[Aldeeran Sub-Space, 9BBY]
[Inside Inquisitorius Transport Vessel - Scythe]
"They're... they're completely blocking the primary jump node," Ryn said. His voice was tight, fingers flying across the nav-computer in a blur. "The Devastator's mass shadow is projecting an artificial gravity well right over our escape vector. If we engage the hyperdrive now, we'll smear ourselves across a sub-space anomaly."
"Plot a different route!" I snapped, dropping back into my jump seat. "Alderaan is a Core World. There have to be a dozen other hyperspace lanes out of this sector."
"I am!" Ryn shot back, his eyes glued to the scrolling green data on his screen. "But an off-axis vector requires recalculating gravitational drift for three different planetary bodies. We're at sixty-seven percent certainty right now. If we jump below eighty, we could end up inside a star."
"How long to hit eighty?" Kael asked, keeping his hands steady on the yoke as he brought our sub-light thrusters to a tense idle.
"At least five minutes!"
Five minutes in front of Vader's flagship. We might as well be asking for five years.
The console's red comms light blinked insistently, practically mocking me.
"Unidentified transport. Power down your engines immediately and prepare to be boarded, or you will be fired upon."
Okay, think. Vader was down on the surface dealing with Bail and whatever fake spice-smuggler lead brought him here. The Devastator was just running standard, fascist blockade protocols.
Why would they dare to blockade a core world like Aldeeran? I didn't know. Maybe even Bail didn't, or he would have warned. Did they really think that Kenobi was here? Or did Emperor really attach so much importance to that Force disturbance? I couldn't know but at least I could theorize that these people were being thorough, but they didn't or couldn't know who we were yet.
To them, we should be just a random, ugly freighter blundering into a restricted zone.
"I'll buy us time," I muttered, reaching over Kael's shoulder to tap the comms receiver. I quickly deactivated my helmet's intimidating voice modulator and cleared my throat, forcing my tone to sound a little higher, a lot more nasal, and sufficiently terrified.
"Ah, Imperial Command, sir! This is... um, the independent hauler Dusty Mynock," I lied smoothly. "Sorry about the intrusion! Our long-range sensors have been acting up since Tuesday. We had absolutely no idea there was an Imperial operation going on up here. We'll just, uh, turn right around and head back to the spaceport. No trouble at all."
If they let us dive back into the atmosphere, we could slip into a sub-orbital layer, cruise around the dark side of the planet, and take an obscure exit node on the southern hemisphere.
There was a heavy, static-filled pause on the other end.
"Negative, Dusty Mynock," the crisp, mechanical voice of the Imperial officer replied. He sounded deeply bored and immensely arrogant. "Your transponder code does not match any registered vessel in the Alderaan commercial directory. You are ordered to maintain your current position."
I forced a nervous, groveling chuckle into the microphone. "Like, well, sir, we just bought this bucket third-hand from a Sullustan scrapper down in the lower levels. You know how the Coruscant bureaucracy is with updating registry manifests. The paperwork is probably still clearing."
"Irrelevant. You are in violation of a Level-One Imperial Cordon." The officer's tone didn't shift a single fraction. "Two TIE escorts have been deployed to your coordinates. You will follow them into Hangar Bay Four for a full chain-code verification and cargo inspection."
Through the viewport, two tiny green flashes flickered near the ISD's massive hangar bays, signaling the launch of the twin fighters.
"Right, um... roger that, Command. Powering down main thrusters and awaiting escort." I muted the comms channel with a sharp jab of my finger.
"We are not going into that hangar," Kael stated flatly. He didn't even turn his head. "If they scan my chain-code, it tracks right back to the Royal House of Alderaan. The Senator will be implicated."
"I know, I know. Just keep stalling," I said. "Drop our power output to make it look like we're complying. Ryn, talk to me about those calculations."
"Seventy-one percent," Ryn muttered. Sweat was literally beading on the back of his neck. "Just give me four more minutes, Sir."
We sat there in agonizing silence for about thirty seconds. The massive gray wedge of the Devastator loomed closer and closer in the viewport as our ship drifted forward on minimal thrust. The two TIE fighters were rapidly closing the distance, their iconic screaming twin-ion engines completely silent in the vacuum of space, but terrifyingly visible.
