Star Wars: New Age

Chapter 12

The Daily Grind

The next simulated "morning," Jax awoke on his bedroll to a familiar, deep-seated ache behind his eyes. It was the mental equivalent of muscle soreness, a clear sign that the "training" from the day before had pushed his mind to a new, painful limit. He sat up, watching as Kael was already at his console, sipping from a water pack while scrolling through glowing, alien schematics. Zana was not at her station; she was standing, arms crossed, waiting for him.

"Morning," she said, her tone leaving no room for pleasantries. She tossed him a ration bar. "Eat up. We're on the clock."

Jax ate in silence, the nutrient paste tasting even more like cardboard than usual. As soon as he was finished, Zana convened their morning briefing.

"Kael," she began, "continue your analysis of the ship's systems. Forget the sensors for now; focus on propulsion and power distribution. I want to know what makes this thing go, even if we don't have the keys."

Kael nodded, his attention never leaving his screen. "I think the Nexus Core acts as a direct conduit, converting some kind of zero-point energy. The efficiency is… theoretically impossible."

Zana cut him off. "Just figure it out. Jax," she said, her gaze pinning him. "You're with me. Back to the Kinetic Chamber."

The vast, empty room felt less like a place of discovery today and more like a gymnasium where a grueling workout was about to take place.

"Yesterday was about discovery," Zana explained as the training drone detached from the wall. "Today is about consistency. I don't want you just dodging. I want you to last." She nodded to Kael over the comm. "Kael, program a new routine. A randomized, three-minute continuous drill. Variable speed, unpredictable bursts."

"Three minutes?" Jax balked. He had lasted less than thirty seconds yesterday.

"That's the goal," Zana said flatly. "Begin."

The drone zipped into the air. Jax closed his eyes, reaching for the Force, for the state of calm precognition he had found. He felt the drone's first targeting lock and dodged. He felt the second and twisted away. For a few glorious seconds, he was untouchable, flowing around the attacks with an eerie grace.

"Now, shield!" Zana commanded.

The order broke his concentration. He threw up a hand, trying to will a barrier into existence while still tracking the drone's movements. He was a split-second too late. An energy pellet slammed into his side, the jolt making his muscles seize. While he was recovering, another pellet struck his leg. He fell to one knee.

"Focus, Jax!"

He scrambled back up, his body aching. He abandoned the shield, focusing only on dodging. He found the rhythm again, the world slowing into a series of intents and reactions.

"Move the sphere!" Zana ordered.

He tore his focus from the drone and directed it at the metallic sphere that had risen in the center of the room. He reached out with his mind, trying to will it to move. As he did, he left himself completely defenseless. A pellet struck him squarely in the back, throwing him to the floor.

The drill stopped. He was panting on the cold metal floor, his body a collection of stinging aches. He had lasted forty-seven seconds.

"You're treating them as separate tasks," Zana observed, her voice not cruel, but analytical. "You can dodge, or you can shield, or you can move things. But you can't do them together. In a real fight, you'll be dead."

Jax pushed himself up, frustration welling within him. She was right. He was failing.

As he knelt on the floor, the Warden's conceptual voice flowed into his mind, cool and clear.

[YOU TREAT THE CURRENT AS THREE SEPARATE STREAMS: ONE FOR MOVING, ONE FOR SHIELDING, ONE FOR SEEING. THERE IS ONLY ONE STREAM. THE SAME ENERGY THAT PERCEIVES THE ATTACK IS THE SAME ENERGY THAT SHAPES THE SHIELD.]

The idea was a revelation. He didn't need to switch tasks. He needed to unify them.

[LET THEM FLOW TOGETHER,] the Warden continued. [SEE THE ATTACK, SHAPE THE SHIELD, AND MOVE YOUR BODY AS ONE THOUGHT. BE THE WATER THAT FLOWS AROUND THE ROCK, NOT THE HAND THAT TRIES TO CATCH THE RAIN.]

He stood up, his body bruised but his mind electric with a new understanding. He looked at Zana, a new determination on his face.

"Again," he said, his voice firm.

Zana saw the shift in his eyes. She gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod of approval. "Kael. Run it again."

The drone buzzed to life. Jax closed his eyes, not just listening for the drone, but feeling the single, unified river of the Force that connected everything in the room. The real training had just begun.

The training drone whirred to life, its red optical sensor locking onto Jax. Zana and Kael watched from the doorway, a shared, tense anticipation in the air. Jax stood in the center of the room, but this time his posture was different. He wasn't coiled like a spring, ready to dive. He was relaxed, his eyes closed, his breathing even. He was reaching for the single, unified stream of the Force.

The drone fired.

What happened next was so fast, so fluid, that it was difficult to follow. Just as Jax's mind registered the drone's intent to fire at his left side, a small, shimmering shield materialized in the path of the attack. But Jax was already moving, not in a desperate dive, but in a smooth, economical sidestep, his body flowing away from the danger zone. The energy pellet dissolved against the shield with a soft fizz an instant after he had already vacated the space.

Seeing, shielding, and moving had become one seamless, harmonious thought.

"Kael, are you seeing this?" Zana's voice was a low, astonished whisper.

"I see it, but I don't believe it," Kael replied, his eyes glued to his datapad. "His energy expenditure is a fraction of what it was before. The efficiency is… it's a hundred times better. He's not fighting the Force anymore. He's directing it."

The drone zipped to a new position and fired a quick, three-shot burst.

