Chapter 3
The Vagrant
The ship's ramp closed with a hydraulic groan and the heavy thud of locking bolts. For a moment, the small cargo hold was plunged into near darkness, illuminated only by a few strips of emergency lighting running along the floor. Jax found one of the four fold-down acceleration seats bolted to the bulkhead and strapped himself in. The Bothan and the woman with the cybernetic eye did the same, a silent, shared understanding passing between them.
A deep, bone-jarring shudder ran through the deck as the ship's engines vibrated to life. Jax felt a lurch in his stomach as the inertial dampeners struggled to compensate for the ship's movement. Through a small, thick viewport set high in the wall, he watched as the docking clamp retracted and the gray, utilitarian hull of Waypoint Station Epsilon began to drift away. The station, which had been his entire world for the past few hours, shrank with surprising speed, becoming just one more piece of metal and light in the star-dusted blackness of space.
The Twi'lek pilot's voice crackled over a small intercom. "Jump in thirty seconds. Might get a little rough; old girl's got a kick."
As if on cue, a series of powerful vibrations shook the ship. The low hum of the engines intensified into a roar, and through the viewport, the stars elongated, stretching from pinpricks into long, ethereal streaks of blue and white light. The roar was replaced by a deeper, almost sub-sonic thrum that resonated in Jax's bones. They were in hyperspace.
The journey, according to the schedule he'd briefly glimpsed, was several hours long. Once the thrum of the hyperdrive settled into a steady rhythm, the other two passengers unstrapped themselves. The woman with the cybernetic eye found a clear space on the floor, sat down cross-legged, and began to methodically disassemble and clean a heavy-looking blaster pistol she produced from a hidden thigh holster. The Bothan simply returned to his corner, his ears twitching at every creak of the ship's hull, his eyes closed as if in meditation. The message was clear: they were all tenants of a temporary, shared silence.
Not wanting to seem idle, Jax decided to inspect the gear he'd received. His Pioneer ID was just a card with his name and a long identification number. The starting stipend had been automatically credited to a new account linked to the card. It was the cylinder, however, that drew his interest. It was heavy for its size, made of some dark, unscratchable metal. He turned it over in his hands until he found a small, almost invisible switch.
He gave it a tentative flick. With a satisfying click, one end of the cylinder telescoped out, revealing several articulated tool-heads. He clicked it again, and a different head swiveled into place. A hydrospanner, a fusion-welder, a data-jack, a magnetic driver. A small, concentrated beam of light shone from the tip, a built-in torch. It was a Pioneer's Multi-tool. A simple, practical piece of equipment that felt infinitely more valuable than any weapon at that moment. It was a tool for fixing things, for interacting with the world. He smiled faintly, clicking it off and securing it to his jumpsuit's belt.
Hours passed in the humming quiet of the ship. The pilot never emerged from the cockpit. The woman finished cleaning her pistol, reassembled it with practiced ease, and now sat perfectly still, watching the bulkhead as if expecting it to burst open at any moment.
Jax occupied himself by studying the ship. The cargo hold was filled with large, sealed crates stamped with the logo of the Pioneer Corporation—the atmospheric sensors mentioned in the manifest. He ran his hand along the wall of the ship, feeling the vibrations of the engine, trying to build a mental map of the small vessel. Cockpit, cargo hold, probably a small engine room in the back. Maybe a cramped refresher. That was it. Simple.
He was just beginning to feel a sense of calm, the gentle monotony of travel lulling him into a state of security, when it happened.
A violent, ear-splitting BANG ripped through the ship, followed by the shriek of tortured metal. The lights flickered and died, plunging the hold into absolute darkness, save for the red glow of the emergency strips. The steady thrum of the hyperdrive vanished, replaced by the terrifying sound of a ship groaning in its death throes. Jax was thrown from his seat as the vessel lurched violently, dropping out of hyperspace with a gut-wrenching finality that sent loose tools skittering across the deck.
Alarms blared, their piercing whoops echoing in the sudden, terrifying silence of open space.
The chaos was absolute. Red emergency lights pulsed in a frantic, strobe-like rhythm, painting the cargo hold in flashes of crimson and deep shadow. The piercing whoop of the collision alarm was a physical assault, a sound designed to incite panic. For a moment, as the artificial gravity sputtered, Jax felt a dizzying sense of weightlessness, his body floating an inch off the deck before a secondary generator kicked in, slamming him back down with a painful thud.
