Jax Secretly Investigates Vader and Searches for Yimmon

Jax Pavan’s secret investigation into Darth Vader and search for Thi Xon Yimmon begin as a refusal: he will not take the captured leader’s place, and he will not accept the resistance’s strategic regrouping as a reason to abandon him. The search becomes a carefully divided effort, drawing on I-Five’s route analysis and Pol Haus’s Imperial Security Bureau contacts while Jax keeps his immediate objective from Tuden Sal. Its central tension is not simply whether Yimmon can be found, but whether one rescue can be pursued without placing the whole of Whiplash at risk.

Refusing the vacant leadership

The question of who should lead Whiplash arises while its operatives are considering how to reorganize after Yimmon’s capture. Tuden Sal argues that the organization needs redundant leadership, autonomy, and overlapping responsibilities rather than all its credits in one bank. Pol Haus begins to offer Jax a leadership role, but Jax refuses emphatically. He says he cannot lead the group or take Yimmon’s place, and holds himself responsible for the need to replace him. In Jax’s view, recovering Yimmon is his responsibility.

That conviction meets a practical challenge. Sal warns that even Yimmon’s formidable mind may eventually succumb to Vader. Jax acknowledges that Vader is the most powerful Force-user he has known, but treats that very danger as a reason to make the rescue more urgent. Haus, meanwhile, points out that the group does not know where Yimmon has been taken. He might still be on Coruscant or held at another Imperial stronghold; even if Whiplash locates him, Vader could use him as bait for Jax, whom Haus considers the Empire’s real prize.

Jax resists the idea that Vader deliberately let him escape, arguing that Vader could have taken him alongside Yimmon if that had been the objective. Den Dhur counters with the circumstances of their escape: Laranth had breached Vader’s vessel and disabled its stasis web, while Vader believed the interstellar flux would destroy the survivors. Aren Folee and her crew, not any deliberate mercy from Vader, made it possible for them to survive. The exchange complicates Jax’s assessment of the threat and shows how little certainty he has about Vader’s intentions.

A rescue against the organization’s priorities

The disagreement is already familiar to the operatives gathered around Jax. Sal asks whether Yimmon would want Whiplash to jeopardize the organization and sacrifice its other priorities merely to find him. Haus and several others are visibly resistant to that prospect; Sheel Mafeen lowers her eyes, while Haus silences her by putting a hand over hers. When Jax asks whether Haus agrees that they should give up on Yimmon, Sheel quietly objects.

Haus’s answer distinguishes abandoning Yimmon from postponing an all-out search. He believes Yimmon would have urged Whiplash to regroup, retool, and rethink its strategy quickly, and says the organization is already doing so. Sal likewise explains that, in Jax’s absence, Whiplash has advanced plans to strengthen its contacts within the Imperial Security Bureau. Curtailing that work would cost the group ground it had gained. The competing priorities are concrete: a search with no confirmed location could consume resources that Whiplash needs for its wider resistance work.

Jax nevertheless frames the rescue as a blow against the Empire, asking what could be more devastating than taking Yimmon from the Emperor’s grasp. He then asks Haus whether he should leave Yimmon with Vader and move on. Haus turns the question toward Jax’s Force sense. Jax’s answer is that it tells him not to leave Yimmon behind. Haus does not argue with that answer, but his exchange with Jax does not resolve the strategic disagreement with Sal; it establishes a personal direction for Jax’s next actions.

Turning uncertainty into reconnaissance

The search gains its first lead when I-Five says the group has a glimmering of Yimmon’s possible route. He has traced the paths taken by Vader’s forces as they entered and left the area where they trapped the survivors. The available evidence suggests that some vessels, perhaps Vader’s own, called at Mandalore before continuing toward the Mid Rim. This is a partial trail, not a confirmed destination: the larger part of the legion returned to the Core, and Yimmon may even be on Coruscant.

That uncertainty makes the lead useful but dangerous. Dyat objects that Whiplash cannot throw everything into a search based on an uncertain location; Yimmon may already be dead, and each resource assigned to finding him is unavailable for other major tasks. Sal agrees that the Imperial Security Bureau effort could suffer if the resistance diverts its attention. I-Five’s route analysis therefore narrows the possibilities without removing the dilemma: it gives Jax something to investigate, but not grounds for a full-scale operation.

Jax proposes reconnaissance rather than asking Whiplash to commit all its forces. He assigns I-Five to investigate Space Traffic Control, speak with its AI if possible, and check for unusual activity, particularly arrivals from the 501st Legion. Jax plans to find Haus and ask what he has heard from the Imperial Security Bureau. The two lines of inquiry divide the work between traffic records and Haus’s intelligence network, with the practical aim of locating Vader and identifying where the Empire may be holding Yimmon.

A private inquiry through Pol Haus

Jax makes his request to Haus privately. He switches off his voice amplifier and speaks close enough that only the prefect can hear, asking for information about unusual activity inside the Imperial Security Bureau. He specifies a possible Inquisitor presence or increased security in detention areas, signs that might indicate a special prisoner, and asks whether Vader has returned. The detail of the request shows the search becoming targeted: Jax is not merely looking for Vader’s movements, but for the institutional traces that the detention of an important prisoner might leave.

Haus can answer one part immediately. He has kept feelers out for Vader and received confirmation shortly before Jax arrived: Vader is on Coruscant, and most of his legion has returned with him. The location sharpens the danger for Jax, who is now on the same planet as Vader, while the ships that went elsewhere remain unexplained. Haus’s information reinforces the need to learn where those vessels went, but does not itself establish Yimmon’s whereabouts.

Haus asks whether Sal knows Jax is still thinking about Vader. Jax denies that Vader is his objective: he is pursuing Yimmon, and Sal does not know. He also assures Haus that he does not intend to interfere with Sal’s plans for Whiplash. Haus then agrees not to tell Sal, explaining that he too wants Yimmon back. He distinguishes his own desire from Sal’s caution: in his reading, Sal wants the rescue as well, but believes that dedicating the organization’s resources to it would be dangerous. Jax’s investigation thus remains both purposeful and concealed—not a declared rejection of Whiplash’s strategy, but a personal search conducted alongside it.