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Empire Reforged
Chapter 26: The Pattern Beneath the Silence
Location: ISV Silver Lance, Approaching System Virell-7
Date: BBY 8 – 1240 Hours, Day 5 of Patrol Deployment
The stars sharpened as the Silver Lance dropped from hyperspace.
System Virell-7 greeted them with silence. No orbital stations, no trade routes. One barren planet, two fractured moons, and a weak sun slowly collapsing toward its eventual death.
Tarris adjusted their approach vector. "Nav locked. Holding standard patrol altitude. There's no traffic — again."
Lucan didn't respond.
He stood at the command platform, eyes fixed on the holomap.
Darran stepped beside him. "That's three dead systems in a row. No contact. No deviation. No sign of rebel cells, courier traffic, or deep-relay anomalies."
"They're adjusting," Lucan said quietly.
Darran raised a brow. "To us?"
"To someone like us."
He turned to Valk. "Scan the system for any signal traffic within the last ninety days. Subspace, pulse, tightbeam — even decayed echoes."
She nodded. "Running historical sweep."
Lucan stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back.
"We're not chasing ghosts anymore. We're walking through the fog they left behind."
Holtz's voice came in over the internal comm. "Reactor stable. Shield harmonics balanced for long-range sweep. We can hold position here for twelve hours before needing a recharge cycle."
"Good."
Valk's console pinged.
"Found something," she said. "Weak signal burst — near the outer edge of moon Besh-2. Directional. Low wattage. Compressed fragment."
Lucan moved quickly.
"Content?"
"It's not a message. It's a digital handshake. A tag — no more than eight characters."
"Show me."
The screen displayed a repeating hex-code:
> V7-RX-0214
Darran frowned. "That's not a signal. That's a tag. A timestamp."
Lucan nodded slowly. "A relay passed through here. Recently. It marked this system as clean and moved on."
Tarris turned in his chair. "Which means they're still running the network."
"No," Lucan said. "It means the network rebuilt faster than we thought."
—
Three hours later, the Silver Lance deployed a long-range buoy of its own — cloaked in a dead relay shell, fitted with a passive burst receiver and signal tracker. If anyone came back through Virell-7, it would flag them.
Lucan watched from the observation deck as the shell drifted into shadow, vanishing against the dull horizon of the frozen moon.
Behind him, Darran spoke without turning.
"You're quieter than usual."
Lucan didn't move. "Because I've stopped assuming I know how deep this goes."
She glanced over. "The data from the downed ship… from the crash world — it's not going away."
"No," he said. "And neither are we."
She studied him for a moment.
"You ever wonder why it's you in the middle of all this?"
He didn't answer at first.
Then, low:
> "Because I don't blink when the line blurs.
Because I was forgotten once.
And I survived."
—
By night-cycle, the crew rotated down to rest.
Only Lucan and Valk remained on the bridge.
She approached with a datapad. "New sensor report from the buoy. No contact yet, but…"
She hesitated.
"But what?"
"I triangulated the tag's format. We've seen a similar structure before — not in the field. In your original patrol archives."
Lucan turned slowly.
"When?"
"The first system where you broke protocol. Relay Node Sigma-Kresh."
He took the datapad, stared at the matching pattern.
They weren't just marking territory.
They were marking him.
Lucan stood tall.
"Plot a jump. Next clean system, furthest off-grid."
"You expecting something?"
"Yes," he said coldly.
"I'm expecting them to stop running."
"And start answering."