He scrambled to his feet, his mind a whirlwind of confusion and fear. Across the hold, the woman with the cybernetic eye was already crouched, her blaster pistol held with a steady, two-handed grip, its tactical light cutting a sharp, white cone through the gloom. Her glowing eye swiveled, scanning every shadow. "Pirates," she hissed, her voice tight and low. "That was a torpedo hit or a disruptor blast. Brace for boarders."
The Bothan was plastered against the far bulkhead, his fur standing on end, his wide eyes reflecting the flashing red lights.
But Jax's attention was drawn to the cockpit. The door, which had been closed, now hung crookedly on a single hinge, its metal bent and torn. Sparks rained down from the damaged frame. The pilot had said nothing.
"The pilot!" Jax yelled over the din of the alarms, his voice raw.
He didn't wait for a response. He staggered across the lurching deck and shoved his way through the ruined doorway. The cockpit was a disaster. Consoles were shattered, spewing torrents of sparks. The main viewport was a spiderweb of fine cracks, and the Twi'lek pilot was slumped sideways in his chair, a trickle of dark, purple blood running from his temple. He was unconscious, or worse.
Jax's blood ran cold. But it wasn't the pilot's state that seized him with immediate, primal terror. It was the view through the fractured viewport.
They were no longer in the serene, empty void of hyperspace. They were in a swirling, chaotic nightmare of rock and ice. An asteroid field. And they were tumbling, uncontrollably, towards the biggest one. It wasn't an asteroid; it was a moonlet, a colossal sphere of pockmarked, cratered rock that filled the entire viewport, growing larger with every terrifying second.
A single, small monitor on the console was still alive, flashing a proximity alert in sync with the wailing alarm. A projected trajectory line showed their path intersecting the moonlet in seventeen seconds.
"Collision!" Jax screamed, a raw cry of pure panic. "We're going to hit!"
The woman swore from the cargo hold. "Can you fly this thing?"
"No!" Jax yelled back. He was a logistics man. He planned routes. He didn't fly them.
Sixteen seconds. Fifteen.
His mind, the analytical tool he had always relied on, went into overdrive, then seized up completely. There were too many variables, too much damage. No logical solution presented itself. It was over. The perma-death he had feared, the end of his one shot, was coming for him not in a glorious battle, but in a stupid, random accident.
Ten seconds.
And then, something shifted. As the raw terror reached its peak, it collapsed in on itself, leaving behind a strange, preternatural calm. The piercing whoop of the alarm seemed to fade into the background. The flashing red lights slowed. He wasn't thinking about his old job, or his bank account, or the game. He was only aware of the ship, the rock, and the space between them.
He lunged forward, shoving the pilot's limp body aside and throwing himself into the captain's chair. He grabbed the control yoke, his hands closing over the worn grips. He had no idea what to do.
But his body did.
He wasn't reading the damaged controls; he was feeling them. His left hand shot out, slamming a grimy, yellow lever forward—maneuvering thrusters. His right hand pulled back on the yoke, not because he calculated the trajectory, but because it felt like the ship was screaming at him to do so. He saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and his thumb jabbed a button on the yoke, firing a burst from a forward thruster he didn't even know was there.
The ship groaned, protesting the sudden, violent commands. But it responded. The sickening tumble began to slow, the nose of the old freighter pulling up, fighting against its own terminal velocity.
He wasn't going to clear it. He knew it. But he could change the angle.
With a final, desperate heave, he wrenched the yoke to the side just as the proximity alarm became a single, solid, deafening tone.
The impact was not the clean, obliterating explosion he had expected. It was a sickening, grinding roar. The ship's port side slammed into the moonlet's surface, and the sound of the hull being torn open, of metal scraping against rock at an impossible speed, was the most horrific sound Jax had ever heard. He was thrown violently against his straps, his teeth rattling in his skull.
The grinding went on for an eternity, and then, with a final, shuddering slam, it stopped. The alarms died. The ship was silent, except for the faint crackle of dying electronics and his own ragged, desperate breaths.
They were down. He looked at his hands, still trembling on the controls. He had no idea how he had done it. It was a fluke. Adrenaline. A bug in the system. It had to be.
Then the ship gave one last groan and tilted forward, caught in the moonlet's weak gravity, and began to slide into the darkness of a vast, gaping crater.
The ship groaned one last time and settled with a shudder, its nose tilted downwards into darkness. The only sounds left were the faint, rhythmic hiss of the emergency life support and Jax's own ragged breathing. The red emergency lights cast long, dancing shadows across the hold.
"Status report! Anyone injured?"
The voice, sharp and commanding, cut through Jax's daze. It was the woman with the cybernetic eye. She was already on her feet, blaster held at a low ready, her posture radiating a tense competence.
