Star Wars: New Age

Chapter 22

The Shopping List

The bridge of the Quarry was silent, but it was a new kind of silence. It wasn't the silence of fear or uncertainty; it was the quiet, focused silence of a team that had just proven its capabilities and was now contemplating its next move on the galactic chessboard. Their massive in-game credit balance was a testament to their success, a powerful tool waiting to be wielded.

Zana, true to form, was the one who set their new direction. She stood before the main holographic display, her arms crossed.

"The sale was a success," she stated, her voice resonating with authority. "It gives us capital. But wealth is useless if it's not leveraged." She turned to face them. "Buying modern ships or gear is a fool's errand. It's like finding a dragon's hoard and using it to buy a new sword. We own the hoard. We need to learn how to use it."

Her gaze fell upon Jax. "We're done with reconnaissance. We need to become self-sufficient. I want to see what this station is truly capable of. Ask the Warden to open its technical library. I want to see schematics, manufacturing data, anything related to automation and robotics."

Jax nodded. He sat in the pilot's chair, the connection to the Warden now feeling like a constant, quiet hum in the background of his thoughts. He didn't need to touch a console anymore. He simply focused his will, shaping Zana's request into a query for the ancient intelligence. We need to build. Show us how.

The response was immediate. The main holographic display, which had been showing their credit balance, flickered and changed. It filled with a dizzying, three-dimensional array of complex blueprints and flowing energy diagrams. It was a library of wonders, a glimpse into the minds of the beings who had built this place.

"By the stars..." Kael whispered, his eyes wide as he stumbled toward the display. "The architectural complexity... the power designs... this is fifty thousand years beyond anything I've ever studied."

"Filter it, Kael," Zana ordered, her voice sharp, pulling him back to the task. "Don't get lost in the library. I need two things right now: a worker and an eye. Find me a droid that can pilot our mining vessels, and find me a drone that can be our scout and security."

Guided by Zana's clear directive, Kael dove into the archives. His fingers danced across his own console, cross-referencing the alien data structures with terms he could understand. For nearly an hour, he was lost in the work, translating and sorting, until finally, he isolated two designs.

"I have them," he announced, his voice filled with a discoverer's triumph. He projected two massive, rotating schematics into the center of the bridge.

The first was a robust, humanoid droid with thick, powerful limbs and a heavily shielded chassis. Its designation, translated from the ancient glyphs, was the "Geode-class Mining Servitor."

The second was a small, sleek, disc-shaped drone with multiple sensor arrays and an almost organic-looking design. Its name was the "Oculus-class Observer Drone."

"A pilot and an eye," Zana said with a satisfied nod. "Perfect."

"We have the blueprints," Jax said, a sense of excitement building within him. "We can finally start building our own fleet."

"Not yet," Kael said, his expression turning from triumphant to troubled. "I'm afraid it's not that simple."

He tapped his console, and a new window appeared next to the schematics: a detailed list of materials. "I've generated the bill of materials. We have the Iridium, more than enough. But that's just the chassis. The internal systems, the processors, the wiring… they require a whole range of other advanced components."

He highlighted three items on the list.

"Gallium-Arsenide Wafers, Yttrium-laced Superconductors, and Carbon-Nanoweave Plating." He looked up at them, his face grim. "We can't make any of them. We don't have the raw materials."

Kael's announcement hung in the air on the bridge, a bucket of cold water on their celebratory fire. He projected the full materials list next to the schematics for the Mining Servitor. The Iridium requirement was immense, but it was dwarfed by the long list of other, more complex components.

Zana stepped closer to the holographic list, her eyes narrowing as she read the names. "Gallium-Arsenide Wafers. Yttrium-laced Superconductors. Carbon-Nanoweave Plating," she read aloud. "These aren't raw ores. These are refined, high-end industrial components." She looked at Kael. "We can't make any of this here."

"Not without a micro-fabricator, a chemical refinery, and about ten other facilities we haven't found yet," Kael confirmed, his shoulders slumping. "We have the blueprints to build a hyper-advanced car, but we don't know how to make a spark plug."

The dream of instant self-sufficiency had evaporated. They were still dependent on the galactic economy they were trying to hide from.

"So we buy them," Jax said simply.

Zana and Kael turned to look at him. A week ago, a statement like that would have been an impossible fantasy. Now, it was a simple statement of fact. He was thinking like a man with a 2.7 million credit bank account.

"We have the capital," he continued. "It's seed money. We use it to buy the parts we need to build the machines that will get us the rest of the materials ourselves."

