Private Song of the currents

[Alina Grayson]

The planet had no name.

At least, not one found on any recent charts. It hung at the far edge of a dying star system, buried beneath the scars of wars long passed and long forgotten. Orbiting debris drifted like ghostly monuments shattered moons split open by unnatural forces, their cores exposed and frozen in the void. Gravitational anomalies flared intermittently, tugging at passing ships with unseen hands. There were no beacons. No stations. No rescue if you called.

And yet, there they were.

The ship dropped out of hyperspace just inside the system's edge, her hull creaking from the pressure of a premature reversion. A warning klaxon sounded as the ship lurched. Alina quickly slid into the co pilots seat next to Aiden and began checking the scanners. "Gravimetric anomolies, its disrupting ship systems." the local star pulsed, and the pressure wave slammed into the ship sending it sideways.

Azure eyes turned to Aiden, no fear but concern she nodded to him. The viewport rippled with distortion. Outside, the star flared. Violently. A solar burst surged across the system like a tidal wave of light and radiation. It wasn't natural. Alina could feel that even before the Force pressed hard against her skin warning her, bracing her. The ship bucked sideways as control panels shorted in a cascade of sparks. Engine systems whined. One of the refugee children screamed behind her. Comms went dark. Nav charts scrambled, their coordinates reduced to noise.

Alina gritted her teeth and turned into the wave of panic surging through the cabin. Not fear not yet but close. The planet below looming large in the viewport, she turned back to the panel infront of her. "Aiden get us down gently." she turned and called back to the hold. "Everyone, take your seats and hold on to whatever you can"

It was a dead world. No signs of life. No cities. No orbiting satellites. But gravity held true, and that was all they needed.

Alina didn't flinch. Her eyes fixed on the broken surface below.

Aiden Porte

 

[Aiden Porte]

Alina Grayson​

The children's fear clawed at his focus, but Aiden did not let it take root. He pressed both hands against the controls, steadying the yoke even as the ship fought him. The viewport shuddered with every lurch, as though the star itself were trying to peel them from the sky.

“Hold fast,” he said, voice low, calm, a thread of steel against the storm.

The Force surged against his skin. It was warning, yes, but not without guidance. A current within the chaos. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a heartbeat, letting the current pull him where the nav charts could not.

The world below filled their vision, its broken crust scarred like bone picked clean by time. He could feel its silence even before the ship began to cut through the upper reaches of its atmosphere. Dead, but waiting.

The hull groaned as fire licked against it, plasma shearing across the nose in long tongues of flame. Aiden kept his breathing steady, guiding the descent. His hands moved with patience, not haste, minute corrections where panic would demand heavy pulls.

“Steady,” he whispered, whether to the ship, to Alina, or to himself, even he wasn’t sure.

The star flared again behind them, light bleeding across the sky, chasing their descent with unnatural hunger. Aiden’s jaw tightened. Something was wrong here, beyond the science, beyond coincidence.

He guided them lower, toward a jagged plain where ancient mountains lay shattered and half-buried in ash. “We’ll make it,” he said, his voice pitched just loud enough for the children behind them to hear, as if the words themselves could anchor their fear.

The impact was not a crash, but it was no graceful arrival either. The ship struck hard against the scorched earth, skidding across a bed of blackened stone before the repulsors caught and jolted them into a final, shuddering halt. Loose crates toppled in the hold, voices cried out, then silence, thick, stunned silence. Only the hiss of cooling metal filled the cabin.

Aiden’s hands lingered on the yoke even after the ship had stopped moving. He let the hum of the Force wash through him, confirming what his eyes already told him: they had survived. “Systems are fried,” He murmured. “Engines offline. Comms too.” He looked towards her, steady despite the lingering adrenaline. “But we’re down.”

Behind them, the children shifted, whispering among themselves. Aiden turned in his seat. “It’s all right,” he said, softer now. “We’re safe.” The words were gentle, but carried the same resolve he’d spoken with in descent, as though spoken truth might bind the fragile calm inside the hold.

 

[Alina Grayson]

Alina stood slowly, her limbs steady despite the violent descent, and stepped toward the bank of flickering screens that lined the cockpit's front console. The static and interference made most of the readouts difficult to parse, but one caught her attention the pulsing signature of the system's star, captured in the final moments before the flare had scrambled their sensors. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she studied the rhythmic spikes.

