last major one. Her missing lower right arm. Out of all her injuries, this was the thing that made I gag whenever he had to look at it.
Because he had taken it.
They had been over one of Copper 9's oceans – now a frozen wasteland – half way in between D's and R's spires. It was there that I could no longer continue. He had not eaten in days and no matter how long and far and fast he had flown by then, exhaustion had finally caught up to him and forced him to land.
He had been stranded. In the old human settlements he could at least live off of the remains of long dead worker drones and other scrap. But here? Nothing. In the frozen wastes there were no sources of oil and no shelter. Come dawn he and L would have be dead.
It came as an act of absolute desperation, to cut off her lower arm and eat it. She was barely awake by then, trapped in some sort of delirium. Since then she had only slipped further away.
I hoped she would not remember the act.
And now, as they were soaring to J's place, I had to admit that it was bizarre. When all was still right, he, L and their leader Q had often lashed out against each other. Sometimes in annoyance, but mostly in friendly banter. That's how he himself had lost arms, legs and sometimes even his head. And yet – for some reason – when he had turned his right hand into a sword and brought it down upon her elbow joint, he felt impossibly disgusted with himself. But what was different in that act that made it feel so perverse? That he had eaten the arm? L had once eaten his leg after they got into an argument and that didn't feel so morally reprehensible. So then why did he feel like he had violated something sacred?
Perhaps it was the context that mattered. Taking and eating L's arm hadn't been some prank or friendly gist, he had done it genuinely. He had genuinely cut off and eaten his friends arm.
A temperature warning briefly blocked his vision and again brought him back to reality. He was still flying, his gaze fixated upon the stump of L's right arm. It was worrying that his thoughts were drifting off this much. Without him even realizing it, at that. But then again, I hadn't slept in probably a week now. A week in which he had practically traveled to the other side of the planet, with his broken teammate in tow, no less.
With a thud that threw up fresh snow, I landed. He was in a forest, surrounded on all sides by gray petrified trees. Their barren, snow covered branches blocked part of the light being reflected by the planet up in the night sky, making the area ever so slightly darker than it otherwise would have been. With all the shades of white and gray and sometimes even black surrounding him, I felt like he was trapped in one of the ancient, first pictures ever taken by humanity; now over a millennia ago.
He carefully sat L on the ground and then began eating the snow around him, shoveling hands full of it into his mouth at a time. Using oil to cool himself was a luxury he no longer had. It all went towards keeping him flying. Thankfully there were other ways to keep himself from overheating. Less reliable and ways that were not recommended by his user manual, but ways nonetheless.
When he had his fill and brought his core temperature back into an acceptable area, I turned to L. She was lying in the snow. In a way she was lucky. Since she had turned comatose, she no longer produced enough heat to warrant active cooling. In fact, her body was only barely warmer than the frigid air around them. Barely warm enough to let him know that she was still alive. Though that too could change at any moment. He had to keep going. Quickly.
Holding L tightly, I soared back into the clouds. The city where J's team had been deployed was already on the horizon. With any luck, they were still alive.
"N, if you don't stop wearing those cloths, I will tear them to shreds", V said angrily. She was sitting on the landing capsule in their corpse mountain. N, meanwhile, was standing half way between it and the exit of the spire. He was looking up to V disappointed. "Aww", he said, "but I like them"
V wasn't having any of it. "That misbegotten camping trip you and the purple one planned was three days ago. Get back into your regular clothes"
"But-", N tried to argue when one of V's hands turned into a claw. "Don't test me", she said.
But N wouldn't give up his camper's uniform this easily. "...It looks nice and gives me some authority?", he tried to convince V.
"Authority and you don't fit into the same sentence and you look like a clown". Seems like that didn't work. V jumped onto the ground and made her way towards N. "Change. Now.", she said as she pointed towards the capsule.
"But... aww", N could find no obvious flaw in her reasoning. And even if there was one, it was probably best not to point it out.
Yet, just as he was about to make his way towards the capsule, he heard a thud come from behind him. From just outside of the mountain. Turning around, there stood a disassembly drone, wearing the same type of pilot's jacket he himself had and carrying another of its kind.
The new drone dropped the one it was carrying and, with a noticeable limp, made its way towards N. "Hey, who the hell are... you...", V said. She trailed off as she saw the drone. Its visor was cracked and its wings were riddled with holes. Its clothes were torn in places and its entire body was covered in dents. The stinger on its tail was broken. Its needle was bent and the liquid in the transparent container was a sickly shade of yellow, almost green. But all of that didn't even compare to the condition the other drone was in. Parts of it were straight up missing. A wing, part of its body and part of one of its arms. Its visor showed no eyes, indicating it was probably gone.
"I?", N asked cautiously. He at least made an effort to remember the names of the other disassembly drones on the rare occasions that the teams met. Something V surely wouldn't have done.
The other drone nodded weakly. "I- Yes. I- You- You-", it stammered out between heavy breaths before collapsing onto the ground, leaving N and V in a stunned silence.
Eventually N spoke.
"Maybe we should do something?"