Then, the comms channel went entirely dead.
Not just quiet—the ambient static completely cut out. The lights on the dashboard flickered violently.
A sudden, deep vibration rattled through the floor plating, vibrating straight up my boots and rattling my teeth. It felt like standing too close to a massive, low-frequency speaker. For a brief second, even the Force around me felt staticky and warped.
"Whoa—what was that?" I asked, gripping the back of Kael's seat.
Ryn frantically tapped his secondary monitor. "They just hit us with a magnetic resonance sweep. A deep-penetrating structural scan."
I stared at him. "Wait—they can do that?!"
"Normally they don't!" Ryn shot back, looking extremely confused. "It takes a massive amount of power. They usually only deploy structural resonance scans if they suspect a ship is carrying high-density contraband or... or trying to mask its true hull profile."
Ryn turned his chair around to look at me, his professional demeanor slipping into genuine concern. "Sir... is there a problem with this ship?"
My mouth went completely dry.
Because, yeah, there was a problem. A very, very big problem.
When I disguised this ship back on Tatooine, I'd literally just welded a bunch of random junk freighter panels and mismatched exhaust vents onto the outer hull. It looked like garbage to the naked eye. But underneath all that cosmetic scrap metal?
The skeletal structure was still entirely shaped like a highly classified, top-secret Imperial Inquisitor Scythe.
And an X-ray scan would show exactly what was under the hood.
"Uh... s-so the thing is..." I stammered, awkwardly rubbing the back of my helmet.
Before I could finish the sentence, the muted comms channel absolutely exploded.
The bored, arrogant Imperial officer was entirely gone. Instead, a blaring, digitized klaxon screamed through our cockpit, followed by a voice filled with frantic, borderline-hysterical urgency.
"ALERT. STRUCTURAL PROFILE MATCHES PRIORITY ALPHA STOLEN ASSET. VESSEL DESIGNATION: INQUISITORIUS SCYTHE. ALL BATTERIES TARGET THE ROGUE VESSEL! SCRAMBLE ALERT FIGHTERS! AUTHORIZING LETHAL FORCE!"
"Oh, son of a—" Kael cursed, slamming his hands onto the yoke and yanking the throttle to maximum.
The ship lurched violently as the sub-light engines roared to life, pinning me against the bulkhead. Through the viewport, the belly of the Devastator lit up like a swarm of angry fireflies. It wasn't just the two escort fighters anymore.
Dozens of TIE fighters were pouring out of the main hangar bays, swarming into attack formation like a hornet's nest we had just kicked with a durasteel boot. Worse, the massive, building-sized turbolaser batteries along the edge of the Star Destroyer were slowly pivoting their barrels right toward our tiny cockpit.
"Ryn! Where is my jump vector?!" Kael yelled over the sound of our straining engines.
"Seventy-four percent! We still need three minutes!"
"We don't have three minutes!" I shouted, bracing myself against the console as the first volley of green laser fire streaked past our viewport, missing our starboard wing by absolute inches. "Evasive maneuvers! Just keep us in one piece until that nav-computer pings green!"
[A few minutes earlier...]
[Aboard Imperial I-class Star Destroyer - Devastator]
Captain Jhared Montferrat stood with his hands clasped rigidly behind the small of his back, gazing out through the sweeping transpari-steel viewport of the Devastator.
Below them, the emerald and blue sphere of Alderaan spun in peaceful ignorance. Up here, however, the Imperial war machine was operating at a state of hyper-alert that bordered on pure paranoia.
The entire galaxy felt as though it had been violently shaken by the throat over the past standard week. The Imperial Security Bureau was working triple shifts, turning the underworld upside down and squeezing informants dry. Entire sectors were locked down under localized martial law.
And all of this unprecedented mobilization was allegedly over the Daiyu incident.
Montferrat maintained a perfectly stoic expression, but internally, he harbored nothing but profound disdain for the entire situation. An Inquisitor had gone MIA. Some rumors suggested that she had been killed. The Third Sister, to be precise.
