SWNOVELXO Chapter 3: Chapter 3
A month had passed, something that had been difficult to notice on this planet. It turned out that no one knew what date it was or even the day. Some said that on Bracca, the days don't have names, and the sky is always the same gray. But my body did notice. My hands no longer trembled when I carried my load. My back hurt less, and my steps were firmer. The change in each statistic wasn't always noticeable, but thanks to everyone's advice, the work was still exhausting, but I no longer felt on the verge of collapse every shift.
My body had changed. And although the food was still a bland mess and the days were endless, everything was more manageable, and I had been able to explore the little they knew about this planet.
Bracca, a planet focused on ship recycling, but at some point, the results stopped mattering, and the Republic government was simply looking for a place to safely store those disabled warships. Resulting in the danger the planet had now become, with a company whose legality, even in the days of the Republic, had been questionable. But they weren't the ones enslaving us; like any company, they had subcontractors, those that did the dirty work for them, and those that would be discarded the moment the government, by pure miracle, decided to take an interest in the rights of sapient beings.
A bit difficult, since I had arrived during the Imperial era, apparently. No one remembered how many years had passed, mainly because they were too young to do so. Not that I cared, or anyone else around me did; this planet had been operating the same way for centuries, as far as they knew. The Republic wasn't much better, and the Empire wouldn't last long. History would move on, and that was too big to even think about.
Sometimes, at night, I'd check my stats window again. There weren't always changes, but when there were, it seemed like I wasn't wasting my time.
"Hey, Scraps, grab that by the base, not the mechanical arm," Vekk said, not looking at me, as he lifted a cargo thruster. He was right. The arm fell off the second I let go.
Scraps, that was the name I'd been given after the group decided they couldn't keep calling me you or hey, not that I could complain; I couldn't have come up with a better one when they'd asked me what I wanted to be called.
"See?" Rusk added from the other side. "Another apprentice with bantha hands."
It didn't bother me. That was his natural tone. I learned to listen through the taunts.
Kyi giggled from where she was dismantling a rusty panel.
—Don't worry, a cell exploded in my face the first week. They left me glowing like a navigational flashlight.
"And spoken like one," Rusk added, with his typical crooked smile.
Talla slipped between two collapsed structures and left a piece at my feet. She didn't say anything, but pointed toward a shadowy corner. I looked, and sure enough, there was a small, almost intact spare box.
"Talla is good at noticing things," Kyi said quietly. "Our best loots are thanks to her good eyesight."
By "loot," she meant literally that. It turns out there are certain buyers—from outside, I suppose—interested in specific pieces that can be found among the wreckage. The problem is that it's not easy to remove them without the company noticing. Everything we collect is logged, and the guards inspect us regularly.
That's why the group didn't sell anything right away. Over the course of a month, they carefully set aside the pieces they believed to be valuable, hiding them in forgotten compartments or among structures too large to inspect thoroughly. They did this while waiting for an event that, they'd heard, happened like clockwork: a failure in the scanning system, something old and unmaintained that no one cared to fix, while everything seemed to work on the surface.
Until now, I'd only heard it mentioned in whispers. Today, for the first time, I would see how they actually did it.
Zaru appeared at that moment, effortlessly carrying her part. She didn't say much while we worked, but a glance was enough to understand what she wanted.
"Don't stand there for so long," she said as she walked past me. "If you think too long, they'll take half your registration off before you finish."
I nodded. I had nothing to say in response. I just bent down, secured the mechanical arm properly this time, and lifted it. It was heavy, but not as heavy as before.
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There were no alarms, no sparks, no flickering lights. Just a different silence, a barely perceptible change in the rhythm of things. A familiar buzzing sound ceased, and in the control tower, the monitoring lights dimmed. No one commented. No one batted an eye. It was as normal as the gray dawn on Bracca.
Zaru moved first.
"It's now," she said in a low voice, barely enough for us to hear.
In less than a minute, the group dispersed without a word. Everyone knew their role. I, for one, just tried to stay out of the way.
Talla was the first to disappear. Literally. She slipped between two piles of corroded parts, and I never saw her again. Kyi and Rusk headed toward an abandoned dumpster that almost seemed part of the landscape. Vekk nodded at me, and I followed.
