Ascending Legend
The sound was so out of place that Iandre initially failed to recognize it. She had been halfway through sorting the few belongings she still kept from her first life when a faint electronic chirp came from somewhere beneath a folded set of clothing. Iandre stopped, grey eyes narrowing toward the open case as the sound came again, followed by two short tones and a longer third that sent a strange chill through her before she'd consciously remembered why. Reaching beneath the clothing, she pulled free an old Republic communicator and turned the battered device over in her hands. It was ancient by every modern definition of the word, obsolete even as a curiosity, yet she had never quite convinced herself to throw it away. Now, impossibly, the indicator along its side was blinking.
"That's impossible." Iandre lowered herself onto the edge of the nearby chair and activated the receiver. Static immediately filled the room, but beneath it came fragments of something else, so weak that she had to increase the gain before the communicator could isolate anything meaningful. An identification sequence surfaced first. Republic military. An authentication protocol she hadn't seen since the Clone Wars. For several seconds she simply stared at the device in her hand while a string of numbers and corrupted telemetry crawled across its tiny display. She knew that protocol, and more unsettlingly, the communicator knew it too.
Whatever had reached her wasn't a modern transmission masquerading beneath an old encryption standard. The packet carried an original Republic timestamp buried inside its header. Iandre checked it once, then again, convinced she had misread the numbers, but there was no mistake. The transmission had been sent during the Clone Wars. Somewhere along the old Republic communications network, a signal had failed to complete its journey. Perhaps a relay had been damaged before it could finish routing the packet, or perhaps the transmission had spent centuries trapped within some forgotten piece of infrastructure, endlessly attempting to complete instructions given to it by people who had been dead for nearly a millennium. Whatever had happened, something had changed. An ancient relay had awakened, a surviving system had finally found a viable route, and the communicator Iandre had carried into another age had recognized a message intended for equipment just like it.
Most of the transmission was gone. There were fragments of coordinates, corrupted operational identifiers, and pieces of an automated priority signal, but no voices survived and no desperate plea for rescue emerged from the static. There was only enough information to establish where the transmission had originated.
Boz Pity.
Several days later, Iandre stood beneath its bleak sky with the old communicator secured at her side. The coordinates had taken her well away from anything that might attract ordinary travelers, across broken stone and desolate stretches of terrain interrupted here and there by remnants of a world whose association with death had begun long before the Clone Wars. Somewhere ahead, partially swallowed by centuries of erosion and neglect, rested the source of a signal that had somehow managed to reach her more than nine hundred years after someone had sent it.
She moved carefully across the uneven ground, dressed for travel rather than ceremony, with her lightsaber resting at her hip beneath the edge of her outer layer. Its familiar weight was reassuring without demanding attention. She hadn't come expecting a fight, though she wasn't entirely certain what she expected to find at all. When the communicator suddenly chirped at her side, Iandre stopped and drew it from her belt, watching the indicator pulse before changing direction slightly. The signal was stronger here, growing incrementally clearer as another few hundred meters carried her toward the base of a rocky embankment.
The first unmistakable evidence of the outpost was easy to miss. Weathered duracrete protruded from beneath the surrounding rock, faded almost to the same dull shade as the landscape around it. Beyond stood the remains of what had once been a communications mast, its upper portion long since collapsed against the earth. It was only when Iandre drew closer that her light caught the faint remains of a Republic insignia beside the partially buried entrance, and for several long moments she simply stood there looking at it.
She had seen that symbol countless times since awakening. It existed in museums, archives, historical recordings, and reproductions printed beneath paragraphs describing a government that had become ancient history. This one was different. Someone had painted it there when the Republic was still alive, perhaps never imagining there would come a day when its emblem needed to be identified by historians. Iandre reached out almost without thinking, her fingertips brushing lightly across what remained of the faded insignia.
"You took your time." she murmured, glancing down at the communicator still blinking in her other hand before turning toward the entrance.
Part of the passage beyond had collapsed, but enough remained for Iandre to slip through. Darkness swallowed the daylight within several steps, prompting her to produce a small light before continuing deeper into the outpost. Its beam passed slowly over ancient conduits, fallen ceiling panels, and doors marked with military designations she could still read without translation. Dust and nine centuries of neglect covered everything, yet beneath it all was an architecture painfully familiar to her. The modern galaxy would have called this an archaeological site, another surviving fragment of the Clone Wars carefully cataloged and separated from the present by centuries of history. To Iandre, there was nothing ancient about the shape of those doors or the markings beside them. They belonged to memory.
