Unmarked

The planet had no name anymore. The maps called it K-317, but maps only mattered to people who planned to return. Names were for places that expected visitors. Histories. Futures. This world had been reduced to coordinates and warnings in small print, unless they were desperate. Or very well paid.

Once, it had been something else. It must have been. No one built domes and towers and schools on a world they never bothered to name. The designation came later, after the evacuation, after the reports were filed and stamped and buried under newer problems. K-317 was what remained when sentiment was stripped away.

Michelle arrived alone, her lander settling into red dust that behaved more like ash than sand. It rose in slow clouds, clinging to her boots, her gloves, the seams of her suit. The particles were so fine they seemed to hesitate in the air before drifting back down, as if unsure where they belonged. They took their time. The sky above was a dull copper, streaked with darker bands where storms moved lazily, wide and slow, as if even weather here had grown tired of effort.

She stayed strapped in for an extra minute, hands resting on her knees, listening to the soft ticks and pops of cooling metal. Old habit. You didn’t rush first contact with a place that had already outlasted everyone else. Her breath sounded loud. She focused on slowing it, letting the moment settle.

When she finally stepped down the ramp, the dust shifted under her weight with a muted sigh. She paused at the base of the ramp longer than necessary, scanning the horizon, listening to the quiet. No mechanical hums beyond her own ship. No distant signals bleeding into her receiver. Just wind, faint and uneven, brushing against the hull like a hand testing a locked door.

She logged the atmospheric readings automatically, fingers moving from memory.

Everything here was survivable, technically.

There had once been a colony. She could see the remains from the ridge above the landing site, a short climb that left her breathing harder than she liked. The gravity was close enough to standard to be deceptive. It let you forget yourself until your muscles reminded you otherwise. Her knees ached by the time she reached the top, and she paused there, hands on her thighs, taking in the view.

Low domes lay half-buried in dust, their once-white surfaces stained rust-red. Solar spines were snapped and scattered like bones picked clean. A communications tower leaned at an angle that made her neck ache just looking at it, cables hanging loose, swaying slightly with the wind. One section of habitat wall had collapsed inward, creating a dark, toothy gap where dust flowed in and out with each gust.

No lights. No signals. No movement.

That was the point.

She descended into the colony on foot, moving slowly, deliberately. Her boots crunched softly against debris that had been exposed and reburied a thousand times over.

Doors stood open where seals had failed, and closed where they still held, stubborn in their purpose long after anyone remembered why. The place felt paused rather than abandoned.

Her suit pinged softly as it mapped the interior spaces. Layouts matched archived schematics almost perfectly.

Someone had cared enough to build things according to plan.

That thought lingered with her longer than she expected.

Inside the nearest dome, the air was thin but breathable. Her suit chimed as internal systems adjusted, then fell quiet again.

Someone had repaired the filters long after the official evacuation. Not recently, but not decades ago either. The maintenance logs, still readable on a flickering panel, ended mid-cycle, the last entry unsigned. No farewell message. No explanation. Just a task left unfinished.

She imagined someone meaning to come back after a break. After sleep. After one more check.

A chair lay tipped over near a table. The table still held a mug fused to its surface by dried residue, a dark ring marking where it had been set down again and again. On the wall, a child’s height marks had been scratched into the metal, each line labeled with uneven initials and dates. The last mark was crooked, barely higher than the one beneath it, as if the child had tried to stand taller and failed.

Michelle ran a glove over the scratches and paused, her hand resting there longer than necessary.

She moved through the dome slowly, opening drawers, checking rooms that had no reason to be checked. Personal items remained where they’d been dropped. A single boot by a doorway, its mate nowhere in sight. A blanket folded with care and then abandoned. In one storage alcove, she found a stack of printed photos sealed in plastic.

Faces smiled up at her.

She didn’t take them. This wasn’t salvage.

This was evidence, and evidence deserved to stay where it had meaning.

In one corner, she found a toy, its surface worn smooth by hands that had outgrown it before the planet had been given up. The paint was chipped, the edges soft. She turned it over, half-expecting a name scratched into the underside, but there was nothing. Just use.

She carried the toy outside and set it on a ledge where the dust hadn’t fully claimed the surface yet. It felt wrong to leave it buried.

The wind nudged it slightly, but it stayed upright, facing the open sky.

The wind picked up as the day wore on, whispering through broken structures, carrying fine dust that softened every edge. It slipped into cracks and corners, burying sharp angles, rounding hard mistakes. The planet erased things gently. No sudden disasters. Just patience. The kind that waited years, centuries, knowing it would win eventually. It had time.

Michelle recorded short notes as she went.

Structural integrity. Environmental drift. Signs of—

Her voice sounded strange in her own ears. She stopped after a while and let the recorder hang silent at her side.

By late afternoon, the light had shifted, turning the domes into long, distorted shadows. The colony looked almost orderly from a distance, as if nothing had gone wrong at all. Michelle climbed onto the roof of one and sat with her legs dangling over the side, recorder resting idle in her palm. She didn’t turn it on.

Officially, she was here to survey, to document, to provide clean data that would justify another red mark on a map. But the numbers would keep. The silence wouldn’t.

Silence changed when you tried to revisit it later. It never sounded the same twice.

As night fell, the temperature dropped fast.

She returned to her lander and shut the hatch, letting the systems hum back to life.

The sound felt almost intrusive after the quiet outside, like a conversation started too loudly. She ate a simple meal without tasting it and reviewed her supplies by habit more than necessity. She had enough to stay longer than planned. Much longer.

She considered the schedule she’d filed before leaving. Tight margins. Clean exit.

She could already imagine the automated reminders that would be waiting if she powered the beacon back on.

Before sleeping, she reached up and powered it down instead. The small green light winked out, and the silence settled in. No tracking signal. No automated check-ins. No voice on the other end asking for status updates she was tired of giving.

She lay back and stared through the narrow viewport. Unfamiliar stars burned with steady indifference. They didn’t flicker or shift. They simply were.

For the first time in years, no one knew where she was.

The planet didn’t care.

And somehow, that made it feel safe.