What is build and what approaches

CHAPTER 1 — What Is Built and What Approaches

Year 2106
Zekra never fully slept.
Its purple atmosphere with turquoise mists remained the same as always. But the cities that inhabited it were no longer the same as six years ago. The black constructions with yellow details had grown. The streets had light. The markets had movement. People walked without looking at the sky in fear.
That was new.
That was Zarpon.
And in part... it was them.
---
🟡 Marek
Zekra's northern border zone was the most conflictive area on the planet. Rough terrain. Little natural surveillance. The kind of place where crime—which had grown during colonization—had found refuge when the cities began to organize.
Marek knew this.
That's why he was here.
His dark blue armor absorbed the little light that filtered through the low, deteriorated buildings of the sector. The red K on the center of his chest was the first thing people saw when he appeared. By then, it was usually too late for those who had something to hide.
Three figures ran through a dark alley.
Marek didn't run. He took one step forward.
The yellow aura ignited around his fists. Dense. Controlled. No flickering.
The three figures stopped cold.
One tried to turn.
Marek appeared in front of him before he could complete the movement. A precise strike to the shoulder. No energy. Just technique. The man fell to his knees.
The other two raised their hands.
Behind Marek, two zekran guards arrived at a jog. Black armor with gold details. Breathing hard. They had run several minutes to get here.
"Thanks," one said, cuffing the detainees. "We'd been monitoring them for days, but they always managed to slip away."
Marek extinguished his aura.
"The alley at the back has a hidden exit behind the third metal panel. You should seal it."
The guard nodded and took a note.
Marek watched them take the three men away.
He was alone in the alley.
Silence returned. And with it, something that wasn't satisfaction.
He looked at his hands.
Three years of doing this.
It wasn't that it was wrong. It wasn't that Zekra didn't need it. But every time he finished one of these interventions, the feeling that remained wasn't that he had gained something.
It was that he had fulfilled a duty.
Which wasn't the same thing.
---
🌸 Sira
The community center of District Four was the project Sira was most proud of.
It had taken her two years to convince the families in the sector to trust it. Another year to make it run regularly. And the last few months watching how, finally, people started coming on their own, without being invited.
That felt like something earned.
But today she wasn't at the community center.
Today she was in a meeting with three zekran government officials who had been arguing about the budget for forty minutes.
Sira listened with her arms crossed. Her pink armor with the red K on her chest was visually incongruous in the administrative room. She knew it. She didn't care.
"The problem," one of the officials said for the third time, "is that the southern sector's resources are already committed."
"I know," Sira replied with measured patience. "That's why I'm not asking for resources from the southern sector. I'm asking you to redistribute the surplus from the central sector. It's been six months without being used."
An uncomfortable silence.
"That would require approval from—"
"I know." Sira placed a sheet of paper with signatures on the table. "I already have it."
The three officials looked at each other.
Sira waited. Not anxiously. With the same patience she had learned: administrative battles are won with documentation, not with energy.
Finally, the central official nodded.
"We'll proceed."
Sira gathered her papers.
"Thank you."
She left the room and walked into the outer corridor. Zekra's purple sky stretched above her.
She took out a small notebook and crossed off one line from a long list.
Seventeen items remained.
She sighed.
Seventeen.
---
🔬 Arlo
The workshop Arlo had set up in Zekra's technological district was, objectively, the messiest place on the planet.
That wasn't an exaggeration. Zarpon had visited once, looked inside for exactly four seconds, and left without saying a word. That said everything.
Arlo didn't see disorder. He saw a system.
Every cable on the floor had a function. Every component stacked on another was in that order for a reason. Every lit screen showed something he was processing simultaneously.
Today he was working on Zekra's inter-district communication system. The network Zarpon needed to coordinate his forces without relying on centralized infrastructure.
An elegant problem.
Arlo appreciated it as a problem.
What he didn't appreciate was that he'd been at it for three weeks and the solution was still partial.
"All right," he murmured to himself. "The secondary node can't depend on the primary if the primary fails. So I need lateral redundancy, not vertical..."
He took a component from the box his father had given him six years ago.
There were still pieces left.
He looked at them for a moment.
He thought of his father. Of the lab on Earth. Of Taka.
He looked back at the screen.
Lateral redundancy.
He connected the component.
The network flickered. Then it stabilized.
Arlo leaned back in his chair.
