Chapter Text
The lights in the barracks were down to a dim strip along the floor, the kind that kept you from stubbing your toes on a trunk but left faces to the imagination. Helmets rested like pale moons along the upper bunks. Someone—Kip—had dragged a crate into the center aisle, and that’s where Waxer stood, arms folded, grin just a touch too easy. Boil lounged against the frame of the door, one boot braced, eyes half-lidded and watchful.
A dozen shinies leaned in from their racks, all fresh paint and keyed-up nerves. The ship hummed around them, a sound you stopped hearing after a while until you were trying not to.
“All right,” Waxer said. “Welcome to the Negotiator. This is your safety brief.”
Kip frowned. “I thought safety brief was at 0600.”
“This one’s the special edition,” Boil said, not moving from the door. “The Haunting of Deck Twelve.”
A laugh skittered around the bunks. It didn’t stick.
Waxer hopped down from the crate and paced, slow, the way he did before a breach. “You know how decks are numbered wrong? Even numbers starboard, odds portside, then they change by hangar. You learn quick or you get lost where the ship doesn’t like to be looked at.” He paused. “Deck Twelve is one of those places.”
A shiny snorted. “Sir, with respect, decks don’t like or dislike.”
Waxer gave him an apologetic smile. “You can tell me that when you’ve been in Blue Corridor after night cycle.”
Boil’s voice drifted in, dry. “Less heckling. More listening.”
Waxer leaned a shoulder against the crate. “It was after Christophsis. Refit week. Quiet—quiet for us, anyway. Half of us were on inspection duty, and Cody—Marshal Commander, the Commander—was doing rounds with General Kenobi because the reactor spine had thrown a temperature anomaly on Twelve. Engineering swore it was nothing. Engineering always swears it’s nothing.”
“You were with them?” Kip asked.
“We caught up later,” Waxer said. “Serra—Commander Vey—was mapping the ship’s quiet corners for meditation. She’s the friendly one with the smile that makes you say too much.”
A ripple of snickers. Boil smirked. “And she carries a datapad like it’s a pet tooka. You’ll meet her.”
Waxer held up his hands. “All relevant. On the way to Twelve, Cody passed Wooley in the corridor— Wooley gave him a look like he’d rather fight a droideka barehanded than go down there. Cody told him to stop being superstitious.” Waxer’s mouth quirked. “Which is, I think, Commander for ‘me too, but I’m in charge.’ Kenobi did that beard-stroking thing and said, ‘Let’s not spook the men, Cody.’”
Boil’s teeth flashed. “And then the lights flickered. Because the ship has timing.”
A shiny in the back raised a hand. “What’s on Twelve?”
Waxer tapped his knuckles against the crate. “Officially? Overflow storage, parts of Auxiliary Medbay C, the portside coolant manifold, and the back end of the waste recyclers. Unofficially? Bad air, colder than it should be. You can stand on Eleven and feel fine, then step one deck down and your breath fogs like a Hoth postcard.”
Boil’s visor-dark gaze slid along the rows. “And there’s the knocking.”
The shinies went still.
Waxer nodded, slow. “Two taps and a drag. Like a trooper with a busted boot. It’s old ship superstition—on any Venator, you’ll hear it if you stand still long enough. But on Twelve, it kept pace with you.”
He let that sit.
“So they go down there,” Boil said, lazy as a blade in a sheath. “Cody with his helmet cam recording. General Kenobi with a glowstick he refuses to call a glowstick. Vey because nobody told her she should stay put, which you’ll learn is a recurring theme.”
Waxer chuckled. “Kenobi keyed Engineering. ‘Any surprises for us?’ And Control says, ‘Negative, General. Sensors are clean.’"
“They hit Twelve and it’s cold,” he continued. “Not the kind you shrug off. The kind that makes the seam of your gloves hurt. The overhead strips glow wrong, that green-white sickroom color. They pass the Lamprey vent—that big round intake that looks like it wants to kiss your face off—and there’s frost on the grate. Frost. On a climate-controlled ship.”
“Could be a coolant leak,” the shiny from before offered.
“Engineering swore otherwise,” Boil said. “Remember that part.”
“The corridor bends,” Waxer went on, “and that’s when they hear it. Two taps and a drag. A beat too slow for footsteps, too regular for pipes. Coming from the bend ahead.”
He dropped his voice. The bunks seemed to lean closer.
“Cody stops. Kenobi lifts the glowstick like he’s toasting someone invisible. Serra tilts her head. ‘That’s…not the ship.’ She doesn’t say the thing she doesn’t have to say: that she can tell when something is trying to be louder than itself.
“They take the corner. The air tastes like old coins. The sound shifts behind them, like it went through them to get where it wanted to be. Cody motioned a split—you, you, you—and Kenobi murmured, ‘Perhaps we stay together.’”