The communicator chirped again, louder this time, and Iandre's attention shifted toward the darkened passage ahead. Whatever had survived here had not merely sent one final transmission before dying. Something deeper within the forgotten Republic outpost was still transmitting after more than nine hundred years of silence.
With the old communicator held before her and its signal strengthening with every pulse, Iandre followed it farther into the ruins.
Galen Paven
"That's impossible." Iandre lowered herself onto the edge of the nearby chair and activated the receiver. Static immediately filled the room, but beneath it came fragments of something else, so weak that she had to increase the gain before the communicator could isolate anything meaningful. An identification sequence surfaced first. Republic military. An authentication protocol she hadn't seen since the Clone Wars. For several seconds she simply stared at the device in her hand while a string of numbers and corrupted telemetry crawled across its tiny display. She knew that protocol, and more unsettlingly, the communicator knew it too.
Whatever had reached her wasn't a modern transmission masquerading beneath an old encryption standard. The packet carried an original Republic timestamp buried inside its header. Iandre checked it once, then again, convinced she had misread the numbers, but there was no mistake. The transmission had been sent during the Clone Wars. Somewhere along the old Republic communications network, a signal had failed to complete its journey. Perhaps a relay had been damaged before it could finish routing the packet, or perhaps the transmission had spent centuries trapped within some forgotten piece of infrastructure, endlessly attempting to complete instructions given to it by people who had been dead for nearly a millennium. Whatever had happened, something had changed. An ancient relay had awakened, a surviving system had finally found a viable route, and the communicator Iandre had carried into another age had recognized a message intended for equipment just like it.
Most of the transmission was gone. There were fragments of coordinates, corrupted operational identifiers, and pieces of an automated priority signal, but no voices survived and no desperate plea for rescue emerged from the static. There was only enough information to establish where the transmission had originated.
Boz Pity.
Several days later, Iandre stood beneath its bleak sky with the old communicator secured at her side. The coordinates had taken her well away from anything that might attract ordinary travelers, across broken stone and desolate stretches of terrain interrupted here and there by remnants of a world whose association with death had begun long before the Clone Wars. Somewhere ahead, partially swallowed by centuries of erosion and neglect, rested the source of a signal that had somehow managed to reach her more than nine hundred years after someone had sent it.
She moved carefully across the uneven ground, dressed for travel rather than ceremony, with her lightsaber resting at her hip beneath the edge of her outer layer. Its familiar weight was reassuring without demanding attention. She hadn't come expecting a fight, though she wasn't entirely certain what she expected to find at all. When the communicator suddenly chirped at her side, Iandre stopped and drew it from her belt, watching the indicator pulse before changing direction slightly. The signal was stronger here, growing incrementally clearer as another few hundred meters carried her toward the base of a rocky embankment.
The first unmistakable evidence of the outpost was easy to miss. Weathered duracrete protruded from beneath the surrounding rock, faded almost to the same dull shade as the landscape around it. Beyond stood the remains of what had once been a communications mast, its upper portion long since collapsed against the earth. It was only when Iandre drew closer that her light caught the faint remains of a Republic insignia beside the partially buried entrance, and for several long moments she simply stood there looking at it.
She had seen that symbol countless times since awakening. It existed in museums, archives, historical recordings, and reproductions printed beneath paragraphs describing a government that had become ancient history. This one was different. Someone had painted it there when the Republic was still alive, perhaps never imagining there would come a day when its emblem needed to be identified by historians. Iandre reached out almost without thinking, her fingertips brushing lightly across what remained of the faded insignia.
"You took your time." she murmured, glancing down at the communicator still blinking in her other hand before turning toward the entrance.
Part of the passage beyond had collapsed, but enough remained for Iandre to slip through. Darkness swallowed the daylight within several steps, prompting her to produce a small light before continuing deeper into the outpost. Its beam passed slowly over ancient conduits, fallen ceiling panels, and doors marked with military designations she could still read without translation. Dust and nine centuries of neglect covered everything, yet beneath it all was an architecture painfully familiar to her. The modern galaxy would have called this an archaeological site, another surviving fragment of the Clone Wars carefully cataloged and separated from the present by centuries of history. To Iandre, there was nothing ancient about the shape of those doors or the markings beside them. They belonged to memory.
The communicator chirped again, louder this time, and Iandre's attention shifted toward the darkened passage ahead. Whatever had survived here had not merely sent one final transmission before dying. Something deeper within the forgotten Republic outpost was still transmitting after more than nine hundred years of silence.
With the old communicator held before her and its signal strengthening with every pulse, Iandre followed it farther into the ruins.
Galen Paven
