Callen Voss woke to the smell of burnt caf drifting down the family corridor.
It wasn't the good kind, it was the kind his mother sometimes ordered from offworld traders when the budget allowed. This was the local roast, cheap and bitter, the kind that came in unmarked crates from the southern moisture districts.
The serving droid had overcooked it again.
His mother's voice followed, soft but firm, correcting the machine the way she corrected everything that didn't quite fit.
"Temperature setting twenty-three. Not thirty. You'll scorch the next batch too."Callen sat at the long table in the family wing, bare feet brushing cold tile.
He was fourteen and still small for it; the chair felt oversized, the datapad in front of him even more so. The screen showed the latest militia readiness report, columns of numbers he was supposed to memorize.
Only reason he actually did instead of reading the local news or reading a book is because his father had handed it to him the night before with the same quiet insistence he used for everything: "Read it. Understand it. One day you'll need to know why half our repulsor tanks won't start in the rain."
Outside the tall, dust-streaked windows, Zelok's pale yellow sun was just clearing the low hills. Long shadows stretched across the fields below the governor's residence.
Beyond the farms lay the capital spaceport: a sprawl of cracked duracrete, a handful of aging landing pads, and the skeletal outline of repair hangars that hadn't seen new parts in years. A single Arquitens-class light cruiser sat in drydock, half its hull plates missing, looking more like a carcass than a warship.
Callen rubbed sleep from his eyes and tried to focus on the datapad.
Fuel reserves: 41%.
Training ammunition: critical low.
Personnel readiness: 62% nominal, with footnotes about desertions and expired bacta stocks
The numbers swam. He wasn't sure what any of them really meant, only that his father frowned every time he looked at them.
His mother set a cup of caf in front of him. Too hot. She touched his hair once, then moved to the window.
"Storm coming in from the east again," she said, mostly to herself.
"The farmers will curse the overseers for another week."
Callen sipped.
Burned his tongue.
Didn't really complain, he was still half asleep so even getting shot with a Tusken slug thrower probably wouldn't faze him.
Then the alarms began.
They didn't start clean and sharp like the monthly drills his father ran for the household staff in the residence.
This one was a low, stuttering groan that rose and fell throughout the city.
Red emergency lights pulsed along the ceiling trim, washing the room in bloody flickers.
His father stood so quickly the chair scraped back. "Stay here."
Callen's mother grabbed his arm and pulled him under the table in one smooth motion.
The serving droid froze mid-step, caf pot tilting; brown liquid poured in a slow, stupid arc onto the floor. The first tremor arrived like distant thunder rolling through the planet's crust.
Glasses rattled on the sideboard. A picture frame tilted on the wall. Then the second tremor, closer, sharper. Orbital fire.
His father was already at the corridor door, speaking into the wall comm panel. "All units report. All personnel to stations. Priority alert." A voice crackled back, thin, staticky. "Three contacts, light freighters, closing from the ecliptic. No transponders. Weapons hot. Venator is bringing main batteries online."
Callen pictured the old Venator hanging in low orbit like a tired beast, a Clone Wars relic the Empire had never bothered to replace. Half its turbolaser turrets were cold for lack of power couplings; the crew ran skeleton shifts because no one volunteered for a posting this far from anything that mattered. On holos it had looked massive and invincible when he was little. Now he knew the truth: it could still make noise, but it couldn't chase and barley hit anything.
His mother dragged him toward the inner corridor. "Bunker. Move."
They made it perhaps twenty meters before the next salvo landed. The mansion bucked like something alive. Plaster dust rained from the ceiling. A support beam groaned overhead. Somewhere deeper in the building, metal tore with a sound like ripping fabric.
White clad Stormtroopers poured into the main hall from the security wing, thirty or forty of them, white armor gleaming under the pulsing red lights. They moved with the mechanical snap of men who drilled every day whether anyone watched or not unlike the planetary PDF or the Imperial Army regiments.
Dozens E-11s came up in unison; two squads peeled off to cover the main entrance, another secured the lift banks. They didn't look at Callen or his mother. Didn't speak to them, they never do, from the start their only priority is the empire, governor, his family and then citizens, in that order.
One trooper barked into his helmet comm without breaking stride: "Governor's family to extraction point delta. Priority secondary."
His father appeared at the far end of the corridor, service blaster already in hand, uniform jacket only half-buttoned. "Anna! Get him out no-!"
The sentence never finished.
