Dasha Y186-custom-roy

The Caldera was a wound in the planet’s crust, a half-mile-wide crater filled with twisting geothermal vents and the skeletal remains of a pre-FTL civilization. Dasha stepped out of the pod. Ash crunched under Y186’s feet. The air was thick and sulfurous, but inside the cockpit, she smelled only recycled oxygen and her own sweat.

“Loud and clear, Commander.” Her voice came out as a distorted growl through Y186’s external speakers. She flexed the mech’s left arm. Hydraulics hissed. The motion was sluggish, the joints grinding like a boxer with broken knuckles. Custom-roy , she thought bitterly. That meant Roy had replaced the factory neuro-servos with second-hand parts from a mining rig. Typical.