Chapter 4
Echoes in the Dark
"Jax! Five minutes are up! Get out here!"
Zana's voice, sharp and insistent, echoed in the silent crater, pulling Jax from his reverie. He blinked, the strange, profound sensation of the Unseen Force vanishing like smoke. He stood up, his legs feeling unsteady, and walked out of the cave into the stark, unchanging starlight. The universe looked the same as it had five minutes ago, but his perception of it had been cracked wide open.
Zana stood with her arms crossed, her cybernetic eye casting a faint blue glow on her face. Her expression was impatient. "Find anything?"
"It's stable," Jax said, his voice sounding distant to his own ears. "Bigger than it looks. It could work for a shelter."
"Good." She jerked her head back toward the crippled ship. "Kael's finished his initial sweep. Let's make a plan."
She gathered the three of them in the dim light of the cargo hold, the massive, silent crates of the Pioneer Corporation looming around them like monoliths. The initial shock of the crash had worn off, replaced by a cold, heavy atmosphere of dread.
"Alright, listen up," Zana began, her voice cutting through the silence, leaving no room for argument. "Panic is a luxury we don't have. Hope is not a strategy. Work is. Here's our situation: the ship's hyperdrive is slag, the main reactor is unstable, and long-range comms are a memory. No one is coming for us because no one knows where we are."
She let the grim reality of her words sink in. Kael, the Bothan, shivered, wrapping his arms around himself. Jax remained quiet, his mind still buzzing with the ghost of the .
"But," Zana continued, her gaze hardening, "we're not dead yet. Our chances are slim, but they're not zero. Emergency life support is running on auxiliary power. I estimate we have seventy-two hours before it gives out completely. So, here's what we do."
She pointed a finger at the Bothan. "Kael. You seem to have a feel for ship's systems. Your priority is the emergency distress beacon. It's short-range, but it's our only shot. Tear this ship apart if you have to, find the parts you need, and get it working."
Kael nodded, a flicker of purpose in his terrified eyes. "I… I can do that."
"Jax," she said, turning to him. "You found the shelter. You and I will be the labor. We fortify that cave and transfer all essential supplies: ration packs, water recycler, power cells, medkits. The ship is a wreck, and I don't trust it not to slide the rest of the way into that abyss. The cave is our lifeboat."
It was a sound, logical plan. It was exactly the kind of clear-headed thinking that was needed. Jax nodded in agreement, yet a part of him was elsewhere. He looked at the mangled ship, at the exposed conduits and torn hull, and saw it differently now. He wasn't just looking at broken machinery; he was looking at a system he might be able to listen to.
"Let's start with the power cells," Zana commanded, already moving toward a service panel. "We need to see which ones are still holding a charge."
She pried open a panel, revealing a rack of large, heavy-looking batteries, some of them visibly cracked, leaking a foul-smelling electrolytic gel. "Most of these are shot," she grumbled. "It'll take forever to test them one by one."
An idea sparked in Jax's mind, a hypothesis born of a newfound sense. "Let me see," he said, stepping forward.
He stood before the rack of damaged power cells. Zana watched him, a skeptical look on her face. Jax ignored her. He closed his eyes, feigning concentration, and reached for that quiet place, for the hum of the Unseen Force. It was harder this time, with Zana's impatient energy so close, but he found a flicker of it.
He didn't try to see the power. He tried to feel it. He extended his senses, focusing on the rack. Most of the cells felt cold, inert, dead. But two of them, near the bottom, felt… different. They had a faint, buzzing vibration, an erratic but persistent tremor of stored energy.
He opened his eyes.
"Those two," he said, pointing to the ones at the bottom. "They're still good. The rest are dead."
Zana raised an eyebrow. "How could you possibly know that?"
"The indicator lights are still faintly lit on the side," Jax lied, his heart pounding. It was a plausible enough excuse.
Skeptical but efficient, Zana pulled out a small multimeter from her tool kit and tested the cells he'd indicated. After a moment, her cybernetic eye blinked.
"Well, I'll be damned," she muttered, looking from the multimeter back to Jax. "You've got good eyes."