A pulsar. A dying star with a heartbeat. Its flares were violent, but regular almost painfully precise in their intervals. That meant predictability. A pattern. And patterns could be planned for. If they were going to lift off this rock again, they'd need to know exactly when not to try. She keyed in a local recording cycle and saved the waveform, letting the data roll onto a backup slate. That information might be the difference between a clean departure… or a second fall that wouldn't be as kind.

She toggled a few more systems manually, fingers brushing across the panels in practiced rhythm. The environmental scanner returned with a faded green pulse: the air was thin but breathable, dry and harsh, stripped of moisture over the centuries—but survivable. That, too, should have brought comfort.

She lingered on the screen a moment longer. The scanner had detected only the most basic microbial traces. No signs of fauna. No vegetation. Not even the faint traces of scavenger insects or cave-dwelling creatures. The world wasn't just quiet it was empty. For a planet that still held heat, air, and gravity, the absence of life was deafening.

Alina turned from the console at last, her mind already cataloguing the details, filing them away to weigh against the growing whisper in the Force. She reached out and placed a hand on Aiden's shoulder steady, appreciative, the weight of a soldier's trust in a moment of stillness.

"Good work," she said, her voice low and clear. "We did get a good read on that pulsar. That may be the only window we have."

Her gaze shifted toward the hold, toward the frightened and shaken passengers that had huddled in whatever safety they could find during descent. The adults clutched one another quietly, many still watching the viewport as if expecting another flare. But it was the children she moved toward first those too young to know what should come next, and too scared to ask.

She softened her posture, her presence, kneeling beside a young girl with a scraped arm and wide eyes. "Everyone alright?" she called gently to the group. "Anything worse than bumps or scrapes?"

A few murmured responses followed, some shaking heads, others pointing to minor injuries. Alina moved from one to the next with quiet grace, the Force flowing through her fingertips in small, soothing bursts. She eased pain where she could, wrapped a bandage here, settled a child's nerves there. It wasn't much, but it mattered. She spoke little, letting her calm speak louder than words.

Yet all the while, the pull at the back of her mind persisted. Not demanding. Not intrusive. But insistent. The Force wasn't warning her—it was calling. Something beneath the surface. Ancient. Watching. She pushed the thought aside, as she'd always done in times of pressure. These people came first. They always would. But as she stood again, her eyes drifted to the shadowed ridge beyond the viewport toward the place that pull seemed to originate.

TAG: Aiden Porte

 

[Aiden Porte]

Alina Grayson
​

Aiden lingered by the viewport a moment longer, watching the faint shimmer of ash drifting across the scarred plain. The dying light of the pulsar pulsed in the distance like a slow heartbeat, its rhythm almost meditative, if not for the weight pressing behind it. Every flare came with a ripple in the Force, subtle but deep, like the tremor of a great creature stirring beneath the world.

He turned as Alina finished tending to the children, her calm steadying them far better than words could. There was something grounding in seeing her work a reminder that even on worlds forgotten by time, compassion could still reach farther than fear.

He crossed the hold quietly, crouching beside one of the younger refugees as they clutched a stuffed toy. "You were brave," he said softly. The child blinked up at him, hesitant but curious. "Braver than most pilots I've met." A small, uncertain smile tugged at the corners of their mouth, and Aiden nodded once, satisfied.

When he rose again, his gaze shifted to the cockpit's dim glow. "I wonder if the flares are in a patter?" he asked, stepping closer to where Alina stood.

Aiden studied the waveform, brow furrowing. "A heartbeat," he murmured. "The Force feels the same. Like something alive beneath the crust, or remembering what life once was." He let the thought linger between them, heavy and half-spoken.

He glanced toward the viewport again, following her gaze to the ridge shadowing the horizon. The pull there was undeniable now, faint but distinct, whispering just beyond comprehension. "Whatever's calling, it's not done with us yet," he said quietly. "But if the star's cycle is as you charted, we've got time before the next surge. We'll need to scout the area before we plan repairs, find water, shelter, anything the ship can use."

Aiden's expression softened. "I'll take the first look," he offered. "You stay with them until we know what's out there."

He reached for his satchel, checking the clipped tools and compact survival gear. The airlock hissed as it cycled open again, heat rolling in with a whisper of dust. He paused at the threshold, turning back toward her.

"Keep an eye on the pulse," he said. "If it changes… call me back."

Then he stepped down into the wasteland, boots crunching on brittle earth, the silence swallowing his trail. The Force followed, patient, ancient, and listening.

 

[Alina Grayson]

Alina watched him go, standing silent in the fading light of the cockpit, one hand still resting on the edge of the terminal. She didn't call after him, didn't question the offer—because she knew it wasn't just duty that compelled Aiden to walk into the unknown. It was instinct. The same one that made him keep his back to the children and his eyes on the storm.


