Star Wars: New Age

Chapter 17

The Fortress

Zana's words, "Let's go buy our fortress," hung in the oppressive 9 AM heat of the Phoenix transit station. She led them away from the public platform, down a dusty service corridor, and out into a sun-baked parking lot. Waiting for them was a vehicle that was perfectly anonymous: a dented, windowless, dark gray electric transport van, the kind used for industrial deliveries all over the sprawl. It was ugly, slow, and completely invisible.

The journey was short and silent. The inside of the van was dark, the lack of windows a deliberate security measure. The only sounds were the hum of the electric motor and the whisper of the air conditioner fighting a losing battle against the Arizona sun. The awkwardness of their first meeting had been replaced by the quiet, focused energy of a team on a mission.

The van pulled into a derelict industrial park on the forgotten edge of Mesa. The landscape was a graveyard of 20th-century industry: rusted-out warehouses with shattered windows, faded signs for companies that had been defunct for decades, and weeds cracking through the asphalt. The van stopped in front of a squat, graffiti-covered concrete building that looked like it hadn't been entered since before they were born.

"We're here," Zana announced, sliding the side door open.

Kael looked out, his expression a mask of confusion. "Here? It's a ruin."

"The building is a shell," Zana explained, leading them to a heavy, rust-stained steel door. She pulled out a datapad and interfaced with a small, grimy panel next to the frame that Jax hadn't even noticed. With a deep groan of long-dormant hydraulics, the door slid sideways, revealing not a dusty warehouse, but a concrete staircase descending into cool darkness.

"The real prize is underneath," Zana said, leading the way down. "A corporate sub-level data bunker. Decommissioned after the Ares-Cygnus merger wars about ten years back. Hardened walls, independent power conduits, direct fiber-optic trunk access, and only one way in or out."

They emerged into a vast, cavernous space. Rows of empty server racks stood like metal skeletons in the gloom, and thick, bundled snakes of fiber-optic cable lined the walls. The air was cool and still, smelling of dust and the faint, sharp scent of old ozone from fried electronics.

While Kael looked around in wide-eyed awe at the raw infrastructure, Zana got to work on her datapad. Her thumbs moved with a speed and precision that told Jax this was her true element. This wasn't a game; this was corporate warfare. She wasn't Browse a real estate site; she was navigating a web of shell corporations and encrypted financial ledgers.

After several minutes of intense, silent tapping, punctuated by biometric eye-scans for verification, she looked up.

"Done," she said simply. "The property, and the shell corporation that technically owns it, are now ours. The payment was routed through three different offshore digital trusts. It's a clean transaction. It'll take Cygnus a decade to untangle it, if they ever even find a thread to pull."

The three of them stood in the center of their new home. It was an empty, dusty, concrete tomb. But it was theirs. It was secure. It was off the grid.

For the first time since he'd clicked "Confirm Auction," Jax felt a sense of profound safety.

Zana looked around the cavernous space, a flicker of grim satisfaction on her face. "Welcome home, Warden's Echo," she said. "Now the real work begins."

The two days that followed were a blur of focused, exhausting work. The empty, dusty data bunker was systematically transformed from a concrete tomb into a secure, high-tech lair. The awkwardness between them dissolved, replaced by the efficient camaraderie of a unit with a common goal.

On Thursday afternoon, the anonymous logistics transport arrived. Three large, hermetically sealed crates were delivered to the loading bay of the abandoned warehouse above. Using anti-grav lifts they had purchased with their newfound wealth, they carefully maneuvered the crates down into the bunker. Inside were their three Sleeper Pods, the priceless gateways to their other life. They arranged them in a triangle in the center of the main cavern, the nucleus of their new operations center.

Kael was in a state of pure bliss. He had spent his entire life studying theoretical infrastructures; now he had a private, industrial-grade playground. He tapped directly into the bunker's primary power trunk, bypassing the public grid entirely. He set up a dedicated, high-capacity power system for the pods, ensuring they had a stable, uninterruptible supply. He then established a closed-loop fiber-optic network, a digital fortress completely isolated from the outside Holo-Net, making their data streams virtually untraceable. He worked happily amidst a tangle of cables and diagnostic tools, muttering about terabit transfer speeds and the elegant design of the bunker's old coolant pipes.

Zana, meanwhile, focused on physical and digital security with a single-minded intensity that was both impressive and terrifying. She installed a new, military-grade biometric lock system on the main blast door, keyed only to the three of them. She placed a perimeter of discreet motion sensors and thermal cameras throughout the derelict warehouse above, all feeding to a security station she set up near the entrance. She handled their logistics, ordering stockpiles of long-term food rations, advanced medical kits, and, most importantly, a fresh supply of nutrient packs and NMES conductive gel for the pods. All of it was purchased through anonymous accounts and delivered by different covert couriers.