"I'm… I'm okay," Jax managed to say, pushing himself up. His muscles ached from the violent impact.
"Fine," the Bothan squeaked from his corner, his voice trembling. "I think I'm fine."
The woman nodded, her cybernetic eye glowing a soft blue as it scanned the hold. "Name's Zana. That Bothan's Kael. The pilot's gone—console smashed right into him. No saving him." She delivered the news with the blunt finality of a field medic. "Ship's dead in the water. Hyperdrive is scrap metal, and the long-range comms array was sheared off when we hit. We're stranded."
Her gaze fell on Jax, sharp and analytical. "You at the helm. That was you?"
Jax just nodded, still trying to process the strange calm that had come over him.
"You're no pilot," Zana stated. It wasn't a question. "But you kept us in one piece. Mostly." She turned away before he could respond. "Kael, check the cargo. Find the emergency beacon, ration packs, anything useful. Jax, you're with me. We need to check the hull, see how stable we are."
Jax followed her numbly towards the ship's main airlock. Zana worked a manual release valve, and with a gasp of escaping atmosphere, the ramp lowered onto the surface of the moonlet. The view was breathtaking and terrifying. They were perched precariously on a wide ledge inside a massive crater. Below them was a sheer drop into blackness. Above, the sky was an airless void, a tapestry of brilliant, unblinking stars, with the swirling dust and ice of Rykon's Belt forming a ghostly river of light. The silence was absolute.
"Hull's breached along the port side, but the cargo hold is intact," Zana assessed, her breath crystallizing in the faint light from the open airlock. "We're not going anywhere, but we're not about to fall apart. Good. Let's scout the ledge."
They moved across the gray, dusty surface. Jax's boots felt heavy, magnetic clamps engaging with each step to keep him anchored. As Zana methodically inspected the damage, Jax found his gaze drawn away from the ship, towards a dark opening in the crater wall a hundred meters away. A cave. There was nothing remarkable about it, yet he felt an inexplicable pull, a faint curiosity that pricked at the edges of his mind.
"I'm going to check that cave," he heard himself say. "Might be a more stable shelter if the ship's power gives out."
Zana gave him a curt nod. "Five minutes. Stay in sight."
He walked towards it, the silence of the moonlet pressing in on him. Inside, the cave was surprisingly uniform, its walls smooth as if eroded by an ancient wind. And they were covered in carvings.
He ran his hand over the rock. These weren't battle records or historical accounts. They were diagrams. Images of humanoid figures sitting or standing in serene poses, surrounded by rocks, plants, and stars. Faint, swirling lines connected everything, weaving a delicate web between the living and the non-living. He saw a figure with a hand outstretched towards a floating stone. Another sat with eyes closed, lines of energy flowing from them into the rock below.
His datapad had a basic translation function. He scanned a series of repeating glyphs next to a central figure. The words that appeared on his screen sent a shiver down his spine.
…LISTEN TO THE UNSEEN FORCE… FIND BALANCE IN THE FLOW…
The Unseen Force. The Flow. It was the only possible explanation for what had happened in the cockpit. That feeling of preternatural calm, of knowing exactly what to do without thinking—it was this. It was the "Force."
Remembering the pose in the carving, Jax found a quiet spot in the cave, sat down, and closed his eyes. He tried to clear his mind of the crash, of Zana and Kael, of his own fear. He focused on his breathing, just as the figures in the carvings seemed to be doing. He tried to listen.
At first, there was only the sound of his own blood pumping in his ears. But he pushed past it, reaching for the strange, quiet place he had found in that moment of terror.
And then he felt it.
It started as a low hum, a vibration beneath the silence. It wasn't a sound, but a feeling, a new sense he never knew he had. He could feel the immense, sleeping cold of the rock he was sitting on. He could feel the stubborn, slow-burning spark of life from a patch of strange lichen deep within the cave. He could feel the anxious, kinetic energy of Zana pacing impatiently outside, and the terrified, rabbit-like stillness of Kael back in the ship. He could feel it all, connected by that Unseen Force.
"Jax! Five minutes are up! Get out here!"
Zana's call shattered the connection like a stone thrown into a still pond. Jax opened his eyes. The cave looked the same, but everything felt different. Sharper. More real.
He had a secret. In the ruins of their voyage, on a forgotten rock at the edge of nowhere, he hadn't just found shelter. He had found a key. A key to what, he didn't know, but he knew one thing with absolute certainty: it was the only thing that could get them out of here alive.