"There it is."
No one heard him.
The workshop was empty except for him.
And for the first time in weeks, that weighed on him a little more than usual.
---
🌑 Germon
The intelligence room of the trinita fortress had no windows.
It didn't need them.
The walls were screens. Galactic maps. Navigation routes. Fleet movement records. Data from hundreds of planets and systems, updating in real time.
Germon stood in the center of the room. Motionless.
The informant knelt before him. He wasn't a common soldier. He was part of the empire's silent intelligence unit. Those who appeared in no official records. Those Germon used when he needed to know something without anyone knowing he wanted to know it.
"Speak," Germon said.
The informant activated a hologram from his wrist.
Zekra appeared. The purple planet with turquoise mists. But different from how Germon remembered it. Much more different.
"Sir. The compiled analysis of the last six years confirms the following." The informant pointed to several points on the hologram. "Zekra has developed its own national symbols. Anthem. Flag. Coat of arms. None of these elements were present during the colonization."
Germon didn't speak.
"Their security forces no longer respond to trinita protocols. They have an autonomous command structure. Their technological systems have advanced significantly beyond what the colonization's initial resources would justify."
A pause.
"We estimate they have been operating as a de facto independent state for five to six years. No formal declaration. No communication. No direct provocation."
Germon's silence was different from other men's. It wasn't the silence of someone processing. It was the silence of someone who had already processed and was now deciding.
"How did we not detect this before?" he asked. His voice was utterly flat.
The informant didn't hesitate.
"The scale of the empire, sir. We administer hundreds of planets across multiple galaxies. Zekra is the only colony in a parallel universe. Dimensional distance slows supervision cycles. Our satellites sent signals within normal parameters because the zekrans learned to operate just below the alert threshold."
"Smart," Germon murmured.
It wasn't a compliment. It was an observation.
"And the Kratar?"
The informant changed the hologram. The cave. The third layer. The empty pedestal.
"Stolen, sir. The pedestal has been empty for some time. The soldiers guarding the entrance were neutralized non-lethally approximately six years ago. It coincides with the start of Zekra's de facto independence."
Germon stared at the empty pedestal for several seconds.
"Who has it?"
"Unknown. But there are indications that those responsible were not zekran. The neutralization methods and the residual energy traces do not correspond to zekran technology or biology."
"Then?"
"Outsiders, sir. Possibly from the Kratar's universe of origin."
Germon processed that. The Kratar had been stolen by outsiders. Zekra had become independent the same year.
"Not a coincidence," Germon said.
"No, sir."
"The Kratar had something to do with Zekra's independence."
"It's the most logical hypothesis, sir."
Germon turned off the hologram with a wave of his hand. The room was left with only the light from the galactic maps.
"I don't know the Kratar completely," he said quietly. "What I know is enough to know it's dangerous. I've never been interested in magic. I don't consider it necessary for what I want. But I know that in the wrong hands, it can destabilize any power structure we've built."
He turned slowly toward the informant.
"Zekra broke the rules." His voice remained flat, but something shifted in his tone. Something minimal. Almost imperceptible. "They broke them in silence. Without declaration. Without direct confrontation. As if they knew we couldn't respond immediately."
The informant didn't reply. There was nothing to reply.
"That," Germon continued, "cannot go unanswered. Not because of Zekra itself. But because if other colony planets find out..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
He turned to the galactic maps.
"Prepare a reconquest fleet. Discreet. No announcements. I want to be over Zekra before they know we're coming."
"And the Kratar, sir?"
Germon looked at the space where the hologram had been.
"The Kratar is in this parallel universe. If those responsible for the theft were outsiders and made it to Zekra... it means they have a way to travel between planets." A pause. "Which means the Kratar is on the home planet of those agents."
His light blue eyes gleamed with calculated coldness.
"We retake Zekra first. And from there... we find the Kratar."
The informant nodded and withdrew.
Germon was alone in the intelligence room. He looked at the maps. Hundreds of planets. Dozens of galaxies. An empire built with decades of precision. Power centralized to an extreme.
And a single colony in a parallel universe that had decided, silently, that the rules didn't apply to them.
Germon wasn't a man driven by emotion. Or so it seemed. But what he felt now had a name he rarely recognized in himself.
Rage.
Contained. Calculated. But rage.
"Zekra," he said quietly, as if the name itself were a promise. "It won't last long for them."
And he began to move.


END OF CHAPTER 1