“Khhohhhh.... Pwhhhhhhrrr”
His TIE fighter was spat out of hyperspace and back into realspace to the shrill cry of emergency alarms ringing in the cockpit. The vessel screamed through realspace like a fish bleeding in water, and seated in the cockpit, the epitome of calm, Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, rested. His back straight, his demeanor calm and unmoved, as if his ship were not dying around him.
The TIE Advanced x1 was a decidedly unique fighter. Built to his specifications, which included a larger cockpit for his cybernetically enhanced stature. The fighter was the greatest work by Sienar Technologies. Unlike most TIE fighters, the TIE Advanced x1 sported a Class 4 hyperdrive, a deflector shield, an enhanced solar ionization reactor, and a much stronger reinforced durasteel hull.
The sum total of this protection was the only reason the ship had survived the ambush that had destroyed the rest of Black Squadron, leaving Vader to flee into hyperspace. He felt a spike of anger that he immediately channeled into reinforcing himself.
Regardless of the protections the ship had been adorned with, he could feel it dying around him, even as he steered it away from his exit point, in case he was being traced. He had not followed any hyperspace lane, so he did not expect to be followed, and yet. His grip on the flight stick tightened, his fingers etching new dents into it. It was not often he was dealt a loss. And that was what this was, a loss. He discarded that thought process and focused on the now.
He had waited long enough, and no ship had followed after him, no enemy fighters slipping out of hyperspace hot on his tail, which gave him the breathing room to focus on the ship. The ship was dying.
He did not blame the builders of the craft for its failures. Despite how wrecked it had been, it was a testament to its engineering that it flew at all, but now it had been pushed past its limits and was still being asked to function regardless. The blare of the alarms continued to ring out, the cockpit dyed a shade of eye-catching red as the systems began failing in sequence, each loss cascading into the next as the vessel unraveled around him one component at a time.
The left wing was mostly gone. He had felt it go during the transit, the hyperspace stress finishing what the ambush had started. Structural integrity warnings cycled through the screen before him and into his helmet’s display, an annoyance yet one he paid attention to regardless. The twin laser cannons had gone cold. The solar ionization reactor was running at thirty-one percent and dropping.
Vader noted each failure with mechanical patience and set it aside.
He was lost, which was a situation he had not found himself in for some time, and yet he found it no more troubling now than he had then. He did not mind being lost. It meant not even his enemies knew where he was. The ambush that had decimated Black Squadron had been coordinated with a precision that spoke of foreknowledge, and foreknowledge of his movements spoke of either a leak within the Imperial command structure or something else entirely; perhaps this was the Emperor’s doing.
He shoved such thoughts aside and focused on a way out of the carefully orchestrated mess he had found himself in.
The long-range scanners, one of the TIE Advanced x1’s practical advantages over the standard fighter that most Imperial pilots flew to their deaths in, were still functional. His hands moved, fingers blurring over buttons as he brought the long-range scanner to bear on his immediate region of space, letting the system compile its survey while the ship continued its slow deterioration around him.
The transparisteel of the viewport showed cracks, widening nearly imperceptibly every few minutes. He would have missed it if the Force was not sending a dull constant warning at him. It would hold for now.
The scanner beeped a result, drawing his attention once more. Multiple planetary bodies within range. He reviewed them without urgency.
Most of the planets were unsuitable and uninhabitable to human life. Gas giants and barren rocks with dead atmospheres. They were worlds Vader would not have paid attention to, their usefulness primarily as navigational reference points. Yet among the dead and uninhabitable worlds, there was a different one, a ball of green and blue.
The Force called to him.
Vader went through the readings. The planet’s atmospheric composition was optimal, surface temperature adequate, and its gravity acceptable. Multiple readings told him the planet was not just habitable, it was currently occupied. Good. He noted the coordinates and began to plot an approach.
Then the Force sent a warning.
Different from the sharp warning it sent when a saber was coming for him from behind, or a trap had already been sprung. This was slower, a dull pressure at the edge of his awareness rather than a spike. The Force was directing him away from something, and Vader was a paranoid man, but if there was one thing he trusted wholly, it was the Force.