Her gaze lingered on the closed airlock for a moment longer, the hiss of pressurized seals fading into silence. Then she turned back to the terminal, her fingers moving across the interface as she pulled up the latest cycle of the pulsar's waveforms. Still rhythmic. Still stable. But there, between the pulses, a moment of deviation so brief it might have been missed. A lull in the energy. Like breath caught in a throat.


She exhaled slowly.


The Force here was layered buried beneath ash and silence, but not dead. Listening. Waiting.


Her hand lowered to the edge of the terminal. "You're right," she murmured, even though Aiden was gone. "It is a heartbeat. And something is alive under there... even if it's only memory."


She turned then, her eyes sweeping over the children again many now sleeping in the hold, curled beside each other in the quiet warmth of exhaustion. A few of the adults kept watch from the corners, eyes flicking toward her with silent thanks or questions they couldn't quite voice.


Alina offered a small nod in return, reassuring. Grounding. Her presence wasn't loud, but it was steady. That had to be enough, at least for now.


She moved quietly toward her bag near the cockpit bulkhead, drawing a folded cloak from within. With practiced ease, she laid it gently across the shoulders of one of the smaller children, the heavy azure fabric settling gently then crouched beside the makeshift camp forming near the rear bulkhead. They would need rest. Food. Water soon. She would ration what they had until the scout report came back. Aiden wouldn't be long he was careful, and she trusted him completely.


Still, her thoughts drifted beyond the hull, down the path he walked alone. She could feel the Force stretching through the scorched terrain like veins through stone. What he felt, she felt too, distantly like a thread tugged by the current. Whatever called to her from beyond the ridge, it was not coincidence.

It was drawing her. She could not ignore it, but for the moment she waited. She stood again, turning back to the terminal one last time to mark the deviation in the pulsar's rhythm. If it was a heartbeat then something was about to wake.

Aiden Porte

 

[Aiden Porte]

Alina Grayson
​

The ridge fell away beneath his boots, a slow descent into shadow. Wind scoured across the plain, carrying the taste of iron and something older something that didn't belong to this world's surface. Aiden paused at the edge of a fissure where the earth had cracked open long ago, revealing veins of obsidian and charred bone. The faint hum of his rebreather broke the silence as he knelt, one gloved hand brushing against the blackened stone.

The air was charged. Not just with heat, but with intention.

He closed his eyes. The Force wasn't quiet here it was waiting. The rhythm that had pulsed through the ship's readings still lingered in the world around him, faint but insistent. It moved beneath the crust, like a heartbeat buried too deep to die. He reached for it, extending his awareness until the wind itself began to slow, its sound drawn out, the world narrowing to that single, elusive thrum.

There.

A pulse.

Then another.

Too regular to be seismic. Too alive to be mechanical.

He rose, igniting his saber not for defense but for light. The pale blue glow washed across the rocks, revealing scorched markings in the dirt concentric circles burned into the ground, spiraling toward the fissure. Each one faintly resonated with the same pattern he'd felt in the Force, as if the planet itself was echoing the pulse.

Aiden stepped closer, and for a brief instant, the rhythm aligned with his own heartbeat. The world seemed to breathe with him inhale, exhale until the next silence came like a held breath. He felt something stir deep below, faint but immense.

The whisper of memory. The echo of power.

He let the Force flow through him, neither resisting nor directing it. He felt Alina through that current distant but steady, a quiet warmth anchored aboard the ship. It grounded him.

Then the air shifted. The hum in the fissure deepened, vibrating up through his boots and spine. Aiden's grip tightened around the saber hilt, his eyes narrowing as faint light began to seep up from below not natural light, but something cold and rhythmic, like a pulse shining through flesh.

He drew a slow breath.

"Alina..." he murmured through his comms, "Are you picking up on this?"

The wind stilled completely.

And in that perfect silence, the planet exhaled.

 

[Alina Grayson]

The moment the world exhaled, Alina felt it not in her ears or against her skin, but in her chest.


The Force shuddered. Not with warning, but with invitation.


She stood near the forward ramp of the ship, the hum of broken systems still whispering faintly behind her. Around her, the refugees rested in makeshift calm, unaware of the planet stirring beneath them. But she felt it. A deep resonance thrumming underfoot, echoing through her spine like a tuning fork struck in the marrow.