A new explosion, much closer punched through the east wall twenty meters down. Heat rolled in like an open furnace door. Shrapnel pinged off durasteel supports. His mother shoved Callen behind a thick load-bearing pillar and pressed herself beside him. "Stay down. Don't move."
Blaster fire answered from outside scattered at first, then steadier. The planetary militia PDF units, probably still scrambling into their ancient repulsortanks and speeder bikes. Then sharper, cleaner cracks cut through: stormtrooper E-11s. Precise. Controlled. Impersonal.
Callen peeked around the pillar's edge. His father stood in the open corridor, blaster raised, shouting orders to a knot of troopers who had taken cover behind an overturned console. A red bolt stitched the wall beside them, showering sparks. His father returned fire calm, two-handed, the way he'd taught Callen on the target range behind the residence sometimes. Three shots. One glancing hit.
Then the enemies breached. Not through the reinforced main doors, those would have taken sustained fire. They came through the service lift shaft instead, probably using cutting torches or shaped charges on the maintenance levels below. Smoke billowed out first, thick and chemical.
Then the figures with mismatched armor patched with scavenged plastoid, flight suits stained with engine grease, scatterguns and vibroblades in hand. They moved like opportunists, not an army, every man for themselves, fan out, grab what's easy, kill what resists, leave before real opposition arrives.
One of them spotted Callen's mother near the pillar. Raised a heavy blaster pistol. His father stepped into the line of fire without hesitation. Callen didn't see the exact moment the bolt struck. Just the sudden flare of blue-white, the way his father's body jerked sideways, the way his knees folded as though someone had cut strings. He fell against the wall and slid down, leaving a dark smear. No cry. No last words. Just gone.
His mother made a sound, short, raw, more animal than human and lunged toward the body where the blaster still lay in the warm hands of her husband of 20 years.
Blaster fire drowned everything after that.
Callen ran .He didn't decide to. His legs simply moved.
Down the side corridor, past a toppled serving cart, past a dead PDF trooper sprawled face-down with an outdated A280 still clutched in stiff fingers. Alarms howled in overlapping waves. Smoke burned his throat and eyes. His bare feet slapped against tile, then carpet, then tile again.He turned a corner at random. An explosion found him there instead.
Something hot and impossibly bright punched through the outer wall ten meters ahead. The blast wave picked him up and threw him sideways. Shrapnel jagged durasteel and composite tore across his left side and arm in a single burning line. Pain arrived white-hot, then immediately dulled into something distant and pulsing. He hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.
The corridor tilted.
Ceiling lights spun.
Voices drifted in fragments through the ringing in his ears.
Boots pounding.
More blaster fire, distant now. The low whine of repulsorlifts outside, probably pirate boarding skiffs lifting off with whatever they'd managed to steal.
Then nothing.
***
Darkness came quietly, almost politely, and swallowed the rest.
The darkness wasn't complete. It came in layers, like sediment settling at the bottom of a stagnant pond.
Sometimes Callen floated near the surface and could feel things: the cool slide of bacta gel against skin, the faint tug of adhesive patches pulling at his ribs, the metallic taste that coated his tongue every time a medical droid forced nutrient paste between his lips. Sometimes he sank deeper and there was only pressure behind his eyes a low, constant hum that might have been machines or might have been his own skull trying to remember how to hold itself together.
Voices reached him in fragments, never close enough to touch.
"…cranial swelling down to acceptable parameters. Concussion grade two, no intracranial bleed visible on the last scan."
A different voice, female, clipped and tired. Administrator Kesh.
"Seventy-two hours since the breach. The boy's vitals are stable enough. We can't keep him under indefinitely, the guilds are already asking why the governor's office hasn't issued a statement."
A third voice, male, deeper, armoured even without the helmet. Captain Vann. "Statement about what? That the planetary governor and his wife are confirmed KIA? Or that pirates walked through our outer defences like they were on a shopping run?"
A pause. Someone exhaled sharply through their nose. "Succession protocol 47-B auto-activates on confirmed death of the title holder. The boy is Acting Governor now. Temporary. Conditional. Sector command has been notified."
"Sector command will take three weeks to reply with anything useful," Vann said. "If they reply at all. Zelok's not exactly bleeding kyber."More silence.
The hum of monitors ticked up a notch, then settled.
"Stability concerns are already circulating," Kesh continued. "The Citizens' Council wants an emergency session. The mining guild sent a formal inquiry about tomorrow's ore shipment, they're implying they'll hold back if security isn't 'reassured.' The agricultural guild is quieter, but they're watching grain quotas."
Another voice, this one obviously synthetic, the 2-1B droid that never left the room.