"Don't touch anything," he muttered as he crouched down next to a half-loose metal plate.
Beneath, hidden among the rusted structure, was a small compartment lined with old blankets and burnt parts. But in the center, neatly stacked, were the real gems: partial power cores, intact sensors, original circuit boards, and even a fragment of armor that still bore the emblem of a Republic ship.
"They're really into that at the lower levels," Rusk commented upon arriving, giving the contents a quick glance. "Nostalgia, collecting... or illegal reconstruction, who knows?"
Zaru returned with Talla a few minutes later. They were both carrying an empty, dirty crate, nothing suspicious about it… at least on the outside.
"Five minutes, that's all," Zaru said firmly. "The system will reset itself."
They placed all the loot inside the false box, which had a barely perceptible false bottom. At first glance, it looked like we were carrying worthless, burned waste. Kyi took one last look at the surrounding sensors, using an old device that barely worked, but apparently was enough for her.
"No active thermal scanning," he said with a nervous smile. "Again."
So, we walked.
We crossed half the esplanade, skirting machinery, without hurrying too much. Too fast would attract attention, but too slow would also. There was a science to it, and everyone seemed to know it by heart. We passed two supervisors who didn't look up. The box was deposited among other waste near the unregistered loading area, where Zaru said a collection unit passed twice a cycle and no one checked the contents very closely.
Everything lasted less than I would have imagined.
—Today you will go with Rusk, you must learn how to handle things, we will need it later —Zaru told me later
I didn't know what she meant. But I nodded, feeling excited by what her words implied. I would get out of the barracks and see more of this world at last.
That night, I checked my stats again.
Statistics:
Fortress: 7
Resistance: 7
Skill: 8
Intelligence: 14
Willpower: 6
Charisma: 5
Skills:
Repairer's Knowledge (passive): +10% efficiency in simple mechanical repairs.
Scrapper's Eye (Passive): +10% efficiency when searching for materials.
Deft Hands (Passive): +5% dexterity in manual tasks.
Photographic Memory (Passive): Rapid retention of visual details.
Basic Adaptability: Learn basic skills 20% faster.
A few days ago, I gained my first active skill. Kyi's teachings hadn't been in vain, and the skills did a great job; things had never been so easy. It wasn't something I was doing out of kindness either; the parts we sold wouldn't be worth anything if they were in poor condition, so Kyi was the one in charge of repairing them. Now that I'd learned the basics, according to Kyi, I'd have to help out at the company.
My stats weren't rising as quickly as they had in the early days, but I'd decided not to get depressed about it. My growth was still much better than anyone else's. My malnourished, thin body had changed, and my ribs were barely visible now. I still had hope.
Rusk woke me up with a gentle push on my shoulder.
—Up. Let's go.
I nodded and tried to move carefully so as not to wake Nyylo; we shared the same sleeping space. I dressed silently and followed her. No one else was moving in the barracks. Vekk pretended to be asleep, but I had no doubt he'd heard us. We passed between bunks, through a hallway with a wet floor from a persistent leak, and then through a maintenance hatch that clearly didn't open for just anyone. They'd accomplished a lot in the time they'd been there.
"Is it always like this?" I asked quietly as we ducked under a fallen section of the ceiling.
— No, we use different routes and we are not the only ones who leave the barracks to sell some scrap metal — He was interrupted for a moment, while he removed a hatch from a duct to move forward — Each one looks for his own way to seek possibilities in this world, although we pride ourselves on being the only ones who have not been caught yet.
The route was a maze of rusted hallways, unlit walkways, and lower levels I'd never set foot on. He moved as if he knew every crevice. Sometimes he'd stop dead, raise a hand, and listen. Then we'd wait. Sometimes droids would pass by, or sleepless workers. They never seemed to pay attention to anything; according to Rusk, their pay wasn't any better than ours.
That's why the outside access wasn't as heavily guarded as one might think. No one cared if someone crawled through a duct, as long as it didn't trigger an alarm. And Rusk seemed too used to it.
It was there that we came across the collection unit, just in time.
