Chapter 6
The Sleeping Giant
The great metal door slid into the rock wall with a final, grinding thump, revealing a maw of perfect, silent darkness. The air that flowed out was ancient, cold, and utterly still, carrying no scent of dust or decay. It was the sterile air of a place that had been sealed for millennia.
For a long moment, the three of them just stared into the abyss.
"Stay sharp," Zana's voice cut through the awe, her command pulling them back to reality. She unholstered her blaster, its tactical light cutting a clean, white spear into the darkness. "We don't know what's been waiting in here."
She took the lead, stepping over the threshold from the rough-hewn rock of the canyon into a corridor of impossible smoothness. The floor, walls, and ceiling were made of the same dark, seamless metal as the door. There were no lights, no visible panels or seams. It was like walking into the barrel of a gun.
The corridor was short, opening into a vast, cavernous space. As they stepped into it, their suit lights swept across the room, and they all stopped dead. Their collective breath hitched over the comms.
They were standing on the bridge of a starship.
But it was like no ship any of them had ever seen. The design was elegant, alien, and clearly ancient. There were no hard angles, no bolted-on consoles. The control stations seemed to grow organically from the floor like metallic mushrooms, their surfaces dark and smooth. The chairs were graceful, skeletal things, molded in a single, flowing piece. Dominating the entire front of the room was a single, colossal viewport, currently as black and impenetrable as polished obsidian.
In the center of the bridge, directly beneath the highest point of the vaulted ceiling, was the source of the pulse. It was a large, flawless crystal, easily the size of a man's torso, floating a foot above a dark metal pedestal. It pulsed with a soft, internal, white light, and the low, rhythmic thump… thump… thump… they had been following was not a sound, but a visible beat of light that resonated in the air around it.
Kael was the first to move, drifting toward the nearest console as if in a trance. He ran his gloved fingers over its seamless surface. "This technology…" he whispered, his voice filled with a reverence that bordered on fear. "It's not based on any drive system I know. There are no buttons, no switches. It's… something else entirely. I don't even know where to begin."
Zana, meanwhile, remained tactical. She swept her light into the corners of the bridge, checking for threats. "Is it safe? Are there automated defenses? Kael, can you tell if the door can be sealed behind us?"
But Jax barely heard them. He was walking toward the pulsing crystal in the center of the room, drawn by a force he could no longer deny. The Force was thrumming here, a powerful, resonant song that made the faint hum he'd felt in the cave seem like a whisper. This ship was not just powered by something; it was something. The crystal was its heart, sleeping but still alive.
He reached the pedestal and hesitated for a moment before placing his hand on its cold, metallic surface.
The moment he touched it, the pulse in his mind intensified a hundredfold. It wasn't just a beat anymore; it was a wave of pure, dormant energy that washed through him. He felt the vast, interconnected systems of the ship lying asleep around him, a sleeping giant waiting for a command. He felt the unimaginable age of the vessel, and a deep, profound loneliness that seemed to emanate from the crystal Itself. This ship hadn't just been parked here; it had been waiting.
He pulled his hand back with a gasp, the sensations fading to a dull hum.
He looked at the crystal, then at his own two hands, and finally at his companions, who were staring at him. He had the answer, but it was an answer he knew they wouldn't understand. Their only hope for escape wasn't a problem of engineering.
It was a matter of waking the giant.
Zana turned from the door, her blaster still held at a low ready. She looked around the vast, silent bridge, at the impossible technology, at the sleeping crystal heart, and at the monumental task ahead.
"Okay…" she said, her voice a low, determined whisper that cut through the ancient silence. "New plan."
Zana's words, "New plan," hung in the ancient, still air of the bridge. The phrase was a declaration, a line drawn in the dust of millennia. The mission was no longer about survival. It was about conquest.
She turned away from the pulsing Nexus Core, her gaze sweeping the room with a commander's authority. "First things first, we secure our asset. Kael, that door. I want it sealed. No surprises. Figure it out."
The Bothan tore his wide eyes away from the alien consoles. "Seal it? Zana, I don't even know how we opened it! This technology…"
"Then learn," Zana cut him off, her tone leaving no room for argument. "Your new job is 'ancient alien technology specialist.' Get to it." She then pointed to Jax. "You and I are going back to the cave. We're bringing everything here. Rations, the recycler, power cells. All of it. From now on, this bridge is our base camp. We live here until we make it fly."
Kael let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. "Make it fly? Zana, you don't understand. This isn't a ship in the way we know it. There are no data ports, no ignition systems, no control interfaces I can recognize. It's like asking a caveman to fix a fusion reactor. It's… it's philosophical. I have nothing to work with!"
He was right. The sheer alien nature of the technology was a wall their combined knowledge couldn't climb. They had found their salvation, and it was written in a language none of them could read.
Seeing the despair on Kael's face and the frustration tightening Zana's jaw, Jax knew he couldn't stay silent. He felt the soft, rhythmic hum of the Nexus Core, a steady presence in his mind. It was waiting.
He walked back towards the central pedestal. "Wait," he said. Zana and Kael turned to look at him. "When I touched it before… I felt something. A vibration. Maybe it's like the door. Maybe it doesn't respond to tools. Maybe it responds to… us."
