The bridge of the Arquitens-class command cruiser Stalker-Four smelled of ozone, heated polymers, and the sterile, recycled anxiety of fifty junior officers terrified of making a mistake.
Commander Aris Thul stood at the central holoprojector, his posture a rigid line of durasteel against the swirling chaotic backdrop of the Cerulean Maw visible through the forward viewports. Thul was a man of vectors, of calculated risks, of supply lines and fuel consumption ratios. He was Imperial Navy to his marrow, a veteran of the Clone Wars who had traded the chaotic heroism of the Republic for the cold, reassuring order of the New Order.
He hated nebula hunting.
"Atmospheric ionization at forty percent and climbing, Commander," Lieutenant Varken reported from the sensor pit, his voice tight. "The static is chewing through our long-range scopes. We’re effectively blind beyond twenty thousand kilometers."
"Maintain a tight dispersion pattern with Stalker-Two and Three," Thul ordered, his voice a calm monotone designed to suppress panic. "Rely on passive acoustic sondage. If they are out there, they have to breathe. They have to run reactors. We listen for the hum."
The Cerulean Maw was a stellar nursery turned graveyard, a churning expanse of indigo gas and crushed planetoids. It was the kind of place where desperate things hid. Admiral Bale, aboard the looming Star Destroyer Relentless holding position just outside the nebula’s densest cloud, had ordered this sweep based on intelligence provided by the Inquisitorius.
The intelligence was thin. A rumor of a "Red-Haired Jedi" and a ship that matched the description of an S-161 "Stinger" Yacht, previously associated with terrorist activities on Bracca and Kashyyyk.
Thul checked the chronometer. They had been sweeping for twelve standard hours. It was an inefficient use of resources. A task force of this size consumed enormous amounts of fuel simply maintaining position against the nebula’s gravitational eddies. In Thul’s estimation, the resources would be better spent locking down hyperlane chokepoints.
But Thul was not in charge of this mission.
A shadow detached itself from the bulkhead near the communications station. It was tall, draped in heavy black fabric that seemed to absorb the ambient light of the bridge. The figure moved with a predatory fluidity that was entirely unnatural, the faint, sickening hum of a dormant lightsaber emitter serving as its only soundtrack.
The Eighth Brother. An Inquisitor.
Thul did not turn to face him. He kept his eyes fixed on the swirling red wireframe map of the nebula on the projector. "The interference is thickening, Lord Inquisitor. Our current sweep protocols are yielding negative results. I recommend widening the net, moving to the outer rim of the cloud and letting them come to us."
The Inquisitor stopped directly behind Thul. The air temperature on the bridge seemed to drop ten degrees. A pressure built behind Thul’s eyes, a low-level psychic static that tasted of copper.
"Your protocols are designed to catch smugglers, Commander," the Eighth Brother said, his voice a synthesized growl that bypassed the ears and resonated directly in the skull. "Smugglers are motivated by greed. They make rational choices. We are hunting a disease. A Jedi does not think; they feel. They are guided by an arrogant belief in their own destiny. He is here. I can smell his fear on the currents."
Thul tightened his jaw. This was the friction at the heart of the modern Empire. The collision between the cold, hard math of military logistics and the esoteric, terrifying fanaticism of the Emperor’s shadow agents. To Thul, the Force was an unpredictable variable, an accounting error that refused to be corrected.
"As you say, my Lord," Thul conceded stiffly. "Lieutenant Varken, intensify the gain on the passive sensors. Burn through the static if you have to."
"Sir," Varken hesitated. "Burning through will flare our own signature. Anyone hiding out there will know exactly where we are."
"That," the Eighth Brother hissed, leaning over Thul’s shoulder to stare at the red haze of the map, "is the point. Flush the prey. Make him run. When he runs, he lights his engines. When he lights his engines, he dies."
Another hour passed in grinding tension. The Stalker-Four pushed deeper into the Maw, its shields sparking as they deflected pockets of micro-meteoroids.
"Contact," Varken suddenly called out, pressing a hand to his headset. "Acoustic shadow. Bearing 1-9-4, mark 30. It’s large. Too large for a yacht."
Thul zoomed the holoprojector in on the coordinates. The wireframe resolved into a massive, skeletal shape hanging in the void.
"Identify," Thul barked.
"It’s... biological, Commander. Ancient. Looks like the calcified remains of a Purrgil Ultra. It’s enormous. Several kilometers long."
The giant space-whales were legends to most, nuisances to navigators. To find one dead here, frozen for millennia, was rare.
"Perfect cover," Thul muttered, his tactical mind engaging. "The bone density would mask energy signatures. A small base could be hollowed out inside the ribcage."
"There’s something else, sir," Varken said, his fingers flying across his console. "I’m picking up a thermal anomaly near the entity. A spike. Very brief."
Thul looked at the secondary display. A bright white streak was cutting across the indigo field—a long-period comet passing through the system. Near its tail, for just a fraction of a second, a pocket of heat had bloomed and then vanished, absorbed by the comet’s own icy wake.