To the Captain of the Imperial Navy's most formidable flagship, the Inquisitorius were nothing more than a band of undisciplined, mentally unstable zealots. They wielded corrupted Jedi weapons and operated with absolute impunity, yet they possessed none of the terrifying, elegant perfection of Lord Vader. They were blunt, bloody instruments that often caused more political messes than they solved.
Inquisitors died. It was an occupational hazard of employing psychopaths.
What Montferrat failed to understand was why Lord Vader had taken such an intense, personal interest in this particular death. The Supreme Commander rarely concerned himself with the internal failures of the Inquisitorius. Yet, here he was, personally leading an investigation on a major Core World under the incredibly thin guise of hunting a mid-rim spice ring.
There were rumors, of course. Hushed whispers spreading through the lower decks and officers' messes. Utterances of a ghost from the Clone Wars.
Kenobi.
Montferrat internally scoffed at the notion. Jedi Master Kenobi was ash. The Emperor himself had declared the Jedi extinct. Chasing phantoms was beneath the dignity of the Devastator.
"Captain Montferrat, sir," a voice called out, breaking his silent reverie.
Montferrat turned slowly to face the crew pits. "Report, Lieutenant."
The young deck officer swallowed, his hands hovering over his sensor array. "Uh, we have an unidentified transport attempting to leave the planetary atmosphere, sir. They are on a direct intercept course with the primary hyperspace node we are currently blockading."
Montferrat narrowed his eyes. Alderaan airspace was supposedly restricted to all outgoing traffic per Lord Vader's explicit orders on the surface. "Have they transmitted a valid clearance code?"
"Negative, sir. Transponder is active but heavily degraded."
"Initiate contact," Montferrat ordered smoothly. "Remind them of the cordon."
The Lieutenant nodded and activated the primary comms channel. "Unidentified transport. You are entering a restricted Imperial cordon. Power down your engines immediately and prepare to be boarded, or you will be fired upon."
A few seconds of static crackled over the bridge speakers before a voice responded.
"Ah, Imperial Command, sir! This is... um, the independent hauler Dusty Mynock. Sorry about the intrusion! Our long-range sensors have been acting up since Tuesday. We had absolutely no idea there was an Imperial operation going on up here. We'll just, uh, turn right around and head back to the spaceport. No trouble at all."
Montferrat's lip curled in sheer disgust. The whining, nasal tone of a lower-level junk trader grated on his nerves.
"Cross-reference the transponder," he commanded quietly.
The Lieutenant typed furiously. "Sir... the transponder code does not match any registered vessel in the Alderaanian commercial directory. It appears to be an amalgamation of outdated Sullustan civilian registries."
"Inform them," Montferrat said coldly. "Deploy two escort fighters. We will pull them into the hangar and verify their chain-codes manually. I will not have Lord Vader's blockade breached by incompetent smugglers."
The Lieutenant relayed the orders, and the transport offered another stuttering, groveling confirmation before cutting the feed.
Montferrat looked back out the viewport, watching the tiny, horrifically ugly freighter slow its approach. It looked like a flying pile of scrap metal. Mismatched hull plates, asymmetrical exhaust vents, and a silhouette that defied all logic of modern starship engineering.
Yet, something bothered him.
He had served in the Imperial Navy for decades. He knew starship propulsion. The engines on that junk-freighter were idling, but the ion flares pulsing from the rear thrusters burned with a highly concentrated blue hue. That required military-grade combustion chambers, something a decrepit hauler should not possess.
"Lieutenant," Montferrat said, his voice dropping into a dangerous octave. "The visual profile of that vessel does not match its projected mass displacement."
The Lieutenant looked up, confused. "Sir... you believe they are carrying shielded contraband?"
"I believe they are lying," Montferrat corrected. "Run a deep-penetrating magnetic resonance scan on that vessel. Strip away the visual hull profile. I want to see its skeletal structure."
"Yes, sir. Initiating resonance sweep."
The bridge lights dimmed by a fraction of a percent as the Star Destroyer redirected massive amounts of energy to the sensor arrays. A silent, invisible wave of magnetic resonance washed over the tiny transport holding position outside.
The data scrolled across the Lieutenant's monitor.