He turned his attention to the screen and noted the scanner had already flagged the source of the warning. Something rested in the planet’s low orbit. It was large, with multiple wings spread out around it, making it look even larger, and the closer he got to the planet, the more the thing angled itself to face him.
Vader glanced through his databanks for anything similar to what it was and came up empty. The warning from the Force increased. His frown was hidden behind his mask, but to the few who knew him well enough, they would note he was worried, for Darth Vader did not fear. The warning was gradually shifting from dull throbs to something sharper. His grip on the flight stick shifted as he adjusted his approach vector, coming in from the opposite hemisphere, putting as much of the planet between himself and the object in orbit as the trajectory allowed.
The warning reduced.
“Khhohhhh.... Pwhhhhhhrrr”
Hours later, the planet was no longer a marble. Instead, it was growing at a steady rate. Even without a warning from the Force, Vader knew the ship would not survive re-entry. It had survived this long solely because he was keeping it together telekinetically. He had accepted his prized ship’s death before he began the descent.
The TIE Advanced x1 was many things, but it was not designed for uncontrolled atmospheric entry with a missing wing section and a reactor running on four percent. He could guide it. He could choose where it went. Beyond that, the outcome would be what it was.
He opened himself to the Force and let it guide his arms. His flight path shifted, trajectory changing by centimeters. He could feel it. His long-range scanners, one of the few things still working, showed him where he was heading, toward a city by the sea.
A city was good. Cities had resources. Cities had people, which meant information, which meant everything else followed from there. His hands moved as the Force willed, and he picked an approach that kept him away from the densest population concentration and angled toward what the scanner suggested was an industrial or docking area. It was the kind of place where one could drop a barely held together fighter without bringing the roof down on the population.
The heat of re-entry came up through the hull. He manipulated the Force, His left hand gripping the air tightly as he telekinetically held on tighter to the hull of the fighter as it threatened to flake apart, and even with his might, he could still feel parts of the durasteel heat up to near melting point from the velocity.
Yet Vader remained still and composed. The alarms and warnings had gone silent, and in the silence of re-entry, the only sound in his head was the sound of his respirator.
“Khhohhhh.... Pwhhhhhhrrr”
___
Danny Hebert sat alone with only the dim light from his ceiling bulb and the pale glow of the moon shining through his window for illumination. Today had been a bad day. He shifted his weight in his chair, leaning back and looking at the ceiling crack that took up a large part of the structure, a symptom of the systemic failure plaguing the Dockworkers Association.
A side job as the head of Hiring meant he was also the head of Firing, and today he had been forced to lay off two people. Martha and Flemming. Martha had a two year old boy, and Flemming, whom he knew from multiple BBQ nights the association had as a group, was the sole breadwinner of his family, which consisted of a mother who suffered a stroke and a father with dementia.
Today, he had been forced to look them in the face and tell them they were out of a job. They had not shouted at him as he deserved. They had not yelled, frowned, or made a mess of everything. He would not have blamed them if they had. It was a much preferred alternative. Instead, they had looked at him with brittle smiles of understanding.
Martha had given him a hug even with the unshed tears in her eyes, and Flemming had grabbed his shoulder hard, given him a nod, and walked off with his last paycheck. They understood the position he was in, and for that, he could not blame them. Sometimes, he wished they did. Wished they all did.
He let out a sigh as he got to his feet. He was the only person still present in the building. He had promised Marcus he would lock up, and the brawny man had given him a look of understanding before leaving him behind. In times like these, they knew he needed a couple of hours to himself. He did not want Taylor to see him like this, not that he had been present enough in her life in recent times. He was going to rectify that tomorrow.
That was what he had been saying for almost a year now, and in the end, tomorrow never came.
Danny blinked, surprised, as his office slowly grew brighter. He turned his bespectacled glance to the bulb first, but it looked the same. So he looked outside and spotted it. In the sky was a shooting star. His eyes widened. A shooting star headed towards him.
A/N: The title and inspiration for this came from a TikTok Dive on Star Wars, which inevitably spiraled into Darth Vader edits, and then I came across the line where Vader speaks to Kenobi. "Anakin is gone, I'm what remains." Do I have a vague plot for this? Like all my snippets, yes, I do. Would I actually do anything with it? Let's see.