"Analyze that spike," Thul ordered. "That wasn't natural outgassing. That looked like a reactor coolant flush."
A flush meant a station dumping heat to run cold. Someone was home.
"Belay that order," the Eighth Brother’s voice sliced through the air.
Thul turned, risking a direct confrontation. "My Lord, that thermal signature is characteristic of a hidden installation going dark. It could be a rebel cell, a supply depot for the Hidden Path—"
"It is not the Jedi," the Inquisitor snarled, raising a black-gloved hand. Thul felt an invisible vice tighten around his throat, cutting off his air. The bridge crew froze, averting their eyes. "I do not care about smugglers or refugees, Commander. They are rats in the walls. We are here for the wolf."
The pressure released as quickly as it had appeared. Thul gasped, steadying himself against the holotable console, fighting the urge to rub his bruised neck.
"The Jedi is close," the Eighth Brother said, turning toward the viewport, his helmet tilting as if listening to a sound only he could hear. "He is... bright. He is about to do something foolish."
As if summoned by the Inquisitor’s words, the sensor board lit up like a festive Life Day tree.
"Hard contact!" Varken yelled, his voice cracking. "High-energy reactor ignition! Bearing 0-4-5, mark 10. Coming out of the nebula's core at maximum thrust!"
Thul looked at the holoprojector. A small, nimble signature had appeared out of nowhere, far from the Purrgil skeleton, screaming toward open space. The computer tagged it instantly: Modified S-161 Stinger Yacht.
The Mantis.
"He’s baiting us," Thul realized instantly. The trajectory was all wrong. The ship wasn't trying to hide; it was burning so hot it was practically broadcasting its position to the entire sector. It was a flare fired into a dark room. "Why expose himself now?"
"He feels the net tightening," the Eighth Brother said, a terrifying note of satisfaction in his synthesized voice. "He is panicked. Destroy him."
"All power to forward batteries," Thul ordered, shoving down his tactical misgivings. The machine of the Empire had to turn. "Signal the Relentless. Vector them in to cut off the escape route. Stalker-Two and Three, move to flank."
The chase was on.
The engagement that followed was a humiliating lesson in the difference between naval superiority and pilot skill.
The Stinger Mantis was a gnat compared to the Imperial cruisers hunting it. It possessed perhaps two percent of the Stalker-Four’s firepower and negligible shielding. Yet, the pilot—whoever they were—flew the vessel not like a ship, but like a living extension of their own desperate will.
On Thul’s holographic display, the chase was a dance of red vectors. The Imperial cruisers were hammers—powerful, heavy, slow to turn. The Mantis was a scalpel.
"Target is jinking, Commander!" the weapons officer reported, frustration bleeding into his voice. "He’s using the nebula’s gravity wells to slingshot around the debris fields. Our targeting computers can’t lock a solid solution."
Thul watched amazed as the small yacht performed a maneuver that should have sheared its stabilizers off. It dove straight into a dense pocket of ionized gas, causing the pursuing Stalker-Two’s sensors to whiteout. When the cruiser emerged on the other side, the Mantis was gone, only to reappear below them, raking the cruiser’s unprotected ventral hull with laser fire before peeling away.
It wasn't a killing blow—the Mantis didn't have the guns for that—but it was an insult.
"He’s fast," Thul muttered. He recognized the style. It was Latero bush-piloting, characterized by erratic throttle control and impossible intimacy with the ship’s center of gravity. "Varken, stop trying to track the ship. Track the exhaust. Feed the trajectory data to the Relentless."
The massive Star Destroyer had finally lumbered into range, its shadow falling over the nebula like a steel moon.
"Admiral Bale has a firing solution," comms reported.
"Turbolaser barrage detected from the Relentless," Varken said.
Space ahead of the Mantis lit up green as turbolaser bolts the size of shuttlecraft tore through the void. The energy discharge vaporized asteroids and burned away the nebular gas in massive, swirling clouds.
It was too much power, too slowly applied.
The Mantis pilot didn't try to outrun the barrage. Instead, the yacht flipped end-over-end, killing its forward momentum instantly. The turbolaser fire slammed into a planetoid directly in front of where the Mantis had been a second before, shattering it into a million molten fragments.
Using the explosion as cover, the Mantis spun on its axis and accelerated wildly on a new vector—straight up, perpendicular to the galactic plane, heading for the thinning edge of the nebula.
"They’re running for a hyperspace jump point," Thul said. "Divert all auxiliary power to engines. Do not let them clear the interference zone."
The Stalker-Four groaned under the strain as its massive sublight engines pushed it past its recommended safety limits. They were closing the gap. The Mantis was fast, but the cruiser had raw, brute thrust.
"We’re within effective turbolaser range," the weapons officer shouted.
"Fire at will," Thul ordered. "Spread pattern. Cripple them."
Red lances of energy erupted from the Stalker-Four’s forward batteries. They bracketed the tiny yacht. One bolt clipped the Mantis’s port S-foil, shearing off a stabilizer wing in a shower of sparks.
"Hit registered! Their velocity is dropping."
