Kali stepped off the ship, his boots hitting the alloy platform with a faint echo. The air in the port was dense with the scent of coolant, spice-smoke, and bodies compressed into metal corridors and artificial gravity.
Before leaving the hangar, he paused at a terminal, transferred a sum of credits, and paid the docking fees.
Beyond the threshold, the port opened up like a breathing lung, massive, bustling, and chaotic. The Caladrian Promenade, as the port was formally called, was a vast concourse woven with moving walkways, market stalls, docking gantries, and embassies suspended in modular towers.
The place was teeming with life. Every species Kali could imagine, and many he couldn't, moved with hurried purpose or lingering curiosity.
The Rusa made up the majority here. From a distance, they could pass for human, though closer inspection revealed their subtleties: slender frames, slightly elongated limbs, sharp-pointed ears, and eyes with faint, iridescent flecks, residues of some ancient genetic refinement. They moved with quiet grace, efficient and proud.
Next to them were members of a towering, four-armed species, walking with a rolling gait that suggested weight and confidence. Their four eyes blinked asynchronously, each one independently tracking movement. Their skin ranged from pale gray to deep forest green, textured like burnished stone. He didn't know their name, but he'd seen them referred to as Vrohlites in older datasets, long-lived, militaristic, fiercely hierarchical.
Then came the aquatic ones, tall, willowy beings with pale blue skin, gill-laced necks, and limbs that moved like water. Their eyes were wide, black, and reflective. Their voices, when heard, carried a fluid resonance, almost like a song. They moved slowly, deliberately, their moisture-retention suits gleaming with condensation. The datapad had called their kind the Myrsians, deep-space navigators and hydro-engineers.
Kali took a few steps into the crowd, trying to adapt to the flow, the noise, the alien sensory overload.
Then a voice cut through the din. "Goodday, sir! You in need of a guide?"
He turned. A small Rusa boy, perhaps no older than ten, stood beside him. His clothing was patched but clean, and his eyes, those shimmering, luminous eyes, watched Kali with a mixture of curiosity and calculation.
Kali looked down at him, surprised, but not unkind. "I suppose I do," he said in nigh perfect caelinth, adjusting the strap of his shoulder-satchel. "Where do you think I could find a starchart?"
Of course, it didn't matter which language he used because the talismanic strip would translate the intent of his words to the hearer in their own language. But, it was better to stay off English, just incase someone remembered. To be honest, the chances were slim, how could a language survive millions of years into the future, even Rizen didn't speak English, but he had insisted. So, Kali had learnt caelinth, a dialect tongue of the Rusa.
The boy's face lit up.
"Easy! Navigation vendors are on the third ring, west concourse. But if you want the good stuff, the old star trails, deep vault routes, or forbidden zones, you'll need to talk to the Guilds. I know the spots." He gestured with a quick hand flourish, clearly practiced.
Kali gave a small smile. "Alright then, lead the way."
The boy nodded enthusiastically and took off at a jog, weaving through the crowd with the confidence of someone born here. Kali followed, still half-processing the alien grandeur of Caladrian.
The boy darted ahead with quick, nimble steps, turning every few paces to make sure Kali was still following.
They slipped into a moving walkway that carried them across the lower concourse, past glowing shopfronts, mech-repair stalls, and food carts advertising everything from oxygenated algae cakes to flame-roasted skybeast.
"Name's Lio, by the way," the boy said, skipping backward a few steps before turning again. "You new to Caladrian?"
"You could say that," Kali replied, his eyes scanning the thrumming architecture around them. "I'm from... farther out."
Lio grinned. "Farther out's a good place to be from. Keeps you interesting."
They passed beneath a hanging holosign reading NEBULA NAVIGATION GUILD – THIRD RING ACCESS, and Lio motioned them off the walkway, weaving them into a side stairwell lit by dim, copper-blue lights.
"You got business with the starcharts?" Lio asked as they climbed. "Looking to travel? Or just curious?"
Kali considered for a moment. "A bit of both."
Lio shrugged and kept climbing. "Well, if you're chasing ghosts, you'll want Guild access for sure. The standard maps won't cut it. You'll need archive permissions. Could be expensive."
Kali smiled faintly. "I've been told worse."
They emerged into the third ring, a corridor arcing with the gentle curve of the station's outer hull. Transparent panels offered views of deep space, where a silver-fringed moon drifted against the burning blue of the star beyond. Market stalls clung to the walls like barnacles, and a crowd buzzed between them.
Lio raised his voice over the din. "That's Rasik's Corner, where the chart-sellers work. You've got guild vendors, independents, and a few black-channel runners if you're desperate."
Kali gave him a sidelong glance. "Who's do reckon I go to?"
The boy gave a satisfied nod, happy to help. "Alright. Then you'll want to speak to Tavrek. He keeps the weird charts. Stuff most folk don't have."
