Chapter Text
Keith was not the first to arrive on the distant moon orbiting the massive, turbulent gas giant in this system. His ship descended quickly through the thin, cloudless atmosphere as golden arcs of sunlight crested the mountainous horizon in the distance. The battlecruisers hovering overhead paid him no heed. It was morning, now, and the nearby dwarf-star bathed the swirling, stormy planet that dominated the skyline in its warm light - light that reflected back down onto the moon’s surface, casting dual shadows as a slender vessel skimmed along its surface.
Down into the wide, empty valley he flew, past the deep ravine born of some geological catastrophe and deepened by old mining projects. Keith noticed himself holding his breath as he crossed the divide; soaring over the deep trench as golden sunlight fell into its depths, illuminating its vast expanse, and the refinery at the bottom.
And then he was there. The foot of the mountains. The Old Kingdom. His ship touched down on the cracked and faded remnants of an old landing pad, kicking up tufts of dry dust from the disused tarmac.
The whole mountain range was a city. All around him, buildings shorn out of steep hills and jagged cliff-faces, peppered with tiny landing pads and outdated technological artifice, reached into the clouds above and down into the depths of the ravine.
This was a busy city, once. Now, simply a remnant of its former glory.
A quick bioscan revealed only two plants dominating the surrounding ecosystem. A bright red-ochre grass, tough and weedlike sprouted between the cracks of old infrastructure. It spilled out of the meadows into this old city, growing where it pleased, choking the old rail-lines and slowly taking back nature for itself.
The other flora were tall red trees with thick stumps that crested into long, willowy branches swaying in the thin atmosphere. Red leaves fell to the ground from wayward saplings that twisted up, out of cracks in the concrete. They piled up in red mounds around old statues and kiosks. If the landscape around him wasn’t gray rock or dull metal, it was red.
From what he’d been told of its grand history, Keith had expected something much different. Truthfully, this wasn’t much to look at.