Chapter 43 · Listener buoys

After their fifteenth jump, they stopped to let the drives cool. The Mynock coasted in realspace, surrounded by the blue emptiness of the Chaos. The stars here were faint, too distant to measure, their light bent by distortions that made every point seem doubled.

Eli unstrapped and drifted toward the galley compartment, where the air smelled faintly of burned tea and recycled heat. He poured two cups from the dispenser—the liquid sloshed with the faint shimmer of condensation that passed for freshness out here.

When he handed one to Stent, the Chiss nodded in thanks and took a sip.

“This route’s shorter on paper,” Stent said, setting the cup down. “In practice…”

“In practice it’s purgatory,” Eli finished.

Stent smirked. “That’s a human word.”

“It’s an accurate one.”

They sat in the cramped space, the metal groaning softly around them. For a few minutes, the sound of the ship filled the gap between them—steady, uneven, alive.

Stent spoke first. “You could have stayed on the Steadfast. Safe, comfortable, fed. Why come?”

Eli stared into his tea. “Because the safe places always want you to stop asking questions.”

“And the dangerous ones?”

“They want you to find the wrong answers.”

Stent nodded slowly. “So we’re aiming for something in between.”

“Exactly.”

He looked at Eli for a long moment. “You really think he’s alive.”

Eli didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“Because you need him to be.”

Eli looked up sharply. “You think this is about need?”

“I think,” Stent said quietly, “you never learned how to stop following him.”

Eli leaned back, the metal seat creaking. “Maybe not. But you dodn’t either. You are following him and you haven’t met him yet.”

That earned him a faint, rueful smile. “Fair.”

They finished their tea in silence. The ship’s systems hummed in the background, lights dimmed for power conservation.

Eli stared at the fading horizon of stars. “You ever get the feeling we’re just numbers in someone else’s equation?”

“All the time,” Stent said. “I just make sure I’m the variable that doesn’t cancel out.”

Eli chuckled softly. “That’s the most reassuring thing I’ve heard all day.”

“I’m a generous man,” Stent said, pushing back his chair. “Come on. One more jump before we start thinking too hard.”

Eli sighed, climbing to his feet. “That ship name’s going to be prophetic, isn’t it?”

“It already is,” Stent said.

By the time they were ready for the next jump, fatigue had dulled Eli’s thoughts to a quiet hum. He ran the final check by muscle memory.

“Course ready,” he said, yawning. “Coordinates confirmed. Engines at seventy-eight percent efficiency.”

“Which means they’re barely holding together,” Stent muttered, flipping the safety toggles.

“Then let’s not give them time to change their minds.”

The stars folded again, blue light swallowing the cockpit, and the Mynock dove once more into the current of the Way of Schesa—two figures in a ship that was ugly, stubborn, and far too human to know when to stop.

The tenth jump of the day brought them to nowhere.

Not a system, not even the faint blur of dust that marked the edges of a nebula—just the vast, raw dark of the Chaos, a void so complete it felt like a lie.

Eli blinked at the empty scanner returns. “You brought us to coordinates that don’t exist.”

Stent was already unbuckling his harness. “They exist. They just don’t show up on official charts.”

Eli arched an eyebrow. “You’re sure we’re not lost?”

“If we were lost,” Stent said, “we’d be somewhere that mattered.”

The sensors pinged once, faint and uncertain. A single metallic echo drifted through the static.

There, floating a few hundred clicksers off their bow, was a tiny structure—no larger than a shuttle cockpit, its hull blackened and pitted. It turned slowly in the void, an orphaned fragment of metal that looked centuries dead.

Eli frowned. “That’s a relay station?”

“Looks like a derelict buoy,” Stent admitted, reaching for the equipment locker. “Which is exactly why it works.”

He opened the locker and pulled out a space suit. It was old, patched, and clearly meant for someone broader in the shoulders than either of them. Eli blinked, then frowned.

“Hold on—there’s only one?”

Stent glanced over his shoulder, nonchalant. “Yes.”

Eli stared at him. “One suit for two people on a ship this far out? That’s not a risk, that’s a death wish.”

Stent began checking the seals, ignoring the protest. “Two would’ve raised questions when I came through customs on the border stations. A single suit says I travel alone. Traders with more equipment than cargo get searched.”

“That’s still insane,” Eli said. “What if something fails? What if you need me out there?”

