Rana IV Colony

A razed planetary settlement ringed by ash and ruin, the colony reads as both recent battleground and stubborn domestic memory. Among flattened streets and blackened skeletons of buildings stands an impossible, intact house—its white paint suddenly luminous against a devastated plain. The air tastes of smoke and metal; silence presses until the sudden snap of a concealed snare and the ragged breathing of two elderly residents break it. Paranoia and gratitude overlay the place: one survivor armed and suspicious, the other openly relieved, while away-team scanners map registry data with clinical calm. Functioning as the scene of a rescue-turned-investigation, the colony carries forensic traces of targeted survival and ethical unease, its domestic details (a porch step, a garden’s ruin) transformed into clues that propel the crew’s moral and tactical choices.