Boil’s fingers drummed two taps, then a drag on the doorframe. “So they stay together. Past the storage cage for EVA gear, past a pallet of med crates slanted like a bad idea, toward a maintenance bulkhead painted with a number that used to be twelve but looks rubbed down to a one. The knocking is closer now. It’s on both sides of the corridor.”
“Two taps,” Waxer said softly. “And a drag.”
The shinies were very quiet.
Waxer let the silence draw tight before he spoke again. “Then the intercom pops. A crackle, the way it does when rec is bleeding into the wrong channel. And you hear music.”
Kip rasped, “Music?”
Boil’s mouth flattened. “Not ship music.”
Waxer nodded. “Kamino. The counting song we learned as tubies. One beat for each step on the balance rail, over and over until your brain made a rope of it. Except it was glitching, like it had to reach a long way. Cody froze. Kenobi said, very politely, ‘That is not standard protocol.’ Serra went still like a bird that hears thunder and looked down the corridor the way she looks at a holotable before she cuts through a problem. ‘It’s an echo,’ she said.”
“Of what?” someone whispered.
Waxer shrugged. “That’s the question.”
Boil pushed off the door, finally stepping into the aisle, letting his voice carry. “And then the bulkhead in front of them—one of those darker doors with the old manual wheel—goes thunk. Not open. Not close. Just… decides to remember it has moving parts.”
Waxer lifted his hands like he was seeing it again. “Cody puts a gauntlet to the metal. Freezing. He hears it through the door now: two taps and a drag. Slow. Patient.” He took a breath. “He looks at Serra. She nods without smiling. Kenobi says, ‘We’ll open it on three.’ Cody says, ‘On one.’ That’s measurable leadership.”
“Cody cranks the wheel,” Boil said. “Serra palms the frame. Kenobi has his saber hilt in his hand but doesn’t light it, because if you light it, it’s real. The door gives like it’s been holding its breath.”
Waxer’s voice fell to a thread. “It’s dark beyond. Air comes off it like a forgotten freezer. Kenobi angles the light in. It shows… what you expect. A cramped maintenance crawl, the kind you send a mouse droid into when you’re feeling cruel. Frost clings to the pipes. There’s a smear of grease at shoulder height, two lines with a gap and then a drag. Like fingers. Like someone got tired.”
He drew the shape in the air. A few shinies flinched.
“Cody says, ‘Hello?’ Because he talks to trouble first. The intercom crackles again. The counting song turns into numbers without melody, wrong cadence, a little too slow. Serra says, ‘Not you,’ to no one we can see.”
Boil’s eyes were not lazy now. “And then Cody’s cam—which never cuts out—fuzzes. Just a hitch. He doesn’t see it, obviously. Later, when we’re sitting with Riggs and Wooley and watching it back, frame by frame, you can see it. The three of them in the corridor, lit like ghosts themselves, and behind them, in the reflection off the gloss of Serra’s vambrace, a fourth helmet. No markings. No face. Just a shape that knows where to stand.”
The shinies stared at him.
Kip tried, “Could be a trick of light.”
“Could be,” Boil agreed easily. “Could be.”
Waxer cleared his throat. “Anyway. They go in. Kenobi ducks because he’s taller than he remembers, Cody goes second because if something bites he’s already got his arm there to lose, and Serra brings up the rear because I guess she trusts her spine. The sound is louder inside. The frost is thicker. The counting is wrong, then right, then wrong again, like a train changing tracks without slowing.”
Boil murmured, “After three meters, the cam picks up a temperature drop. Riggs made a face when he saw the metric—cold like space, but the door is still open. You can see their breath. You can see Cody’s pauldron fog and drip.”
Waxer swallowed. “They reach a cross-tee. Left is blocked by a shutter that’s buckled a little, like something leaned on it from the far side for a long time. Right is open. The knocking is from…everywhere, like the whole ship decided to pretend it had joints. Serra puts a hand on the left shutter. She says—soft, like to a skittish tooka—‘We’re here.’ Then she flinches like someone put a cold coin on her neck.”
“What did she feel?” Kip asked, too fast.
Waxer shook his head. “She didn’t say then. That part is later.”
“Kenobi’s done playing nice with the dark,” Boil said. “He lights the saber. It paints the frost blue-white. The sound stops. All of it. Even the hum of the ship. I don’t know how that’s possible, but in the footage there’s a half-second of absolute quiet. You can see Cody’s mouth making a joke that he doesn’t say. You can see Serra’s eyes go—” He searched for it. “—focused, like she just solved an equation and didn’t like the answer.”
Waxer’s voice softened. “Kenobi steps forward to the shutter and says, ‘If anyone is in there, please back away from the door.’ Because he is the kind of man who is polite to the unknown.”
Boil blew out a breath. “And on the other side, the knocking answers. Two taps. Drag. Right up against the metal. Like knuckles learning a word.”