“Then,” Stent said evenly, “we’ll improvise. You’re good at that.”

Eli rubbed a hand over his face, muttering, “Stars, remind me never to let you handle safety regulations.”

“They wouldn’t approve of this mission anyway,” Stent said, slipping the helmet on. His voice came filtered through the comm as the seals clicked. “Besides, the suit fits me better.”

“That’s the least comforting logic I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s the only logic we’ve got,” Stent replied, stepping into the narrow airlock.”Bring us closer.”

Eli watched through the viewport as the Chiss officer drifted toward the buoy, a small shape crossing the enormous silence of the void. The relay looked inert, but as Stent approached, a faint green indicator flickered to life near its base.

“Contact,” Stent’s voice crackled over the comm. “Link port’s intact. Amazing what people ignore when it doesn’t transmit.”

Eli adjusted the console’s settings, pulling up the external feed. “So this thing just sits here? Listening?”

“Listening,” Stent said. “Always listening. No signals out—too risky. Only storage. You get the data by being brave or stupid enough to come fetch it.”

“Guess which one you are.”

“I’m both,” Stent said. There was a soft metallic click as he attached a short cable from the buoy to a small storage unit tethered at his waist. “Link established. Pulling memory now.”

A faint hum filled the Mynock’s cabin as the transfer began. The screen above Eli’s station displayed a slow stream of data, all tagged with timestamps and coded sector markers.

Stent’s voice came again after some minutes, calm, routine. “Transfer complete. Clearing buffer.”

The buoy’s light flickered once, then went dark again—its memory wiped clean, ready for another cycle of listening.

“Unlatching,” Stent said. A soft hiss followed, and the cable detached automatically. He drifted free, turning gracefully in the dark. “Still alive.”

“I’ll add that to the report,” Eli said, watching as the suit’s thrusters fired and brought him back to the airlock.

By the time Stent stripped the helmet off, the data transfer was finished. The screen was full of raw signals—half-decoded bursts, navigation pings, distorted transmissions from traders and smugglers, even a few personal messages.

Eli scrolled through the archive. “There’s enough chatter here to map half the border.”

Stent wiped condensation from his forehead. “That’s just one relay. There are dozens more.”

Eli looked up sharply. “Dozens?”

Stent nodded. “Some placed by the CEDF. Others by Families. A few by neither. We pretend not to know about each other’s.”

Eli let out a low whistle. “So the Ascendancy’s silence is an illusion.”

“It always was,” Stent said, leaning over his shoulder. “Now filter the last ten days.”

Eli keyed the parameters. The field of data narrowed, sifting into clearer categories—trade signals, unknown ships bursts, minor fleet reports. Most were static. A few carried recognizable Imperial encryption layers, but all of them were old, unimportant.

Then one line caught his eye. The transmission header was half-burned, degraded by time and interference—but something in its sequence of characters made Eli’s breath stop.

“Wait,” he murmured. “That’s… impossible.”

Stent straightened. “What is it?”

Eli expanded the file. The header code shimmered faintly on the screen. It was broken, only fragments readable, but the pattern was unmistakable.

“That’s Thrawn’s old fleet encryption,” he said. “I’d recognize that structure anywhere. He designed it himself.”

Stent’s expression hardened. “You’re sure?”

“Positive. It’s an old signal but it’s real.I helped him code it when we served on board the Blood Crow”

He began parsing the static, fingers moving quickly across the controls. The playback was nearly unintelligible: a few bursts of data, fragmented chains of ciphers.

Eli sat back, stunned. “He was out there. Recently.”

Stent folded his arms. “Or he sent a way towards here.”

Eli looked up. “Does he know about this network of listening buoys?”

Stent nodded “Of course he does. But this single burst of data doesn’t prove anything solid.”

Eli looked up. “You don’t believe he was around here?”

“I believe the data says what it says,” Stent replied. “And I believe data can carry lies.”

Eli turned back to the screen, studying the pattern. “Then let’s make it tell the truth.”

Eli’s eyes stayed fixed on the screen. The fragment pulsed once more before dissolving into static, the faintest ghost of a transmission too mangled to decipher. The waveform was barely there—half a dozen numbers, a burst of carrier tone, and the designation that made his throat tighten.

ISD CHIMAERA.

He zoomed in on the readout, the name stuttering in and out of focus. “That’s her,” he said quietly. “That’s the ship.”

