On a divided dust moon, a salvage-security team enters a silent refinery canyon city to recover its black-box core.

Gray particulate dust infiltrates suit seals, machines, pods, and bodies, using micro-abrasion to turn dead men into walking chassis.

Static storms cut comms, glass dust scours every surface, and each sealed system begins to fail from the seams inward.

When the black-box extraction carries the contamination into the dropship, the mission stops being salvage and becomes containment.

This is “Hostile Dust” by Sascha Schmidt.