His teeth clacked together as the pod sliced its way through the atmosphere toward the surface of the planet. The planet didn’t have a name yet because they had been busy mapping the asteroid belt, however the name of the planet wasn’t on Kalor’s mind. The blood in his mouth was distracting his thoughts outside of the pod.
The sound was amazingly loud inside the insulated pod. The chutes deployed and Kalor felt his body slam into the harness. Then he felt the descent slide into a controlled descent. Kalor activated the pod control AI with a toggle switch inside his helmet.
“Landing location!” Kalor shouted, with the bone conducting receiver on his jaw a whisper would have been detected. With the adrenaline pumping through his veins whispering wasn’t something he was currently capable of doing. The pod was still streaking toward the planet's surface at incredible speed.
“Landing software has been overridden by jamming equipment. I’m unable to take back control of the landing sequence.” The pod AI continued. “Trajectory of landing sequence is towards the signal. The source of the signal is on the display.”
Kalor had time for a curse before his pod hit the ground. He felt his head swing backward, then he lost consciousness.
Kalor woke up inside the pod which was upright and intact. He flipped a toggle switch inside his helmet and the body harness released. Double vision plagued him as he made his way to the main computer. He typed in his authorization code and the interface came to life on the wall of the pod. He tried to turn the emergency distress signal on but a notification popped up that the signal was being jammed.
“Useless pile of-” Kalor leaned sideways against the wall and slid to the floor. Adrenalin was still racing through his veins, however he was aware that his ship of over five hundred passengers had just been gutted by some kind of ship killer missile. Many of his friends and many families were burning up as the ship fell toward the planet. Perhaps others made it to their life pods, and maybe many had made it out of the ship alive. He decided to lay there a while and after a time he passed out on the floor of his life pod.
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A pair of eyes watched from the surface of the planet at the life pod falling towards his beacon. If he’d programmed the thing correctly the pod would land right atop the beacon. The Dynasty life pod fell exactly where he intended, and he made camp outside of the pod, no sense in poking his head inside, some trigger happy asshat might see an opportunity for target practice. No, he would make camp outside the pod and wait for the single being to exit.
He was taken aback by how little the Dynasty life pods had changed in the time since his had crashed on this very planet. The pod looked almost identical to his all those years ago. His had been taken back to the village and he’d turned it into a home.
The pod cracked open and a young man dragged himself out. He apparently forgot to deploy the stairs and dropped a few feet down into the dirt. He sat up dazed and propped himself up on an elbow. He most likely had a concussion, that much was clear by his behavior.
He had time to set up his tent and make a fire before the newcomer collected his wits. The coffee had been brewed on the small burner over the flame. The stage had been set for his story to be presented and deciphered. He took a sip of his coffee and arranged his thoughts.
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Kalor woke up feeling warmth on one side of his body. He heard the sound of burning wood crackling, it was a sound he distinctly remembered from his childhood. His father had taken him on a hike into the mountains of Mairobi for a weekend. The view of the stars from the clearing on the top of the mountain was majestic. His father had told him that their people had come from the stars, that Kalors grandfather was the captain of the colony ship that had delivered them from the dark depths of the emptiness between the stars.
Kalor very well remembered the crackle of burning wood and the hearty smell that rose from it’s flame. He opened his eyes and saw the stars, it was something he’d not seen in a very long time. It brought him back to the mountain on Mairobi in that clearing learning things that mustn't be forgotten.
“You awake yet?” A voice asked, it was a voice that was old and tired. “Ya been sleeping for a while.”
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“Where am I?” Kalor asked, his voice horse from the smoke he’d inhaled during his escape to the life pod. He ignored for the moment the strangeness of the voice. He had no idea who had asked him this question but the where outweighed the who in the current moment.
“That ain’t important right now,” The old voice answered, “Why you’re here is much more interesting.” There was a twinkle in the voice, holding some secret within the words. “Why’d your ship come here, I already know what happened and how it happened. But why’d the Dynasty send a ship into the unknown again.” The old man's question seemed disdainful and harboring a deeper meaning.
Kalor rolled onto his side and pulled his legs under himself. He sat on his feet with his knees in the cold dirt. The camp was spartan in simplicity and typical of an outlander. The old man however was what stole Kalor’s attention, he looked to be the oldest man he'd ever seen. The old man had spoken of the Dynasty as known thing, something he’d been familiar with perhaps.
