Chapter 7
The Ghost in the Machine
The bridge of the ancient ship had become their world. Their bedrolls were laid out near the strange, silent navigation console. The water recycler hummed steadily in a corner, a piece of familiar, clunky human technology looking utterly out of place amidst the vessel's seamless, alien grace. A small stack of ration packs served as their pantry. It was a pathetic little camp pitched in the heart of a sleeping god.
Zana, ever the pragmatist, had finished organizing their new home and immediately turned to the task at hand. She stood before Jax, who was sitting in one of the elegant, molded chairs near the Nexus Core, her arms crossed.
"Alright, Jax," she said, her voice echoing slightly in the vast, quiet chamber. "You're up. Let's start with the basics. Life support. The air in here is breathable, but it won't be forever. I need a status report. Can you 'feel' it out for us?"
The pressure in her voice was immense. This wasn't a request; it was an order. Jax swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. It was one thing to react instinctively, another to summon this strange power on command, with an audience.
He closed his eyes, trying to replicate the feeling he'd had before. He focused on the Nexus Core, pushing his will towards it, thinking the words life support, status report, show me. Nothing happened. The soft, ambient light of the bridge didn't change. The steady thump… thump… of the core remained placid and unresponsive. He tried again, pushing harder, gritting his teeth with the effort. Still nothing. Frustration began to bubble up inside him.
"I'm detecting… something," Kael said from across the room. He had set up a small, portable scanner on a makeshift stand, pointed directly at Jax. "A minor bio-electric field fluctuation when you focus. Nothing significant, but it's there. Your brain activity is off the charts."
"I don't care about his brain activity," Zana said, her voice sharp with impatience. "I care about the air we're breathing. Anything, Jax?"
Jax let out a frustrated breath, the tension breaking. It wasn't working. Forcing it, commanding it—that wasn't the way. He remembered the cave. He hadn't commanded then; he had listened.
He stopped trying to push. Instead, he relaxed his mind and just… let go. He opened himself up to the Force, not as a tool, but as a medium. He didn't think about the words 'life support.' He focused on the physical sensation of the air filling his lungs, the quiet hiss of circulation he could just barely hear, the feeling of a stable environment. He sank into that feeling, offering it to the ship, to the Core.
It responded.
A single, slender console a few feet from Kael flickered to life. It displayed no text, no numbers, but a simple, elegant diagram of the ship's internal layout. A soft, blue light pulsed gently in the sections corresponding to the bridge and connecting corridors, while other, more distant sections of the ship remained dark. The pulse of the light was as steady and regular as a healthy heartbeat.
Kael gasped, rushing over to the console. "That's it! It has to be! The system is showing… stable. The schematic is blue, and the pulse is regular. If it were failing, it would be yellow or red, right? That's how these systems work!" He looked from the screen to Jax, his awe uncontainable. "It's a diagnostic. You pulled up a diagnostic!"
Jax opened his eyes, feeling a wave of exhaustion wash over him. The effort had been more draining than an hour of hauling cargo.
Zana walked over to the console, studying the glowing diagram, her expression unreadable. She looked at the screen, then at Jax, who was now slumped slightly in his chair. She walked over to their supply pile, picked up a ration bar, and tossed it to him.
"Good work," she said, her tone even. "Eat. You've got five minutes."
Jax caught the bar, confused. "Five minutes for what?"
Zana turned back to the glowing console, her mind already on the next impossibility.
"To do it again," she said. "Now, find the ship's logs. I want to know who built this thing, and what happened to them."
Jax chewed the last of the tasteless, nutrient-rich ration bar and washed it down with a sip of recycled water. The brief rest had done little to quell the deep, mental exhaustion that was settling into his bones. It felt like he'd just taken the most difficult exam of his life, and now he was being told to sit for another.
Zana watched him, her arms crossed. Her patience was a finite resource, but her expression held a new layer of complexity. She was still a commander assessing a tool, but there was a flicker of something else there now—the caution of someone handling a delicate, poorly understood, and utterly essential piece of machinery.
"Time's up," she said. "Let's go again."
Jax nodded wearily and returned to the chair by the Nexus Core. Kael was already poised at the newly-activated console, a datapad synced and ready to record whatever might appear.
"The ship's logs," Zana stated, giving him his objective. "If this ship has a history, I want to know what it is."
Jax knew this would be harder. Life support was a functional system, a tangible thing. A log was data, a memory. How could he possibly 'feel' for a memory? The last attempt had drained him because he was trying to force a command. This time, he decided on a different approach. He had to ask a question.
He placed his hand on the pedestal, the cool metal a familiar anchor. He closed his eyes and sank into the Force, letting the gentle thrum of the Core wash over him. He ignored the expectant presences of Zana and Kael. He focused entirely on the vast, sleeping consciousness of the ship. He didn't push. He didn't command.
He asked.
Who are you? he thought, sending the question into the Core not as words, but as a wave of pure, open curiosity. What happened to you?
The response was immediate, and it was nothing like before.
The ambient light on the bridge dimmed to a deep twilight. The massive, black viewport in front of them flickered, not with data, but with a soft, milky nebula of light. It wasn't a screen displaying a video; it was a window into a memory.
Images, abstract and fleeting, began to drift across the viewport. Jax saw star charts of constellations that were subtly wrong, the positions of stars shifted by millennia of galactic drift. He saw figures—tall, impossibly slender beings with four long limbs, their forms shimmering with a faint, internal light. They moved with a grace that was both beautiful and deeply alien. He felt their collective emotion: not conquest or war, but a profound sense of wonder, of scientific curiosity, of exploration. These beings weren't warriors. They were cartographers, explorers, scientists.
