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Empire Reforged
Chapter 40: The Signal Beneath the Ice
Location: Outpost RS-199, Deep Orbit – Polus System
Date: BBY 7 – Day 11 of Operation "Glass Veil"
The Polus system was cold in more ways than one.
It sat just outside the Core's busy transit lanes, nominally under Imperial jurisdiction but rarely visited. The system's only installation of note was RS-199 — a relay outpost wedged into the frozen rings of a fractured ice moon, originally built for long-range transmissions during the Clone Wars.
It was half-forgotten now.
Which made it the perfect place to hide something.
Lucan stood beside Veya in the Silver Lance's forward command chamber as the outpost came into view — a skeletal station with exposed antennae and long disused hangar fins. Minimal power signatures. No response to hails.
Darran's voice filtered through. "Commander, the outpost hasn't pinged any system-wide transponders in over three months. That's well beyond protocol."
"Any signs of damage?" Lucan asked.
"Not externally."
Lucan looked to Veya.
She nodded. "We go in. Quiet entry. Bring weapons."
—
Boarding the station was like stepping into a graveyard.
The power grid flickered low. Emergency systems hummed faintly. The air recyclers were still working — barely — giving the corridors a cold, stale scent of old metal and spent coolant.
The command deck was abandoned. Chairs pushed away. One datapad left active, humming a dead loop on the diagnostics screen.
"Logs?" Lucan asked.
Valk, wired in through her shoulder-link, responded: "I'm pulling what I can. The internal systems are running off emergency subroutines. No external access logs since… wait."
She paused.
"There's a backtrace here. A redirect loop. Someone fed false traffic from this station to the Chandrila array."
Lucan's jaw tightened. "Coordinates?"
"Encrypted. But I can get them."
Veya walked slowly around the room, her hand gliding across a dusty console.
"This station was used as a ghost beacon," she said. "It sent fabricated bursts to simulate chatter — pulling attention away from real leaks."
Lucan turned to her. "So the saboteurs created noise to bury the signal."
She met his eyes.
"And we followed the noise."
—
They found the first body an hour later.
Cold. Slumped in an access shaft near the reactor housing. Uniform stripped of rank. Throat cut cleanly.
Lucan crouched beside it, checking the old ID chip still embedded in the man's collar. "Tech Officer. Civilian. Scheduled rotation: two months ago."
Veya studied the floor.
"There's no blood on the grating."
"Body was moved," Lucan said.
She looked deeper into the shaft.
"Or someone else is still here."
—
The lights went out.
Then came the sharp hiss of pressure shifting — someone cycling a door in another section of the station.
Lucan's hand was on his blaster instantly.
Veya drew hers without hesitation. "They're trying to vent us."
Lucan tapped his comm. "Silver Lance — secure exfil route, now. Relay beacon compromised. Likely hostile presence on station."
"Copy," Valk replied. "We're cutting power to external airlocks now."
They moved fast through the corridor, sweeping every junction with tight formation. Lucan's training kicked in — angles, timing, cover. Veya followed his rhythm perfectly, moving like she'd spent her whole career in combat-ready halls.
The shooter revealed himself only for a second — a flash of black armor, the glint of modified optics, and the pulse of a suppressor shot that grazed the bulkhead between them.
Lucan dove, rolled to the left, and fired twice.
The body slumped forward.
Too clean.
He stepped closer, weapon up.
The man's armor was ex-Imperial. Stripped of insignia. Face pale, unshaven. The side of his helmet marked with a single stripe — no unit, no origin.
Veya crouched beside the body.
"They're using deniable agents. Cutouts."
Lucan frowned. "How many more?"
"Enough that they had time to plant him here, wait for us, and clean the place out."
She stood.
"They knew we were coming."
—
Back aboard the Silver Lance, Lucan watched the frozen outpost fade into the distance as the ship jumped back into hyperspace.
Beside him, Veya reviewed the data they'd extracted — the corrupted logs, the altered pings, the list of missing personnel.
"Whoever is behind this," she said, "they're not just sabotaging installations. They're hunting down anyone who notices."
Lucan didn't respond for a moment.
Then: "How long before they come for us?"
Veya's reply was calm.
"They already have. They just missed."