The escape from Dock 9 - a mediocre tale

Three weeks after Dock Nine, Zoey Terraj is back in a cramped cockpit, hunched over a salvaged droid with her tools spread out. Her comms unit suddenly cuts through the cabin with an encrypted override, same harsh chirp as before.

A distorted voice rides the signal, familiar enough to prick at memory. It repeats the containment code Zoey used at Dock Nine, like it tastes the words and hates them.

The signal resolves into a sector ping from an empty stretch of space, one that was supposed to be dead. The droid on Zoey's lap goes still under her hands as the cockpit display floods with the hidden transmission path.

The old setup snaps into place. The Dock Nine code was never just a door opener, it was a distress beacon aimed straight at the Inquisitor.

Somewhere out in that empty sector, an Imperial response net wakes up and starts looking back.

Zoey thumbs the comms reroute, splicing the hidden path through her deck and the cockpit bus. The transmission blooms into a branching map, and one branch answers back from a live source instead of dead space.

Coordinates lock in. Not a beacon, a relay spine, nested inside an industrial shadow on the edge of the route net. Her display tags the source, then keeps feeding it, obedient and dangerous.

A second signal snaps on, watching the first. The response net has noticed the trace, and the amber tag on the old transmitter icon flickers across the screen like a warning eye.

The cockpit fills with a thin, rising chirp from the maintenance hatch alarm, while the rerouted comm line stabilizes in Zoey's display. For a beat, the source sits plain and reachable, waiting for her next move.