Chapter Text
It was a pretty well known fact amongst the drones of the colony that the 'murder' drones lived up to their namesake.
They were monsters.
Built for destruction and carnage, they were no different from mindless animals according to the rare first hand recollections that forever haunted the bunker. Many of its residents had dealt with the beasts taking the life of someone they knew, whether it was a friend or family member. Any remains of the dead were mauled and mangled, sucked dry of their lifeblood, and that was in the rare case remains could be found, or identified for that matter- it's pretty hard to tell who's severed limb you've found when the only distinguishing feature was the accessories everyone wore. No-one needed to see the wicked machines up close to know how lethal they were and to know that stumbling into ones sights was a death sentence.
And yet, as if they needed to prove their power, the things still had the gall to go ahead and build a mockery of dronekinds misery; A towering nest made almost entirely of the corpses of the dead. Not that any of the bunkers' residents knew the contents of the tower (Any that hadn't already been beheaded for daring such a stupid feat anyways), but the inside looked just as gloomy and bleak as the outside to the untrained eye. Devoid of any comfort or life aside from the howling winds of the exoplanet from beyond the corpse walls. It was predictably as much of a graveyard as the tower itself, whether they be from corpses dragged in by the murder drones themselves or pieces that had dislodged from the walls in the years its withstood the unforgiving climate beyond.
One object seemed to tower above the assorted arms and limbs inside, though clearly looked as worn down as anything else in the hive. A small ship of sorts, the main structure propped up by three supporting limbs that dug into the snow, yet still left the structure tilting slightly at an angle. And if seeing what was inside the tower of death was a privilege? Well, what lay inside this ship was an unimaginable goal to any worker- Again, if any of them knew such a structure existed. Inside the ship was a sight exclusive to the three drone squad, and them alone.
Whatever must be inside must be incredible, a once in a warranty sight, right?
...
...Well, right now it was a total mess, to put it bluntly.
The harsh lights of the pod illuminated the dire state the pod currently lay in.
Scrapes and claw marks patterned the walls and floor...when you could see the surfaces, that is. Oil was caked on to a good portion of the walls, crusted into the cracks, mainly left there by one squadmates' messy eating habits, though by this point they'd long given up on cleaning up V's extensive mess. The remains of meals, half full of oil at best, lay scattered on the floor, metal limbs crushed and contorted from the powerful tools at the squads disposal, including V's jaws whenever she got bored. J couldn't even scold her squadmate for her habits, her own shameful addition the the mess of the living space lay scattered everywhere; the console turned into her own personal workspace, though in a much less organised state than a drone like herself would have liked. Papers stacked haphazardly on the slanted surface, a few unfortunate pieces having dived off the desk to merge with the mess on the floor, leaving the surface dotted with spots of the ships actual flooring. And much like how the pod sat haphazardly in the spire they reluctantly called home, a certain dissassembler sat like a centerpiece to the chaos that reigned over the pod's interior.
Gone was J's usual heir of composure, the machine of murder reduced to being sprawled out on the floor amongst the mess. She sat cross-legged amongst papers, her back hunched, having spent the last several hours analysing the sheets around her, and the stacks bundled in each hand. You would have thought the drone would be preparing for something major and extravagant given the effort she had spent pouring over the pages all evening, but this was anything but the quarterly statistics presentation that would have the usually composed drone twitching with energy and enthusiasm. No, the circumstances were much more dire, and J didn't need to wait until the end of this quarter to know they were very much in the red.
It was to be expected, at some point, but the shock of the situation still hit home. In the years they'd worked on the exoplanet, their targets had, robogod forbid, actually managed to figure out the threat to their existence. They were still stupid enough to travel outside, but they had adapted. Reinforced themselves in bunkers, repurposed from before the dominant species of humans had gone extinct.
N was never the best at hunting, whether it be from his lack of bloodlust or a sloppy mistake, but the results he was pulling in was dire. V always was a natural, the employee of the month of the two for several years going now, but even time seemed to be taking her toll on her. The strain of quotas had finally come crashing down in the last few months, and the drone with seemingly endless energy when it came to her time on the clock now seemed to be pulling barely half a full battery by the start of each shift. And oh boy did it show in the results, they were barely breaking even even with the overtime poured in. It had gotten so bleak that even J was having to pull her weight and then some, and it seemed that the last several hours of analysing their profit margins seemed to be a bust once again. No matter how much she cross-referenced her reports from different sectors, trends in each quarter, it was all for naught in the long run. They needed results and they needed them now, or else-
*BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!*
J huffed, artificial spine cracking with disuse as she straightened her posture, a hand smacked the side of her skull to silence the alarm that impended another night of actually resorting to doing her job. Usually she would only have to stoop as low as hunting once a week, but she was actually having to pull her weight to feed, robohell, despite them being a squad, the unspoken knowledge of their struggles had silently turned into the three of them knowing that shared profits were turning into a thing of the past, and J would be dammed sure that she wouldn't lose this silent 'Every drone for themselves' that the last few weeks of hunting had turned into.
Her heightened hearing picked up the subtle shift of bodies beyond the pod, the telltale rattling of metal alerting her that her coworkers had gotten up. J wasn't sure if she was pleased with the fact she no longer had to get them up herself; all three of them silently aware that they needed to make the most of their night shift if they wanted to eat.
J rose from the ground, bladed metal feathers rattling as her thrusters whirred to life, preparing her for another night.
Time to get to work.