Liin Terallo
Synthetic Force User
The hum started in my ribs. It was a soft, metallic vibration that did not belong to the wind or the stone around us. It threaded up my spine like a half-remembered frequency, something old trying to match pitch with something new inside me. Eli noticed the way I slowed, the way my head tilted - he always does - but he did not speak.
The canyon was too still for comfort. The air was unmoving. Light caught in the dust like it did not know where to fall. It all felt quite surreal. That was when I saw the glint; a long, sharp line of metal wedged into the cliffside. At first I thought that it was just another scrap of ancient machinery, sun-bleached and harmless. But no dead thing watches back the way this one did. The closer I came to it, the more the hum in my chest aligned with it, like gears trying to mesh together.
By the time I reached the slope, I already knew what it was; a ship. Or at the very least what remained of one. The prow of an old Imperial survey frigate lay broken and half-buried, it's hull ribs jutting outward like the bones of something that had died mid-reach. The sigil on it's plating was almost erased by sand and time, but the shape was unmistakable. My palm was already lifting before I consciously decided to touch it.
Cold metal. A pause. A shiver. The ship reacted instantly.
A deep vibration rolled through the carcass of the vessel, shaking dust loose in small avalanches. Flickers of dying light blinked to life in narrow strips along the hull. A grinding relay snapped awake somewhere deep inside. I felt my own synthetic field respond unbidden, reaching out as if to complete a circuit.
And then the loudspeaker cracked. It was not static. It was a voice; artificial and fractured, it's tone stretched thin by decades of decay.
The canyon swallowed the words and hurled them back in warped echoes, bouncing between the stone walls until it felt like the ship was everywhere at once. Then the message replayed.
Over and over the message repeated; louder each time as more systems sputtered back to life.
My pulse quickened. I could almost feel the signal radiating outward; leaping across dead Imperial frequencies and scattering into space like a flare.
Someone would hear it. Everyone, maybe.
“Liin.” Eli stepped beside me, his eyes sharp. “We need to shut that off. Now.”
He did not have to say why. Every scavenger, syndicate scout, or bounty hunter with an old Imperial listener rig would already be turning toward this canyon like rancors scenting a wounded animal.
The ship wailed it's broken message again.
My stomach tightened. The vessel was not calling for help. It was calling for whoever could claim whatever it thought was inside. And if anything recognized the Isotope-5 in my bloodstream, if the ship had mistaken me for its rightful handler, then the asset it wanted recovered…was me.
Tags: OPEN