On the bridge, the Eighth Brother stepped forward to the viewport, his fists clenched, the Force rolling off him in waves of palpable malice. "Finish it. Tear the ship open. I want the Jedi broken."
"Closing for the kill," Thul said, watching the distance counter spool down. 50 kilometers. 40.
The Mantis, now trailing smoke and venting plasma, began a shallow roll. It looked like a death spiral.
Then, the impossible happened.
The space ahead of the Mantis didn't just starburst into the familiar blue streaks of hyperspace. It seemed to fold. A shimmering, geometric lattice of light appeared—something ancient, something that defied modern nav-computer physics.
"Sir, huge energy spike from the target!" Varken yelled, his voice bordering on hysteria. "It’s not a standard hyperdrive signature. It’s... I don't know what it is. It’s reading as... coherent gravitational manipulation."
"Jam them!" Thul roared.
"We can't jam what we can't understand!"
The Stinger Mantis accelerated. Not into hyperspace, but through the shimmering lattice. One second it was there, a crippled bird waiting for the final blow. The next, it dissolved into a streak of impossible light that didn't travel away from them, but seemed to vanish into the fabric of space itself.
The sensor board went dead.
Silence fell over the bridge of the Stalker-Four. The only sound was the heavy, synthesized breathing of the Inquisitor.
The aftermath was worse than the battle.
Admiral Bale was furious, his holographic projection on the bridge flickering with the intensity of his reprimand. But his anger was nothing compared to the cold, quiet rage of the Eighth Brother.
The Inquisitor stood at the viewport, staring out at the empty space where the Jedi had vanished. He had not moved in an hour.
Thul approached cautiously, holding a data-pad containing the post-action report. "My Lord. The fleet is returning to patrol formation. Admiral Bale requests a priority intelligence briefing on the nature of the anomaly the target used to escape."
The Eighth Brother turned slowly. Thul braced himself for the psychic choke, but it didn't come. Instead, the Inquisitor’s helmeted head tilted, as if reconsidering Thul’s value.
"He is desperate," the Eighth Brother said, his voice softer now, almost meditative. "He is using tools he does not understand. Ancient things. Dangerous things."
"The escape vector was unprecedented," Thul said, keeping his voice professional. "Our nav-computers have no record of such technology."
"It matters not," the Inquisitor dismissed, waving a hand. "He runs because he is afraid. Fear is a scent. I will track it." He stalked past Thul toward the turbolift. "Prepare my shuttle. I must confer with the Grand Inquisitor."
Thul watched him go. The Inquisitor was already moving on, obsessed with the singular target, the grand ideological hunt. He saw the galaxy only in terms of Light and Dark side users.
He missed the details. He missed the infrastructure.
Thul walked back to the central holotable. He called up the sensor logs from the beginning of the engagement—before the Mantis had appeared. He isolated the coordinates of the giant Purrgil skeleton.
"Varken," Thul said quietly. "That thermal spike you saw near the comet earlier. The one the Inquisitor ordered us to ignore."
"Yes, Commander?"
"Plot a course. Let’s take a look."
The Stalker-Four arrived at the coordinates an hour later. The comet, Kallidore’s Ghost, was already distant, a fading smudge of white against the indigo black.
Thul stood at the viewport, looking at the massive, frozen bones of the Purrgil Ultra. It was a magnificent, eerie sight, a cathedral of dead calcium hanging in the void.
"Sensors are clear, Commander," Varken reported, his voice subdued. "No thermal signatures. No reactor hum. The structure is cold. Empty."
Thul nodded slowly. He knew what they would find even before they arrived. The Mantis hadn't just been fleeing; it had been distracting them. The loud, fiery escape was a magician’s flourish designed to draw the eye away from the real trick. While the entire Imperial task force chased the Jedi, someone else—something vital to the rebellion’s logistics—had slipped away in the comet’s shadow.
He looked at the empty space between the giant ribs. He could almost feel the ghosts of the people who had been hiding there hours ago.
"Commander," Varken asked, "should I log the anomaly? The Purrgil corpse as a potential hideout?"
Thul stared at the empty space. He thought about the Inquisitor's arrogance. He thought about the impossible efficiency of the Imperial machine, and how its very rigidity created the cracks through which its enemies slipped. The Empire squeezed so tight that it crushed the very order it sought to maintain, blinding itself with its own power.
If he reported this, the Inquisitor would return. He would tear this sector apart in a rage, disrupting real Navy operations in pursuit of ghosts. It would be a waste of fuel, time, and personnel.
Thul was a man of logistics. He hated waste.
"No, Lieutenant," Thul said, turning away from the viewport. "Log it as space debris. Non-threatening. We have wasted enough time here. Set a course for the Hydian Way patrol route. Let’s get back to doing real work."
As the Stalker-Four turned its massive bulk away from the empty station and accelerated toward the stars, Thul felt a strange, heavy burden settle in his gut. It was the knowledge that he was right. The Jedi were flashy, dangerous distractions. But out here in the dark, it was the quiet ones, the ones who knew when to dump their heat and drift in the shadows, who were slowly, surely, bleeding the Empire dry.
And today, he had let them go.
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