Star Wars: New Age

Chapter 16

The Ghost Protocol

The astronomical number representing their new fortune still hovered in the air from Jax's datapad, but its light seemed cold, all the celebratory warmth extinguished by Zana's grim warning. The bridge of the 50,000-year-old ship, their sanctuary, suddenly felt like a cage, its walls no longer a protection but a boundary they couldn't afford to be trapped within.

Zana began to pace, her movements sharp and precise, the strategist taking command of a new and terrifying battlefield.

"Cygnus Minerals won't just use its in-game guild," she said, her voice low and hard, cutting through the stunned silence. "They are a real-world hyper-corp with an entire division for corporate espionage. They will analyze the financial transaction from every angle. They will hunt for the digital ghost that created 'The Warden's Echo.' They will try to trace the packets that uploaded the auction data right back to the physical terminal that sent them."

She stopped and looked directly at Jax, her gaze piercing. "Your apartment is a crime scene, and you don't even know what crime they'll accuse you of. You are compromised. We are all compromised. As long as we are scattered in the real world, we are weak. We can be identified and picked off one by one."

Kael, who had been fantasizing about the scientific equipment he could buy with his share of the money, turned pale. "But… the profile was anonymous. The financial account was encrypted…"

"There is no such thing as perfect anonymity when a corporation with a valuation that rivals small countries wants to find you," Zana retorted without missing a beat. "There are only levels of difficulty. And we just gave them a multi-million-credit reason to apply maximum effort."

She surveyed her two companions, the rookie mystic and the terrified scientist. "We operate as a unit in here," she stated. "It's time we became a unit out there. We consolidate. All of us."

The idea was radical and terrifying.

"We pool a fraction of the money from the sale," she continued, laying out the plan. "We acquire a secure, off-the-grid location. A warehouse, a decommissioned bunker, I don't care. Someplace with no public utility records, no traceable data lines. A single, physical base of operations where we can set up our pods and work. We operate as a single cell. It is the only way to protect ourselves, and to protect this." She gestured around at the magnificent, ancient bridge.

Kael looked like he was going to be sick, but he nodded slowly, seeing the cold, hard logic in her words. Jax, who could already feel the phantom sensation of a corporate analyst tracing his data, agreed without hesitation.

"She's right. I can't stay where I am," he said. "What's the plan?"

"The plan is to disappear," Zana replied. "We need to arrange a rendezvous. But not over any channels that can be monitored." Her eyes narrowed as she worked out the protocol. "Okay. We each create a new, temporary, encrypted comm channel using the ship's systems. The encryption on this tech should be fifty millennia ahead of anything Cygnus has. We will send the credentials to each other once. We will use that channel to agree on a time and a public place. As soon as the rendezvous is set, the channels will be wiped. Zero digital trail."

The three of them turned to their consoles. The air was thick with the gravity of their actions. They were no longer just players coordinating a log-out. They were now co-conspirators planning a clandestine meeting, using ancient alien technology to hide from a modern-day superpower.

One by one, they created their temporary channels and securely transmitted the contact keys to each other. The data transfer was instantaneous and silent.

They were no longer just teammates. Their fates, both in the game and in the hot, dusty reality of Phoenix, Arizona, were now irrevocably linked.

Jax gave a final nod to Zana and Kael on the bridge, then initiated the log-out. The world dissolved.

Log-out complete. Local time: 20:31 MST, Wednesday, July 9, 2025.

He opened his eyes to the familiar darkness of his pod. He felt the oppressive July heat of his apartment even through the pod's climate control. This time, however, he didn't feel the weakness or the disorientation. His mind was a razor, honed by a new and terrifying clarity. He was no longer a man escaping a boring life; he was a target escaping a hunter.

He swung out of the pod, his movements precise, and went straight to his terminal. The blue light illuminated a face that was no longer just tired, but grimly determined.

His first action was to access the encrypted Cayman Digital Trust account. He stared at the balance: 1,750,000 UC. It still didn't feel real. He initiated a transfer, moving a fraction of the sum—a hundred thousand credits—to his personal account. It was enough to grease the wheels of his disappearance. The confirmation was instantaneous.

Next, he pulled up the rental agreement for his apartment pod. He found the early termination clause and paid the exorbitant four-thousand-credit fee without blinking. An automated notice appeared: Lease for Unit 734-C terminated. Premises to be vacated within 24 hours. The clock was now officially ticking.

