Inktober 2026 23
Inktober 2026 23, Dapper
Out of the dust sky it came. We had stopped looking up. Hours of waiting under that bruised yellow haze, SOSi still chirping away on its hilltop, and then a shadow slid across the wreckage and the dust began to part. Something was coming down through it. It had answered our beacon.
Clean lines, smooth, silver. No flames, no roar, none of the howling engines we’d braced for. It settled onto the plain with barely a noise, as though it had all the time in the world, and the dust drifted back around it like nothing had happened.
For a long moment nothing moved. Then a dark opening yawned in its flank, black as the gap between stars, and out of it came two figures.
The first was a massive metal robot, heavy-footed and unhurried, its lamp sweeping the wreckage. The second walked out beside it in a dapper EVA suit, immaculate, not a speck of dust on him. He stopped at the edge of the ramp, looked over the burned wreck of our ship, and raised one gloved hand in greeting.
Dapper.
