Chapter 91 · Cantonica

Three weeks into the route, the stars had begun to look familiar again — not because they had ever passed this way before, but because long travel had a way of smoothing out the differences between systems until everything felt like a memory pretending to be routine. The Faded Glory moved through the quieter reaches of the Cantonica corridor with that soft, old-ship steadiness she had rediscovered during the past days, a steadiness that came not from power but from age worn into confidence. Eli sat for a while watching the slow ripple of hyperspace across the viewport, trying to remember when he had last felt a ship this calm beneath him. He couldn’t. Not recently.

Even the air seemed to have learned their rhythm — recycled warmth, the faint smell of metal and stale tea, nothing sharp enough to pull them out of the drift. He had expected the long stretch to feel suffocating, but it hadn’t. If anything, the silence had become something like a companion. A steady pulse, waiting at the back of the mind.

Most days blurred into each other in a pattern that felt almost inevitable. Jump, drift, adjust. Long hours spent listening to the soft click of cooling panels as they settled after each hyperspace shift. The occasional creak from somewhere deep in the portside bulkhead, which Eli heard clearly and Stent insisted did not exist unless it grew louder. Eli had stopped arguing about it. Every ship had one sound the crew pretended wasn’t a warning, and if Stent wanted to call it non-existent, Eli wasn’t going to be the one to make it real.

The cabin stayed dim on purpose — low lights along the floor, console glow soft, everything shading into blue as the hyperspace corridor washed over the walls. It made time feel suspended, weightless, stretching into something round rather than linear. Eli found himself adjusting to it faster than expected. The quiet became a kind of gravity.

Sometimes he caught himself watching the speckled shadows on the ceiling as if they might form constellations of their own. Sometimes he let the hum of the stabilizers lull his thoughts into drifting shapes that never fully formed. It wasn’t peace — but it was close.

He spent hours in the pilot’s chair, boots braced under the console, eyes on the countdown of the jump-timer. It ticked down in a patient, unhurried way, as though the ship knew how to manage anticipation better than either of its crew. Twice he tried to open the long-range comm bands, more out of habit than hope — an old instinct for catching stray news, stray warnings, stray voices.

Both times Stent shut the channels before even a sliver of static could form.

“Do not invite detours,” he said. No sharpness. Just certainty.

“Detours are how people survive,” Eli countered one cycle.

Stent didn’t look up. “I prefer efficiency.”

Eli had made a face at that, but he’d left the comms off. The truth was, he didn’t want a detour either. Not now. Not with a direction finally solid under them.

With silence enforced, other sounds filled the space — the low thrumming under the deckplates, the faint vibration behind the walls, the occasional shift in the coolant lines when the temperature balance adjusted by half a degree. A living quiet. The kind that didn’t ask questions.

It wasn’t until the middle of the second week that Eli noticed how far the memories of Klyssos had drifted. The sharp edges had dulled. The panic had folded itself into something distant, almost unreal. Distance did that — not time. Distance stretched the mind thin enough that the present felt louder than the past.

Stent remained constant through it all. He kept their logs meticulous, recalculated drift margins when the navicomp so much as hesitated, and moved through the ship with the same quiet purpose he reserved for things that required no words. He didn’t break the silence unless he had to. He didn’t fill the hours with commentary. He didn’t avoid Eli’s questions, but he also didn’t offer more than was needed. It wasn’t aloofness. It was… structure. Stability. A form of care Stent would never name.

Once, Eli found him at the co-pilot’s station staring at the hyperspace corridor with an expression he couldn’t quite place. Not tense. Not thoughtful. Something deeper — a searching stillness that lasted only as long as it took for Eli to shift his weight. Then Stent blinked and returned to the console as if the moment hadn’t existed at all.

The first sign of civilization came as a faint ping on long-range sensors — rhythmic, steady, unmistakably artificial. A sector beacon. The kind of minor navigation marker no one cared about unless they needed reassurance that the galaxy still had structure.

Eli straightened in his chair, squinting at the console as if the signal might reshape itself into something more informative. “There’s the first marker.”

Stent didn’t look up from his display. “Ahead of schedule.”

“Barely.”

“Ahead,” Stent repeated. The closest he ever came to approval.

Eli let the word settle. Ahead. After weeks of silence and ship-noise, even a simple beacon felt like a welcome sign.

The hyperspace corridor continued to fold around them, calm and slow, but the cabin felt different now — not louder, not brighter, just anchored by the knowledge that they were crossing a threshold. Tomorrow they’d be close enough to call Cantonica by sight. The day after, they’d walk its streets like ordinary traders again, if only for a moment.

For now the drift held them gently, and the Faded Glory carried them onward with a steadiness Eli realized he had begun to trust without reservation.

Cantonica’s system unfolded around them like a mosaic of wealth arranged to look effortless. Even from the outer approach lanes, the planet glowed in the viewport — gold scattered across the night side, white fire along the day, every coastline carved in bright, deliberate geometry. A world sculpted for indulgence. A world where everything costs too much.

Eli throttled back as they slipped into the outer perimeter, letting the ship drift just long enough to admire the view in spite of himself. “It’s still ridiculous,” he muttered. “Every time.”

“Excessive,” Stent agreed. “Inefficient.”

“That too,” Eli said, smiling faintly.