"Patient exhibits intermittent awareness. Recommend reducing sedative dosage by fifteen percent to facilitate emergence. Prolonged immersion risks muscle atrophy."
"Fine," Kesh said. "Bring him up slowly. And prepare the formal notification script. No embellishments. Facts only."
Callen tried to open his eyes. Nothing happened. Or maybe they were open and he just couldn't tell.
The pressure behind his temples sharpened not pain exactly, more like static on an old comm channel that refused to clear. He wanted to ask someone to turn it down, but his mouth wouldn't move.
Time slipped again. When it returned, the voices were farther away, echoing down a corridor.
"…Imperial review team inbound, ETA fourteen standard days minimum. They'll want full logs, casualty figures, defensive posture assessment. If quotas slip even five percent this cycle, we're looking at an audit escalation."
"Stormtrooper company is intact," Vann replied. "Ten thousand effectives, loyal to the Empire first. They'll hold the residence and spaceport if it comes to that. But they won't die for a fourteen-year-old placeholder that could be replaced in the coming days."
"No one's asking them to die," Kesh said. "Just to look like they might. Appearance of continuity is all we have right now."
A soft chime, probably a datapad alert." Pirate vessels have gone dark," Vann added. "Likely jumped to hyperspace already. They took three heavy crates from the armoury annex, two speeder bikes, and whatever credits were in the duty safe. Everyone alive or dead accounted for, no slaves taken."
Callen felt something cold press against the inside of his wrist, a fresh IV line. The static in his head pulsed once, harder, then receded like a tide pulling back from shore. For a moment the darkness thinned enough that he could almost see shapes: the curved ceiling of the bacta immersion chamber, the red glow of monitor readouts, the silhouette of a medical droid moving with mechanical grace.
He tried to speak. Nothing came out.
Grief hadn't arrived yet. It hovered somewhere just outside the haze. In its place was only a dull, mechanical absence.
His father's body sliding down the wall. His mother's single, choked sound. The way the stormtroopers had moved past them both without breaking stride.
Secondary priority. The phrase looped in his head like a stuck holo recording.
He didn't know how long he stayed there, suspended between waking and not. Hours blurred into days or maybe the other way around. The voices came and went like weather patterns. Sometimes they discussed him directly. Sometimes they didn't. Either way, no one spoke to him.
The static behind his eyes never fully left. It wasn't loud. It wasn't painful. It was just… there. A faint background whine, like feedback from a comm unit left on an empty frequency. Every so often it spiked a brief flicker of pressure that made him flinch inside his own skull then eased again.
He thought at first it was the concussion. Or the bacta. Or the sedatives wearing thin.
Then, slowly, the noise began to feel like someone or something listening back.
The droid's voice cut through again, closer this time.
"Sedative reduction complete. Patient exhibiting increased neural activity. Emergence imminent within the next four to six hours."
Kesh's reply was flat. "Good. Have the governor's office prepared. We'll move him as soon as he can stand."
Callen felt the pull then, faint at first, then stronger. The darkness thinning like fog burning off under morning sun. His fingers twitched once against the bacta gel. He didn't want to wake up, did not want to deal with the real world, with the galaxy.
But the galaxy didn't ask. It simply turned the lights back on, fully all at once.
The first thing Callen registered when the haze finally cracked open was the smell. Not the chemical bite of bacta anymore, nor the burnt caf from breakfast that now felt like a lifetime ago.
This was sterile, faintly metallic, the scent of recycled air scrubbed too many times through filters that needed replacing. Hospital smell, my favourite.
His eyelids felt glued. He forced them apart anyway. White ceiling tiles. A single overhead light panel, dimmed to half-strength. Monitors on either side of the bed blinked green readouts in slow rhythm. His left arm was strapped to a restraint board, IV line taped to the back of his hand. The right side of his torso burned under layers of fresh synthflesh and bacta patches, at least he was not in screaming pain, just a deep, sullen ache that reminded him every time he breathed too deeply.
He tried to sit up.
The room tilted.
Nausea rolled through him in a slow wave. He managed to prop himself on one elbow before the monitors chirped a soft warning. A 2-1B medical droid glided into view at the foot of the bed. Its red photoreceptor swept across him once, clinical and indifferent.
"Patient Callen Voss. Cognitive functions within acceptable parameters. Motor response confirmed. Do not attempt to stand without clearance."The voice was flat, synthetic, devoid of anything resembling concern.
Callen's throat felt like sandpaper. "Water."