Stent leaned over his shoulder. “The Chimaera.” He said it like the name of an old myth. “You’re sure?”

“It’s partial, but the prefix is right. And the encryption layer matches the seventh fleet.” Eli sat back, the pulse still echoing in his ears. “It’s out there.”

Stent’s expression didn’t change, but his silence did. The kind of silence that meant belief was dangerous.

“How far?” he asked.

Eli keyed a new sequence into the console. The nav computer processed, blinked twice, and spat out a range estimate. The numbers scrolled upward for several long seconds before stabilizing.

He let out a slow breath. “Too far. The signal’s drifted through the Chaos for days. The distortion radius alone could span half a quadrant. It’d take decades to search.”

“But it’s something,” Stent said.

“It’s more than that,” Eli murmured. “It’s proof.”

They sat there, the faint hum of the ship the only sound between them.

Stent finally straightened. “So, you believe he’s still out there. Somewhere inside that radius.”

Eli nodded. “Somewhere. Or he made the message bounce from any station around there.”

Stent crossed his arms, staring out the viewport at the dark. “Then the real question isn’t whether he’s alive,” he said quietly. “It’s whether he wants to be found.”

Eli didn’t answer. His eyes lingered on the static-filled screen, the ghost of a name flickering faintly against the dark.

The Mynock had been adrift for nearly an hour after the signal faded. The relay buoy had long since vanished behind them, swallowed by the dark, but its echo still pulsed through the cockpit like a heartbeat no one wanted to admit hearing.

Eli hadn’t moved. His eyes stayed on the screen, though the data had long since gone blank. Stent sat opposite him, arms folded, watching.

“You’re going to say it,” Stent said finally.

Eli blinked. “Say what?”

“That you want to follow it.”

Eli gave a tired laugh. “We don’t even know where ‘it’ is.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Stent said. “You want to chase the ghost anyway.”

Eli rubbed his eyes. The faint hum of the Mynock’s engines filled the silence. “You saw the numbers. The range could cover half the western corridor. We’d grow old before we narrowed it down.”

“Some people would call that a deterrent,” Stent said.

“Not the right people.”

They lapsed back into silence. The ship creaked around them—metal expanding, breathing in the cold.

Finally Eli said, “We can’t report this yet.”

Stent’s head turned slightly. “Why not?”

“Because the moment we do, Ar’alani will order us back.”

“And you’d disobey?”

“I’d argue,” Eli said. “Which is worse.”

He keyed the console, bringing the last coordinates back on-screen. A map unfolded—warped, stretched, half-invented. The radius markers spun outward until they blurred into meaningless distance.

“It’s too wide,” Eli said. “We’ll need another data point. Maybe two.”

“From where?”

Eli leaned back. “Wherever this signal came from, it was carried along the old Imperial communications lattice. The edges of that network were anchored near trade posts. If even one of them survived, it might’ve stored the transmission.”

Stent considered that. “You’re suggesting we start raiding forgotten Imperial outposts?”

“Not raiding,” Eli said. “Visiting.”

“That’s a polite word for a felony.”

Eli smiled faintly. “I learned from the best.”

“Thrawn?”

“No,” Eli said. “You. Or you are going to pretend you are a saint?”

Stent’s laugh was short, sharp, genuine. “Then we’re doomed.”

He stood and moved toward the galley, pouring the last of their tea rations into two mugs. “You realize,” he said, handing one across, “that this is the moment where, by all reasonable standards, we should turn around.”

Eli took the mug, the warmth grounding him. “And yet?”

“And yet,” Stent said, “I’m plotting a course instead.”

The Mynock’s lights dimmed briefly as the nav systems reinitialized. The coordinates flickered on the screen—an empty grid, waiting to be filled.

Eli traced a finger along the map, the ghost of the Chimaera still hovering like a memory at the edge of space. “What if we trace the seventh fleet steps before trying to comb thorugh a portion of the galaxy too wide for us?”

“Sounds like a plan”

“We’re searchers now,” Eli said softly.

Stent raised his mug in quiet salute. “To the lost.”

Eli returned the gesture. “And the ones who don’t know they are.”

They drank in silence as the ship turned slowly, aligning with the invisible trail of a vanished fleet.

When the drive engaged, the Mynock slipped once more into the lightless blue—small, unremarkable, carrying two men who refused to let the past rest.