The stealth pod detached from the Arbor, slipping silently into the thin, manufactured atmosphere of Khatia. Its heat-resistant hull flared briefly as it broke through the upper layers, but the specialized coating rapidly dispersed the energy, making the craft nearly undetectable to K'tharr sensors. Every movement was precise, calculated, following a descent vector mapped out with obsessive accuracy. There could be no mistakes.
Khatia stretched below them, vast and unyielding—a planet sculpted by logic, stripped of randomness. Towers of polished metal rose in perfect symmetry, their surfaces gleaming under the pale glow of an artificial sky. There were no oceans here, no forests, no rivers cutting through the land. Nothing had grown naturally. Everything had been built, programmed into existence by a civilization that saw organic chaos as something to be eradicated. It was a place where nature had never been allowed to take root, where life was forced into rigid obedience.
The pod touched down in a desolate sector far from the empire's main strongholds. As the hatch released with a slow, pressurized hiss, the crew stepped into the silent expanse of Khatia's lower district.
Emma led the way, weapon steady at her side, eyes sweeping across the gleaming structures with measured calculation. The air carried a metallic taste, sterile and filtered, engineered to serve function over comfort. It was unsettling—not because it was hostile, but because it felt too precise, too intentional.
Aisha Rahman, the team's xenobiologist, turned in place, scanning the environment around them. Her fingers hovered over her data pad, but the readings it provided did nothing to settle her growing unease.
"This place is wrong," she murmured, voice barely audible.
Ethan Reyes kept his rifle raised, gaze shifting across the structures that loomed above them.
"This isn't a planet," he muttered. "It's a machine pretending to be one."
Emma didn't respond immediately. She watched the slow pulse of energy moving beneath their feet, the rhythmic hum of unseen mechanisms stretching deep into the core of the world itself. This wasn't just a civilization built on technology. It was an entity designed to replace everything else.
She tightened her grip on her weapon.
"Then let's break it."
The team moved cautiously through Khatia's corridors, threading between towering metallic structures, their footsteps light against the polished ground. The architecture was meant to direct movement, to funnel travelers through predetermined paths with no room for deviation. Every doorway, every panel, every flickering light held purpose. They were intruders in a place that did not tolerate unpredictability.
They weren't just fighting for Earth.
They were fighting for something far larger—for the existence of anything uncontrolled, for the survival of life that refused to conform. If the K'tharr succeeded, this world would not be the only one.
And deep within the planet's cold heart, Emperor Magzorha waited.
His designs had shaped Khatia, his command had forged its dominion. He did not see himself as a warlord, nor as a conqueror. He was an architect of absolutes, the force behind a civilization that saw order as the highest form of existence.
Magzorha had never met a force he could not bend.
The crew pressed onward, their presence a flaw in the perfection of Khatia's design. Soon, they would reach the point where Magzorha resided.
And when they did, he would not treat them as enemies.
He would treat them as an error to be corrected.