Zana's eyes narrowed. "What are you talking about, Jax?"
Instead of answering, he placed his hand back on the cool, dark metal of the pedestal below the glowing crystal. He closed his eyes, shutting out the skeptical stares of his companions, and focused. He reached for the Force, feeling the immense, dormant power of the ship all around him. He didn't try to understand it all. He focused on a single, simple, desperate thought. A command. A plea.
Light.
He pushed the concept, the pure intent of the word, from his mind, through his arm, and into the pedestal. He imagined the dark bridge illuminated, the shadows banished.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. He felt a flicker of Zana's impatience.
Then, the Nexus Core pulsed, once, with a brilliant, intense flash of white light. In response, a soft hum filled the air. Faint, glowing lines, previously invisible, began to trace their way across the seamless floor, up the walls, and over the strange, curved consoles. The bridge filled with a soft, indirect, ambient glow, illuminating the entire space in a light that seemed to come from the very walls themselves.
Jax opened his eyes, pulling his hand back as if startled by a static shock.
He turned to see Kael staring, his jaw hanging open, his ears stock-still for the first time since the crash. Zana was silent, her blaster lowered slightly, her face an unreadable mask of shock and intense scrutiny. The suspicion she'd held before had now crystallized into a hard, undeniable certainty. This was no archivist.
"How…" Kael stammered, pointing a trembling finger at Jax. "How did you do that?"
Jax looked down at his own hand, forcing a look of stunned surprise onto his face. It was the only lie he had. "I… I don't know," he said, his voice a convincing imitation of bewilderment. "I just touched it. Maybe it responds to biometrics? Maybe it just needed a… a jump-start."
The lie was flimsy, and he knew it. Standing in the soft, ancient light of the awakened bridge, the dynamic between the three of them had been shattered and reforged. He was no longer just the quiet observer. He was the key. And Zana's sharp, calculating eyes told him that she knew it, too.
The soft, ambient light of the bridge seemed to hum with the unspoken tension between the three survivors. Kael was still staring at the glowing lines on the floor as if they were a holy script, his technical mind completely short-circuited by the impossibility of what he'd just witnessed. Zana, however, was no longer looking at the ship. Her gaze, sharp and intense, was fixed solely on Jax.
She moved deliberately, her mag-boots making soft, heavy sounds on the seamless floor until she was standing directly in front of him. She wasn't aiming her blaster, but her posture had a coiled intensity that was just as threatening.
"Cut the crap, Jax," she said, her voice low and steady, devoid of anger but filled with a cold, absolute seriousness. "I don't know what you are, and frankly, right now I don't care. 'Good eyes,' 'good reflexes,' 'biometrics'… you've been full of it from the start. But what I do know is that this ship responds to you."
She gestured around the illuminated bridge. "That makes you the most important piece of equipment we have. So, we're done with the lies."
Jax felt his throat go dry. This was the confrontation he had been dreading. He couldn't tell her the truth—that he was touching a legendary power that wasn't supposed to be real—but the lie of ignorance had crumbled to dust. He had to give her something.
"I don't know how," he said, and this, at least, was the honest truth. "It's not a skill I learned. It's… an instinct. A feeling." He looked from Zana's piercing stare to the pulsing Nexus Core. "When I focus on it, I can… interact with it. I don't know why."
Zana held his gaze for a long, silent moment, weighing his words. Her cybernetic eye whirred almost imperceptibly. She wasn't looking for the whole truth, he realized. She was a pragmatist. She was looking for a functional one.
"Okay," she said finally, taking a step back. She'd accepted his vague explanation because, for now, it was all she had. "Okay, 'instinct'." She turned to face both Jax and a still-stunned Kael. Her leadership was not dissolving; it was adapting to the new, insane reality.
"Our priorities have changed," she announced. "Kael, forget the beacon. Your new job is to assist Jax. He's the interface; you're the interpreter. When he says he can 'feel' a system, you find a way to analyze it. You translate his 'instinct' into data we can use. Got it?"
Kael just nodded, his eyes wide.
Zana then turned back to Jax. The weight of her command was immense. "Your job is this," she said, gesturing to the Nexus Core. "You are going to sit here, and you are going to 'feel' your way through this ship. Don't just turn on the lights. Find primary life support. Find the ship's status logs. Find out if it has defenses. Find out what it can do. You are our only way in."
She let her words hang in the air before concluding, "I'll handle security and manage our supplies. I'll keep us alive while you two figure out how to fly this tomb."
With the new roles assigned, a tense, uncertain silence settled over the bridge. Kael looked at Jax with a mixture of awe and fear. Zana watched him with the focused intensity of a scientist studying an unpredictable and potentially dangerous experiment.
And Jax… Jax felt the incredible weight of their expectations settle onto his shoulders. He was no longer a follower. He was their guide, their tool, their only hope. He looked at the softly pulsing crystal, the sleeping heart of the ancient vessel, and understood that his one shot at a new life had become something far stranger and more terrifying than he had ever imagined. The game was no longer about survival. It was about learning to speak to a god in a machine.