The droid extended a thin manipulator arm. A cup of clear liquid appeared, straw already positioned. Callen drank in small, careful sips. It tasted like nothing at all.
The droid continued without prompting. "Current status: Injuries stabilized. Concussion resolved to grade one residual effects. Shrapnel wounds closed via dermal regeneration. Estimated full mobility return: forty-eight to seventy-two standard hours with continued rest. You have been unconscious or semi-conscious for approximately ninety-one standard hours since the incursion."
Ninety-one hours. Callen stared at the ceiling again. The number didn't feel real.
"Your parents are deceased," the droid stated next, tone unchanged. "Cause of death: multiple blaster wounds sustained during pirate incursion on the governor's residence. No recoverable remains suitable for ceremonial disposition due to secondary explosive damage. Official record updated. You are now Acting Planetary Governor per Imperial succession protocol 47-B."
The words landed like stones dropped into deep water. Ripples, but no splash. Callen didn't cry. Didn't shout. Didn't even blink harder. Grief was still somewhere else, locked in a compartment he couldn't reach yet, still in half awake state like he was during breakfast.
All he felt was the dull pressure behind his eyes, that same faint static whine that had followed him through the coma. It pulsed once, almost in time with his heartbeat, then eased.
The door hissed open. Two figures entered. Administrator Lyra Kesh first, dark hair pulled into a severe knot, uniform crisp but showing faint creases from too many long shifts. She carried a slim datapad in one hand like it weighed more than it should. Her eyes flicked over Callen once with a look that screamed assessment and if there was sympathy somewhere it was not showing.
Captain Reth Vann followed. Stormtrooper officer, helmet tucked under one arm. The plastoid of his armor still carried faint scorch marks and soot from the attack. His face was carved lines and short-cropped graying hair. He stopped two paces inside the doorway, posture rigid even at ease. Neither of them spoke to Callen at first.
Kesh tapped her datapad. "He's awake. Good. We can move to phase two." Vann nodded once. "Militia casualty report finalized. eighty-seven PDF dead, around double wounded and around ten that deserted in middle of battle pending disciplinary action. Spaceport took moderate damage, two landing pads cratered, fuel depot breached but contained. Pirates withdrew when the Venator finally lit its dorsal turrets. No pursuit attempted. Fuel reserves too low for sustained burn."
Kesh didn't look up from her screen. "Guilds are already moving. Mining consortium sent a priority communique demanding assurance that tomorrow's ore convoy will depart on schedule. Agricultural guild is holding grain shipments pending 'security clarification.' The Citizens' Council has called for an emergency session tomorrow morning. They want the new governor present."
Vann's jaw tightened fractionally. "Stormtrooper company remains at full readiness. Ten thousand effectives. They'll secure the residence and key infrastructure. But they follow Imperial chain of command. Not… provisional authority."
Kesh finally glanced at Callen, brief, appraising.
"You remember the attack?" Callen's voice came out thin. "Parts of it. It's… blurry."
"Trauma-induced retrograde amnesia," the 2-1B supplied immediately. "Common in cranial-impact cases. Memory gaps may resolve partially or fully over weeks to months. Recommend low-stress environment."
Kesh nodded as though the answer satisfied protocol. "We'll note it in the medical log. For now, you're stable enough to be transferred. The governor's office has been secured. We'll conduct the formal succession confirmation there."
Callen looked between them. "My parents—"
"Confirmed deceased," Kesh repeated, not unkindly but without softness. "The residence wing sustained critical structural damage. Recovery teams completed their sweep forty hours ago. No survivors beyond yourself and three household staff in the lower levels."
She paused, perhaps waiting for a reaction, from Callen, any as he was known to be quite an expressful and somewhat of a troublemaker of a kid. However, seeing that Callen gave none she reasoned he must have still been in shellshock and still grasping reality.
Vann shifted his weight. "Pirates took what they came for and left. Probing raid. They'll be back when they think we're weaker. Which we are." Kesh turned toward the door. "We'll have a hovergurney brought in. You'll be moved within the hour. Try to rest until then."
They left without another word. The door sealed behind them with a soft pneumatic sigh.
Callen lay back against the thin pillow. The monitors kept their steady rhythm. The static behind his eyes pulsed again, sharper this time, almost insistent. He closed his eyes against it. For a moment the room felt too large and too quiet. He was alone.
He opened his eyes again. The ceiling tiles stared back.
The droid glided closer. "Recommend limited verbal interaction. Emotional stress may elevate cortisol levels and delay healing." Callen didn't answer. He just stared at the door the two adults had walked through. They hadn't asked how he felt. They hadn't offered condolences. They hadn't even used his name. Just "the boy.
