Chapter 95 · Nothing There Forgets

The next checkpoint came into view as a thin lattice of lights stretched across nothing—barely a station, more a framework of scanners and communication pylons held together by stubbornness. The Empire had abandoned most of its outer nets; this one had the look of something too trivial to dismantle and too dangerous to leave unmonitored.

Eli eased the Faded Glory into the lane, keeping their speed marginal, giving the net every courtesy, as if politeness could convince a machine not to misinterpret them.

The comm light blinked once.

Then again, slower.

Finally, a voice crackled through—a man’s, worn raw. Not hostile, not alert. Just tired.

“State your name and business.”

Eli slipped again into the alias without hesitation. “Horatio Figg, independent trader, inbound for Lothal. Cargo: cloth bolts, rations, repair tools. Routine supply venture.”

Silence. Not electronic static—human hesitation.

The screen flickered. A face appeared: unshaven, uniform collar loose, eyes ringed with exhaustion that looked months old. He wasn’t looking at Eli. He was looking through him, as if expecting a weapon to sprout from the wall at any moment.

“Repeat your name,” the officer said.

Eli did.

The man blinked slowly, the way someone processes information with the dullness of chronic fear.

“You’re headed to Lothal,” he said. Not a question. A sentence pronounced like a diagnosis.

“Yes,” Eli answered carefully.

Another long pause. The man leaned closer to the camera. His voice dropped.

“Stay clear of the capital,” he murmured. “Nothing there forgets.”

Stent straightened. “Explain.”

But the man flinched, as if struck. His posture stiffened, the mask of regulation slamming back into place.

“You are cleared for entry,” he said sharply. “Maintain lane. Proceed.”

The channel cut before Eli could speak.

Eli stared at the dead screen. “That was—”

“A warning,” Stent said.

“Yeah, but—”

“A sincere one,” Stent continued.

Tee issued a low, unhappy blurble. The sound vibrated faintly in the cabin, a droid’s version of instinctive unease.

Eli rubbed his jaw. “What did he mean, ‘nothing there forgets’?”

Stent didn’t answer immediately. He was looking at the space the officer’s face had occupied, as though reading an invisible text.

“The capital was the rebellion’s symbol,” he said at last. “The Empire erases symbols with… thoroughness.”

“Right, but the war’s over.”

“That changes nothing.”

Eli felt the words settle in his spine like snowfall.

He swallowed once. “Do you think the warning was about the Empire or about something else?”

“Yes,” Stent said.

Eli stared at him. “…Yes to which?”

“To both.”

The air felt thinner after that.

The Faded Glory passed through the lattice of scanners. The sensors hummed. The lights pulsed.

No alarms sounded, yet Eli had the distinct sensation of crossing the threshold into something that did not welcome trespass.

The checkpoint didn’t turn its guns on them. It didn’t chase them. It simply watched them go.

And that, somehow, was worse.

The checkpoint lattice shrank behind them until it was only a faint geometry against the dark, an afterimage on the viewport. Ahead, the star that Lothal orbited brightened by degrees, pale and cold through the glass, and the sector around it grew denser with the kind of silence that wasn’t empty at all, just waiting.

Eli sat with both hands on the controls, not because he needed to—autopilot was holding the vector steady—but because letting go would have made the tension too obvious. His fingers tapped restlessly against the throttle housing, a small staccato rhythm that betrayed what he wasn’t saying out loud.

Months of travel. Planets blurred into one another. A hundred decisions that could have ended differently. And now Lothal.

“Feels… strange,” he said quietly, as if volume might disturb the space around them. “We’re here. Or almost. After all this time.”

Stent stood behind him, one hand resting lightly on the back of the co-pilot’s chair. His expression didn’t change; it rarely did when he had settled into purpose. “Strange is irrelevant,” he said.

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“It is the correct way.”

Eli huffed under his breath. “I’m not nervous, I just—”

“Yes,” Stent said.

“Yes what?”

“You are nervous.”

Eli shot him a glare over his shoulder. “You’re not helping.”

Stent considered that with clinical honesty. “It was not intended as help. It was an observation.”

Tee rolled into the doorway, issued a sharp, reprimanding beep, and projected a tiny red pulse on the wall—something between focus and stop spiraling.
Eli groaned. “Even you?”

Tee beeped again: affirmative.

Stent inclined his head toward the droid. “He is correct.”

A soft vibration ran through the hull as the engines compensated for the gravitational shift of the system. The sound was subtle, but Eli felt it—deep, inevitable, a reminder that some paths didn’t require choice once the first step was taken.

“This is it,” he murmured. “We actually… made it.”

“Yes,” Stent said.

“And now what?”

Stent didn’t hesitate. Not for a breath. “We continue our search.”

Eli stared ahead at the narrowing corridor of space, at the faint glint that might have been a distant orbital platform or just a trick of filtered starlight. His stomach tightened with something that wasn’t fear, not exactly—more like the anticipation before stepping into a room where everyone already knows something you don’t.

“Just like that,” he said.

“There is no merit in hesitation,” Stent replied. “Not now. Not here.”

Eli let out a slow breath and released the throttle, letting the autopilot’s corrections smooth his tension into the deck. The ship hummed, steady and sure, as if affirming the decision neither of them needed to say aloud.

“All right,” he whispered. “Forward it is.”

“Forward,” Stent echoed.

Not encouragement. Not comfort. Just direction.

The Faded Glory angled deeper into Lothal’s system, the stars thinning around their path, the silence thickening until it felt like a tangible pressure against the hull.

The way ahead no longer felt like travel. It felt like gravity. Like a pull they had been following long before either of them admitted it.

They didn’t turn back.

They couldn’t.

Lothal was waiting.

And the quiet between them held no illusions about what that meant.