Her hand hovered over the side of the ramp as her eyes narrowed on the distant ridge, the one Aiden had disappeared beyond minutes ago. The sky above still flickered with the dying light of the pulsar but now, that flicker had rhythm. Measured. Intentional. Like a signal.

And beneath it, that pull.

Alina closed her eyes, centering herself in the current. There was no danger in it. Not yet. No malice. But there was weight ancient, expectant, as though the planet had been holding its breath for centuries… and had finally found someone to notice.

The comm crackled at her hip just as her breath left her. Aiden's voice, low and quiet:

"Alina... Are you picking up on this?"

Her gaze sharpened. "I feel it," she replied, already moving back into the ship. Her tone didn't carry urgency but it did carry certainty. Something had shifted. Something wanted her to see it.

She paused long enough to check that the refugees remained stable Aiden had bought them time, and now the Force was calling in its debt. She stepped lightly down the ramp, and quickly lifted the ramp behind her before she turned toward the ridge, where that pulse in the Force beat like a second heartbeat. Her own.

By the time she reached the fissure, dusk had begun to fall, painting the landscape in gray and violet tones. The wind carried no sound, as though the world itself was listening.

She didn't hesitate. Not when she stepped to the edge. Not when her boots found scorched earth, or when her eyes landed on the concentric rings carved into the soil like memories burned into flesh. Each ring pulsed softly matching her breath, matching her step.

Matching her.

Alina's fingers brushed the air above one of them and felt the Force respond. Not with knowledge, but familiarity. Recognition.

The fissure waited.

Tag: Aiden Porte

 

[Aiden Porte]

Alina Grayson
​

Aiden stood at the edge of the fissure, the saberlight flickering across his features as Alina's silhouette emerged from the dimming haze. Her approach was silent inevitable, even. The wind shifted with her presence, the Force gathering around her like the tide recognizing the pull of the moon.

He didn't need to turn to know it was her. He could feel the way the current changed how the once-chaotic hum of the planet bent into something steady, almost harmonic, as though the world had been waiting for the pair of them together.

"You felt it." he said quietly, his voice low beneath the thrumming air. Not a question. A statement born of the same certainty that brought her here.

"It isn't just energy." He murmured. "It's awareness."

Aiden took a deep breath as his hand drifted toward the fissure, fingers brushing the heat that bled from below. The light pulsed once, as though reacting to his proximity.

He exhaled, and the glow deepened. The Force coiled between them alive, thick with memory and promise. Aiden let it flow through him, listening, but not controlling. The soundless whisper of the current carried echoes: whispers of a world before ash, of voices that once shaped the stone itself.

The fissure deepened. The ground trembled, not violently, but with the weight of something long buried beginning to stir.

Aiden stepped beside her, his saber dimming as he lowered it, the hum fading into quiet reverence. "What do you think?" he said softly.

The next breath that rose from the earth wasn't wind it was a sigh, warm and resonant, carrying through their bones and into the Force itself.

 

[Alina Grayson]

Alina slowed as she neared the edge, her steps quiet on the broken stone. The light from his saber cast a pale glow along her features, but it was the Force that illuminated her thoughts tugging at her senses with each step closer to the truth buried beneath their feet.

She said nothing at first. Her gaze drifted over the spiral of burned markings, over the pulse rising through the crust of the world. She drew in a breath though strained by the rebreather, eyes half-lidded as the current brushed against her mind.

She knelt, fingertips grazing one of the scorched rings carved into the stone. As her skin made contact, the line shimmered faintly not with heat, but with recognition. The pulse responded again, slow and deliberate, syncing to the rhythm of her own breath.

"It's waiting," she whispered.

The Force wrapped around her like the hush before dawn, not silent but watching. It knew her, not the rank or the discipline but the girl who had once stood alone in darkened halls and chose to walk forward anyway. It reached deeper than training, past the echoes of war and diplomacy, and brushed the core of her being past the trappings of dogma and emotion.

She stood again, slowly, her eyes on the fissure. "The current here… It's not flowing outward its pulling in." Her gaze turned to Aiden. "This place hasn't been concealed because people forgot where it was. It hasn't wanted to be found, until we arrived."

A gust stirred her cloak, but she didn't flinch. "There's a place below. I can feel the path." Her tone was steadier now, because she understood the weight of what lay beneath them. Alina stepped forward, toward the edge of the breach where the earth thinned and the glow reached up to meet her. "This wasn't forged in war," she said softly. "It was buried in peace. Preserved. Guarded."

She gave a thoughtful pause

"It's calling to me. Like a song, do you hear it?"

TAG: Aiden Porte