Callen closed his eyes again.
***
The hovergurney carried Callen down long, echoing corridors he had never really noticed before. White walls. Faded Imperial crest decals peeling at the corners. Overhead lights that flickered every few meters, the kind of small neglect that accumulates when no one important visits. He lay flat, staring up at the ceiling panels sliding past.
The ache in his side had dulled to a steady throb under the fresh patches. His head still felt stuffed with cotton. The static behind his eyes came and went in slow waves, never quite gone, the droids did some tests but came to the conclusion it must be side effect of his concussion.
They didn't speak to him during the transit. Kesh walked ahead, datapad in hand, tapping commands without looking back. Vann followed two steps behind the gurney, boots clicking in perfect rhythm. A single stormtrooper flanked each side silent, rifles at low port, faces hidden behind white cold helmets that have become the staple of the Imperial propaganda machine.
The doors to the governor's office opened with a soft pneumatic hiss. The room smelled of his father. Old leather from the chair. Faint caf residue baked into the carpet. A trace of ozone from the holotable that had been left running too long. Callen's stomach twisted.
They helped him off the gurney. He stood on unsteady legs. The floor felt colder than it should have. His borrowed medical clothes hung loose on his frame.
Kesh gestured toward the desk without ceremony. "Sit."
Callen obeyed. The chair was too large. His feet dangled slightly when he settled into it. His father's datapad still lay open on the polished surface, an unfinished report on grain shipments to the sector depot that he swore he would finish the next day after mother dragged him to bed late at night to get rest.
Vann remained standing near the door. The two troopers took positions outside; the doors sealed behind them. A wall-mounted holoprojector flickered to life without warning. The image resolved into a stern Imperial officer, mid-forties, uniform immaculate, background a sterile gray that could have been any Moff's staff office. His voice came through crisp and bored.
"Acting Governor Callen Voss."A pause. The hologram's eyes flicked down, presumably to a datapad off-screen.
"Your appointment is logged in sector records as of ninety-three hours ago per protocol 47-B. Hereditary succession on Zelok is recognized pending performance review. Maintain export quotas at current levels. Grain: 1.2 million metric tons per cycle. Ore: 850,000 metric tons. Personnel tithes unchanged. Report anomalies, security breaches, or productivity shortfalls immediately. Stability is paramount.
"No greeting. No condolences. No questions about the attack or the dead or even about sending reinforcements to hunt down the pirates.
"Failure to meet quotas will trigger automatic audit escalation. Sector command reserves the right to appoint a replacement administrator at any time. Transmission ends."
The hologram winked out.
Silence settled like dust. Callen stared at the empty projector lens. Kesh broke it first. "Temporary regency," she said. "Conditional on compliance. The Empire does not dispatch reinforcements to backwaters unless hight tier threats, large number of enemies or high treason that can threaten multiple sectors. Zelok is not currently facing a threat that would endanger multiple sectors only small pirates."
Small pirates? Callen wanted to scream but had no energy to do so.
Vann crossed his arms. "Stormtrooper company remains under Imperial chain of command. You may issue requests for support. They will be evaluated per doctrine. Loyalty is to the Empire. Not to… provisional authority."
Callen looked at the datapad. The blinking cursor hadn't moved, he mulled over what he should do, what he should say. If he should do anything at all. His mind wandered back to his time with his father and his lessons so he tried something small. A test. "Increase patrols around the spaceport," he said quietly. "Double the PDF shifts if necessary."
Kesh glanced at Vann .Vann glanced at me and after a while spoke into the comm unit on his vambrace. "Patrol increase request logged. Pending resource allocation and militia readiness assessment." Callen felt the weight of the chair more acutely now. Authority on paper, strenght on paper, responsibility without levers. He was accountable for outcomes he could not influence and responsible for all the problems he could not solve.
Kesh stepped closer to the desk. Her voice stayed level. "The Citizens' Council convenes in twelve hours. They expect the Acting Governor to attend. The guilds will be represented. They want assurances, verbal, written, whatever format keeps shipments moving. You will need to prepare a statement." Callen didn't respond, his mind still half in real world while the other is still metaphysically in the bacta. She continued anyway, sparing a quick glance at the boy that is acting too quiet even for him, while Vann just kept a cold gaze forward but even he could not help himself sparing a similar look to the brat that used to scream from the windows to try and make the storm troopers lose their cool with terrible jokes and his annoying questions.
