A ringing silence hung over the bridge, broken only by that same message repeating on a loop, in the ancient tongue of the Sith.
Elara was the first to snap out of it, lunging for the control panel, her fingers flipping switches in a frantic blur, cutting off auxiliary comm systems.
"The frequencies are overloaded... they packed a virus into that transmission!" she shouted, without turning her head. "If I don't isolate the internal subnet right now, we're going to lose every navigation relay we have!"
A heavy metallic thud rang out from below, echoing through the ship's hull — the magnetic clamp engaging, hauling the scorched, slag-covered navigation probe into the landing dock.
I looked at the screen, where thermal-load charts, pressure vectors, and tables of the drone's system logs had come up — and my head immediately started throbbing, so I decided some fresh air was in order.
"Elara, the technical side's all yours," I said, stepping back from the terminal and giving her the seat. "Check the drone through the internal sensors and start pulling its telemetry. Squeeze everything you can out of its memory. Something's telling me this matters."
Elara nodded briefly, snapping instantly into work mode. She plugged a cable into the interface port and launched the standard data-copy protocol into our ship's shared memory. Lines of upload progress began scrolling across the holographic display. Ten percent, twelve...
Suddenly a sharp, broken alarm blared. The interface's blue schematic flickered and switched to an ominous crimson. Every modern Aurebesh glyph vanished, replaced across the whole screen by angular, archaic characters of old Imperial military script.
"What happened?" I asked, staring at the changed graphics.
"Some kind of trap," Elara said, slamming her palm against the input panel in frustration, but the system only gave a curt refusal. "Someone's autonomous security protocol — genuinely ancient. Our connection's being flagged as an unauthorized data extraction attempt, or Republic espionage — that's literally what it says. The system's locked down the probe's memory core. Looks like while our scout was flying back, somebody had a very thorough poke around inside its electronics."
At that same moment, a digital countdown lit up on screen and began ticking down: 03:00... 02:59...
A dry, synthesized voice, styled after some old-fashioned convention, came out of the lower speaker, reading out the same warning shown in text.
"Attention. Unauthorized attempt to copy strategic data detected. Emergency media-destruction protocol engaged. Enter the analog alphanumeric code of an authorized Ministry of War officer. One hundred eighty seconds remain before full thermal purge of the memory matrix."
"Can this actually be hacked?" I asked quickly.
She turned to me, her expression a mix of irritation and helplessness.
"With what?! This isn't modern software, you know — it's some ancient analog system. There's no standard logic ports or software vulnerabilities here, the kind my programs are all written for. If I try brute-forcing it, I'd give you no more than a ten percent success rate. Best case. And a hundred percent guarantee that if it fails, everything on there gets fried into nothing, self-destructing."
"What if we physically disconnect the data cable?" I asked, running through the options.
"That triggers a circuit-break failsafe. Same result. Brutus, engineering and tools aren't going to crack this system. I can try a brute-force combination sweep, but the cipher's probable length is around sixteen characters, including case and unit indices. I doubt there's a single machine anywhere in the galaxy that could crack that in time..."
The countdown on the main monitor ruthlessly kept ticking: 02:45... 02:44... Elara tried a few things, careful not to provoke the self-destruct routine further, but it was already painfully clear none of it was going to work.
Still... one thought crossed my mind, and I very nearly facepalmed at how obvious it was.
"I think I know what to do. Elara, let me at it."
So much had happened since I'd first landed here that it was no wonder I'd forgotten about this. I hurried to my quarters and dragged back the heavy bag that, among various other odds and ends, still held the small pack I'd originally found the disassembled lightsaber in, back on Tatooine. Buried among the rest of the junk was a whole stack of paperwork — permits, ID cards, and other bureaucratic clutter that came with the job. Those were exactly what I needed now. After all, I was, whatever else might be said of me, an Inquisitor of the Vishate Empire, and my position was very much official. If I was right, that might just be enough. Now I just needed to find it.
