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Empire Reforged
Chapter 13: Burn the Map
Location: IPV-120 Vigilance, En route from Lortan Fracture
Date: BBY 8 – 2145 Hours
The Vigilance moved through hyperspace like a whisper between stars.
Lucan stood alone on the bridge.
The lights were dimmed, most of the crew off-duty or rotated into rest cycles. Only essential personnel remained — Valk at comms, Tarris at helm, and Darran sitting quietly beside the nav console, reading over intercepted data.
The last relay node had given them something different — not a command burst, not a location ping. It was an archive. Dozens of compressed logs, image files, encoded voice lines, and technical readouts buried beneath multi-layer encryption. The packet had passed without resistance. Whoever maintained the network still believed they were part of it.
Lucan didn't feel victorious.
He felt watched.
"Estimated time to relay vector?" he asked quietly.
Tarris answered without looking up. "Nine minutes to exit point. Then we hit the midpoint beacon on the Jenth Corridor. It's marked as dormant on current charts — likely another passive comm node."
"Scan history?"
"Updated once every two years. No patrol presence. Last traffic signature logged twelve cycles ago."
Lucan exhaled.
They were walking further off the Imperial chart with every jump.
Darran looked up. "We keep this up, we'll lose all plausible deniability."
Lucan turned. "You're saying we should stop?"
"I'm saying we're playing by someone else's map. One they're rewriting as we go."
He met her gaze. "Which is why we stop following it."
She straightened. "You want to deviate?"
"No," Lucan said. "I want to take control of the route."
He stepped toward the central console and activated the holomap. Their current path glowed pale blue — each node behind them now marked with Imperial red, a warning line they were no longer beneath official protection.
He keyed in new coordinates.
"I want to intercept the next courier ship. Not just observe. We mimic the signal again. Bounce the archive forward as expected. Then we jump ahead to the likely pickup system and meet them at the door."
Darran stared at the path as it reconfigured.
"That's risk."
Lucan's voice was steady. "So is war."
—
The Vigilance dropped from hyperspace into a silent corridor system flanked by two brown dwarf stars and a collapsing debris cloud from a long-dead planetary body.
The relay was exactly where they expected.
Old, scorched, and still functional.
Valk fed the archive into the relay with clinical precision.
"Packet sent. Signal integrity confirmed. Passive response confirmed — same protocol as before."
"Any pings?" Lucan asked.
"Not yet."
Tarris was already calculating.
"Best guess puts the next intercept point at a system three jumps forward: Varn Trill. Civilian registry, no garrison. Sparse traffic. Local comm hub. If I were running a handoff in person, that's where I'd do it."
Lucan nodded. "Prepare the jump."
Holtz's voice chimed in from Engineering. "Captain, motivator's still running hot. I can get you there, but we'll need a hard shutdown after. Twenty-four-hour cool cycle minimum."
"You'll have it."
He turned to Darran.
"When we arrive, we play it different. No silence. No stealth. We land like an Imperial patrol."
She arched an eyebrow. "Won't that break cover?"
Lucan shook his head. "It'll bait whoever's waiting. We've followed them far enough. Time to make them think we've always been in control."
—
The ship dropped into the Varn Trill system just after 2300 hours standard.
Lucan stood at full height, now in full dress uniform, the lights on the bridge raised for visibility. The crew snapped into position — not casual anymore, not hidden.
Varn Trill loomed below — a dusty yellow-gray world with a thin atmosphere, cratered surface, and a small orbital station shaped like a three-pronged docking claw.
"Bring us into geosync orbit," Lucan ordered. "Comms — standard patrol signal burst. Mark our presence. I want every set of eyes watching."
Valk hesitated only a moment before flicking the switch.
The Vigilance broadcast its ID to the system in full strength:
> Imperial Patrol Vessel IPV-120 – "Vigilance" – Sector Sweep Protocol 113B
Tarris guided them into position.
Lucan stepped to the viewport.
"We're here now. Let's see if they come out to greet us… or if they run."
Darran stepped beside him.
"And what if they don't do either?"
Lucan's reply was cold.
"Then we burn every relay we've passed. And start drawing a new map."