"Pirate activity has gone quiet since the raid. That usually means they're regrouping. Or waiting to see if we fracture internally first. The Venator is still in low orbit, but only forty percent of its main batteries are operational. Crew shortages. Parts shortages. Everything shortages." Vann added, almost as an afterthought. "The old man kept things running. Barely. Now it's yours to manage boy." Callen looked up at them both. They met his empty sunken gaze without flinching. Second to no pity, and no encouragement. Just expectations, as all things empire.
Kesh tapped her datapad once more. "We'll leave you to review the standing reports. Security will remain outside. Do not leave the office without escort. For your protection."
The doors opened again and they left.
The room sealed with no sound as his father specifically requested as hearing it groan and squeek everytime drove him mad.
Callen sat alone behind the too-large desk. The holotable hummed faintly in standby mode. His father's unfinished sentence stared back from the datapad screen. He reached out and touched the edge of the device. The screen stayed lit, a single tear rolled down his pale and noticeably skinnier cheek over the small scar that he remembers his mother soothed and bandaged herself when he was younger. He could swear he can feel her gentle hand even now caressing his cheek as she says how brave he is for not flinching from the stinging medicine she applied.
Outside the tall windows of the lonely and dark office, Zelok's only yellow sun was setting behind the vaporator fields. Long shadows stretched across the farmland like fingers reaching for the residence. Somewhere far below, a patrol speeder passed. Its engine whine faded quickly.
He just sat there, in his father's chair, still smelling of him, still feeling the noticeably larger imprint of his body in the leather of the chair. He turns his gaze to the floor beside the desk, below a cracked photo frame of them from a month ago celebrating his 14th birthday.
No one even bothered to pick it up even though they cleaned the office.
His tear finally sliding off his chin onto the picture, righ on top of his parents faces.
***
Night had fallen over the residence.
The tall windows showed only black now, broken by the faint orange glow of distant vaporator lights across the fields. Inside the office, the overhead panels had dimmed to a soft amber. The holotable stayed in standby, its low hum the only sound besides Callen's breathing.
He hadn't moved from the chair. His hands rested flat on the desk, small against the expanse of polished wood, the cracked photo now standing upright on the table. The datapad with his father's unfinished report had gone to sleep; the blinking cursor long extinguished.
Exhaustion pressed down like a physical weight. His side throbbed in time with his pulse. The bacta patches itched under the tunic. His head felt heavy, stuffed.
He stared at nothing. The static behind his eyes that faint, persistent whine had never left since he first felt it.
A sudden pressure bloomed at the base of his skull. Not pain. Not quite. More like someone turning up the volume on a holonet channel he hadn't known was broadcasting. Callen blinked hard couple of times. Blue text appeared in his vision. Clean lines in Arubesh. Sharp edges. No flourish. No colour bleed. Just sterile administrative overlay floating perfectly in the centre of his field of view, as though projected directly onto his retinas.
Planetary Governance Interface – Online User: Callen Voss
Designation: Acting Planetary Governor
System Status: Nominal (Provisional Activation) Core Metrics Authority
Weak (12%) Stability
Low (31%) Imperial Attention
Minimal (rising) Resource Reserves
Depleted Threat Level
Active
(Pirate Probes Detected – 3 vessels last known vector) Population Loyalty Index
Fragmented Quota Compliance Projection
Critical Risk (Grain: -4% trend | Ore: -7% trend) No icons. No progress bars. No cheerful animations. Just numbers. Cold. Unemotional. Judgmental. Callen stared at the text without blinking until his eyes watered.
"Am I going crazy? Or was it the burned caf laced with something?" Wouldn't put it past the rusted annoying droid.
Callen lifted a hand slowly, half expecting to pass through it like a hologram. His fingers met only air.
The text lingered for several long seconds. Then without fanfare it faded. Not dissolved. Not scrolled away. Just… gone. As though it had never been there at all. The pressure behind his eyes eased, but the whine remained. Quieter now. Background static again.
Callen exhaled slowly. His breath fogged the air for a moment in the cooling office. He looked around the room one more time. Then Callen closed his eyes. He didn't sleep. He simply sat there in the dark, listening to the sound of something stuck in his head watching him.
*Authors notes*
Most of this story will be from Callens POV, also if I get something wrong in the timeline or about some equipment or time period whatever dont crucify me its just fanfiction lol.
I dont know if I should make any romance in this story at all tbf.
Anyways, only AI i use is Grammarly to fix my grammar and spelling, send reviews, make comments give me stones (if you are on webnovel)