The Korriban system greeted Alex with dead silence and the reddish light of an ancient star.
The planet rotated slowly before him – once a mighty Sith world, now a graveyard of civilization. Its red-brown surface was cut by deep canyons and dotted with the ruins of ancient temples. Even from orbit, it was clear that life had long since died out here, leaving behind only stone and dust.
But Alex had not chosen this place by chance. Korriban was dead, and if his plan succeeded, no innocent would suffer. He had once read about this planet in the archives and heard of it from Kreia. What was surprising was that he didn't know the coordinates. But the Force knew and had led him here. This meant that Tersik was not entirely protected either.
He closed his eyes and allowed his consciousness to sink into the meditative state Kreia had taught him. Immediately, a wave of sensations washed over him – not visual images, but something more fundamental. Probability threads, stretching into the future, showed him approaching danger.
A ship. Powerful, fast, carrying death on board. Time until its arrival... Alex focused deeper, trying to refine the premonition. Twenty-two hours, plus or minus three. Enough time to prepare. Running was pointless; the probability threads showed him being caught in a few weeks.
He opened his eyes and looked at the control panel. The indicators blinked green – all systems normal. But Alex knew the ship was doomed. Something about it "glowed" to the Inquisitors, creating a trail in the Force that they could track across light-years.
Perhaps it was the crystals in the hyperdrive. Or the very fact that the ship had lit up in the Coruscant system. It didn't matter. What mattered was that the ship had to be gotten rid of. He felt a little regret about parting with this machine, but everything has its time.
Alex studied the planet's topographical map, choosing a landing site. He needed a basin – a natural shelter that would protect him from the direct radiation of an explosion. An ancient crater fifty kilometers from a ruined city was ideal. An open enough place for the Inquisitors to find him easily, but also isolated enough so that the explosion wouldn't damage anything important.
Not that there was anything important left on Korriban. Except for him.
The landing was uneventful. Alex shut down the engines and sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to his senses. The planet was dead, but not lifeless – ancient temples still emitted faint echoes of probabilities, creating background noise in the Force. Perfect camouflage.
He rose from the pilot's seat and headed to the engine room. What he was about to do required precision and caution. One wrong step, and the ship would explode right now, along with him.
The hyperdrive hummed with a steady rhythm, its crystalline components pulsing with a faint blue light. Alex opened the protective panel and examined the internal structure. Quantum processors, energy nodes, stabilizing fields – all of this was familiar to him. But now he saw not only the technical side but also how all these components interacted with the Force. Valorin's engineers had found a way to remove the Rakata safety protocols. Alex carefully studied how it was done. This was exactly what he did first. Then he began working on the hyperdrive systems.
Each crystal was a tiny window into hyperspace, each processor an instrument for manipulating probabilities. The hyperdrive didn't just create wormholes – it altered the very fabric of spacetime, forcing reality to "choose" the desired options from an infinite number of possibilities.
And if this balance were disrupted...
Alex carefully began to reconfigure the stabilizing fields. Not to disable them completely – that would lead to an immediate explosion – but to create instability. The engine had to oscillate between safe and critical states, creating chaos in the foresight of anyone who tried to scan it.
The work took several hours. Alex checked each connection, each setting three times. The slightest mistake, and the plan would fail. Too stable – no explosion. Too unstable – the explosion would occur prematurely.
Finally, he finished. The hyperdrive now pulsed unevenly, its energy fields fluctuating in a chaotic rhythm. Through the Force, this should appear as a constantly changing pattern of threats – sometimes mortal danger, sometimes complete safety.
Alex returned to the bridge and activated the long-range communication. The signal went through several relays, masking the true transmission direction. Tersik was far away, but his people should receive the message.
"Seven-two-five to base. Situation critical. Requesting emergency evacuation. Transmitting coordinates and hyperspace corridor calculation."
Target coordinates: Halo vector [-42819.81, 8742.33, -127.55], Estren Sector, access code ES-185-004-005-KOR. Rendezvous point on the surface: Planet, class III, coordinates 735.441.128.905. Landmark: ancient necropolis area. Hyperspace corridor calculation: Entry vector HVEC-ESSTRAN-018-005-000. Estimated arrival time: plus thirty-two hours from current mark. If I'm not there, leave.
