A Thousand Years

Hanzo turned to face where the timid voice had come from. Takeda stood staring at his scanners, shivering slightly, his spacesuit clearly not giving him as much protection from the cold as intended. This entire planet was nothing but ice and snow, and Hanzo had to admit, even with the added protection, it was still a bit chilly.

“This planet is meant to be uninhabited, right?” He asked, glancing from the scanner to Hanzo.

“It is an uninhabited planet, yes.” Hanzo shared a glance with the two other crew members. Both looked as perplexed as Hanzo felt.

“It’s just… I’m picking up two extra life signs.”

Hanzo’s head snapped over to Takeda before he strode toward the young man. He looked at the scanner, and just as said, there were two life signs being picked up not too far from where they were. These never came up on their initial scan of the planet from the main ship. From the scanner it looked like they were extremely faint, which might have been why, but it was still odd.

He looked over in the direction where the signs were coming from. He couldn’t see anything except a mountain in the distance. Still if the scanner was right and there was something or someone alive on this planet, they had to check it out.

He clicked his commlink with the ship back on and stated, “Captain to bridge, we have unexpectedly picked up on life signs, we are going to investigate.”

“Roger that Captain,” the voice said on the other end. Hanzo nodded at the three crew with them, before gesturing for Takeda to lead the way, seeing as he had the scanner.

As they made their way across the barren land, the closer they got to the mountain, the stronger the life signs were getting. Despite the snow, he could make out a structure that definitely wasn’t a natural part of the mountain. There was what looked like a massive archway, made of stone, leading into what appeared to be a cave system.

The four of them paused outside the cave. The arch was very ornate, patterns of strange beasts and shapes carved into it. Clearly there had been some form of life here before. Hanzo looked into the cave, but it was so dark there wasn’t much to see.

“The signs are definitely coming from inside there,” Takeda explained, frowning as he stared into the darkness. “It’s up to you Captain if we continue but given that nothing is supposed to be here I think it’s worth pursuing.”

“Ah yes, the expert opinion of a junior scientist,” one of the other crew, Katashi, sarcastically replied, rolling his eyes as he did. “You’ve not even passed your exams yet.”

“He can only pass his exams by gaining field experience,” Hanzo snapped in return. Katashi’s eyes widened and wore a grimace on his face, knowing he really should not have said that in front of Hanzo. Takeda wasn’t just another crew member after all, he was the son of one of Hanzo’s closest friends. He had a personal duty of care as well as a professional one. “Besides, even without a qualification, I’d put money on him knowing more about science than you do.”

“Yes. Sorry Captain.” Katashi hung his head low. Takeda just looked uncomfortable, the confrontation not something he would want to be involved in.

“I have to agree with Takeda,” the other crewmate, Junpei, added. He either didn’t notice or outright ignored the glare Katashi shot him. “We were under the impression this planet has never had life of any kind on it.” He pointed towards the archway. “That rather implies otherwise.”

Hanzo nodded in agreement, clicking the comms on. “Captain to Bridge, we’ve found a cave we believe the life signs are coming from. We will be going inside, I will keep you updated.”

“Understood Captain. Good luck.”

The four of them slowly began to enter the cave, clicking on the flashlights as they did. It wasn’t much. But it should be enough to help them explore the darkness. The walls on the cave continued the patterns on the archway. Clearly a civilisation had been here at some point. It was strange there were no real signs anywhere else but given the conditions of the planet, it might have been better to live in cave systems.

It wasn’t long until in the darkness, he could see a blue light.

“Hello?” He called out. If there was a light, it was reasonable to assume that's where the life signs were coming from. There was no reply however, no sound of movement either except for a constant dripping sound.

Following the light brought them into what he’d almost describe as a room. There were several blue gems, clearly the source of the light, glowing and brightening the area. Looking around, it almost looked like someone had, at least once upon a time, lived here. There were tables and chairs, discarded plates, and what looked like rather rudimentary technology, all covered in a layer of dust. It seemed no one had been here in a long time.

So where are the life signs coming from?

“The scanner says the signs are coming from this room,” Takeda spoke as if reading Hanzo’s thoughts. “I don’t see anything though?”

Hanzo hummed, slowly strolling around the room. He could hear Takeda and Junpei talking about taking a sample of the crystals, as they were unlike anything else they’d ever seen. There even seemed to be some discussion if it was possible the crystals were the life signs. Hanzo instead chose to take a closer look at the tables and things left behind.

There was one table that was particularly unusual. The main surface of the table was incredibly thick, and almost looked like it was made of metal unlike the others made of stone and wood. As he got closer, he realised the very top was made of glass, and through the dirt, he could see lights just past the glass and something else more solid. He reached forward to brush off some of the dust, only to be met with a shocking discovery.