Montferrat watched the young officer's face drain of all color in a single heartbeat.
"S-sir—" The Lieutenant stammered, his voice cracking entirely. "The structural profile... it isn't a freighter."
"Speak clearly, Lieutenant."
"It's a perfect match for a priority Alpha stolen asset!" the officer practically shouted, his hands shaking as he pulled the holographic schematic up on the main bridge projector. "Vessel designation... Inquisitorius Scythe!"
The ugly, mismatched junk panels dissolved on the hologram, revealing the sleek, unmistakable folding wings and aggressive cockpit of the very ship that had gone missing from Tatooine days ago. The very ship tied to the Daiyu disaster.
The phantom was right in front of them.
Montferrat's blood ran ice cold.
"Sound the general alarm!" Montferrat roared, shattering his stoic composure completely. "All batteries, target that rogue vessel! Scramble the alert fighters! Authorizing lethal force—do not let them jump!"
--
[Present - Scythe]
[Ezra's POV]
The last twenty seconds had been an absolute masterclass in why I never wanted to join the Imperial Navy.
I wrenched the secondary turbolaser controls hard to port, tracking a TIE as it tried to swing around our starboard flank. The targeting reticle flickered red for half a second—just enough time for my brain to run the trajectory math, add a little Force-assisted gut instinct, and squeeze the firing stud.
The turbolaser spat twin bursts of green energy. The TIE didn't even finish its banking maneuver before the bolts intersected with its hexagonal solar panel and turned the whole thing into a rapidly expanding cloud of scrap and ignited fuel.
"Scratch three," I muttered, already swiveling to track the next target. "Kael, bank left—left! You've got two more coming in on our six!"
"Trying!" Kael grunted, yanking the yoke so hard I felt the inertial compensators lag behind. The ship groaned like an old man getting out of a bathtub, and the viewport filled with the stomach-churning sight of Alderaan's atmosphere tilting ninety degrees as we barrel-rolled. A burst of green laser fire from the pursuing TIEs sliced through the space we'd just occupied, close enough that I could see individual ion trails through the transparisteel.
Zzzzt-zzzzt!
The sound of near-misses vibrated through the hull, making my teeth ache.
"Shields down to forty-two percent!" Ryn shouted from the nav station. His fingers danced across the console fast enough to leave afterimages. "That last salvo nearly punched through the aft deflector array!"
"Nearly doesn't count," I snapped back, though my hands were slick with sweat inside my gloves. "Keep working on those coordinates. How long?"
"Four minutes to acceptable margin!"
"We don't have four minutes!"
Another TIE shrieked past the viewport, its twin ion engines wailing like an angry krayt dragon. I didn't bother with the targeting computer this time—I just followed the scream, led the shot by a hair, and fired. Green bolts lanced out and caught the Imperial fighter right in the cockpit junction. It blew apart in a satisfying spray of sparks and twisted titanium.
Kael let out a low whistle. "How in the hell are you doing that?"
"Less talking, more evading!" I barked, though privately I was wondering the same thing. My brain was running on some weird combination of Psychometry echoes, raw panic, and whatever Force-enhanced spatial awareness I could scrape together. The sensor array painted ghostly vector lines across my vision, and somehow—don't ask me how—I was just... knowing where the TIEs would be before they got there.
It was like playing the world's deadliest game of three-dimensional chess while riding a roller coaster through a fireworks factory.
A turbolaser bolt from the Devastator itself lanced past us, so close that the entire cockpit lit up with actinic white light. The ship bucked violently, and I smashed my shoulder against the turret housing hard enough to leave a dent in my armor.
"Direct impact on dorsal shields!" Ryn called out. "Down to twenty-eight percent! If they land another one of those—"
"They won't," I growled, more hopeful than certain. "Kael, keep us away from that tractor beam range. I don't care what maneuver you have to pull, do not let them get a lock."
"Working on it, Sir."
The ship dove suddenly, and my stomach tried to climb out through my throat. Through the viewport, I saw the Devastator's massive ventral hangar bays scrolling past above us, disgorging more TIE fighters like a kicked anthill. There had to be two dozen of the damn things now, swirling and diving in attack patterns that looked chaotic but were probably designed to herd us straight into the Star Destroyer's kill box.