"Where do I find him?"
"Right through that alley," Lio pointed. "Third stall on the left. Smells like engine grease and root tea. You'll know it."
Kali nodded, pinging the boy a few credits from his bracelet. "You've been helpful."
Lio beamed with joy, checking his own bracelet. "Thanks sir."
And with that, the boy vanished into the crowd like smoke in air, leaving Kali standing alone at the mouth of a shadowed corridor, where the unknown waited patiently.
Kali stepped into the narrow alley Lio had pointed out. The light dimmed instantly, the buzz of the promenade falling away behind him like a closing curtain. The corridor curved slightly, barely lit by a strip of failing luminescence along the ceiling. A tangy, metallic smell filled the air, mixed with something herbaceous.
He passed two closed stalls. The third was half-open, with a tangle of dangling wires and softly humming lenses marking its threshold.
Inside, the space was cluttered with strange equipment. Maps etched on crystalline slates hovered in low orbit around a central gravity core. Starfields rotated within dusty holospheres. And behind a counter of cracked synthwood, a hunched figure sat, nursing a steaming cup of black liquid.
He looked up.
Tavrek was not Rusa, nor any of the common Caladrian species. His skin was a dusky silver, threaded with pale blue veins that pulsed softly beneath the surface. His eyes were wide and milky, but not blind, on the contrary, they flicked to Kali with immediate precision.
"You've got the look of someone looking for things that aren't supposed to exist," he said without preamble. His voice was gravel smeared with velvet. "Come in. Don't touch the anything."
Kali entered, cautious but calm. "I'm looking for a planet called Umbriel."
Tavrek set his cup down with slow, deliberate care. The ceramic touched the counter with a muted click, and the steam coiling from its surface twisted between them like the remnants of some half-forgotten ritual.
"Star system and galaxy name?" Tavrek asked
"The Messier Cluster," Rizen's voice whispered directly into his spine, calm and precise. "Star system is Astraeon Reach. Tell him that."
Kali cleared his throat. "Messier Cluster. The system's called Astraeon Reach."
Tavrek blinked once, slowly. Then again, faster, as if sifting through layers of memory.
"Astraeon Reach," he repeated under his breath. "Yes… I've heard that name. But Umbriel?" He shook his head. "The planet itself… no. Don't think I know it."
He stood with a grunt and began rummaging through a storage wall lined with memory-lattices, starmap cores, and slates coded in languages that hadn't been spoken in ten thousand years. With each item he moved, tiny pulses of light flickered in protest, as though reluctant to be disturbed. He then pulled out a sliver-thin shard of obsidian, its surface etched with shifting constellations. A soft blue glow pulsed at its center, syncing briefly with Kali's heartbeat.
"It'll cost you five thousand creds," Tavrek said evenly, slipping the shard into a slender stasis sleeve.
Kali nearly choked on his own breath. Five thousand? For a map? He blinked hard, trying to keep his face neutral, but the number sank into his gut like a rock. He still had about eleven thousand credits saved from his mercenary days, hard-earned pay scraped together through near-death jobs and double-crosses on Theraxis.
Still, he transferred the amount without flinching. The shard pulsed once in acknowledgment as Tavrek handed it over.
"And if I wanted to journey there?" Kali asked, trying to sound casual, though his voice betrayed the strain.
Tavrek raised an eyebrow, clearly amused. "Well, we are in the Wane Spiral," he said, gesturing lazily toward the spiraling galactic map still rotating in midair. "Intergalactic transport doesn't come cheap, especially not to far off galaxies like the Messier Cluster. You'd need a ticket for ship from the Caladrian Transport Consortium, long-range, high-capacity, with an extended FTL lattice and redundancy drives. Luxury vessels, really. The kind used by traders, diplomats, or warlords."
"So how much would a ticket run me?" Kali asked, though he already sensed the answer would sting.
Tavrek gave a dry chuckle. "One-point-five million creds. Give or take, depending on your cabin class."
Kali went still. His jaw locked, his nostrils flared, and he let out a slow, bitter breath. One-point-five million?
That was enough to buy a gamma-class genome serum. Enough to modify a man into something that could tear through steel and regrow limbs in minutes. Even his shuttle would cost only three hundred thousand creds.
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath, turning on his heel and walking out of the shop. The city lights of the Caladrian port glared around him, crystalline towers humming with energy, ships ascending and descending like falling stars.
Somehow, even here, beyond Theraxis, beyond the rim of anything he'd known, money still ruled everything.
He sighed. "What now?" he asked aloud, more to himself than to anyone else.
Rizen's voice answered inside his nervous system, dry and immediate. "What else? Raise money. We start where you're strongest. Register at the mercenary guild."
Kali scowled. "Back to that life again, huh."