He switched off the transmitter and leaned back in his chair. Now all that remained was to wait. And prepare for the most difficult part of the plan.
Alex closed his eyes and plunged back into meditation. This time, he wasn't looking for general probabilities, but for something more specific—the images of those who were pursuing him. Kreia had taught him that strong Force users leave imprints in the quantum network, and these imprints can be read if one knows how.
At first, there was only darkness, then... there. Two presences moving through hyperspace at incredible speed. Alex couldn't see their faces, but he felt their intentions towards him—cold determination, professional detachment, absolute confidence in their own superiority. If their fates were not meant to intersect, he wouldn't be feeling them.
Inquisitors. Hunters specially trained to find and destroy the gifted.
One of them was older, more experienced. His presence in the Force felt honed, like the edge of a blade—no extraneous emotions, no doubts. Just a tool created for killing. In many probability lines, he was the main threat.
The second was younger, but no less dangerous. His mental imprint showed ambition, a desire to prove himself, a thirst for success. Such individuals were particularly unpredictable—they might take risks that a more experienced colleague would deem unjustified.
Alex broke the connection and opened his eyes. They were supposed to feel him. That was also part of his plan. He had broadcast a whole network of intentions, he had plans to surrender, to meet them on the ship with a blaster, to flee… Eighteen hours until their arrival. He needed to use this time with maximum efficiency.
He left the ship and took a speeder from the cargo bay. A small, single-seater craft capable of reaching decent speed over the planet's surface. If everything went according to plan, the speeder would be his salvation.
Alex checked his personal kinetic shield—a compact device built into his suit. The shield could withstand significant overloads and protect from debris, but its energy was enough for only a few minutes of operation. He would have to time everything to the second.
Then he set up a remote transmitter, tuned to the ship's control frequency. One press of a button—and the unstable hyperdrive would finally fail. The explosion would be... catastrophic.
All that remained was to wait.
Alex spent the remaining hours in meditation, tracking the Inquisitors' approach and refining the details of the plan. He felt their presence growing brighter, clearer. They weren't hiding themselves—why would they? They were hunters, and he was merely prey.
Or so it seemed to them.
An hour before their arrival, Alex took up a position on the edge of the crater, ready for a quick retreat. The speeder hovered nearby, its engine idling. The transmitter lay in his hand, ready for use.
Forty minutes later, a dot appeared in the sky—the Inquisitors' ship, entering the atmosphere. It moved cautiously, scanning the planet's surface. Alex felt their attention focusing on his ship, their attempts to understand the nature of the signals emanating from it.
And then, what he had counted on began.
The unstable hyperdrive created chaos in their foresight. Alex watched through the Force as the Inquisitors tried to scan the ship and received contradictory results. Sometimes mortal danger, sometimes complete safety. Sometimes imminent death, sometimes absolute stability.
Their ship hovered over the crater, hesitant to approach. Alex felt their confusion, their attempts to understand what was happening. They exchanged messages on a secure channel, discussing options.
Inquisitor Castus felt the tension mounting with every second. Their ship had been hovering over the ancient crater of Korriban for half an hour, and the mystery only deepened.
"What kind of technology is this?" he couldn't help but ask, addressing his mentor via internal comms.
Senior Inquisitor Trema remained silent, her presence in the Force focused and intense. Castus felt the experienced huntress repeatedly trying to scan the ship below, each time receiving contradictory results.
"Unknown," Trema finally replied, and a rare note of uncertainty sounded in her mental voice. "Perhaps a defensive system. Or a trap."
Castus focused on his own scan. The ship below was definitely what they were looking for—traces of their target were everywhere, imprints of the presence of someone who dared to brazenly appear in the Core Worlds. First on Corellia, then on Coruscant. But something was wrong. Very wrong.
"The target is definitely there. I feel traces of his presence."
"I do too. But these fluctuations..."
