“…….”
“Are you going to say you’ll answer later again, once I have the prosthetic attached? Then I’ll never get that answer for the rest of my life?”
It was an expression of his absolute refusal to ever have the prosthetic attached. The captain hesitated briefly, as he hadn’t expected Luka to show this level of fierce resistance. But he knew that Luka — who had already shut the door to his heart once before — could, if he truly closed it again this time, drift away permanently without much difficulty.
“I’ll tell you.”
At the door to the captain’s quarters, which they had arrived at without him quite noticing, a familiar voice offered its greeting.
— Welcome, Captain Luka. Identity confirmed.
The captain stepped into the space where no one else could interrupt them — just the two of them — still holding Luka in his arms.
“The reason I brought you here. The reason it had to be you. And.”
With a soft hiss, the door that had opened with a hydraulic sound closed behind them. The captain’s eyes, as they looked down at Luka held in his arms, shone with the same brilliant gold they always did.
“The reason both you and I are called Luka.”
The captain set Luka carefully down on the sofa positioned in the center of the captain’s quarters. Luka turned his gaze toward a place he hadn’t paid much attention to the first time he’d visited.
A solid wood bookshelf standing tall against one wall of the captain’s quarters. It was packed full of books made of paper. Paper books were a relic of a bygone era, nearly impossible to find anywhere anymore. Even on his home world, they were things he had only encountered when signing his enrollment oath as a special temple knight candidate.
“There’s something I want to show you.”
The captain’s large hand touched the control panel on the wall. One section of the wall slid smoothly open, revealing a small shelf.
On the shelf sat a single wooden storage box. When the captain reached out and gave it a light tap, a small hologram device rose out from inside it. Blue particles gathered above it, and before long, a recorded video of some planet began to play.
“This is… what planet?”
The world inside the hologram was far more verdant and full of life than anywhere Luka had ever lived — a strange paradise where enormous trees soared as though to pierce the sky.
“This is a planet called ‘Earth’ — one that disappeared a very long time ago.”
“…Earth?”
“By Galactic Alliance standard designation, it’s planet ‘Terra-Origin-01.’ Have you heard of it?”
Terra-Origin-01.
There was no way he wouldn’t know that famous planet. Because Luka’s own planet, ‘Eremos,’ was precisely the desert planet pioneered by the humanity of this Terra-Origin-01.
Standard designation ‘Terra-Eremos-09’ — the ninth planet humanity had settled.
“I know it. It’s the first planet of our ancestors.”
At that answer, the captain’s voice brightened.
“Did you learn about it at the academy?”
“Yes….”
“Then do you also know that the traditional martial arts you trained in actually carry a very long history that traces all the way back to Earth?”
Luka paused. When they had talked about the traditional martial arts, the captain had given every appearance of not knowing anything about it.
Was he pretending not to know, even though he did?
Well — he must have known at least who Luka was and what he had studied, which would be why he went to that crumbling planet and brought him out. That much made sense.
Why hasn’t he properly told me any of this? Is it because I never pressed him with questions out of curiosity…?
Until now, the struggle just to survive had taken up far more space than anything else, and there simply hadn’t been room to ask. It was possible the captain had deliberately kept quiet to spare him unnecessary things to worry and agonize over, knowing that.
But the ease with which he concealed things still felt underhanded, and Luka couldn’t help it. If the captain ever decided to deceive him properly, Luka felt like he’d fall straight into the trap without even suspecting a thing.
Luka nodded quietly, though still guarded. That made it a little easier for the captain to speak about himself.
“I am that Earthling. To be precise — the officially recognized last surviving human from Earth, which has been destroyed.”
At those words, Luka’s tangled thoughts came to a dead halt.
…What?
He knew from history class that Earth had been destroyed. What shocked him was the captain’s identity.
“The last human from Earth…?”
“That’s right.”
“Earth was destroyed five hundred years ago. How are you still alive? Did you go into cryo-sleep or something?”
Even with cryo-sleep, five hundred years was something else. Was it even possible? The captain gently checked the flood of questions.
“I’ll explain that slowly too. For now — let’s start with why Aegis destroyed your planet.”
“Ah….”
“They aren’t just destroying Earth. They’re destroying every planet that carries Earth’s lineage.”
