Chapter 5: The First Burn
The twin suns of Vorlag were just beginning to paint the bruised sky with shades of orange and violet when Jax arrived at Bay 7. The air was cool, a rare reprieve from the planet's oppressive heat. He had washed as best he could, using his canteen to scrub the grime from his face and neck. His clothes were still the worn, simple garb of a laborer, but he walked with a straight back, his steps measured and sure.
Valerius was already there, leaning against a landing strut of the Stray Comet, a steaming cup of what looked like tar held in his cybernetic hand. He looked as if he hadn't slept, his eyes narrowed and suspicious.
"You're here," the captain grunted, his voice a low rumble. "Thought you might've sobered up and run off."
"I don't drink," Jax replied coolly. "And I don't run from a deal."
Valerius gave a noncommittal snort and jerked his head toward the ship's ramp. "Get on board. Time is money, even when I'm not paying you yet."
Jax walked up the ramp without another word. The inside of the ship smelled exactly as he'd imagined: a mix of stale caf, ozone from the electronics, and the faint, metallic scent of recycled air. Wires snaked along the corridors, held in place by makeshift clamps, and the floor plates were scuffed with years of hard use. It was a mess. It was perfect.
He followed Valerius to the cockpit and slid into the co-pilot's seat. The worn synth-leather groaned under his weight. The console was a chaotic landscape of unfamiliar switches, buttons, and faded markings. But after twenty-five days of study, it was a language he could read fluently. A profound sense of peace washed over him, a feeling of rightness that he hadn't felt since he'd last strapped himself into an F-35. This was his temple. This was home.
"Alright, kid. You talk the talk," Valerius said, settling into the captain's chair with a weary sigh. "But can you fly the ship? You even know how to run a pre-flight on a rust-bucket like this?"
Jax didn't answer. His hands moved with a quiet, practiced confidence, his fingers dancing over the console. He began the sequence, his voice falling into the calm, professional cadence of a pilot.
"Power core temperature is nominal," he began. "Sublight engines are cold but stable. Running diagnostics on the inertial dampeners... field integrity is at ninety-two percent."
Valerius was silent, watching.
"Checking power converters..." Jax continued, his eyes scanning the flickering lights. "Primary converter is showing a thirty-percent power fluctuation. It's holding for now, but it's unstable." He made a mental note. 'A simple diagnostic toolkit from the shop would let me isolate the bad cell in ten minutes. Cost... maybe fifty points? I could fix that.'
He finished the checklist, his hands moving with an economy and grace that spoke of years of training. "Pre-flight complete, Captain. She's ready for takeoff. All systems are... within acceptable risk parameters."
Valerius took a long sip from his cup, his eyes fixed on Jax. The kid wasn't faking it. He knew the procedure cold. The old captain let out a long, slow breath and stabbed a button on the console. The boarding ramp whined as it retracted, sealing them inside with a heavy, final thud.
"Okay, hotshot," Valerius rumbled, his voice holding a new, grudging note of respect. "Take us out. Nice and easy."
Jax's hands rested on the controls, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, the universe made sense. The Stray Comet shuddered as it lifted off the ferrocrete, a low groan of protest from its old frame.
'Easy, girl,' Jax thought, a whisper in his mind. He could feel the ship's imbalances through the vibrations in the yoke. 'I feel it. That damned thruster pull.'
Instead of fighting it with the main engine, he feathered the maneuvering thrusters with his fingertips, a tiny, almost imperceptible correction. The ship, which should have listed slightly to port, rose straight and true into the sky of Vorlag. Across the cockpit, Valerius's left eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch. He didn't say a word.
They cleared the dusty orange atmosphere, the planet falling away to become a rust-colored marble below. The twin suns—one a brilliant diamond, the other a dull ruby—cast long shadows across the ship's hull. It was beautiful. Jax's soul, which had been hunched in alleys and crushed under the weight of crates, finally had room to expand.
"Course laid in for Ryloth, Captain," he said, his voice all business. "Ready for the jump on your mark."
Valerius grunted, taking a final look at the sensor board. "Looks clear. Punch it."
Jax's fingers flew across the console, inputting the commands. He wrapped his hand around the hyperdrive lever and pulled. The stars outside the viewport elongated into streaks of blue-white light, and the familiar, disorienting tunnel of hyperspace enveloped them. The low hum of the sublight engines was replaced by the high, steady thrum of the hyperdrive. All was calm.
The peace lasted for precisely four hours.
A violent, metal-screaming shudder ripped through the ship, throwing them against their harnesses. An instant later, they were back in realspace, the emergency dropout so brutal it felt like hitting a wall. Red lights flashed across the console, and a piercing proximity alarm shrieked through the cockpit.
"Devils and dust!" Valerius swore, his eyes wide with horror as he stared at the viewport.
