Chapter 262: Ghost System

The relay gate's flare faded behind them, the aftershock of displacement energy rippling across the hull of the Obsidian Wraith in slow, phantom waves. Stabilizers whined briefly before falling silent, and just like that, the ship slipped back into stillness.

From the cockpit viewport, the starfield reformed, and Haltris Sector emerged into focus.

The difference hit Ethan immediately.

In the Enover Sector, space had stretched wide and feral. Long gaps between scan buoys, fractured comms nets, trade lanes that wandered like rootless veins through neglected systems. There, starships moved like predators or prey, and bureaucracy was a half-whispered theory at best.

But this?

Haltris gleamed.

Like an architectural diagram rendered in motion. Every orbit was defined, every corridor of space lit with precise beacons and regulated drift lanes. Convoys of freighters crawled along projected rails, their ID pulses syncing with orbital registries in bursts of green code. Escort ships mirrored their path from above like silent shepherds.

Traffic lanes flickered in clear, color-coded bands: red for military, blue for corporate trade, amber for regulated freight hauls and mercenaries, and green for civilian use. Even the debris had been pushed to collection grids anchored by synchronized drone chains.

Ahead, a colossal orbital nexus hung in the dark like a city suspended from the stars. Dozens of dock spires and ring-shaped hangars branched outward, tethered by floating cranes and magnetized cargo tubes stretching miles across.

Ships blinked in and out of place in seamless transition. A machine in perpetual, immaculate motion.

Haltris wasn't just maintained. It was curated.

Ethan watched the way the patrol patterns turned with the same rhythm, not rushed, not searching, just... watching.

"Haltris, one of the Federation's eighteen Inner Galactic sectors " he muttered, almost to himself. "Clean on the outside…"

"And rotting beneath the casing," Iris replied without pause, her voice composed, clinical. "Federation trade output from this sector has increased by fourteen-point-three percent over the current fiscal cycle. However, patrol funding has remained static for the third consecutive year."

Her words floated in the cockpit like a second layer of the interface.

"Forty-six percent of active conflict arbitration contracts are now fulfilled by rotating mercenary forces and PMCs. Seventy-two percent of orbital defense platforms are maintained through outsourced industrial bonds rather than internal regulatory oversight."

Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Translation?"

"They've built a fortress," she said evenly. "But they staff it with mercenaries, corporations, and executive-level security operatives with weapons permits and discretionary immunity."

A beat of silence passed.

He leaned back in the pilot seat, expression unreadable, and tapped a few keys on the nav-grid to zoom out. The map flared in a three-dimensional projection, clean lines and blinking ports stretching out like a spiderweb drawn by economists instead of engineers.

He didn't trust it.

Not because it looked wrong. But because it looked perfect.

Too perfect.

He scanned the visible registry pulses nearby. Civilian haulers. Luxury liners. Private business-class vessels with polished hulls and flagged metadata. All smiling. All polished. All just... so compliant.

Too many eyes.

Too many ears.

Too many smiling faces asking just the right number of questions.

He ran his thumb along the edge of the console, letting the hum of the ship beneath him ground his thoughts.

Surface order. Deep rot.

Like so many other places on this galactic nation.

Only here, the mask fit better.

He sat forward again, fingers flexing toward the manual thruster controls. "Let's disappear," he said.

They dropped into a lateral drift path, just beneath the primary scan lanes. The Wraith's drive coil dimmed as Ethan shifted power away from the propulsion core and into the internal heat sink system. Every external light died. The ship entered stealth profile, gliding forward like a shadow lost in deeper shadow.

"Approach path set," Iris confirmed. "System TH-9. Outbound edge of Haltris Sector. Minimal oversight. Former industrial node."

System TH-9 wasn't glowing with traffic like the rest of Haltris. It hovered like a scar at the rim of order, a planetary system half-forgotten by the very machine that once drained it dry. A massive gas giant hung in the center of the system, swirling with rust-colored clouds and faint arcs of storm static.

Orbiting it were shattered moons, abandoned refineries, and the ruins of once-profitable orbital platforms. Their purposes lost. Their names erased from Federation shipping maps.

One of those moons was Yora.

Dust-blasted. Unlit. And home to something Iris had flagged only as myth.

Mirth Vault.

Ethan took manual control as they entered TH-9's outer perimeter. What little infrastructure remained had become debris, collapsed scaffolds, drifting refinery arms, and an eerie field of "sensor ghosts": ancient AI drones caught in feedback loops, mimicking the orbital drift of actual ships to throw off pirate scanners or keep relic bounty hunters away.

The Wraith glided among them, silent and careful.

"Iris, how live are these mines?"

"Eighty-three percent appear deactivated. Twelve percent emit decaying energy signatures. Five percent... are unknown."

"Perfect odds."

He shifted the pitch, tilting the Wraith between a spinning cargo cage and the long-dead spine of an orbital fuel cannon. His eyes flicked between the viewport and the kinetic proximity map Iris was rendering in real time. His hands stayed steady. His heartbeat didn't change.

This was a dead system, but it didn't sleep quietly.

Lightning from the gas giant shimmered across distant moons as they dipped lower into orbital shadow. Dust coated the hull in a dull haze, giving the Wraith the texture of rust.

Then Iris pinged a response.

"Encrypted handshake detected. Source: Moon Yora. Location: southern hemisphere, crater cluster Beta-9."

Ethan squinted into the gloom. The moon's dark side barely reflected any light from the gas giant. The terrain below was all jagged scars and collapsed mining tunnels—until a single pulse of blue light flickered from beneath the stone.

Iris matched the pulse, layer by layer.

The reply came back, faint, fractured, but clear enough.

A signal lock.

The crater wall opened, not with mechanical flourish, but as if the rock itself blinked. A narrow aperture hissed into being, just wide enough for a ship the size of the Wraith.

No external beacon. No transponder code. Just a hole in the dead, waiting for something that already knew how to knock.

"Tunnel's open," Ethan murmured. "They expecting us?"

"They don't expect, Captain. They observe. And let in what doesn't make noise."

He angled the ship forward, pulling power from the lateral thrusters and engaging the gravity clamp. The Wraith eased down into the crater, the light vanishing behind them as the moon swallowed the vessel whole.

Inside, the landing tunnel narrowed. Walls etched with old mining marks, patched with scavenged hull plating, and reinforced with non-Federation alloy.

At the bottom: a shadow-drenched hangar.

Empty. Silent. And perfectly hidden.

Mirth Vault.

No welcome message. No registry ping. No armed reception.

Just access.

The Wraith settled gently onto the landing pad, struts locking with a soft thud.

Ethan didn't move. He stared through the cockpit for a moment longer, letting the silence hold.

Then he spoke.

"For somewhere that doesn't exist… it sure knows how to open the door."

And just like that, the system swallowed another secret.