Then came the erasure. He navigated to a dark-web service he'd only ever read about, a digital cleaner outfit known as "The Janitors." Their motto was simple: We make ghosts. He paid their five-figure fee. A progress bar appeared on his screen, a stark visual of his old, mundane life—his social media, his public records, his consumer data—being digitally shredded and replaced with corrupted files and false trails.

The final piece was the most important: the Sleeper Pod. It was his gateway, his lifeline. He couldn't leave it behind. He accessed a high-end, discreet logistics service that catered to the corporate elite. He scheduled a "Priority Zero" pickup for the following morning. The manifest was for one "hermetically sealed server unit," to be placed in a long-term, anonymous storage locker he had just rented across town under a false name. The cost was astronomical, but the service guaranteed no paper trail.

He spent the next hour packing a single, small duffel bag: a few changes of clothes, a backup datapad, and the nutrient packs he hadn't used. He looked around the small, gray room that had been his cage for so long. There was no sentimentality, no nostalgia. It was the shell of a person who no longer existed.

A soft chime came from his personal datapad. He opened it to see a new message in the temporary, encrypted channel Zana had instructed them to create. The message contained no words. It was simply a set of coordinates for a 24-hour public transit station on the far side of the city, and a time: 09:00 tomorrow morning. The rendezvous.

Following protocol, he ran a wipe-and-delete function on the comm channel. It vanished from his datapad without a trace. The last digital tie was cut.

He stood in the center of the empty room with his single bag. He was untraceable, a ghost in the system, and, for the first time in his life, incredibly wealthy. He was also completely and utterly alone, on his way to meet two strangers who knew his greatest secret.

Without a backward glance, he walked out the door for the last time.

The sun was already a brutal, oppressive force at 08:45 the next morning, baking the concrete of the 24-hour mag-lev station and making the air shimmer. The station served the industrial outskirts of the Phoenix sprawl, and the air smelled of ozone, hot metal, and desperation. Jax sat on a worn plasteel bench, his duffel bag between his feet, feeling more exposed than he ever had in his life. After the sterile silence of the ancient ship, the real world was a chaotic assault of noise, smells, and unpredictable people.

He scanned the faces in the sparse crowd—transient workers on their way to factory shifts, disheveled night-dwellers blinking in the morning sun. He had no idea what he was looking for.

Then he saw him.

A tall, painfully thin young man was hovering near a public terminal, clutching a datapad to his chest like a shield. He had a mop of unruly black hair, and his glasses kept sliding down his nose. He radiated an aura of pure, unadulterated anxiety, his wide eyes darting around as if he expected a corporate assassin to leap out from behind a trash receptacle. It was so obviously Kael that Jax felt a jolt of recognition.

Just as Kael's panicked eyes met his, Jax saw her. She wasn't where he was looking. She was leaning against a massive support pillar twenty meters away, perfectly still, half-hidden in shadow. He had been scanning the crowd for threats, but she had been watching the entire station. She was smaller than he'd imagined, compact and wiry, dressed in plain gray cargo pants and a black t-shirt. Her dark hair was cut in a short, no-nonsense military style. She was completely unremarkable, until she turned her head slightly and the harsh morning light caught the faint, perfect seam of her cybernetic eye. She saw that Jax had spotted her, and gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.

She had been there the whole time, assessing, ensuring the rendezvous wasn't a trap. Of course she had.

Kael began to shuffle nervously towards the bench. Zana pushed off the pillar and moved to intercept, her walk efficient and purposeful. The three of them converged in the middle of the station plaza. The moment was thick with a profound, surreal awkwardness. These were the two people he had shared a near-death experience, a cosmic secret, and his own life with. He had never seen their faces before.

"Kael," the tall young man stammered, offering a clammy, hesitant hand to Jax.

"Jax," he replied, shaking it.

Zana arrived, stopping before them. She simply said her name, "Zana." Her voice was the same, but hearing it under the open sky, without the filter of a comm, made it sound grittier, more real.

They stood there for a second, a strange tableau: the nervous scientist, the intense soldier, and the quiet, average man who was their key to everything. The three founding members of The Warden's Echo.

Zana's gaze swept over them, her brief inspection complete. The time for uncertainty was over. She was back in command.

"Okay," she said, her voice dropping to a low, confidential tone. "We're all here. I've confirmed we weren't followed." She looked at both of them, her eyes hard and clear. "From this moment on, we operate as one unit. We protect each other, we protect the secret. What we do, we do together."

She shouldered her own small, equally practical bag. "I've arranged for an anonymous transport. It's waiting."

She gave them one last look, a silent command to follow, and then turned.

"Let's go buy our fortress."