“This system isn’t on our maps.” Kalor knew it was a lame attempt to hide his knowledge of the Dynasty. He chalked it up to a possible concussion he most likely suffered in his crash to the planet. “This system hasn’t been mapped by anyone in the galaxy.” He saw a change in the old mans posture, it was slight but he thought he noticed a change.
“It ain’t on the map because Dynasty don’t want it on the map. If this system were known, it’d take one pioneer with a freighter and the Dynasty would collapse.” There was hardness in the old mans voice, certainness of the words he spoke.
“Who are you?” Kalor asked, suddenly very interested in the old man. Who was he and how had he found the pod. Why was he telling Kalor this and why was this system so important. There were so many questions he had, and very few answers he had received.
Suddenly it began to rain, the water droplets came down fat and heavy like a wet blanket they shrouded the camp in seconds. The old man pulled an unseen staff from behind him, it looked to be made of bone with intricate geometric carvings covering its length. There was a cube at the top of the staff sitting inverted atop the staff pulsing with a dull blue glow. It was also decorated by carvings but was not made of the same material. It was a matte black with a glow coming from inside like a tormented lamp post. He lifted the staff slightly and struck the ground with it. A yellowish glow rose from the cube and stretched upwards and then outward forming a dome. The rain rolled off of the dome as it expanded outward to cover the entire camp. When it halted expanding it had covered Kalor and the man's tent.
Kalor looked up at the translucent shield holding back the rainfall. It unnerved him to see starship level tech displayed on the end of a walking stick. It took the reactor power of a starship to project that type of shielding. The technology had never before scaled to that size, only to the size of a luxury ultra-yacht that the elites sailed through stars with
“My people gave me the title of Daigensui-Kaigun-taishō, long time ago, you know what that means kid?” The old man asked with dark eyes. “It means Emperor, and I lead the Dynasty through its darkest hour. I was there on the ground at Trynard, I fought above Argust in the battle of the Twins.” His eye’s softened, “It means Emperor. I created the Dynasty from two colony ships that were barely holding together at the end of the journey. We set out to reach Tau Ceti,” The old man looked into the fire as he dragged out the memories from the far reaches of his mind. “Days after we launched an engine malfunctioned. I think it was a Sunday, but it was all hands on deck for weeks, and that’s just the first of a long list of problems.” The old military man chuckled. “We were in for a rough ride, that’s what I was thinking at the time, but we kept turning the wrenches, and we was always days away from catastrophic failure.” He took a sip of his nutty brew.
“When we finally made it to our destination,” The old man took a deep breath and exhaled shakily. “We had to set down on the moon ‘cuz we was in bad shape, I mean duct tape and a prayer, that was what we were running on before the landing.”
The strange old man sat like a master storyteller, his steaming cup in one hand and gripping the staff unconsciously tight. Gripped it while he remembered some ages long lost memory. Remembering the past with excruciating detail.
“After we got ahead of the problems, well that was when the eggheads started receiving a signal from the planet. They were all kinds of excited about that, but the technicians and mechanics had questions. We got ignored by the smarter folks aboard the Korean ship. The American ships crew weren’t much help either, they wanted to ‘investigate’ with orbital strikes.”
Kalor listened intently, he’d switched his helmet recorder on when the old man started telling his tale, but the recorder was forgotten. Too much knowledge of accurate description was being delivered over the camp fire for this man to be full of it. His claim that he was the Emperor though, extraordinary proof was required for a claim like that to be verified.
“We investigated the signal and found an automated beacon of unknown origin sending it out in waves. Days of looking at the thing and the best the science team came up with was it wasn’t human tech.” The old man that called himself Emperor smiled. “I coulda told them that just by looking at it. The thing was twenty feet tall and one foot wide, we found our first monolith.”
The old man continued, taking another sip, “That’s what started the war. The Barzaan waited twenty years, their colony was ten light years away, then they slipped into our colony system with those nasty FTL Springs. They took everything, and we lost all our records. Navigation information and the Korean tech that the eggheads used to launch new research projects. All of it was stolen by the Barzaan, followed by a thousand years of war.” The old man looked into the fire remembering it all. He looked older somehow, like the story had aged him another thousand years.
“How old are you?” Kalor asked the first question that he thought of.
“Older than the Dynasty.” The old man said. “I’m the guy that set the first foot on the moon in Tau Ceti off the Ark. You’re the first guy to set foot on Old Earth in almost fifteen hundred years. Welcome home young man.