Jax provided the labor. He helped Zana install the heavy security door and ran the thick power conduits for Kael. The physical work was grounding, a welcome contrast to the ethereal, draining nature of his Force training. But as he worked, his mind was light-years away. He could still feel the phantom hum of the Nexus Core, the silent invitation of the Warden. He felt the pull of their mission, of the ancient ship waiting for him. The real world was a temporary, necessary logistical stop, but his true purpose now resided in that other, virtual reality.

By Saturday morning, the transformation was complete. The cavern was no longer empty. It was their command center. The three pods sat ready, their power indicators glowing a healthy green. Kael had a multi-monitor computer station set up, ready for data analysis. Zana had her security console, a silent sentinel watching over their fortress.

The three of them stood before their pods, the air humming with the power of their new home. They had done it. They had disappeared.

"Alright," Zana said, breaking the silence. Her voice echoed slightly in the large space. "We're secure out here. The real world can't touch us." She paused, her gaze sweeping over them, her expression turning from satisfied to serious.

"But we're still broke in there," she continued. "We have no advanced gear, no resources, no parts for repairs, and no in-game currency to buy them. We solved our first problem."

She looked at her pod, then back at them, her eyes glinting with determination.

"Now we go back in and solve the next one."

The three of them stood on the bridge, the hum of the ancient ship a quiet testament to their secure new reality. They were safe, for now.

"Alright," Zana said, her voice cutting through the silence, bringing them all to the present. "We're back. We're safe in the real world. But we're still broke in here. We need a way to generate in-game capital, and we need it before we can even think about repairing or replacing parts on this ship."

Kael sighed, the weight of the problem settling on him. "Stripping The Vagrant for common scrap would take months to generate any real currency."

"A waste of time and effort," Zana agreed immediately. She paced before the main viewport, her mind already working several steps ahead. "This station is immense. The Warden's people were explorers; the log we saw proved that. They wouldn't have used this entire capital-class vessel for every small task." She stopped and turned to Jax, her eyes sharp. "There must be auxiliary craft. Shuttles, support ships. Ask him. Ask the Warden if this place has a hangar bay."

Jax, now comfortable in his strange role as a living conduit, didn't need to move. He simply closed his eyes and focused on Zana's query, pushing the concept towards the silent presence of the Warden. Hangar? Smaller ships?

The response was instantaneous. On the holographic schematic of the station that Kael had active, a new pathway began to glow, tracing a route from the bridge level, down through a series of transit tubes, and into a massive, sealed sector they had not seen before. A single, elegant glyph pulsed at the destination.

"The Hangar," Kael read, his voice filled with a sudden, breathless excitement.

Without another word, they were moving. They followed the illuminated path on their datapads, their footsteps echoing in corridors that had been silent for fifty thousand years. They passed through vast, empty chambers and down long-service causeways until they reached a set of colossal blast doors, marking the edge of the new sector. At Jax's mental nudge from the Warden, the doors hissed and slid open, revealing the space within.

They stepped through and froze, their suit lights sweeping across a cavern so vast it seemed to have its own horizon. It was a hangar bay, pristine and silent, and resting in a series of docking cradles was a small, sleeping fleet.

There were four sleek, blade-winged ships that looked impossibly fast, clearly Scout vessels. A pair of more menacing craft with visible weapon emplacements, Interceptors, were docked nearby. And in the largest cradles sat two robust, blocky ships, their hulls thick and practical, with massive, folded manipulator arms and external cargo clasps.

"Mining vessels," Zana whispered, the words filled with a reverence born of pure strategic opportunity.

The sight of the ships, of the tools just waiting for them, changed everything.

"This changes the plan," Zana declared, her voice ringing with a new, fierce ambition. "Forget selling data. Forget finder's fees. We have the means of production right here."

She turned to her team, her eyes blazing with the fire of a new idea. "We go back to the bridge. We use the ancient maps to find a new target—a quiet, resource-rich world nearby that no one knows about. Then, we get one of these mining ships working. We will harvest the resources ourselves and build our own fortune from the ground up."

It was an audacious, brilliant plan. Kael, however, had walked up to the nearest mining vessel, placing a hand on its cold, seamless hull. He ran a quick scan with his datapad, and his face fell.

"Zana…" he said, his voice hesitant. "The technology… the systems are identical to the bridge. It's completely inert. I have no way to interface with it. I don't even know how to open the cockpit."

He and Zana turned to look at Jax, who was staring at the dormant, powerful machine. The Warden had shown them the tools for their salvation. But the unspoken, monumental question now hung in the silent air of the hangar.

Can you wake this one up, too?