I quickly dumped the entire contents of the pack out onto the tactical table. Old datapads, outdated info-chips, and a few thick, rolled-up sheets of genuine physical paper scattered across the panel...
The timer had just over a minute left: 01:12.
My fingers finally found a stiff, nearly unbendable form embossed with a sharp-edged gear insignia. It was the original military service record of the Inquisitorius, made out to Taales. Right at the bottom of the page, just beneath the list of campaigns and combat commendations, ran a long, faded line of characters from the ancient alphabet, mixed with numbers.
00:28. Judging by the cursing coming from Elara, the program had already begun the pre-heating process on the probe's memory matrix, the step right before self-destruction.
"Where do I enter it?" I asked, a bit sheepishly.
"There's a slide-out keypad console to the right of the main screen," she shouted, without looking away from the diagnostic monitor. "You'd better hurry, or the hangar repair bill's going to be a real headache."
Getting to it quickly, I started punching in the characters. There were a lot of them, and I fumbled the first attempt, so I had to start over.
The timer already read: 00:15.
The letter "Tesh"... the number four... the letter "Kresh"...
00:08.
The number nine... the letter "Zesh"...
At 00:05, I threw my full weight onto the wide enter key in the corner of the panel.
The alarming crimson glow on the bridge cut out instantly. The terminal let out one long, clean tone, and the interface flooded with a steady green. The probe's protective programs cut power to the heating elements, saving the memory crystals from destruction.
"Lockdown's cleared," Elara breathed out in relief, immediately shouldering me aside from the console and taking back the controls. "Data's transferring into our ship's shared memory. Brutus, this has full jump vectors through the spatial anomalies of the Unknown Regions. And the system also sent over a fixed frequency on ultra-long wavelengths. Without it, we'd have flown right into a gravitational trap. In the logs, this sector's labeled 'Gravitational Shield.' And the second the drones got close to it..."
"Load the coordinates and jump immediately," I ordered, dropping into the command chair and buckling the restraint straps. "There's no telling who else might have intercepted whatever residual signal that probe put out."
...
The hyperspace transit through the "Gravitational Shield" bore no resemblance whatsoever to a standard flight along a well-traveled route. The moment the ship entered the anomalous zone, the hull shuddered under a massive impact, and we had to drop back into realspace, forced to cross this stretch the hard way — broadcasting a specific signal ahead of us across every spectrum, one that deactivated the traps scattered throughout the area. Judging by their condition, those traps had been sitting there untouched for a very long time, and for whatever reason, most of them weren't even working anymore.
Honestly, the place was a rough neighborhood even without the man-made hazards. The onboard sensors kept up a constant stream of warnings about the dangerous proximity of wandering black holes, which had to be given a wide berth or we'd never pull free again, along with dense plasma clouds capable of burning through even the strongest deflector shields in a single second. The infiltrator groaned pitifully, its inertial dampeners pushed to the absolute edge of what they could physically handle, but slowly, steadily, we kept moving forward. In the end the old ship held together and made it through the deadly maze, after which we had to jump back into hyperspace one more time.
And then, after a few more grueling hours, the violent shaking finally stopped, and we were slammed back into our seats. The ship dropped into realspace inside a fully isolated, dead-end sector deep within the Unknown Regions.
The jump ended directly in front of a colossal automated dreadnought of the old Empire. It was a titanic, angular vessel of brutal wedge-shaped design, its dark armor coated over the centuries in a thick layer of cosmic dust and micrometeorite scarring. Despite its outwardly abandoned look, the guardian ship's running lights burned a steady, ominous red.
On the bridge of the Core Guardian, the battle-stations siren wailed again.
"Quite the warm welcome," Elara said, quickly flipping switches, trying to reroute power to the shields. "That monster's onboard AI is fully active. Its heavy old-model plasma batteries are already coming around to bear on us. Better not push this into a direct confrontation."
On the central comm monitor, text in the Sith language lit up over the navigational charts:
"Attention. Sector protocol engaged: General Inspection. Incoming vessel not found in database. Present authorization, or the object will be destroyed under orbital elimination protocol. Time to respond: thirty seconds."
