Public Echoes Over Ord Janon (OPEN)

[Oraya Kaith]

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Ord Janon was abandoned centuries ago, its surface stripped bare and its settlements left to collapse into dust. The records say nothing survived. No one was supposed to come back.

And yet the signal persisted. A Republic distress beacon, impossibly old, still ticking in broken cycles. Oraya Kaith hadn’t meant to stumble into it—her freighter’s sensors simply wouldn’t stop screaming once the system drew near. Static. Ghost echoes of ships long gone. Navigation warnings that contradicted themselves.

When the planet came into view, it was wrong.

The southern hemisphere glowed with an eerie shimmer, as if glassed by weapons no one remembered. But at its center was the scar—an endless black wound that bent the horizon around it. Gravity folded inward there, drawing storms, rivers, even whole ruins into its grip. A singularity, half-buried in the world’s crust, eating the planet from the inside out.

And still, from somewhere within that wound, the beacon kept calling.

[LOG 3:14] :: “—don’t go near the southern ridge. The ground moves. It’s—” :: [static]

Oraya adjusted her comms, frowning. The voice was decades old, yet sharp enough to cut through the cabin like it had been spoken yesterday.

[LOG 5:02] :: “Half the colony’s gone. Just… gone. Like it fell into the sky upside-down. If anyone hears this—”

The ship shuddered as another wave of interference struck. Her navicomputer flagged phantom vessels all around her—hulks of transports, warships, civilian craft—none of them really there.

[LOG 7:41] :: “We sealed the doors but they keep whispering. I hear them in the walls. They sound like my wife. She’s dead. I buried her—”

Her stomach turned cold. The voices overlapped now, mixing beacon chatter with words that weren’t on any frequency.

[BEACON ID: UNKNOWN] :: “…you’re already here…”

She swallowed hard, eyes fixed on the wound in the planet. That black horizon tugged at her ship as though daring her to come closer.

And she wasn’t the only one listening. Ships were already dropping into realspace along the system’s edge—lured by the same impossible signal.

Something on Ord Janon was calling out.
Something born of power that was never meant to exist.

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Tags: Mykel Dawson Rayne Lo'to Soliane Desari Tohu Sula Skirata​

 

[Tohu]

Mazdo had never seen anything like this before. Scanners picked up ships, then nothing, then different ships. Comms full of static and voices, all talking over each other. But looking out the viewport, he saw nothing but a dead planet; black scar running across it like some god had sliced it with a planet-sized knife.

"I recommend immediate departure," said his ol' faithful co-pilot Kiwor, an ancient OOM model of a pilot droid.

Mazdo shook his head. "And have the Vigos serve our heads on a platter? Tsk." He glanced back at the tall man looming behind him, "Tohu, what you say?"

"Long as you don't crash us," Tohu said.

"I won't. Don't worry, I won't."

Mazdo's voice said otherwise and Tohu heard it. Still, he wanted that bounty hunting license bad, and if this was the way to get it, he'd take it.​

Oraya Kaith

 

[Sula Skirata]

Sula sat perfectly still, one leg tucked up under the other as the sound filled her cockpit. Messages overlapping so much so that it was almost impossible to decipher one from the other. Almost. What interested her the most, however, was the phantoms that kept appearing and disappearing on her navcom. Sula listened to all of it, watched it all, analysing every detail and drawing up hypotheses but nothing seemed to truly fit.

Time was simple. It was the continuous progression of events in one direction. An irreversible direction. It wasn't possible to go back in time. It was possible for time to move slower in places, but it never went backwards. She looked up as the navcom pinged again, the hull of the ship creaking as it did. She noted their unchanged locations from the last wave.

Did time...echo?

Sula frowned, untucking her leg she reached a hand for her comms and flicked the incoming barrage off.

"…you're already here…"
​

Her frown deepened. She checked the comms, confirming she had switched them off, that they were not malfunctioning. Something akin to fear ran down her spine, but Sula Skirata did not feel the same ways others did. She ignored it, taking the ships controls in her hands once more and drifting closer to the dying planet. Whatever this was, whatever was waiting for her, it was down there.

And she would have answers.