They didn’t go anywhere near the main resort ports. You didn’t dock there unless you wanted to bleed credits at the airlock. Instead, they cut toward the far side of the system, where Cantonica’s shadowed companion station floated in a deliberate orbit maintained more by economic convenience than hospitality. A refueling depot, a trade outpost, a quieter satellite where the resort’s supply chain did its dirty work. It lacked glamour, which made it perfect.

The docking array came into view like a rusted spine against the stars — utilitarian, patched, busy. Cargo haulers drifted in slow arcs around the station, tugs connected by thick fuel hoses, loaders shuttling pallets from one sealed bay to another. No ornament, no noise beyond what was necessary for the work.

Eli keyed their transponder to a trader profile. “Faded Glory, independent,” he said over the channel, tone easy and neutral.

The controller replied without enthusiasm. “Berth nine-seven. Stay in your lane. Don’t block the haulers.”

“We wouldn’t dream of it.”

Stent raised an eyebrow at his tone. Eli shrugged. “Dock workers appreciate politeness.”

“No,” Stent said. “Dock workers appreciate efficiency.”

“Both can coexist,” Eli countered.

The berth clamps engaged with a heavy metallic thud that echoed through the hull. The Faded Glory settled into place with a small sigh of pressure equalization, as though relieved to lean against something solid for a moment.

The air inside the loading corridor was warmer than expected — the kind of heat created by bodies, not climate systems. The scent of coolant hung in the space alongside the sharper smell of metal dust. Traders moved past them with crates, datapads, and the tired determination of people who knew exactly how many hours they could afford to spend docked.

Eli stepped out first, adjusting the strap of his satchel. “All right. We’re here to behave. No detours. No unnecessary purchases.”

Stent glanced at the list on his datapad. “You have already allocated thirty-seven percent of our remaining funds to restocking.”

“Because we need to restock.”

“We could restock less.”

“And then starve three jumps from Lothal?”

“An inefficient outcome,” Stent conceded.

“Exactly.”

They slipped into the station flow with minimal notice — just another pair of small-time traders running errands on the cheap side of a wealthy world.

The supply district was little more than a warren of narrow walkways, small merchant stalls, automated dispensers, and storage lockers. A few places sold genuine goods; most sold the less legal or less glamorous parts of Cantonica’s economy — fuel, ration supplements, parts that had seen better days, parts that had never seen proper days at all.

Eli negotiated the purchases with the ease of someone who had lived more than half his life around people who measured their honesty by how well they lied. Cloth bundles, preserved meals, ration bricks that tasted like compressed hope, a handful of maintenance tools they’d burned through during the past months. Prices were high, but not extortionate. High enough to bite. Not high enough to break them.

Stent managed the loading, checking each crate’s seal, weight, and integrity before permitting it to be rolled into the ship. Once, he rejected a container by simply saying, “No,” and handing it back. The seller didn’t argue. Stent’s expression carried a particular efficiency that ended debates before they began.

The expenses accumulated quickly. Eli watched the credits drain from their account with a quiet sigh. “Three weeks to reach this place,” he said under his breath, “and thirty minutes to empty the wallet.”

“Money is a tool,” Stent replied. “Tools are meant to be used.”

“Not all at once.”

Stent tilted his head. “Then we will use them more slowly after this.”

Eli laughed in spite of himself.

They didn’t linger.

Cantonica had a gravity that pulled in the idle, the curious, the desperate — anyone who thought they might escape their life for the price of a drink or a hand of sabacc. That gravity didn’t touch the trade outpost in the same way, but it still radiated out from the planet in a subtle pressure: a reminder that everything here was owned by someone richer.

When they returned to the berth, the Faded Glory’s ramp was already extending. Tee rolled to the threshold, dome swiveling in a series of irritated chirps that Eli understood as Where have you been?, followed by something that sounded very close to Nothing exploded but it could have.

Stent paused at the foot of the ramp, giving the droid a cool look. “Your presence was unnecessary. There was no threat.”

Tee issued a single, pointed beep.

“He’s guarding the ship,” Eli said, stepping past them with the crate manifest tucked under one arm. “Let him do his job.”

“That is not his job,” Stent replied. “His programming is for navigation and system diagnostics.”

Tee gave a short burst of sound that Eli had learned to interpret as offended competence.

Eli didn’t slow his pace. “Then think of this as… supplemental initiative.”

“That is not an improvement,” Stent said, but he followed them up the ramp anyway.

Tee trundled after him with the faint wobble of a droid deeply invested in being taken seriously.

Inside, the lights hummed back to full power. Stent sealed the hatch behind them and moved through the preflight checks with the same precision as ever, though Eli caught the faintest tightening at the corner of his mouth whenever Tee rolled close to a console and chirped advice.

He counted the remaining credits twice, just to convince himself they would last until Lothal. “Well,” he said, “we’re not rich, but we’re stocked.”

Tee gave a brief, proud beep.

Stent adjusted a setting on the overhead panel. “Then we leave.”

Eli settled into the copilot’s chair, easing the ship’s systems awake. Outside, the station lights flickered over the hull, throwing brief gold reflections across the viewport — a reminder of the world they had chosen to avoid.

Stent lifted them gently from the berth. Behind him, Tee steadied himself in the narrow alcove beside the co-pilot’s station, domed head angled forward as if claiming full credit for their uninterrupted departure.

Cantonica slipped behind them with no ceremony at all, as forgettable as an expensive lie.