Vreeeeeeee!
A whole squadron peeled off from the main swarm, coming at us from below. I tracked them on the sensors, watched their formation tighten, and preemptively filled the space they were about to occupy with a wall of green turbolaser fire. Two of them flew right into it and vanished in twin flashes of light. The third broke formation, scrambling wildly to avoid the same fate.
"Holy—" Kael actually turned his head for a split second. "Did you just—?"
"Eyes forward!" I yelled. "Tractor beam, port side! They're trying to snag us!"
Kael threw the ship into a corkscrew dive that made every unsecured object in the cockpit rattle like dice in a gambler's cup. The blue-white cone of the tractor beam swept through the space we'd just vacated, grasping at nothing.
My hands were cramping around the turbolaser controls. My vision was starting to blur at the edges from sheer adrenaline overload. But we were still alive. Somehow, impossibly, we were still alive.
Zzzt-zzzzt-zzzzt!
A spread of laser fire from a passing TIE caught our port wing. The entire ship shuddered, and warning klaxons started blaring from every console.
"Hull breach on the port stabilizer!" Ryn's voice cracked. "Shields are critical—eighteen percent and falling!"
"We're taking hull damage now?" I felt my mouth go dry. "How much longer on those calculations?"
"Two minutes! Maybe less if you stop asking!"
"Don't get snippy with me, just—watch out!"
I spun the turret and unloaded a sustained burst at a TIE that had gotten way too comfortable on our tail. The first shot grazed its wing, sending it into a wild spin. The second and third shots turned it into a fireball that briefly illuminated the cockpit like a miniature sun.
The Scythe was groaning around us now, every bolt impact making the durasteel frame sing a song of imminent death. My armor felt like a tin can, and I was pretty sure I'd bruised ribs on both sides from getting thrown around. The inertial compensators were doing their best, but when you're dancing around a Star Destroyer's broadside, "best" isn't exactly comforting.
Thud-thud-thud!
More lasers stitched across our dorsal hull. The lights flickered. Somewhere in the aft section, something exploded with a muffled whump, and the smell of ozone and burning insulation started creeping into the cockpit.
"Shields are gone!" Ryn practically screamed. "We're running on hull integrity alone!"
"Just hold on!" I shouted back, firing wildly at another TIE that swooped too close. The bolts caught its engine pod and sent it cartwheeling into the path of another fighter. Both went up in a spectacular chain reaction. "We're gonna make it, just hold on!"
"Eighty-one percent certainty!" Ryn whooped. "Coordinates locked! I have a clean jump vector!"
Relief flooded through me so fast I almost felt dizzy. "Then punch it! Get us out of here!"
"Engaging hyperdrive in three..."
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. My fingers relaxed on the firing studs. Through the viewport, the swirling mass of TIE fighters seemed to slow down, their laser fire trailing behind us as Kael poured every last drop of power into the sublight engines.
"Two..."
The stars ahead began to elongate, stretching into the familiar lines of pre-hyperspace acceleration. The Scythe's frame hummed with building energy, and for one perfect second, I let myself believe we'd actually made it.
"One—"
I suddenly felt an omnious sensation wash over my mind. Like a cold breeze in the dead of night for but a moment.
My head snapped toward the rear viewport without conscious thought, and I saw it—a single, massive turbolaser bolt, bigger than the others, burning white-hot as it lanced out from the Devastator's dorsal batteries.
It was already on us. There was no time to dodge.
"Oh fu—"
---
A/N: Throw in the powerstone boys!
By the way guys, if you remember, I had been posting the book on Royal Road site too. I had paused it over there for 2-3 months so it didn't took off and now I have restarted posting chapters there. If you could, please go there, read a few chapters, and leave a review on the book. I would be very thankful for your efforts!
Link is: www.royalroad.com/fiction/138867/star-wars-rebel-a-gray-tale
(or you can simply search up the book on google or royalroad)
Blog: I fell asleep in afternoon, woke up at 10 pm, missed time for mess's dinner and all eateries around me are closed T_T
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