It wasn't empty space. It was a churning, chaotic graveyard of rock and ice. They had been pulled out of hyperspace on the edge of a dense, un-plotted asteroid field. Massive, tumbling stones, some the size of a city block, filled the void around them.
"Shields!" Valerius roared, grabbing the yoke with both his organic and cybernetic hands. "Get the shields to full!"
Jax's training slammed into place, overriding any trace of fear. His voice was sharp, a blade cutting through the alarms. "Negative, Captain! Full shields will overload the faulty power converter! It'll kill our maneuvering entirely!" He was already working, his fingers flying across his own console. "Angle the forward deflectors. Give me the stick. I can get us through."
Valerius stared at him, his face pale. The field was a death sentence for a ship this slow. His panicked instincts screamed to turtle up and pray. But the kid… the kid wasn't panicking. He was working the problem.
"What are you waiting for? Let me fly!" Jax demanded.
The captain looked from the impossible chaos outside to the absolute, terrifying calm on Jax's face. He made his choice. He ripped his hands away from the controls as if they were burning hot.
"She's yours, pilot!" Valerius snarled, his voice a mix of terror and fury. "You even scratch my paint, I swear I'll kill you myself!"
Jax didn't answer. His hands were already on the yoke, his full attention on the first massive asteroid that was tumbling directly toward them, big enough to swallow the Stray Comet whole.
Jax's mind went quiet. The alarms, the captain's curses, the grinding sound of stressed metal—it all faded into a distant hum. The universe compressed itself into the viewport in front of him and the controls beneath his hands. The massive asteroid wasn't a threat; it was a variable. Its size, its spin, its trajectory—all just numbers in a complex, three-dimensional equation he had been born to solve.
Instead of veering away, he pushed the throttle forward, aiming the Stray Comet directly at the rock's northern pole.
"What are you doing?!" Valerius roared, his knuckles white as he gripped the arms of his chair.
Jax didn't answer. His hands were a blur. He rerouted auxiliary power from life support to the port thrusters, compensating for the misalignment with a burst of focused energy. The ship surged forward. At the last possible second, just as they were about to be smashed to pieces, he pulled the yoke hard to starboard, kicking the rudder controls. The Stray Comet, a ship never designed for grace, performed a gut-wrenching gravitational slingshot, using the asteroid's own mass to whip itself around and through a narrow gap between two smaller, faster-moving rocks.
For the next two minutes, he was not a man, but an extension of the ship. He was the nerve endings, the synaptic firings, the pure will that guided the vessel. He threw the freighter into a corkscrew roll to avoid a fan of icy debris. He threaded the needle between two tumbling, oblong rocks that were closing in on each other like a vise. He saw Valerius's horrified face reflected in the console, but the old man was just a passenger now. This was Jax's sky.
The final obstacle was a dense cluster of smaller rocks, a field of deadly shrapnel. There was no path through it. So he created one. Angling the forward deflectors to their maximum, he didn't dodge. He charged.
"Brace!" he yelled, his first command.
He hit the field like a battering ram. The ship screamed as dozens of small impacts hammered against the deflectors, the sound like a hailstorm on a metal roof. The lights flickered, the power converter groaning in protest. He held the controls steady, his will a physical force, pushing the ship through the storm.
And then, silence.
They burst through into the calm, clear void of deep space. The alarms were still shrieking, but the violent shuddering had stopped. Ahead of them lay the serene, star-dusted blackness. Jax's breathing was deep and even, his heart a steady drum. He calmly began silencing the alarms one by one, his movements efficient and precise.
Valerius stared, his mouth slightly agape. He looked from the tranquil starfield ahead, back to the impossible calm of the young man beside him. He finally let out a long, shaky breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding for the entire two minutes.
"Who in the blazes are you, kid?" the captain asked, his voice a raw, quiet whisper filled with a wonder that bordered on fear.
Before Jax could even think of an answer, Valerius was already tapping at the datapad strapped to his wrist. A clean, beautiful chime echoed in Jax's mind, a sound far sweeter than any applause.
+100 REPUBLIC CREDITS. NEW BALANCE: 101 POINTS.
Valerius had paid him. He had fulfilled the wager before they had even reached their destination. It was the ultimate sign of respect.
The adrenaline began to fade, replaced by a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. Jax took a slow, steadying breath of his own. He looked at the captain, the hard edges of his face softened by awe.
"Just a pilot, Captain," Jax said simply. "Like I said."
He turned his attention back to the viewport, where the planet Ryloth was now a beautiful, swirling jewel growing larger by the second. One hundred and one points. It was a ridiculously small number compared to his goal, but it felt like a king's ransom. He had proven himself. He was a pilot again, and he was back in the sky where he belonged.