There was a man's face under the glass.

“Takeda,” Hanzo called as he continued to clear the dust. The man looked mostly human, dark black hair and beard. Except he had slightly pointed ears, and what looked like a scar over his one eye, only for some reason the flesh was blue. His face was completely relaxed, and eyes closed. He didn’t look like he was breathing.

Takeda reached his side, staring wide eyed at the man, before lifting up the scanner. “This is where the life sign is coming from…” His mouth went tight. “Both of them, actually.”

Hanzo continued to wipe the dust away, until around the man's chest where he saw the tips of blue hair. Soon, he revealed another person, this one a little girl laying atop the man's chest. The man had his arms around her, like he was protecting her from something. She also did not appear to be breathing.

“How can they possibly be alive?” Hanzo questioned in a whisper.

“This seems to be a status pod,” Takeda explained. Given how old the rest of the technology looked, it seemed so strange that they would have the ability to create such a complex machine. “They’re both alive, just… frozen in time.”

“But why?” Junpei questioned, leaning over to look at the two figures. “I mean, it looks like this place has been abandoned for a long time, why put these two into status?”

“Maybe he put himself into status for some reason?” Katashi added, the first time he’d talked since Hanzo had scolded him. He was looking at the man with an eyebrow raised.

“We won’t know unless we bring them out of status,” Takeda pointed out, tapping the glass with his finger. “It’d probably be better to transport it to the ship, we can keep a closer eye on their condition that way.”

Hanzo reached to pull out a transporter responder, and made sure it was stuck to the pod. He clicked his comm button again and said “Captain to Bridge, we have found something of interest, I have attached a transporter to it, requesting a teleport to the ship.”

“Affirmative Captain,” the voice on the other end said. “Locking on to the responder now.”

It took a minute, but soon a light emitted from the responder, and suddenly the transporter was gone.

“Bridge to Captain, Teleportation successful.”

“Affirmative, 4 to beam up then,” he commanded.

“On it, Captain.”

Another minute passed by, before Hanzo felt the familiar tingling sensation and the blinding light. He blinked, and next thing he knew, he was standing in the teleporter room, his three crew next to him. The pod was in front of them, a couple of science officers looking at it and whispering.

“Takeda, can you help them take it to the medbay and assist in the waking process?” He asked as he made his way towards the door. “Please contact me when it’s almost complete.”

“I will do Captain.” Takeda saluted before turning his attention to the status pod and began to coordinate its transport.

Hanzo on the other hand, had to go and report this discovery to the Earthrealm command. This was, after all, one of the biggest discoveries since the planet had first begun to reach out to others. The discussion went about how he’d expected. His chain of command had been extremely excited by the news of both a potentially long lost civilisation and the prospect of someone from that civilisation being in status. They requested more investigation into the cave and other surrounding mountains, which Hanzo was more than happy to arrange.

When he got the call from Takeda however, he knew that could wait.

He walked into the medbay, expecting the excited atmosphere to still be lingering. When he entered however, he just found tense silence, and no one seemed to want to make eye contact with him. He felt his heart clench. Did they not survive the revival process?

“Captain,” Akemi greeted, and Hanzo immediately knew something was wrong. She never referred to him by his title, only the ever embarrassing Hanzo-Chan nickname from when they were children.

“What’s happened?” He asked, as Akemi waved him over. “Are they okay?”

“They are fine, not fully awake, but their vitals are strong and they are slowly coming around.” She bit her lip, looking nervous. “But… there is something troubling we’ve found.”

Hanzo watched as she brought up a DNA analysis screen. He personally didn’t understand any of it, but he assumed Akemi was about to fill him in.

“We wanted to see if the man and little girl are biologically related.” She tapped some buttons, two graphics of DNA appeared, a cross section was highlighted with a red box from each. “As you can see, their DNA is a match, the girl is the man’s daughter.” Akemi paused for a long time, staring at the screen rather than Hanzo. She looked like she really did not want to say anymore, but eventually forced out, “however, our systems flagged up a second DNA match for her other parent.”

Hanzo frowned, why would the system come up with another match? They only kept records of the crew's DNA.

… Unless…

“The other parent is someone in the crew?”

Akemi was silent, and clicked another button. Hanzo looked towards the screen and watched as the second DNA match was pointed out. A photograph of the crewmate came up seconds later.

And Hanzo found he was staring at a photo of himself.

“What?” He questioned, mouth agape and feeling a cold sweat overtake him. “How? That's… That’s not possible!”

“We’ve double checked- triple checked even.” Akemi shook her head, rubbing her cheek with her hand. “Every time, it comes back to you.”

Hanzo didn’t know what to say. What could he say? He had never met the man in the pod in his life. So how could this child possibly have his DNA?

