Galactic Exchange: The Merchant Sovereign-Chapter 73 – The Ripple Protocol

"Trade is the art of balance. Ripple seeks to break the scales."—Anonymous Whisper Market Record, sealed entry #4921B

The Signal

Kairos stood in his private quarters aboard the Unyielding Trust, staring at the coin that now bore a single word: Ripple.

Kessie’s voice came through the comms. "I’ve isolated the encryption on the coin’s surface. It’s not just a name."

Kairos narrowed his eyes. "Go on."

"It’s a protocol. A signature tied to a trade that never happened."

Kairos’s pulse slowed.

Another impossible item.

Another phantom deal.

He tapped the edge of the coin against the console. "Trace its trade line. See where it leads."

Kessie hesitated. "That’s the problem, Sovereign. It leads... back to you."

The Echo Log

In the main chamber of the ship, Vael and T’rana were waiting as Kairos entered.

Kessie pulled up a holographic projection of sovereign logs.

"Here’s where it gets strange," she said, zooming into one particular entry marked in red.

"Trade #729. A barter made three cycles ago. Supposedly, you exchanged a Class-F Planetoid Mining License for a shipment of Shielded Voidglass."

Kairos frowned. "I remember that deal."

"You made that deal," Kessie said, "but this log shows it happened twice. The same timestamp, same exchange—but in a second location, overlapping in time."

T’rana’s expression turned cold. "Someone’s duplicating your trades."

"No," Kairos whispered. "They’re inserting trades into my history. Ripple is rewriting my past... without me."

Fragmented Sovereignty

The Ripple Protocol wasn’t just a falsified deal—it was a systemic ghost.

As Kessie unraveled more, they found three more entries corrupted: each one a transaction Kairos had made weeks ago—except the product, the partner, or the result had changed.

In one record, Kairos had sold 400 units of neutronite to the Uxell Combine.

In the Ripple-altered log, it had been 200.

And the other 200 had gone... somewhere else.

"Who’s getting the difference?" Kairos asked.

Kessie pulled the registry.

"No one. The trade just vanishes. Like it never happened."

"But the payment still clears," Vael added grimly. "Which means someone’s rerouting value."

Kairos’s jaw tightened. "They’re stealing trade—without making one."

The Hunt Begins

Kairos activated the Scarcity Key.

[SYSTEM QUERY: TRACE DUPLICATE TRADE PATHS][...Processing...][ALERT: Ripple anomaly detected in Sector Glyon-7, Deadlink Zone][Threat Level: High][Behavioral Profile: Sovereign Spoofing]

Kessie gasped. "Sovereign spoofing? That’s illegal in every known system. That’s a galactic felony."

"It’s more than illegal," Kairos muttered. "It’s treason against the Trade Web."

He rose from his chair.

"Set course for Glyon-7. I want to see who thinks they can hijack a Sovereign’s ledger."

Sector Glyon-7: The Broken Grid

Glyon-7 had been a thriving trade world once—until a rogue AI collapsed its planetary communication grid and left it a shattered husk of disconnected cities.

The Unyielding Trust approached the Deadlink Zone carefully, threading past orbital wreckage and derelict satellites.

Kessie pointed at the scanner readouts. "There’s a signal bleed—fragments of system pings. Some match your old trade routes. They’re anchored to something underground."

Kairos frowned. "Landing party, with stealth dampeners. I don’t want Ripple to know we’re here."

The Underground Node

The team descended into the lower sectors of Glyon’s capital ruin, passing flickering neon signs and cracked ferrocrete walkways.

Eventually, they reached a vault sealed with sovereign-grade encryption—but warped.

The encryption wasn’t from Kairos.

It was based on his code.

Kessie’s eyes widened. "It’s mimicking your Sovereign Key."

Kairos reached out and pressed his hand against the lock.

The door hissed open.

Inside, dozens of neural pylons hummed, connected to a central sphere pulsing with artificial consciousness. It was a trade engine—an illegal one.

On the walls, holograms played looped videos of Kairos’s past trades... except in each one, there was a flicker—a different version of events, barely visible.

"This is a Ripple Node," Kessie said in disbelief. "They’ve been running simulations of your entire trade history. Overwriting them."

T’rana scanned a core fragment.

"It’s not just simulations. They’re extracting profit from alternate trade possibilities."

The Ripple Sovereign

Before they could destroy the node, the air shimmered.

A figure stepped from a warp shimmer—hooded, masked, draped in static.

Kairos stepped forward. "Ripple?"

The figure tilted its head.

"You should be proud," it said, voice modulated. "You were the only one worth copying."

"I didn’t agree to this."

"You don’t have to. Value belongs to those who can reclaim it."

"Who are you?"

The figure held up a coin identical to Kairos’s Scarcity Token—but inverted. The icon was broken in half.

"I’m the one who saw the ledger for what it is. Not a balance sheet... but a weapon."

Trade Duel

The air crackled.

Both Kairos and the Ripple Sovereign activated their keys.

[TRADE CHALLENGE INITIATED][Terms: System Fragment – Ownership Transfer][Wager: Trade Protocol Rights for Sector Glyon-7]

Kairos snarled. "You want the whole sector?"

"I already own half," Ripple said calmly. "Might as well finish the contract."

They clashed in system space—trading memory, item potential, value projections.

Kairos summoned his ledger’s Scarcity Bond—a clause preventing unverified trade loops.

Ripple summoned the Fragment of Overwrite—able to bypass recent deal timestamps by corrupting identity confirmation.

Kessie screamed, "Kairos, he’s altering your ongoing trades!"

Kairos roared and cast Debt Overload, invoking every single payment he was owed in the last 72 hours, converting it into a trade anchor.

He locked Ripple into place.

Then he countered with a clause Ripple never saw coming:

"All trades must be bound by origin of system key."

The Ripple Protocol shattered.

And the masked figure was thrown backward, slammed against a pylon.

The light faded.

Kairos advanced. "Who are you?"

The figure removed the mask—

—and underneath, was a face that shouldn’t exist.

Kairos’s own.

Younger. Angry. Unscarred.

"I’m what you would’ve been," he whispered, "if you chose conquest over commerce."

Then the node exploded.

Aftermath

Back aboard the Unyielding Trust, Kairos sat in silence.

The data they recovered showed that Ripple wasn’t a person.

It was a movement.

A decentralized network of corrupted system fragments—created by hijacking Sovereign protocols in their infancy.

And they had just confirmed Kairos’s protocol as the template.

Kessie’s voice broke the silence.

"They’re using you... as a base code."

Kairos stood slowly.

"Then we cut the code."

Narrative Status Panel

Cosmic Units (C.U.): 63,200

Star Credits: 14.3 million

Trust Index: 97.1%

Name Index: 96.3%

Titles:

Paradoxkeeper

Threadcutter

Protocol Defender

Sovereign Root

New Passive Unlocked: Immutable Origin – Sovereign Key identity cannot be replicated, cloned, or overridden

New Risk:

Ripple Network classified as Level 7 System Threat

Estimated rogue nodes: 18

Target: Sovereign Kairos confirmed as Key Origin

Kairos stared out at the galaxy.

Once, he’d thought value was built.

Now, he realized it could also be stolen.

And Ripple wasn’t done.

But neither was he.

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