She began unbolting the charged cells. Jax watched her, a slow, dawning realization spreading through him. He hadn't just gotten lucky. He hadn't just survived. The rules of reality had changed for him, and he was the only one who knew it. His one shot at this game had just become infinitely more complicated, and infinitely more interesting.
The work was brutal. The power cell Jax had identified was a monster, its casing cold and heavy even in the moonlet's one-sixth gravity. Moving it from the ship's rack to the cave entrance was a slow, agonizing process. Jax and Zana, working together, shuffled across the treacherous, dusty ground, their magnetic boots locking them to the surface with each deliberate step.
Zana set a relentless pace. She was a whirlwind of grim efficiency, her movements economical and strong. She didn't speak unless it was a direct command. "Lift on three." "Watch your footing here." "Higher, Jax, get it higher."
Back inside the ship, Kael had already created a nest of wires and salvaged components around the communications console. He muttered to himself in a constant, low stream, his nimble Bothan fingers flying across exposed circuit boards, his earlier panic seemingly channeled into a laser-focus on his task.
After their third trip, hauling a heavy crate of emergency ration packs, Zana finally called for a break. She leaned against the cold wall of the cave, taking a long pull from a water ration. She watched Jax, her cybernetic eye glowing faintly as her organic one narrowed.
"You're taking this well," she said, her voice less a compliment and more a clinical observation. "That trick with the power cells… you're observant. What was your line of work before you signed on for this?"
The question was a probe, sharp and direct. Jax thought of his prepared answer, the one he'd chosen on the datapad. "Logistics and Acquisitions Archivist," he said, trying to sound nonchalant.
Zana's eyebrow raised. "An archivist. A desk jockey. You don't move like one."
"You learn to see how things fit together," Jax replied, the lie coming easier than he expected. "Whether it's shipping manifests or… a busted power rack. You just look for the patterns."
Zana grunted, a noncommittal sound, and turned her attention back to the ship. "Let's get the recycler. It's the heaviest piece. If we can get that, we have a water supply."
The water recycler was a dense, awkward machine located deep within the ship's service corridors. Unbolting it was a chore, and carrying it was a nightmare. As they maneuvered it through the ruined doorway, the corner of the heavy unit snagged on a piece of torn metal.
"Hold it!" Zana grunted, trying to keep her side from slipping.
But it was too late. With a groan of protesting metal, the recycler tilted, its immense weight shifting. It was going to fall, threatening to pin Zana's leg against the doorway.
Jax saw it happen in a strange, heightened state of awareness. For him, the recycler didn't just lurch; he felt its center of gravity shift through the Unseen Force. He felt the momentum, the arc of its fall, the precise point where its weight would become unrecoverable.
He didn't have time to think. He reacted.
Instead of trying to heave against the weight, he shoved hard against the bottom corner of the machine, a completely illogical move. But he wasn't fighting the weight; he was fighting the momentum he could feel. His shove, combined with Zana's desperate heave, didn't stop the fall, but it changed its trajectory. Instead of toppling over, the recycler slid, slamming down onto the deck with a deafening clang but missing Zana's leg by inches.
They both stood panting, their breath pluming in the cold air.
"Nice save," Zana said, her voice tight with adrenaline. She looked at him, a new flicker of respect in her eyes. "Good reflexes."
Jax just nodded, his heart hammering in his chest. It wasn't reflexes. It was the Force. He was starting to understand. It wasn't just a sense for listening; it was a sense for the physical world—for balance, for momentum, for the unseen forces that governed every object. It was a new set of physics, and he was the only one who could see the equations.
They spent the next hour moving the rest of the supplies. By the end, a small, pathetic-looking mound of crates, power cells, and machinery sat in the center of the cave. It was their entire world. It wasn't much, but it was a start, a beachhead against the overwhelming odds.
As Zana began setting up the water recycler in their new, fortified shelter, Jax stared at his hands. He had a weapon far greater than Zana's blaster, and a tool more versatile than Kael's electronics kit. Now he just had to figure out how to wield it without anyone noticing.