Luka looked at the captain strangely — this man who claimed to be from a civilization dead five hundred years — but his thoughts were already spreading outward toward Aegis. Why, out of all the countless species in existence, did they treat the Terran human lineage with such particular cruelty?
“What did we do wrong to make Aegis so angry?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Aegis simply hates us unilaterally.”
“What do you mean?”
“They want to erase all Earth-based humanity from the entire universe.”
Luka’s eyes trembled beyond his control. The realization that every tragedy he had endured was the result of Aegis’s unilateral decision brought a long-suppressed fury surging to the surface.
“Why… why on earth…?”
The captain responded quietly to the murmured question.
“They think humanity is too great a threat.”
He reached toward the hologram device and slowly rotated the image of the blue Earth.
“Humanity kept developing in directions that the superior intelligences ruling Aegis didn’t want.”
The rotating image of Earth in the captain’s hand splintered into fragments and scattered throughout the entire captain’s quarters. One of those fragments changed its name. Terra-Eremos-09. The place that had once been Luka’s home.
“We replaced diseased organs with machines and extended our lifespans. Eventually, we reshaped the very environments of entire planets to suit our needs — just like your home, Terra-Eremos-09. Aegis felt threatened that humanity would end up dominating the entire universe.”
A facility on a planet where rain fell fewer than twenty days a year, yet water could be obtained without shortage. Technology that allowed a man or a woman alone to bear a child. And even the collective mindset of groups spreading theology among people in a space-faring society at the pinnacle of science.
Even from Luka’s own perspective, the people of his home world had always seemed more organized than other highly intelligent alien species, thanks to their advanced science and technology. Enough to give the ruling class of the Galactic Alliance genuine cause for concern.
“Earth was their first example. And then the second, the third — every frontier that humanity had ever set foot on, they destroyed.”
The captain switched off the hologram. The room filled once more with the dim color of cosmic dust. In that quiet, Luka drew in a long, deep breath.
The rich scent of cedarwood pushed all the way into his lungs. Was the reason he had loved this scent because the blood of Earthling ancestors that also ran through his own veins was longing for home?
The fumbling helplessness of a boy who had wept out of fear over mechanical arms and legs was gone. What remained was only contempt and rage at Aegis’s campaign of one-sided slaughter.
“…So I, too, was just one of the vermin they needed to wipe out.”
The captain responded to Luka’s self-deprecating words with ease.
“You are the Terran that Aegis is hunting most desperately of all.”
“…Aegis considers someone like me to be special?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you are Luka.”
“And what does that mean…?”
“It means you are someone very closely bound to me.”
When the captain had been explaining Earth, it had all been within the realm of what Luka could follow. But when the subject turned to himself and the captain, there was nothing he could make sense of. Even Luka — who had never thought of himself as someone with a slow mind — could not immediately grasp the thread of this conversation.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Mm, shall I break it down a little more?”
“Yes….”
“I am the last Earthling. The existence that irritates Aegis most of all in the entire universe. And the one most closely bound to me is you. Do you think they could ever leave you alone?”
Even with it broken down further, Luka’s expression remained one of someone struggling to accept it. He had understood as far as the captain being the last surviving Earthling. But the moment his own existence — Luka — became the center of the story, his thoughts turned to chaos.
Aegis was hunting him. Because they believed him to be connected to the captain, Luka, who stood before him.
…Why?
The question filling every corner of his mind was one he could no longer keep buried inside him. Luka opened his mouth.
“What is the relationship between you and me?”
His voice was laced with shallow, unsteady breathing.
“Hah — am I someone important to you, or….”
The tight, strained breaths made Luka finally bow his head. No matter how hard he tried to pull air in, gasping and desperate, it wouldn’t draw down deep into his lungs. It was a mild onset of hyperventilation.
“Oh no….”
The captain moved close and took Luka’s shoulder in his long, firm fingers. He wasn’t flustered by the ragged, wheezing breaths.
The sight of Luka lying in the medical bay bed, screaming as if in convulsions and then gasping for air — it was one of the symptoms he had watched over most often.
“It seems the stress has been too much. We’ll stop talking for now, so breathe slowly — exhale, then inhale.”