Jax flowed with it. A shield here, a twist of the torso there, another shield. He wasn't thinking. He was simply being. In the back of his mind, he extended his awareness to the metallic sphere hovering in the corner of the room. As he dodged a fourth shot, the sphere wobbled and lifted a few inches into the air. It was a clumsy, secondary thought, but it was proof of the Warden's lesson. He could multitask. He could be the water flowing around the rock, while also nudging a pebble on the riverbed.

For the entire three-minute duration of the drill, he was never more than a hair's breadth from being hit, but he was never touched. It was a dance of impossible grace, a perfect harmony of instinct and action.

The moment the drone powered down and returned to its alcove, the connection shattered.

The strength vanished from Jax's legs. The world came rushing back in a wave of nausea and vertigo. He collapsed to his knees, his body trembling, every muscle screaming in protest. A profound, bone-deep exhaustion washed over him. He had performed perfectly, but the mental focus required had pushed him to his absolute limit.

Zana was at his side instantly, helping him to his feet, her grip firm and steady.

"Report," she said, her eyes scanning him for any sign of injury.

"I'm… alright," Jax panted, leaning heavily on her. "Just… drained. Completely."

"The technique is viable," she stated, a new, almost frightening gleam of calculation in her eyes. She was no longer just seeing a survivor with a strange trick. She was seeing a weapon of unimaginable potential being forged before her very eyes. "But the endurance is a critical weakness."

She looked at him, not as a commander to a subordinate, but as a master strategist evaluating a new and powerful piece on the board.

"That was a good first day," she said, her voice holding a new tone of respect. "A very good day. We have our baseline. We have our method."

She helped him walk towards the exit, Kael following behind, still staring at his datapad in silent awe.

"Get some rest," Zana ordered, her mind already clearly planning the next phase. "Eat, recover. Because tomorrow, we do it all again. And you will do it for four minutes."

Of course. Acknowledged and understood. The pacing needs a moment to breathe, to focus on the people inside the survival situation. This is a crucial scene for their development as a team.

The exhaustion from the training session was a heavy cloak on Jax's shoulders, but the conversation that followed was a different kind of intense. They sat on supply crates near the glowing Nexus Core, the empty wrappers of their tasteless ration bars a small pile of mundane trash in the magnificent, alien chamber.

For a long while, the only sound was the faint hum of the ship's ambient lighting. It was Zana who finally broke the silence, her analytical gaze sweeping over the two men.

"You know," she said, her voice softer than usual, more curious than commanding. "For a grad student and an archivist, you two handle mortal peril better than half the grunts in my old unit."

Kael, who had been nervously tracing the glowing lines on the floor with his eyes, looked up, startled. "Handling it? I'm terrified out of my mind!" he squeaked. "But… this place… the science… it's just… more overwhelming than the fear." He pushed his glasses up his nose, a nervous habit that persisted even in his avatar. "I'm a grad student at ASU, in xenolinguistics. The chance to encounter a real, non-human intelligence, even a dormant one… it's the reason I poured my life savings into this game."

Zana offered a rare, thin smile. "An academic. Figures." To build a bridge of trust, she offered a piece of her own story. "I did a few tours with Ares Security Solutions. Corporate defense contractor. We ran operations out of Luke Air Force Base." She stared into the middle distance, a flicker of an old weariness in her eyes. "Got tired of the gray areas. Came in here looking for a world with clearer objectives."

Both their gazes turned to Jax. "What about you, archivist?" Zana prompted. "What's your story?"

Jax stuck to his cover, but colored it with the truth of his frustration. "I managed drone logistics for Omni-Drop. Spent my days watching little icons of cargo ships fly around a holo-map of the city." He shook his head. "I quit because I was tired of watching icons have adventures. I wanted to be one."

Zana's eyes narrowed slightly, a new connection being made. "Omni-Drop… you worked out of the Sky Harbor hub, then?"

Jax blinked. "Yeah. The main depot."

"Wait," Kael interjected, his head snapping up. "You said ASU? The Tempe campus?"

Zana looked from Kael back to Jax. "My last off-base apartment was in Glendale."

The air on the ancient bridge grew still. Tempe. Glendale. Sky Harbor. These weren't just random places in the world. They were all component parts of a single, sprawling desert metropolis on Earth.

"No way," Kael breathed, a look of utter disbelief on his face. "You're both… you're from Phoenix?"

"Looks like it," Zana said, a slow, incredulous smile spreading across her face.

The professional distance between them evaporated in an instant, replaced by a strange and powerful shock of intimacy. Three people from the same sun-scorched city, who had likely passed each other on the freeway or stood in line at the same coffee shop, now stranded together fifty thousand years in the past on a rock at the edge of the galaxy. The sheer, cosmic absurdity of it was staggering.

It was this newfound, fragile familiarity that allowed Zana to bring up the next, even more pressing issue.

"This… this changes things," she said, her tone shifting back to business, but with a new undercurrent of concern. "But it doesn't change biology." She looked at both of them. "My pod's nutrient supply is rated for another two weeks at most. After that, the IV runs dry. Not to mention muscle atrophy, even with the stims. We're going to have to log out. Soon."

The real world, which had felt a universe away, came crashing back into their reality.

"We can't all go at once," Jax realized aloud. "Someone has to stay, guard the ship."

"Exactly," Zana confirmed. "We'll need to set up a rotation. A schedule."

The idea of it was terrifying. To willingly leave this place, this incredible discovery, and return to their drab apartments, to then put their faith in the others to protect their sleeping bodies in-game. It required a level of trust they hadn't even considered needing until now. They had just found each other, only to be immediately confronted with the necessity of leaving.