The cave, once a silent, ancient space, was now a small pocket of determined life. Zana had organized their meager supplies with military precision, creating designated areas for food, water, and power. The water recycler, now hooked up to one of the charged power cells, hummed softly, its gentle vibration a comforting counterpoint to the oppressive silence of the moonlet.
While Zana worked, Jax sat on a crate, his muscles aching with a fatigue that was deep and unfamiliar. His mind, however, was anything but tired. It kept replaying the moment with the recycler, the feeling of the machine's momentum as a tangible thing, a force he could push against.
Zana finished her work and gave a sharp, satisfied nod. "Shelter's established. Kael's been quiet for too long."
She strode back towards the ship, and Jax, not wanting to be left alone, followed her. They found the Bothan in the cramped, sparking confines of the cockpit, the pilot's body now respectfully covered by a spare tarp. Kael was surrounded by a tangled mess of wiring and salvaged components, his expression a mask of deep frustration.
"Talk to me, Kael," Zana said, her tone all business.
Kael looked up, his large, dark eyes weary. "It's bad, Zana. The primary emitter on the beacon is cracked. I might be able to get a signal, but it'll be weak, unfocused. A whisper in a hurricane." He pointed with a trembling finger at a fried component on the floor. "Worse, the power modulator is completely slagged. If I hook a power cell directly to the emitter, the voltage spike will fry it instantly. I need a regulator conduit to bleed off the excess power. A specific kind. I haven't found one that's still intact."
Zana's jaw tightened. A missing part. The oldest problem in the book. "So we find one," she said. "We do one more sweep. Every panel, every service hatch. Kael, you stay here. Keep working. Jax, you take the cockpit and the forward corridor. I'll take engineering. Look for anything that even remotely matches his description."
She headed towards the back of the ship, leaving Jax alone in the ruined cockpit. The weight of their situation pressed down on him. Their survival hinged on finding one small, specific piece of metal in a mountain of wreckage. It was a task based on luck, and Jax was fresh out of it.
Unless…
He looked around the darkened cockpit. The flashing lights were dead now, the alarms silenced. It was a tomb. An idea, foolish and desperate, formed in his mind. He needed to find a specific component. Instead of looking with his eyes, what if he tried to listen?
He sat down in the co-pilot's chair, closed his eyes, and reached for the Force. It came easier this time, like a muscle remembering a forgotten exercise. The hum of the active power cell Zana had rigged for Kael was a steady, familiar baseline. He felt the cold stillness of the dead consoles and the faint, residual energy in the ship's wiring.
This time, he tried to do more than just feel. He tried to push his sense outward, to search. He focused on the idea of the conduit Kael had described—a regulator, a thing that managed the flow of energy. He tried to feel for a component with that signature, that purpose.
His senses expanded, moving past the cockpit, through the corridors, feeling the ship as a single, broken entity. He felt Zana's frustrated energy in the engine room, a sharp, angry spike in the quiet. He felt Kael's focused, anxious mind in the cockpit behind him.
Then, trying to push even further, he lowered his focus, past the ship's hull, down into the rock beneath them. He expected nothing, just the cold, dead silence of the stone he'd felt in the cave.
But he found something else.
It was faint, so faint he almost missed it. A pulse. It was a rhythmic, incredibly weak blip of energy, deep within the moonlet. It felt ancient, mechanical, and utterly out of place. It was nothing like the ship's technology. This was something else entirely. A slow, steady, sub-surface heartbeat. Thump… thump… thump…
What was it? Another ship, buried long ago? A dormant automated system?
"Jax? Anything?" Zana's voice crackled over the short-range commlink she'd given him, making him jump. The connection to the Force, and to the mysterious pulse, snapped.
He opened his eyes, the dark, silent cockpit seeming mundane again. He hadn't found the conduit. He had found a mystery.
"No," he transmitted back, his voice steady despite his racing heart. "Nothing here."
He looked down at the metal floor, as if he could see through it to the source of the pulse deep below. Their chances of survival may have hinged on finding a simple piece of hardware, but Jax suddenly felt that the real key to this place was buried far deeper.