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Empire Reforged
Chapter 44: Shadow Routes
Location: ISV Silver Lance, Outer Mid Rim — Ganthel System
Date: BBY 6 — 3 Months After the Kuat Incident
The stars blurred outside the viewport, yet Lucan wasn't watching them. He sat in the command chair, gloves off, sleeves rolled up, datapad in hand. A cup of stim-tea sat cold on the armrest, untouched.
Three months.
Three months of coded trails, false maintenance requests, re-routed fuel convoys, and "accidental" malfunctions traced back to nowhere. Three months of chasing the echo of sabotage across half the galaxy. And still no clear pattern — just a growing pile of anomalies no one else seemed willing to connect.
"Encrypted file just came in," Veya said, stepping onto the bridge. "Intercepted a comm burst from the Hapes trade corridor. Same signal pattern as Centares. Low-grade slicer tags. Delayed bounce."
Lucan rubbed his eyes. "Another ghost."
"Maybe." She handed him the pad anyway. "But this time the signature was local. Only one light-day out. Merchant vessel flagged as overdue for inspections."
Lucan scrolled through the metadata. "That makes five flagged ships in two months. None on official logs. All operating near intelligence assets. Convenient."
"Too convenient."
He exhaled. "Send the coordinates to nav. We intercept. Minimal profile."
"Yes, Captain."
She moved with her usual crisp precision, but Lucan noticed the tightness in her movements — the exhaustion beneath the routine. They'd both been running at full burn for weeks.
He stood.
"Veya."
She paused at the command terminal.
"Stand down for a few hours once we're underway. We both need the uptime."
She hesitated. "That applies to you too."
He gave a wry look. "I'll think about it."
—
Later, in the quiet of his cabin, Lucan reviewed the compiled intelligence dossier Veya had been building. Ganthel. Velmor. Even Brentaal. Every system showed low-level disruptions: shipment reroutes, junior officers reassigned without chain of command notification, communication delays masked as solar interference.
It wasn't just sabotage.
It was a soft dismantling — a silent corrosion of the Empire's operational flow.
And no one was talking about it.
Only Veya believed him without proof. And she didn't just believe. She helped.
There had been close calls: a mole embedded in a supply depot on Malastare, a mining platform on Orleon rigged to vent atmosphere if questioned. Each time, Lucan and Veya had gone in together. Each time, they came out alive, but changed. More guarded. More ruthless. More aware of how fragile the Imperial machine had become.
And how little command truly knew — or wanted to know.
—
Three days later, the Silver Lance dropped into realspace near a fractured moon belt — hiding place of the flagged freighter. Lucan and Veya led the inspection detail personally, stormtroopers in tow.
The ship wasn't armed.
But the crew was nervous.
Too nervous.
Three crates in, they found a passive signal tap disguised as a cooling regulator — built to eavesdrop on military-grade encrypted channels.
Lucan didn't need a confession.
The equipment spoke for itself.
As the freighter was impounded and its crew detained, Lucan stood on the outer airlock ramp, staring into the shadowed asteroid field ahead.
"It's not random anymore," Veya said from beside him.
"No," he murmured. "This one was listening. Not sabotaging — recording. Feeding someone intel."
"We're being watched."
"Always have been."
She folded her arms. "What's next?"
He looked out toward the stars.
"We pull back. Resupply. Report findings to Centares Command. Then we push into the Core again."
Veya nodded once. "Still chasing ghosts."
Lucan glanced at her, then toward the stars.
"No. Now we're chasing the hand that moves them."
And for the first time in weeks, he didn't feel entirely alone.
Not in purpose.
Not in conviction.
Not in command.
Just two shadows in a fleet of steel — trying to hold back the cracks.
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