"Elara, open a direct comm channel to send a data packet," I said calmly, straightening in my seat and adjusting the folds of my dark clothing. "Write the reply exactly as I dictate it."
I focused, half channeling the Force, half improvising off the style of the old paperwork I had on hand, and began.
"Write: 'To the superior AI of the defense node. This is Inquisitor Taales, Sphere of Law and Justice. Authorization code: zero-zero-four-kresh-nine-zesh. Arrival in this sector is conducted under special order of the Ministry of War, for the purposes of a routine loyalty inspection and materiel resource audit. Order: immediately cease pre-combat readiness of weapons systems, log the arrival of the inspection team, and add this vessel's coordinates to the sector's approved list.' Send it."
Elara's fingers flew rapidly over the touch keys, entering the text and running it through the old Imperial cipher frequency we'd pulled from the probe earlier, precisely for a situation like this one. The data packet went out toward the dreadnought.
For a few seconds, dead, ringing silence gripped the bridge. Then the giant guardian ship's heavy gun turrets froze, stopped tracking us, and slowly lowered back into their default, non-combat position, locking their barrels flush along the hull as a formal salute to a high-ranking official. The battle-stations alarm on our own ship shut off.
"Phew. Looks like it worked. That was genuinely nerve-wracking..." Elara said quietly, wiping the sweat off her forehead. "But we're in now."
"That's only half the job," I noted, gesturing toward the long-range comm screens.
The dreadnought, obediently carrying out some algorithm hardwired into it long ago, automatically activated the sector's long-range beacon and sent out a broadcast notice to every inhabited installation in the system. On the auxiliary monitor, the outgoing signal's text appeared:
"Attention all control nodes, garrisons, and administrative units of the sector. Inquisitor Taales has arrived in-system for a routine inspection. All responsible personnel are ordered to immediately prepare current loyalty reports for the population and resource extraction summaries for review."
Less than a minute later, the comm terminal flashed with an incoming call from the nearest moon-hub, which, according to the astrographic charts, served as the local logistics center.
"Well, let's see what kind of welcome we get here. Put it through," I ordered, arranging my face into the coldest, most impassive and stern expression I could manage.
The bridge's holoprojector lit up with the image of a pale, thoroughly terrified humanoid in a strict gray uniform of the old Imperial style, clearly several sizes too big and hanging off him like a sack. The moment it dawned on him exactly WHO he was looking at, the official went even paler, and his knees buckled. He dropped straight to his knees in front of the camera, forehead pressed to the metal floor.
I gave the figure sprawled on the ground a cold once-over. Faded uniform fabric, crooked collar tabs, a cheap third-rank administrator's badge on his chest — this man clearly never made decisions bigger than ration distribution or shift changes at some warehouse.
"Get up," I ordered in a dry, matter-of-fact tone, taking half a step toward the holoprojector. "Stop shaking and answer me: who currently holds supreme military and administrative command of this sector?"
The official struggled up onto trembling legs, swallowing hard and nervously wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. His eyes darted around the frame, not daring to meet mine.
"Supreme... Grand Marshal Vallen, Lord Inquisitor! Chairman of the War Council of the Isolated Military Remnant," he stammered out, barely keeping his balance. "Node Delta is just a logistics supply point, we..."
"Connect me to Vallen," I cut him off, not letting him wander into a long string of excuses. "And if you make me wait more than thirty seconds, I'll be reconsidering your personal loyalty rating."
The humanoid nodded frantically and grabbed the switchboard panel with both hands. The image on the projector flickered a few times, blurred with interference, and switched to a different figure.
An entirely different sort of man stood before us now. Roughly fifty, close-cropped graying hair, dressed in a tunic tailored precisely to his frame, heavy metal epaulets on the shoulders. Despite visible signs of careful darning at the cuffs, the uniform fit him perfectly. His broad, deeply scarred face showed not a trace of panic — only the disciplined bearing of a career soldier and the heavy, calculating gaze of a commander used to keeping order with a firm hand.