It was a small transport, almost a motorized wagon covered with cargo panels and no visible markings. It would stop for a few minutes, as if waiting for instructions that never came. It was driven by a Trandoshan with a dirty hood and a dull expression. When he saw us, he said nothing. He just activated a side hatch and looked straight ahead again, as if we were air.
"Here," Rusk said. "He doesn't mind what we do as long as it doesn't affect his work. Every now and then, we make sure to give him a cut of the profits in return."
We climbed in quickly. Inside were other crates, some full, some empty. The smell of old oil and hot metal filled the space. The engine vibrated unevenly, as if it were about to explode with each acceleration, but it didn't stop.
"What if they catch us?" I asked as I sat down between two empty containers.
Ruks didn't respond immediately. He just bent down and checked the bag we had our loot in, making sure everything was wrapped up properly.
—They won't.
The truck started off, slowly at first, then with a louder hum. We moved away from the main lights of the complex. When I heard we were leaving, I hoped we'd see something other than scrap metal, but everything was the same, and from the view provided by the vehicle hovering hundreds of meters above the ground, I could only see scrap metal.
We continued deeper into areas where metal rusted unchecked, and the skeletons of ships were piled on top of each other like forgotten graves. It wasn't just a technology graveyard. According to Rusk, it was an underground market, constantly moving across the planet, avoiding security patrols.
We got off in the middle of one of the unit's stops and arrived at
"Have you sold many times?" I asked.
—Enough to know who not to deal with.
The market appeared after a while, through a crack opened by an ancient explosion. Electric torches hung, dim lights gleaming between patched tarps. It was underground, improvised, and alive. A mass of muffled voices murmuring prices, making offers, arguing over stolen parts or rare components.
Rusk didn't stop to look at anything. He walked through the makeshift hallways as if he belonged there. As if he were part of the dust and smoke. I tried not to look too much, but it wasn't easy. I'd never seen a blaster for sale. Or anything that looked like a functioning Imperial droid leg.
Eventually, we stopped in front of a table with no name on it. Just a symbol painted in white on a piece of Y-wing hull: a vertical line crossed by an X.
The vendor was an old human, as thin as an antenna, with one eye covered by a modified solder plate. His accent was raspy, as if he were speaking through a throat full of scrap metal.
—They arrived late.
—But with good material, my good friend—Rusk replied without hesitation.
He opened the bag and let the man inspect it. His fingers were slow but precise, like those of someone who'd seen many more pieces than he'd sold.
"This is fine. This is fine too… This isn't so fine," he growled, pushing him away. "I'll give you 120 for everything."
"One hundred and eighty," Rusk replied. "We both know they're worth twice as much, and with good connections, you could get three times as much."
There was an awkward silence. The man looked at him with his one useful eye. Then, without saying anything, he took out a pack of credit cards.
"Two hundred, but I want you to find a piece," the old man said as he pushed the pieces toward Rusk. "If you find it, the price goes up."
Rusk didn't respond immediately. He took the chips, counted them quickly, and only then looked up. —What kind of piece?
The old man looked around for a second, as if the market could hear him. Then he leaned forward. His voice lowered in volume, but it didn't lose its rusty edge. —Navigation Core of a Republic Warship
Rusk frowned slightly. We didn't usually deal with anything like this in our decommissioning area; we could barely manage to pick up anything else from the dismantled remains of ships.
"It's not something that usually gets left behind among the remains," he said.
"That's why I'm offering more than just tokens," the old man replied, and took out a small metal cylinder. When he opened it, he revealed a keycard, shiny and spotless. Level 3.
My eyes widened reflexively. Even without knowing all the levels, I knew one of them would open doors that shouldn't be opened.
"A key card, and as you might have guessed, it's not just any key card," the old man added, seeing our faces. "Forgotten in a drawer during a supervisor's retreat... or something like that."
It had the symbol of the scrap metal guild, the organization that had control over the entire planet.
Rusk nodded slowly.—We'll see what we can do.
"I hope so," the old man said. "And if not, maybe bring more material next time. But don't repeat with worthless junk."
Rusk gave a slight nod and touched my arm.
"Time to go back. And remember," he told me as we walked through the market aisles, "what happens here is not discussed in the barracks. Not even among ourselves, unless it's necessary."