Before he and Akemi could talk further, Takeda emerged from another room and stated “he’s starting to come around.”

The questions could wait until later. Right now, he had to go and see if he could get any sense out of this strange man. That’s if the ship's translation systems could even translate what the man was saying.

As he walked into the room, he saw the man was already sitting up, although his head was down and he was swaying slightly. He was clearly disoriented. Hanzo knew how that felt. He’d only been in status once but waking up from it was one of the most uncomfortable moments of his life.

“W-where am I?” The man questioned, voice groggy and lethargic.

“You are on the Starship Shirai Ryu,” Hanzo replied, stepping forward. He noticed the man’s fists clench as his head shot up, glaring at Hanzo with icy blue eyes. “My name is-“

“Hanzo Hasashi,” the man hissed, baring his teeth. Hanzo felt himself falter. Not only did this man know him, he seemed extremely angry at him. “You… You have some nerve.”

“I- Do I know you?” Hanzo asked, genuinely confused.

“Do not play innocent with me!”

The man flung an arm forward, a blue energy being thrown towards Hanzo. He was thrown back against the wall. He heard Akemi and Takeda shout for him. He expected to fall to the ground, yet he didn’t. He just felt a cold creep across his chest. When he looked down, he found he was trapped against the wall by a formation of ice around his torso.

“You don’t get to pretend you don’t know who I am,” the man screamed, arm still outstretched as he leapt off the cot he’d been on. His legs buckled slightly but he did not relent. “You don’t get to act like you didn’t abandon me and-”

His face dropped, like he’d just realised something. His breathing became frenzied, as he frantically looked around the room. The man turned back to them, now not just anger, but outright murder in his eyes.

“Where is she?” He demanded, holding his hand forward. More ice began to engulf Hanzo. “What have you done to her?”

“Your daughter is safe,” Akemi tried to plead, “she is in the other room. We can take you to her, if you just-”

“Why should I trust anyone associated with him?” The man snarled with such venom it was almost terrifying. There was a crack as the ice spread.

“Please, I don’t know what I’ve done, but-” Hanzo was cut off by another growth spurt of ice. “We found you and your daughter in a status pod on an uninhabited planet.”

“W-What? Status…” The man trailed off, retracting his hand. The ice shattered and Hanzo finally fell to the floor. As Takeda and Akemi reached to pull him up, the man asked, “What year is this?”

“4020,” Hanzo stated softly. The man’s eyes widened and he stumbled backwards.

“No, but-” he reached a hand to his head and softly pulled on his hair. “That would be… a thousand years.” So, this man was from the 3000’s? But that didn’t explain how he knew Hanzo, or what anything he just said meant. “How are you alive? Your species don’t live that long.”

“I genuinely do not know what you’re talking about,” Hanzo softly said, taking an experimental step forward to see how it would go.

The man stared at him for a long moment, before he questioned, “you really don’t remember me?” There was a hurt in his eyes as he really studied him. He blinked rapidly, and tilted his head. “You look… Younger than when I first met you.”

Looked younger? “Well… I am 39.”

The man responded by shaking his head, “no, no you were 48 when we met.”

How the hell is that possible? Meeting me at an older age 1000 years in the past? He looked to Takeda and Akemi for an answer but both of them looked bewildered.

He turned back to the man, “what is your name?”

“Kuai Liang,” he replied, looking away and grabbing his wrist with one of his hands. That anger he’d held seemed to have dissipated, leaving only confusion and an aching sadness.

“Kuai Liang, I do not know what is going on, or what I have done to make you so angry,” he began, Kuai seemed to continue to just stare at the wall, “but I promise I’ll figure this out if it’s the last thing I ever do.” Kuai seemed reluctant to believe him, but nodded in agreement. “For now, why don’t we reunite you with your daughter?”

Kuai turned and regarded him. Hanzo could see in his eyes that he was trying to work out if he already knew the child’s heritage. Neither of them said anything about it, but he was certain Kuai could tell Hanzo knew the truth.

“Thank you,” Kuai whispered, and Hanzo just tried to give him a reassuring smile. It didn’t seem to help.

Still Hanzo let Akemi lead them out of the room, into the one next to it, where a certain little girl was sitting up, looking tired and confused.

“Frost!” Kuai darted forward, rushing up to her and gathering her in his arms. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, Bàba,” She said with a yawn. “Where are we?”

“Safe, little one,” Kuai murmured, holding her close to his chest, even as he shot Hanzo yet another distrustful look. “We are safe.”

There were so many questions, so much about this situation that just didn’t make sense. That could wait, he supposed. For now, he’d let Kuai Liang and Frost settle from their ordeal before hitting them with the hard questions.

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