This one didn't drop to his knees. Instead, the Marshal brought his right hand to his temple in one smooth motion, offering a crisp, formal military salute per the old Imperial regulations.
"Grand Marshal Vallen, Chairman of the War Council," he said, his voice level, showing no visible strain or other emotion. "The Inquisitorius authorization packet checks out. But I'll be blunt with you, Lord Taales — it's been nearly two thousand years since Central Command sent us a single directive. Generations of officers have held these biospheres, maintained caste discipline, and kept the fleet at readiness with no outside support whatsoever. So what's changed now, that you've suddenly remembered us?"
Vallen spoke from a position of strength — the strength of a man with millions of trained soldiers and a functioning system standing behind him. I didn't lean on theatrical menace or hollow threats — that kind of thing tends to land poorly with pragmatic military men. Instead, I crossed my arms silently and studied the details of his behavior. Beneath his outwardly unshakable calm, there was a wariness — the fingers of his left hand quietly curling into a fist with every flicker of the hologram. This was a man who'd grown up under permanent isolation, and he clearly had no intention of handing power over to an outsider without a fight, even one presenting genuine Imperial codes. Which, of course, was precisely my goal.
At that moment, the comm terminal signaled an incoming packet of strategic documentation, which the guardian dreadnought had forwarded to our bridge under its high-access privileges. The central screen lit up with a dense, chaotic tangle of code lines, network telemetry charts, voltage fluctuations, and three-dimensional equipment specifications.
Staring at that meaningless wall of green symbols and murky engineering indices, I felt a flicker of irritation. I silently stepped back, clearing space in front of the console, and gave a short gesture with my hand.
"Elara, take the feed," I said, without looking away from Vallen. "Filter out the technical noise. I don't care about their hydroponics schematics or cable labeling. Boil the reports down to plain text summaries — social structure, resources, shipyard status. That's what matters."
"On it," Elara said, immediately taking the seat, her fingers gliding rapidly over the keys, seizing control and collapsing the graphical windows into neat blocks of text.
While she dug through the incoming data, I turned back to the projector and looked the commander directly in the eye.
"I haven't come here to take your chair away from you, Marshal, or to make your people rewrite regulations they've had memorized for generations," I said calmly. "And I certainly haven't come to listen to reports of loyalty to a Dromund Kaas that burned down a long time ago. I'm here to give your army a purpose."
Vallen raised an eyebrow slightly, but said nothing, waiting for me to continue.
At that moment, the first structured summaries appeared on Elara's side panel. I leaned in closer, quickly running my eyes over the neat rows of administrative reports.
The sector turned out to be a perfect, rigidly fossilized society. The population divided cleanly into three castes: hereditary soldiers, engineers, and administrators. They lived under massive sealed biosphere domes on planets and moons, sustained by automated hydroponic farms that had run without a single failure for a thousand years on nothing but basic service algorithms. Discipline here was absolute, raised to the level of religion — these people simply knew no other life besides following instructions.
The report on orbital infrastructure looked even more impressive. In orbit around the central planet sat fully functional, mothballed automated shipyards. The docks retained the technical capacity to build heavy warship hulls and manufacture that same powerful old-model plasma artillery. This was a ready-made, self-sufficient war industry, just sitting there.
But when I got down to the supply and energy-balance section, the answer to their thousand-year standstill became obvious. The fuel reserve figures all read zero.
The system simply had no deposits of hypermatter isotopes or coaxium — the raw materials needed to produce stable hyperdrive fuel. Their own reserves had likely run dry back in the first few centuries of isolation. The people of the Remnant were sublight prisoners, trapped inside their own star system. They could keep their heavy cruisers in flawless working order and pour fresh steel all day long, but those ships were physically incapable of making a jump beyond the "Gravitational Shield." For a thousand years, they'd stagnated in place, kept every piece of hardware in perfect condition, and simply waited for the Imperial fleet to break through to them from outside and bring fuel.
