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Empire Reforged
Chapter 55: Ghosts in the Green
Location: Onderon Surface – Sector Ridge Nine, Old Republic Listening Post
Date: BBY 6 – Day 23 of Operation Apex
The air was thick — not with smoke, but with memory.
Onderon's jungle canopy towered above the landing zone like ancient teeth. Moisture clung to every surface, dripping from moss-covered durasteel and shattered Clone Wars-era barricades. Vines had strangled much of the old Republic infrastructure, but a faint buzz of power still pulsed beneath the ruin's crust.
Lucan knelt beside a rusted panel and wiped the surface clean with his glove. The Republic crest stared back at him — faded, chipped, forgotten.
"LZ secured," came the voice of Lieutenant Varn over comms. "Perimeter drones deployed. No visual contacts, but motion scanners keep ghosting."
Lucan didn't respond. He stood slowly, turning toward the overgrown corridor ahead.
The Hexnode signal had triangulated to this ruin. A lost comm bunker, once used to relay battlefield data between Clone troopers during the Separatist siege. Now, it pulsed again — faint, regular, alive.
Behind him, Veya emerged from the dropship, flanked by a fireteam of stormtroopers in adaptive jungle armor. Her eyes swept the trees as if they might be watching back.
"They're here," she said flatly.
Lucan nodded. "They're waiting."
—
They advanced slowly — two squads through the primary corridor, Lucan and Veya at point. The old durasteel creaked under their steps, ancient bulkheads stained with moss and rust. Bones littered the side hallways — Republic, Separatist, maybe even local militia. Ghosts of wars no one remembered.
Then the ambush hit.
A flash mine detonated above the second squad — not lethal, just blinding. Then came the first volley — magnetic bolts from the treeline, silent and sharp. A trooper cried out as his shoulder plate shattered, spinning into cover.
"Contact front!" Varn shouted.
Lucan didn't hesitate. "Suppressive fire — flanks hold. Push forward!"
He charged into the hall's center, his blaster tight to his side, sweeping the corridor in tight arcs. The enemy didn't stand and fight. They moved. Darted. Camouflaged. But Lucan had studied their pattern from orbital recon.
They were fast — but predictable.
He dropped one with a clean shot to the knee, then another as she tried to retreat. Veya followed beside him, calm as always, sending single, deliberate shots through the haze.
Within minutes, the shooting stopped.
Five insurgents lay wounded. Three dead. The rest had vanished into secondary escape tunnels.
"Check their gear," Lucan said, breathing hard. "I want tags, data pads, anything."
—
What they found wasn't much — a few comm chips, ration tubes, short-range jammers.
But one datapad, partially cracked, held enough.
A name.
"Commander Vash Qil."
Lucan turned it over. The signal records tied back to the Hexnode relay network.
"This is it," Veya said beside him. "The field coordinator. He's been bouncing between abandoned bunkers for months."
Lucan stared down the ruined hallway. "Where's his next stop?"
She pointed to a line of coded coordinates just beginning to decrypt. "Deep jungle plateau. Unmapped. No roads. No records. But the signal path ends there."
Lucan looked at the wounded insurgents being zip-tied behind them.
"Then that's where we finish this phase."
—
Hours later, back aboard the Silver Lance, Lucan sat in the war room alone. The jungle still clung to his uniform. The blood hadn't all come from him, but it stained his gloves all the same.
Veya entered, tossing a datapad on the table.
"Vash Qil used to be Republic Army Intelligence," she said. "Disappeared during the early purge years. Slipped through the cracks. His record was wiped."
Lucan raised an eyebrow. "So not a rebel."
"No. A ghost. One of ours."
Lucan leaned back.
The insurgency wasn't just built on resentment.
It was built on forgotten soldiers.
And they knew how the Empire thought.
Which meant this war was far from over.
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