A shiny’s bunk creaked.
“Kenobi looks at Cody,” Waxer said. “Cody looks at Serra. Serra shakes her head, tiny. ‘Not a person,’ she says, almost sorry. ‘It feels like…like when you leave a room too fast and forget your last thought. And the room keeps trying to remind you.’”
No one moved in the barracks.
“Kenobi powers down,” Boil said. “He says, ‘All right. That’s enough curiosity for one afternoon.’ Cody starts to back them out. The shutter sighs like a wet lung. The intercom crackles and the numbers come back, a little voice you can’t place counting to ten and then starting over. As they reach the door, something knocks behind them a last time.” He tapped the doorframe, loud in the quiet. “Two taps. Drag.”
Waxer spread his hands. “They clear the bulkhead. Cody spins the wheel in a hurry, which is the fastest I’ve ever seen him do a mechanical task. Kenobi calls Engineering and says, very calm, ‘Please seal this area, flag it for maintenance, and if anyone opens it without me present I will be most displeased.’ Engineering says, ‘Yes, General,’ in the voice of a man with a new religion. Serra stands there with her hand on the door and doesn’t say anything for a long time.”
He looked down, thumb rubbing the edge of the crate. “After, in debrief, Riggs says the temperature drop isn’t possible unless the manifold is bleeding cold into the crawl, which it isn’t, which he checked. Wooley swears he heard the counting in his dreams. We watched Cody’s footage three times. The reflection is there each time. You can tell yourself it’s a trick of light, if that helps you sleep.”
“What did Commander Vey say later?” Kip asked, almost whispering.
Waxer met his eyes. “She said it was a memory with nowhere to go. That on Kamino, when we marched and counted and learned to be the same, the sound left grooves in us. Maybe the ship has grooves, too. Maybe something full of grooves walked through once and left some behind.” He hesitated. “She also said a name.”
Boil tilted his head. “She told Cody it said ‘CT-1227 “Slate”,’ which is funny, because Slate never served on this ship.”
Kip swallowed. “So it was a prank.”
“Maybe,” Waxer said. “Which would make Kenobi’s beard go gray faster than the war does.”
Boil straightened, stepping back to the door. “The day they sealed Twelve, we moved a supply run off that deck. Not because Cody is superstitious.” His mouth twitched. “He’s practical. And practical men don’t ignore doors that knock back.”
Waxer clapped his hands once, light and sudden. Half the bunks jolted. “End of safety brief. Don’t go wandering down there for thrills. If you have to cut across, take a friend and a flashlight and keep your helmet on. If you hear the song, you turn around and you walk away. Don’t be a hero, be a clone.”
A nervous laugh ran around the room and eased some shoulders.
Kip slotted his helmet onto the bunk rail and said, too breezy, “You two are having us on.”
Boil shrugged. “We’re entertaining the troops.”
“Engineering filed a report,” Waxer added. “It says ‘anomalous readings; cause unknown.’ That’s engineering for ‘haunted.’”
More laughs. The shinies started to peel away from the aisle, ribbing each other in low voices; a couple tossed balled socks at Kip. Boil reached for the panel by the door.
The strip lights along the floor flickered.
A small, private ripple went through the room, quickly smoothed over with eye rolls and tutting noises. Waxer raised his hands as if to show he wasn’t touching anything.
Then the ship’s intercom coughed. Just once. A soft, dry pop of static, then the tail of a sound like someone breathing into a cupped hand.
Boil’s finger hovered over the door panel. Nobody spoke.
From somewhere very far away in the ventilation—or very near, it was hard to tell—a child’s voice began to count. Not the words, just the shape of them. One to ten. Slow. Careful. The exact cadence that made your feet move in time, once upon a hallway. The room held very still until the numbers stopped.
Waxer broke the silence with a smile too bright around the edges. “You hear that? Engineering loves their pranks.”
“Yeah,” Kip said, and the word landed like a coin on frost. “Engineering.”
Somewhere beneath them, the ship shifted. It was nothing. It was always something. Boil thumbed the door and it grumbled open. Waxer hopped off the crate, landing with a soft plastoid clack.
“Lights out in ten,” Boil said. “Sleep well, boys.”
The shinies climbed into their bunks with a lot of unnecessary noise. Someone joked about extra blankets. Someone else volunteered to sleep with his helmet on. Kip lay back and stared at the ceiling where the seams made little rivers.
The floor strip light pulsed once more. Waxer glanced at Boil. Boil didn’t glance back.
And as the door hissed shut, the corridor outside gave a small, polite knock.
Two taps.
A drag.
Whether that was the ship dodging a cold spot in the manifold, Deck Twelve learning a new joke, or the memory of someone who never made it to a room like this—well. That’s the thing about stories.
They fit in the spaces you leave for them.