Trema didn't finish the sentence, but Castus understood her concern. Foresight flickered between extremes, unable to lock onto anything definite.
"Perhaps it's related to Sith artifacts," Castus suggested, looking around at the dead ruins surrounding the crater. "This planet is saturated with the Dark Side. Maybe our target is using local relics for concealment."
"Or for defense," Trema added grimly. "I've heard legends of ancient Sith techniques capable of distorting the perception of reality. Creating false probabilities, deceiving foresight."
Castus felt a chill run down his spine. If their target had truly mastered such knowledge...
"What are we going to do?" he asked.
Trema was silent for a long time, her mind working, weighing options. Castus felt his mentor's internal struggle—the caution of an experienced huntress against the necessity of completing the mission.
"Scan the perimeter," she finally decided. "Look for alternative approaches. If this is truly a trap, perhaps we'll find a way around it."
For the next twenty minutes, they tried to survey the crater. But the result was the same—chaotic fluctuations of probabilities, yielding no clear picture. Moreover, with each minute of waiting, Castus felt his confusion growing.
"We're losing time," he couldn't help but say. "The target could slip away while we're dithering here."
"Patience," Trema replied coldly. "Haste has killed more Inquisitors than all traps combined."
But Castus could see that she too was starting to get nervous. Her movements became sharper, her scans more aggressive. She was trying to break through the veil of uncertainty with brute force, which was unlike her.
"Perhaps we should call for reinforcements?" he suggested. "A cruiser with orbital cannons could..."
"No," Trema cut him off sharply. "This is our mission. Our target. We won't ask for help because of some technical tricks."
Pride sounded in her voice, which made Castus wary. Trema was one of the Empire's best Inquisitors, but even the best had weaknesses. And her main weakness was her unwillingness to admit defeat.
"Master," he began cautiously, "perhaps we should retreat and reconsider..."
"Enough!" Trema exploded, and Castus felt a wave of her irritation through the Force. "We've been hunting this target for months. He's here, in this ship, and whatever tricks he uses, we'll deal with them. We are Inquisitors."
Castus wanted to object, but saw the futility of his attempts. The decision was made, and arguing with an enraged mentor was not only useless but also dangerous.
"We're landing," Trema ordered. "Standard capture tactics. You go left, I go right. At the slightest sign of danger—retreat."
"Understood," Castus nodded, checking the lightsaber on his belt.
Their ship began its descent, cautiously approaching the crater's surface. Castus still felt the chaotic fluctuations from the target, but now they seemed less important. The decision was made, the plan formulated. All that remained was to carry out the mission.
"Remember," Trema added as their ship touched down, "the target is extremely dangerous. He may have studied forbidden techniques, he may possess abilities we don't know about. Do not underestimate him."
"I won't," Castus assured her, activating his combat suit systems.
The hatch of their ship opened. The dry air of Korriban rushed into the cabins, bringing with it the smell of dust and ancient death. Castus took a deep breath, preparing for battle.
They emerged onto the surface and moved slowly towards the target, keeping their distance from each other. The ship before them looked ordinary—a medium cargo frigate. But the fluctuations in the Force grew stronger with each step.
"Fifty meters," Castus reported over the comm.
"I see it," Trema replied. "Prepare for..."
She didn't finish the sentence.
The Inquisitors' ships touched the crater's surface a hundred meters from his vessel. Alex was already speeding away when he saw on the speeder's display how the hatches opened, how two figures in dark robes emerged onto the surface. He knew the hyperdrive was messing with their sensors.
The Inquisitors cautiously approached his ship, their lightsabers ready for instant activation. They moved professionally, covering each other, constantly scanning the surrounding space through the Force.
Alex gained altitude, breaking out of the crater at maximum speeder speed as the Inquisitors drew closer and closer to the ship. Fifty meters. Forty. Thirty.
He activated the kinetic shield and placed his finger on the transmitter button. Just a little longer...
Twenty meters. The Inquisitors stopped, exchanging quick gestures. The elder pointed at the ship, the younger nodded. They were preparing for the final push.
