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Empire Reforged
Chapter 11: Ghosts on the Line
Location: System JX-6447, Drift Relay 3
Date: BBY 8 – 1700 Hours
The signal skimmer activated with a soft pulse.
A cone of focused energy arced from the Vigilance's comms array toward the relay tucked into the cratered rock. The moonlet offered no resistance. It was ancient — a forgotten relic from the final days of the Clone Wars, its systems barely holding cohesion through redundant power loops.
On the bridge, Valk monitored the data stream, brow furrowed as lines of raw cipher crawled across her screen.
"Packet acquired," she said. "No corruption. Four encrypted subroutines. Two are low-level courier tags, the others are compression bursts."
Lucan stood just behind her station. "Decryption?"
"Partial. Holtz's skimmer rig can bypass masking layers, but the deeper codes are buried in recursive deadlocks. Whoever built this doesn't want it read — just passed along."
Tarris looked up from navigation. "That suggests a command chain. Message origin unknown, message content sealed. Intermediaries are blind."
Lucan nodded once. "A system designed to prevent compromise. Whoever receives the final message is the only one who understands its meaning."
Darran joined them from the systems side. "And we're about to pretend we're part of it."
Lucan turned to her. "Route the decoded signal through our comms buffer. Inject false authentication tags. Bounce it downstream, exactly as the gunship would've done."
Valk hesitated. "If we get the timing wrong—"
"They'll know," Lucan said. "Yes. That's why we don't get it wrong."
Holtz's voice crackled in from Engineering. "Captain, we've diverted power from the lateral capacitors to feed the comms burst. You've got fifteen seconds of clean output — after that, we risk a feedback surge."
Lucan gave a sharp nod. "Understood. Valk, inject the signal on my mark. Tarris, prepare a pre-plotted jump to the edge of the system. We disappear the moment it's sent."
Darran raised an eyebrow. "You're not staying to watch who answers?"
"No. That's not how this game works. We don't observe this node. We wait for the next relay to light up."
The bridge fell quiet as final preparations snapped into place.
Valk's fingers hovered over the console.
"Comms rig charged. Signal lock established."
Lucan's voice was a razor.
"Mark."
The transmission fired.
A sharp pulse tore from the Vigilance's hull-mounted dish, invisible to the eye but bright to any listening device within range. It mimicked the format of the original courier burst, complete with false security codes and staggered frequency decay.
In those five seconds, the Vigilance became someone else.
Then they were gone.
"Jump now," Lucan ordered.
The motivator screamed, but the ship complied. The stars stretched — and the relay fell behind.
—
The Vigilance emerged at a high orbital slingshot point near a dead moon, one system away, drifting under silent power.
The crew worked without command now — they knew the drill. No lights. No signals. No pings. They waited.
Tension hung in the air like charged dust.
Lucan sat in the command chair, watching the bridge as it breathed — silent consoles, blinking status reports, the low background hum of power redistribution systems fighting to cool the hyperdrive motivator.
Then Valk looked up.
"Hit confirmed. We were scanned."
Lucan rose. "Source?"
"Unknown. Passive-only. Short burst — likely an automated relay response from an unknown node. Not from the last system."
Lucan moved to the tactical screen. "They know we passed the packet. And now they're opening the next door."
Darran stared at the feed. "We're in."
Tarris adjusted the projection grid. "Two possible destination nodes based on the signal's projected direction: Binar Expanse or the abandoned station cluster in the Lortan Fracture. Both are within three jumps."
Lucan considered.
"Fracture," he said. "More likely. Denser gravimetric anomalies mean more sensor interference. If I were moving critical messages, I'd hide them there."
Darran gave a tight nod. "Plotting course."
Lucan took one last look at the fading telemetry.
They had walked a thin line — worn the face of the enemy without knowing its purpose.
But for the first time, the enemy might invite them closer.
Not with weapons.
But with trust.