"Kael, are you getting this?" Zana's voice was a sharp whisper.
"I'm recording," Kael breathed, his voice filled with awe. "The star charts… the displacement… Zana, this ship isn't a thousand years old. It's… it's from before the Old Republic. Maybe fifty thousand years old. Maybe more."
The peaceful images on the viewport suddenly warped. A wave of a new emotion washed over Jax, coming directly from the Core—not its own emotion, but the echo of one. It was pure, undiluted terror.
The viewport showed a tear in the fabric of space, a formless, colorless void that seemed to suck the light out of the stars around it. It wasn't a ship or a fleet. It was a wound in the universe. The serene explorers turned their ship and fled, not from an enemy, but from a cataclysm, a plague of anti-reality.
The final memory was clear. Jax saw this very bridge, crewed by the slender, luminous beings. They guided their vessel into the heart of the asteroid field. With a final, collective act of will, they laid their hands on the Nexus Core. The crystal flared with brilliant light, the door sealed, and the ship… went to sleep. It was a final, desperate act of preservation. Hiding from a horror that consumed reality itself.
The vision faded. The viewport went dark. The bridge lights returned to their soft, ambient hum.
Jax slumped in his chair, a sharp pain lancing through his skull. A trickle of blood ran from his nose. The sensory overload had been immense.
"They weren't attacked," he croaked, his voice hoarse. "They were hiding. They put the ship to sleep themselves."
Zana was at his side in an instant, her tactical pragmatism replaced by a stark, genuine concern. "Jax!" She helped him sit up straight. Kael rushed over, his face pale with worry.
She looked at the blood on his lip, then at the now-dormant viewport, and then back at him. Her expression had changed completely. He wasn't just a key anymore. He was fragile.
"Okay," she said, her voice softer than he'd ever heard it. "That's enough. That's enough for today." She looked at Kael. "Get him a water pack. Now."
The dynamic had shifted once more. Jax had found the logs, but the effort had shown Zana the very real cost of using her living key. She now understood that their greatest asset was also their most vulnerable.
Kael rushed to Jax's side, fumbling with a water pack. "Here, drink this." He helped Jax tilt his head back, and the cool, clean water was a balm to his raw throat. The metallic tang of his own blood was still fresh in his mouth.
Zana stood over them, not with a weapon drawn, but as a watchful guardian. The frantic energy of their initial survival struggle had been replaced by a heavy, profound gravity. The problems they faced were no longer simple matters of mechanics and resources.
"Kael," Zana ordered, her voice calm and measured. "Set up the portable med-scanner. Run a full diagnostic on him. I want to know what that… effort… did to his vitals. We need a baseline for the future."
"On it," Kael said, his technical curiosity overriding his fear. He hurried to their supply pile to retrieve the scanner.
Jax leaned his head back against the strange, smooth material of the chair, his skull throbbing with a dull, persistent ache. He felt like he'd been awake for three days straight. He watched as Kael attached a small, humming sensor to his temple.
"Incredible," Kael muttered, watching the readings on his datapad. "His neural activity during the vision was off the charts. The energy spike from the Nexus Core seemed to sync with his brainwaves directly. It wasn't just showing him a video; he was part of the circuit." He looked up from his datapad, his eyes wide with theory. "The beings in the memory… they didn't have individual interfaces. They all touched the Core. Maybe this ship doesn't have one pilot. Maybe it requires a… a conscious gestalt. A biological processor."
Zana filed the information away, her expression thoughtful. Once she was satisfied that Jax wasn't in immediate danger, she turned her focus to the larger, more terrifying issue. "Let's talk about what we saw," she said, her voice low. "That… void. The entity that was eating stars. Is it still out there?"
The question hung in the ancient air of the bridge.
"Fifty thousand years is a long time," Kael reasoned, removing the sensor from Jax's temple. "It could be long gone. But… this ship, with all its power, didn't fight. It ran. It hid. That tells me it wasn't something you could fight. It was a force of nature."
The implication was clear. Their prison might also be their only sanctuary. Escaping the moonlet could be a death sentence far swifter than their dwindling supplies.
While they debated, Jax focused inward. He didn't reach for the Force; he assessed the cost of having touched it. He could feel a deep weariness that went beyond physical muscle fatigue. It was a soul-deep exhaustion. He understood with intuitive certainty that the power he had used was not limitless. It was drawn from his own life force, his own stamina. The nosebleed wasn't a random side effect; it was a warning. If he pushed too hard, too fast, he wouldn't just pass out. He could break his own mind. He could die.
His new ability had its own invisible, non-negotiable price.
Zana seemed to arrive at a similar conclusion through her own pragmatic logic. She looked at Jax, who was still pale and drawn.
"Okay," she said, a final decision made. "New priority. Forget propulsion. Forget the logs. Knowledge comes first."
She looked directly at Jax, her gaze firm but no longer demanding. It was the look of a commander who understood the limits of her most vital weapon.
"Jax," she said. "When you've rested. Not before, but when you are ready. I need you to connect to the ship again. Just like you did with the life support. Don't ask for memories. Don't ask for history. Just ask it to open its eyes."
"Its eyes?" Jax asked, his voice weak.
"Its external sensors," Zana clarified. "Its telescopes. Whatever it uses to see. We need to look outside. We need to see what's become of the galaxy in the last fifty thousand years before we even think about showing ourselves to it."
The task was set. It was a clear, intelligent, and cautious plan. But all Jax could think about was the feeling of the ship's ancient, terrifying memories flooding his mind, and the knowledge that to save them, he would have to touch that overwhelming power again, and again, and again.