It had been a long day. Long enough for Kirby to sleep most of the way back on the trip to his newly reconstructed home planet of Popstar. At least, he would have slept had the klaxon alarms not pulled him out of his slumber.

He stirred quickly and hopped out of his sleeping pod, moving his way past washroom and maintenance facility, small feet shuffling along the way.

Reaching the bridge of his craft he sat down in the pilots' chair, yawning as he did so, eyes roaming over the various systems and settings that littered the console in front of him.

'What is going on', he muttered quietly to himself. There was nothing wrong with any of the readings and the alarms were still blaring, irritating him slowly as their sharp tones penetrated his ears.

He looked over the console again and spotted the problem.

'God am I tired', cursing softly and rubbing his eyes as he realized that his ships systems woke him for a common occurrence.

The trip he was taking was a long one. As it was so long, his hyper drive systems couldn't handle a full jump, needing two or more jumps in order to reach his destination. While not common, this slight problem was rectified by simply stopping the ship near a safe place far away from stars and clouds of radiation that would harm it and having it release the built-up heat and used anti-matter that the engines consumed for transport. It was an automatic procedure that took an hour at the most. Afterwards, the ship would simply engage the hyper drive engine again and resume its progress towards the end of its journey.

However, what didn't happen was an annoying alarm waking Kirby and forcing him to check the status of his ship every time it happened.

So… that meant something had either damaged his hyper drive and he needed to repair it. Or an anomaly stopped him from continuing. This was baffling, for the sole reason that hyperspace was a complete and separate entity from normal space and as such there was nothing for him to interfere with. Even a black hole or a neutron star could not interrupt his travel.

'So what happened', he thought, glossing over his readings again and scrolling through every different parameter his ship had to give.

After a few minutes Kirby finally found his answer. Truthfully he was lucky his father had the best pilots and engineers train him in the fine art of flying and maintaining a spacecraft for he was sure not even they would have caught the one line of code that flashed in front of him.

He brought up the screen with the flashing code.

101-457-EC

What!?

That was the code for unknown space anomaly. How and why would his ship stop in the middle of his journey through relatively unknown space for such a thing? This ship had no S.I.* to speak of, so it wasn't something that was simply for satisfying curiosity.

No.

His ship was meant for the pilot and a co-pilot, that was all that had the ability to control anything except for the basic autopilot programming that was commonly used and known to be 100% reliable.

No. This was not good. This meant that either something outside of hyperspace had affected the inside of hyperspace; which was next to impossible, or, his ships hyper drive was affected by this outside anomaly. This was far more likely.

Neither of these prospects were something Kirby wanted to ponder, he just wanted to get it fixed and get the hell home.

Looking around the outside of his ship through the port and starboard cams, he found himself staring at an enormous gas giant and a few moons that circled it.

Tapping a few icons allowed him to scan the system he was in, while he also praised himself for upgrading his scanning equipment before he left home.

Minutes passed, Kirby slouching back in his leather seat while his ship finished learning about the star system he was in.

A soft beep alerted him to the completion and he hurried to read all about his position in the galaxy. Gazing at the screen, he was gifted with the following information.

Unmapped Sector

Unmapped System

12 Planets

1 Terrestrial Planet

4 Rocky Planets

7 Jovian Planets

Unknown

Artificial Construct surrounding terrestrial planet

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

Radioactive product detected.

Reboot initiating.

Kirby's eyes widened as he flew through key commands and prompts to stop his ship from shutting down in the middle of unknown space, suffocating him and putting an end to his journey home.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he finished tapping the panels, the reboot process was circumvented. He then let out another sigh, this time of frustration. How was he supposed to get home if he didn't know what was causing his ship to malfunction?

He gathered himself and activated the manual pilot controls.

'Might as well see what is happening beyond this planet', he mused.

He wasn't stupid. He knew that he was more than likely to come into contact with another species. He just hoped whoever built the construct his ship picked up was friendly, although he seriously doubted it. In the hundreds of thousands of years his people- the 'Puffs' as they were referred to by their enemies and 'Kurdish' as his own called themselves- existed they had yet to encounter another race of beings that did not desire either complete subjugation or extermination of his species.

Not dwelling on his peoples unfortunate past dealings, he slowly guided his craft around the giant in front of him and found a bright yellow star staring back at him.

Among its followers were a few of the other gas planets and smaller rocky planets, and in the distance he saw a medium sized planet that looked to be inhabitable to most known species of this galaxy.

He didn't see the construct he was warned about, nor did he see anything that could resemble colonization, but he was far away and his cameras weren't that good.

'Yet', he mumbled, 'First thing I'm doing when I get back is getting these things replaced with deep solar cams'.

Still moving forward, a little less cautious and making better time, Kirby's heart almost stopped when his computers started to buzz with activity, so much so that certain monitors went out completely. Static and then blank, black screens greeting him.