I allowed myself a small smile, looking back up at the Marshal. The central vulnerability of his entire regime sat right there in front of me, in that one dry line of text. And on top of that, from the looks of things, either they didn't know or they'd forgotten that the Vishate Empire had already fallen. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if some general had shown up here ages ago, given the order to destroy all their fuel stores, and spun up some story about the Empire still thriving out there beyond their borders, just to keep his grip on power. But that's just me getting carried away with speculation.
"I've gone over your summary, Vallen," I said, stepping toward the hologram. "You've got trained soldiers and functioning shipyards capable of building warships, but no fuel for interstellar flight. You're stuck here — and I suspect you like that even less than I do."
The Marshal's face twitched, ever so slightly, his jaw muscles clenching bitterly. Looks like I hadn't been wrong.
"You've got an army and shipyards, but no fuel," I continued, dropping my voice. "And I have access to resources across the galaxy, modern hyperdrives, and — as it happens — a rather substantial sum of credits at my disposal. Sooner or later, the outside world would find you regardless. But right now, we can put an end to this forced isolation of yours. I won't hide it, though — my primary condition is the complete integration of your war machine into my own forces. As for the Empire... I think you already understand. It's been gone a long time."
The Marshal was quiet for a few seconds. I could see the intense calculation running behind his eyes: weighing the risk of an unknown Inquisitor showing up out of nowhere against the enormous benefit of finally breaking a thousand years of isolation. Picking a hopeless fight with a ship that held valid access codes to the sector's defenses made no sense — not when that same ship was also handing him the solution to his single biggest problem.
"Your proposal has practical merit, Lord Taales," Vallen finally said, giving a curt, respectful nod. "If you can guarantee a supply of hyperfuel for the fleet, the War Council will recognize your authority without obstruction. I'm opening staff comm channels to you and issuing the order to integrate our production facilities."
"A sensible decision, Marshal," I replied. "Prepare your staff for a personal visit."
The hologram faded out. Silence settled over the Core Guardian's bridge, broken only by the steady hum of the life-support system.
Kem, who'd stood silently behind my chair this whole time like some carved stone statue, shifted his weight heavily from one foot to the other. His armor creaked softly, and his broad, flat face turned toward me.
"That commander reminds me of an old krayt dragon," the Dashade rumbled hoarsely, giving the darkened projector a sparing glance. "There's no cowardice in him, not like that small official. His soldiers know which end of a weapon to hold. These are good allies."
"Must be a simple life you lead, Kem," I said with a faint smile, looking over the structured lists of the Remnant's divisions on the screen.
Elara quickly finished saving the data and turned back to me, her usual confidence back on her face.
"So, Brutus... an entire industrial base, shipyards, and a whole army of disciplined fanatics, and we didn't even fire a single shot," she said, lacing her hands behind her head. "That's a lot more stable than every one of Baron Aurelius's smuggling schemes put together. If we can get a coaxium supply running out here, we could be churning out heavy warships in the shadow of the Unknown Regions itself. And it's hard to imagine anyone managing to find their way in here."
"Ah, Elara, such a sweet, naive soul. You have no idea just how relentless Jedi can be. Poof — and suddenly the Force drags them straight here at the head of some unstoppable armada. For absolutely no reason at all. Cosmic malice, that's what it is. Anyway, that's just nerves talking..." I answered, settling into the command chair. "We've finally got ourselves a secure rear base and our own industrial foundation. All that's left now is putting it to good use. But first... I suppose it would be rather rude of us to just fly off without so much as a proper visit, so I think a trip down to see the locals and give their heads a bit of a rinse is in order."
Author's note: I've got this nagging feeling I'm just handing the protagonist plot-armor freebies here, though honestly, all this really does is bring him up to a bare minimum of combat readiness for the current conflict... Eh, well. I'll probably do one more chapter about the Remnant, since this all went by a bit too fast. Could use a little more depth.