Inside an abandoned space-elevator base on the planet’s night side, a salvage assault team is sent to recover a credential core from the wreckage of a failed tether system.

The base is not dead. Its salvage systems have learned to hunt.

Heat-seeking drones and a disassembly cleaner strip soldiers apart like damaged machinery.

Comms fail, gravity stutters, bulkheads seal behind them, and the cold starts breaking their suits from the outside in.

This is “Kill Radius” by Sascha Schmidt.