Frantic, he did all in his power to figure out the problem and put a stop to it.

Unfortunately, he could not fix this grievous lack of fortune, and his main monitor started to slowly dim.

Now in complete panic, Kirby did the only thing he could and raced back to his quarters. Slipping on space armor - which had an air source and pressurization system built in - he started to calm down enough to realize that his ship was completely silent. No buzz or draft to signal the engine or air system working. This meant that he was dead in the water so to speak.

Good news however, he was still drifting towards the terrestrial planet at a good pace. Hopefully in a time that wouldn't run out his oxygen supply which would only last for 24 hours in perfect conditions. Conditions that didn't include crash landing and/or suffocating in space. So more like 12 hours.

Angry, Kirby swiped a few pictures and now meaningless objects off of his sleeping pods night stand. Forgetting there was no more gravity, He did not hear the satisfying sound of the items connecting with the floor.

Letting out the longest sigh of his life, he resigned himself to the pace that he set earlier on his ships thrusters, praying to the High God Junith that it would put him in range of the planets gravity well enough to pull him in.

He could survive a crash landing he knew. He was trained again and again how to properly perform one, especially when you had no control of your craft, which often happened nowadays since the newest set of skirmishes with the Klefct started up. No, he wasn't worried about crashing.

He was more worried about after the crash.

Would he be able to fix his ship?

Are there aliens here?

Are they hostile?

God forbid, are they similar to the Narg, the space pirates of the Monti Confederacy?

He hoped not. Torture to the point of insanity and then eternal enslavement was something he wished on no man. He would put a las charge through his brain before he let himself be captured by those bastards.

Images flashed through his mind as he remembered instances of the acts the Narg were capable of. He shuddered and closed his eyes, shaking his head, willing the pictures away.

He had seen far too much in his 1,987 years alive – still young by Kurdish standards- too much in so little time.

His father had always looked at him with sadness when talks of the situation with the various opponents they had to contend with were brought up. He always remembered being told that this was not the life he should have, simply the life he had been given. He took it in stride, realizing that this had been going on far longer than he or his father had been alive. It simply was and no amount of wishing could change it. The only thing that could change it was mountains of dead Kurdish soldiers and hopefully an even taller mountain of enemy corpses.

Done reflecting, Kirby floated his way to the bridge once more to have something to look at while he contemplated his most probable death.

Shock settled through him as he arrived. When his ship died and he rushed to change he had been over 10 AU away from the planet. Now, judging from his view of the now immense and colorful planet in front of him, he was only a few hundred thousand – maybe less- kilometers from the planets biosphere.

'How the hell did I get here so fast', mind racing to come up with an answer. None came. It was simply not possible to have gotten here in the little time he spent in his room. Unless the radiation disturbance accelerated him? But that made no sense at all.

'Well, at least I don't have to worry about suffocating now', he thought grimly.

Looking out at the planet, he still saw no signs of any construct at his position near the planet, though it could have been on the other side. Then again, he couldn't see out the sides of his ship and the only non-electrical viewing panel that he was currently using was small and could only show things directly in front of his ship.

The planet itself was nice, very pleasant to look at. Nothing that could compare to Popstar, but beautiful nonetheless.

It was then, looking at the serene picture in front of him that he felt a very familiar pull. One that could be described as a belt tightening around all parts of your body. It was a feeling he knew very well.

The ship was being pulled into the planet.

Training kicked in and Kirby, calm and controlled, made his way to the safe slot. This was a design choice implemented when the Nargs used planet to sub-orbit batteries to very deadly effect, killing tens of thousands when ships crashed to the surface of whichever hellhole they were to land on.

Reaching the slot and using its manual clips, he harnessed himself inside the secure compartment and punched out the small plate that connected the safe slots emergency shields to the small generator that it was connected to.

He hoped that the radiation hadn't done damage to it. It was protected by the ships shields and its own dampener, so it was a good chance that it was intact. A relatively good chance.

….Right…

Breathing slowly and closing his eyes, Kirby waited for the ship to be completely engulfed in the gravity well of the planet.

He didn't have to wait long as the pull on his body was more intense and he felt his ship shake from the strain of breaching atmosphere without its shielding to compensate for the heat of re-entry.

He didn't know how far the planet's surface was from its biosphere, but looking at it had given him a relative idea and his hand hovered over the shield activation array, waiting for the perfect moment to press it. Too early and it wouldn't last for the impact. Too late and it wouldn't charge before he hit the surface. And if that happened, all that would be left of Kirby Shuringgli, Prince of the United Kurdish Empire, War hero and Sole Survivor of Glamour Star Prime would be a pink puddle.

His eyes still closed, Kirby breathed again, counting seconds and milliseconds in his head.

And then, He pressed the button.