Screaming Metal

Priyanka and the crew of the Alley Cat are "junk-mercs," for-hires specializing in finding Metal braincores -- rare, non-functioning alien AIs. On a job in the depths of a starship junkyard on Shake Hands, a frontier planet of colonists eschewing in outsiders and technology, they receive detailed coordinates for their latest job... apparently from the braincore itself. Soon after, they are attacked...

"Screaming Metal" is a Twitter novella (31,000 words) written in microfiction format (25 words or less per "paragraph") partially posted on Twitter in 2015 and Vocal in 2017-2018.

Inspired by works like Makoto Kobayashi's Dragon's Heaven, Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series, and the wildly imaginative adult-level reader (but not adult content) stories within Heavy Metal Magazine among others. At its core, "Screaming Metal" is action adventure sci-fi set on a distant planet in the far future, featuring sentient AI mecha of a mysterious alien origin.