Under Alien Suns

The first thing Hawks noticed about the colony world Kairu was the sky—a bruise-violet banded with gold, so vivid it could only have been designed by a committee that never saw a real sunset. The air tasted sharp, thin, and full of floating pollen that stuck to his reservation jacket. Nothing smelled like home. They had landed close to what the System called 'the Human Settlement,' but even from orbit, Song Ching’s calculations had been uncertain. Master System liked its secrets. Now, walking down the polymer ramp, Hawks watched a group of colonists approach: tall, long-limbed men and women, their skin shimmery with bioengineered pigment, loose tunics woven from local fibers. One waved warily—a signal neither greeting nor challenge. Cloud Dancer pressed close to his shoulder, her eyes wide. "Are they truly people?" she whispered. "Or something else wearing our faces?" "Both," Song Ching replied quietly, moving with a grace that belied her tension. "Master System adapted their bodies for this gravity, that sun. But they remember—names, some words. The rest... we’ll have to ask." Manka Warlock scanned the horizon with practiced eyes. "We keep Raven at your back," she murmured to Hawks. "System outposts here run on old protocols. Security’s just as old." Raven grunted, a hand barely brushing the gun hidden beneath his jacket. "Old or not, they see us first." The colonists stopped a dozen paces away. Their leader—a woman with coppery skin and eyes too reflective for comfort—spoke in careful Standard. "Travelers, you are not from this sky. Why does the System let you come?" Song Ching stepped forward, her voice gentle but unyielding. "We seek knowledge lost to Earth. There are five rings—" The woman’s lips pressed thin. "Rings are forbidden. Our children are forbidden even to speak of Earth. Why do you risk us?" Cloud Dancer met her gaze. "Because the System has not made us forget. Not yet." There was a pause—a shimmer of pollen in the air, a horizon trembling with heat. Then the colonist leader beckoned. "We will show you what remains. But you must understand: here, the price of memory is higher than you know." They followed, boots and moccasins crunching on alien grass, into a settlement half recognizable—houses with roofs pitched for the world’s strange storms, gardens of edible ferns, children’s laughter warbling in a dialect twisted by a century of adaptation. Inside, the crew saw family altars mixing Earth’s old tokens—beaded necklaces, prayer strips—with artifacts made from local stone and resin. At every threshold, a ring was painted in ochre: forbidden, a reminder and a warning. Hawks felt the ache of almost-recognition, the ache of exile. "We can’t ask them to risk everything." Song Ching watched a child trace the forbidden ring in dust. "But if we don’t—Master System will erase even this." Night fell, a deeper blue than any Earth night. Around a central fire, the leader knelt, holding something small and gold. Not a ring, but a key. She placed it in Hawks’s palm. "One memory for your journey. One promise: do not let us be the last to remember." Stars rose—different stars, under the same old fear. The crew slept uneasy, between what had been given and what must be risked.

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