Year 00
The signal was detected.
It came from a system no survey had catalogued, repeating on a band nobody still used. It had been running long before anyone was listening.
Year 01
The first ship arrived.
Fifty-one aboard. They found atmosphere, gravity within tolerance, and structures that were not theirs.
Year 02
Contact was lost.
Eleven months of transmissions, then nothing. What returned to the relay afterward was not in any language on file.
Year —
And that was only the beginning.
The Discovery
Colony Zero was never charted. It was answered. The signal gave coordinates and nothing else: no greeting, no warning, no terms.
The expedition that followed it was funded quietly and launched without announcement, on the assumption that whoever arrived second would arrive too late.
The World
A cold planet under a fractured moon, ringed by the debris of something that came apart in orbit long ago. The light is wrong. Instruments drift.
The ground holds. That has been enough.
The Colony
Explorers who map what the surveys missed. Commanders who decide what is worth the cost. Survivors who were here before the current roster and do not discuss it.
Every inhabitant is on the register. Every one of them is part of the colony.
The Mission
Hold the landing site. Extend the perimeter. Recover what the first expedition left behind and find out what reached them.
The Unknown
The structures predate the landing. The signal has not stopped. Nobody has explained either.
Further records remain sealed.