The ship was called Kaleid-One—a name pulled from the old tongue, a word once used to describe shifting mirrors and forgotten light. It wasn't a warship, or a scout, or even a standard survey craft. It was an old exploration-class vessel, recommissioned in silence for a journey no one was supposed to notice.
It had room for five.
Lu'Ka was alone.
He stepped through the central corridor with measured steps, boots echoing lightly against the composite floor. The air was warm, filtered, clean with the faint scent of recycled eucalyptus. The artificial gravity was light but familiar, tuned to mimic the Academy's internal balance fields. Subtle comfort, designed for long-term sanity.
The ship had been meant for deep-space science teams. Five workstations. A full med-bay. Expanded storage. A pressure-adjusted arboretum pod—empty now, its plants long removed but the lights still on, casting green-gold shadows on the metal.
Lu'Ka had left the extra bunks untouched.
Let them remain.
Not as ghosts—but as reminders.
This ship was built for many. And now it carries one.
He entered the command deck—circular, domed, its ceiling a full viewport that gave him unbroken sight of the stars. Not the ones they charted. Not the ones people named.
Just light, deep and wild.
The nav systems projected his locked drift corridor—interweaving pulses across gravity wells and ancient stellar debris. No patrols. No signals. Just the corridor toward Dakun.
A red dot blinked in the center of the map like a heartbeat.
He exhaled. "Begin drift initialization. Full automation."
"Confirmed," the ship's AI replied. "FTL field charging. Velocity build in progress."
He took his seat—not the pilot's chair, but the one beside it. The captain's chair, empty on most voyages. But this was his.
As the Kaleid-One began to hum, Lu'Ka sat alone in the vessel meant for five, watching the stars stretch thin into silence.
Time lost its edge after the fourth day.
The Kaleid-One glided through folded space like a thought unspoken, its FTL drift corridor threading between gravitic anomalies with programmed precision. No outside light penetrated the corridor. The view was a blur of warped starlines—motion without context, like sailing through a painting undone by wind.
Lu'Ka followed a routine. Not because he had to—but because he feared what would happen without it.
Wake. Hygiene. Morning diagnostic. Nutrient prep.
He had three meal slots, spaced across ship time. He ate in silence, sitting near the viewport, watching the stars flicker in ways no natural sky would ever allow.
After meals, came study.
The central databank was filled with classified archives—most of them acquired unofficially. Lu'Ka spent hours parsing through old xenoarchaeological reports: dead civilizations, unidentified ruins, inexplicable anomalies. Glyphs from no known species. Fragments of pre-contact tech sealed beneath atmospheres no one had dared to explore since.
He made notes. Theories. Cross-references.
No conclusions.
He would pause sometimes, sipping warm water, and glance at the crew stations. Five work pods, polished, unused. He never powered them on. They were placeholders for people who weren't here—people who might have kept the silence at bay.
In the evenings, he exercised. Thirty minutes of low-grav resistance work. Then a shower, a dry suit, a moment of stillness in the dimmed arboretum.
He kept a log. Not for publication, but for himself. A record of thought. Of time. Of the slow, deliberate weight of traveling somewhere the universe had chosen to forget.
Ten weeks to go.
And each day, Dakun pulsed closer—its name silent on the nav screen, but undeniable in his mind.
By the tenth week, the silence had changed.
It wasn't louder. Just… heavier.
Lu'Ka noticed it in the way the ship's systems responded—slightly more delayed, as if they too felt the gravity of where they were going. The Kaleid-One had begun pre-deceleration sequences, pulling itself gradually from FTL drift into sublight navigation. The final trajectory corrections had initiated.
Arrival was close.
He stood before the central console, watching the real-space projection unfold. Dakun didn't appear on any open navigation grid. It had to be fed in manually, verified through Council-locked coordinates stored on his encrypted clearance module.
Now it hovered there.
Unmistakable.
A red-orange planet, banded by dry winds, its surface crawling with dunes like scars across ancient skin. No moons. No satellites. No orbital debris.
Just a forgotten world waiting under too many layers of myth.
Lu'Ka checked his systems for the fiftieth time—power reserves, oxygen levels, shield modulation, scanner arrays. The ship's hull integrity read perfect. The med bay was stocked. The descent gear preloaded.
But preparation wasn't just mechanical.
He returned to the ship's observation deck, sat in silence, and recorded one final log.
> "Final phase. Deceleration entering second curve. Dakun within range. Signal strength consistent. No interference detected. Mission objective unchanged."
A long pause.
"But the question remains… what do I do if I'm not alone?"
He didn't answer himself.
Instead, he reviewed his suit's atmospheric readings. Scanned for seismic activity. Pre-calibrated the ship's environmental threshold, in case a rapid evac became necessary.
As he sealed his field kit, he placed the small, unreadable artifact into the pouch against his chest.
Just in case the planet remembered what he was.
Just in case it recognized him.
The Kaleid-One drifted closer.
And Dakun waited, quiet as bone..