Alex pressed the button.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the ship's hyperdrive emitted a high, piercing sound—the cry of dying crystals, tearing energy fields, collapsing quantum structures.
The Inquisitors understood what was happening a second before the explosion. On the speeder's display, Alex saw them scatter, saw them try to create defensive barriers from the Force.
Too late.
The hyperdrive explosion was not just a physical phenomenon. As the quantum fields collapsed, they created a localized tear in the fabric of space-time. The energy released at that moment was comparable to matter-antimatter annihilation—as if the hyperdrive motivator had crashed into the planet at the speed of light.
Behind Alex, a blinding wall of light flashed. Even through the display filters, the light was unbearably bright. The crater instantly turned into a sea of plasma, the temperature at the epicenter reaching millions of degrees. Rock evaporated, turning into incandescent gas.
The shockwave reached him twenty seconds later.
First came the sound—not a roar, but something more fundamental, the sound of reality itself tearing apart. Then the ground beneath the speeder rippled, the air became dense as water.
Alex felt as if an invisible hand grabbed his machine and hurled it forward. The speeder spun in the air, its stabilization systems unable to cope with the overloads. The kinetic shield flared, absorbing the impact energy, protecting the pilot from fatal G-forces.
The world around turned into chaos. Debris flew past, lifted by a hurricane wind. The air temperature rose by tens of degrees in seconds. The speeder was falling, its engine sputtering in the thin atmosphere.
Alex fought the controls, trying to stabilize the flight. The altimeter showed critically low altitude, the warning system blared. A little more—and he would crash into the planet's surface.
Finally, he managed to level the machine. The speeder flew at treetop level, its hull smoking from overheating, but the engine was running. Alex looked back and saw what was behind him. A giant mushroom, illuminated by electrical flashes that struck for kilometers around.
The crater. A perfectly circular crater fifteen kilometers in diameter, its edges glowing with molten lava. A plasma storm still raged in the center—the remnants of the energy released by the hyperdrive collapse. A pillar of smoke and steam rose into the sky, visible for hundreds of kilometers.
Not even atoms remained of the Inquisitors.
But the worst happened in the Force.
The explosion created a powerful disturbance in the quantum network—a wave of chaos and destruction that swept through all dimensions of reality. For a Force-sensitive, it was equivalent to an explosion next to the ear—deafening, disorienting, paralyzing.
Alex felt it to the fullest.
First came the pain—sharp, piercing, as if thousands of needles had plunged into his brain simultaneously. Then came the silence. Not the usual silence of absence of sound, but something much deeper and more frightening.
He could no longer feel the Force.
Completely. Absolutely. As if some part of his consciousness had simply disappeared, leaving behind emptiness. The threads of probability he had learned to see had dissolved. The network he connected to became inaccessible.
Alex was deaf to the Force. He thought he hadn't been sensitive before, but that wasn't true. Weakly, perhaps, but he had felt it his whole life. But not now.
Panic seized him instantly. The speeder tilted, reacting to the tremor in his hands. He tried to concentrate, to enter a meditative state, to re-establish the connection. Nothing. Only emptiness where the ocean of possibilities had been.
What had he done? Was the damage permanent? Had he forever lost the abilities he had only begun to understand?
But there was no time for panic. The explosion had destroyed the Inquisitors—he was sure of it, no one could survive the epicenter of a hyperdrive collapse. But their ship might have transmitted a signal before destruction, which meant, sooner or later, other hunters would arrive. He had to get to the evacuation point.
Alex set course north, towards the ancient necropolis near the planet's polar cap. A thousand kilometers of desert terrain, cut by canyons and dotted with ruins. Twelve hours of flight in a damaged speeder.
Twelve hours alone with the realization of what he had lost.
The speeder flew across the dead plains of Korriban, leaving a thin trail of dust behind it. Alex piloted mechanically, dedicating most of his attention to trying to re-establish contact with the Force. Again and again, he tried to find familiar sensations, to enter a meditative state, to see the threads of probability.
Nothing.
Only emptiness and silence where a whole world of possibilities had been. As if he had suddenly gone blind or deaf—lost one of the most important senses he had already grown accustomed to.