Zana's expression hardened with renewed purpose. He was right. This wasn't a setback; it was the first test of their new enterprise. "Kael," she commanded, "back to the Galactic Trade Network. You're not a prospector anymore. You're our head of procurement. Find me the best, most discreet suppliers for these three components. I want military-grade or better, and I want it delivered without a name attached."

Kael nodded, a new fire in his eyes. He dove back into the trade network, his search parameters completely different now. He sifted through listings from major NPC industrial suppliers and a few specialized player guilds who had managed to corner the market on certain refined goods.

"The components are available," he reported after several minutes. "But they're expensive. Very expensive. We're talking top-tier materials for corporate and military manufacturing."

"Give me the numbers," Zana said.

Kael projected a shopping cart into the air. The total made Jax's stomach clench all over again. It was nearly a third of their hard-won fortune from the Iridium sale. For a moment, he hesitated.

Zana saw his hesitation. "It's an investment, Jax," she said firmly. "We spend this now, we won't have to spend it later. Authorize it, Kael."

With a deep breath, Kael confirmed the purchases from three different anonymous suppliers, the credits vanishing from their "Warden's Echo" account in a massive digital transaction.

"The deals are done," Kael said. "Now for delivery. We can't have them deliver to Hesperos or anywhere we've been."

"They won't," Zana said. "We're giving them a dead-drop location." She brought up their regional star-map. "We'll have them deliver the goods to a secured container at a specific set of coordinates. A quiet, unremarkable asteroid in the RC-1138 system. It's a dead system. No traffic. No reason for anyone to be there."

She set the delivery time for 24 hours from now, giving all three suppliers a common window.

The plan was set. They had just spent a fortune, but in doing so, they had acquired all the missing pieces for their puzzle. Their first droids were no longer a dream; they were a set of components waiting for pickup and assembly.

With the massive order placed and the delivery timer set for twenty-four hours, a strange and unfamiliar quiet settled over the bridge. For the first time since they had woken up on this ancient station, there was no immediate, pressing crisis to solve, no system to coax to life, no destination to plot. There was nothing to do but wait.

The feeling was deeply unsettling.

Kael, unable to sit still, dedicated himself to monitoring the public Holo-Net shipping channels. He tracked the three separate cargo vessels that were carrying their precious components, watching their icons crawl across the galactic map toward the designated dead-drop point in the RC-1138 system. It was a self-assigned and ultimately useless task, but it gave his nervous energy an outlet.

Zana, ever the professional, spent her time in front of the tactical console. Using the Echo's powerful sensor data that they had previously downloaded, she ran deep scans on the dead-drop asteroid itself. She analyzed its composition, checked for hidden energy signatures, and mapped every crater and fissure. She was preparing for an ambush, even when there was no logical reason to expect one. In her world, you never walked into a room without checking the corners first.

That left Jax. He felt the lull, the quiet moment, but he knew it was an illusion. The challenges ahead were only going to get harder. He was the key, the engine to their entire enterprise, and he had just seen a glimpse of his own limitations in the training chamber. He couldn't afford to be idle.

He walked over to Zana. "While we wait," he said, his voice firm, "I'm going back to the Kinetic Chamber. If I'm going to be the one to power all this up… I need to be better."

Zana looked up from her scans, a flicker of approval in her cybernetic eye. She simply nodded. "Don't break yourself."

For the next twenty-four hours, while Zana planned and Kael watched, Jax trained. He pushed himself to the brink. It was no longer about learning new concepts; it was about drilling the fundamentals until they were second nature.

The Warden seemed to understand his new resolve. The training routines became more complex. Two drones were deployed instead of one, their attack patterns forcing him to divide his precognitive attention. He had to form shields while simultaneously using telekinesis to assemble simple geometric shapes out of floating metal blocks.

He failed, repeatedly. He was tagged by energy pellets, his shields collapsing under pressure. The blocks clattered to the floor as his focus wavered. But with each failure, he learned. He felt his mental endurance growing, the connection to the Force becoming less like a wild river he had to dam, and more like a part of his own circulatory system. He learned to unify his thoughts, to see the drones and the blocks not as separate problems, but as a single, interconnected puzzle he could solve with the flow of the Force.

He was bruised, exhausted, and mentally drained when the chime finally echoed through the bridge.

He emerged from the training chamber to see Kael standing up from his console, his face lit with excitement.

"They're here," Kael announced. "All three shipments have confirmed delivery to the secured container at the dead-drop coordinates. The package is ready for pickup."

The waiting was over. The components for their future had arrived.

Zana looked away from her tactical display, a grimly satisfied expression on her face. She looked at Jax, taking in his exhausted but more controlled demeanor.

"Good," she said. "Your training just got a field test."

She brought up the schematic for the sleek, fast Scout ship.

"Let's go get our parts."