Jax and His Group Flee Coruscant begins with a mistaken identification on a Westport landing pad and ends with the group lifting off before they know whether the Empire has connected them to its investigations. An Imperial Inquisitor has been watching their ship, and I-Five’s diversion escalates the encounter rather than resolving it. The escape is therefore both a practical retreat and a response to a new uncertainty: whether Darth Vader knows Jax Pavan is alive on Coruscant.

The Inquisitor at Westport

A cloaked figure moves from shadow to shadow, crossing from the fuel port toward a stairwell on the port side of the landing pad. Den Dhur’s reaction is immediate and physical: he feels as if his blood has congealed. I-Five, by contrast, meets the sighting with irritating calm and suggests making the stranger aware that he has been seen. The difference in their responses establishes the danger without yet revealing what the figure knows or wants.

I-Five takes charge of the encounter despite Den’s attempt to go after the figure himself. The droid passes him, lowers the loading ramp before Den can stop him, and goes down to the landing area while Den remains in the hatch, his heart pounding hard enough to make him sway. Rather than directly confront the cloaked figure, I-Five calls out in a high, tinny voice that he has seen thieves and addresses a Captain Vigil. His head swivels almost completely around, then turns the other way; while his oculus points away from the Inquisitor’s last known position, he points in the opposite direction and fires a blue bolt at the retracted umbilical cabling housing.

The act is a diversion, not a successful attack on the pursuer. When I-Five climbs back up the ramp, the Inquisitor steps out of the spaceport shadows directly behind him. Den tries to warn the droid, but his panic has kept him from activating the comm. I-Five nevertheless turns toward the Sith operative, and the laser port in his oculus begins to glow red as it charges. The near miss turns the group’s suspicion into a direct confrontation, although the available account does not describe a fight or establish what the Inquisitor intended to do next.

A mistaken assumption

The group’s understanding of the encounter changes when Jax arrives. I-Five explains that they have been monitoring an Inquisitor making a circuit of the ship for roughly fifteen minutes and that he thought he had driven the figure off. The others had assumed the skulking was Jax. Jax’s face pales as he clarifies that it was not him and that he has only just arrived. The revelation gives the earlier movements a different meaning: the figure was not a member of the group returning to the ship, but an Imperial threat already present around it.

That distinction matters because the group cannot tell how much the Inquisitor has learned. Den considers whether the presence means Darth Vader knows Jax is alive on Coruscant, knows what ship he flies, or knows that he has visited the Security Bureau. He also considers a less conclusive possibility: the Inquisitor might simply be patrolling for Force adepts and have been drawn to Westport by Jax’s residual signature. The scene supplies no answer. Instead, Den returns repeatedly to the thought that Vader would already have acted if he knew, while recognizing that the Inquisitor’s report could change the situation.

The decision to leave

The immediate risk is not limited to what the Inquisitor has seen. I-Five fired at him, and Den understands that anyone who fires on an Inquisitor can expect swift Imperial attention. I-Five’s theatrical claim of chasing thieves may have obscured the group’s intentions at the landing pad, but it cannot guarantee that the encounter will be dismissed. The attempt to manage suspicion has itself created a reason for the Imperials to investigate.

The group responds by fleeing in a legal, orderly fashion, taking care not to attract further attention. That restraint contrasts with the suddenness of the threat: their departure is urgent, but they cannot simply behave like fugitives without increasing the scrutiny they fear. Any plan to wait out Darth Vader’s departure from Coruscant is abandoned. Den can see the agony of that decision on Jax’s tense face as the ship lifts off. Leaving is necessary, but it means relinquishing the chance to remain on Coruscant while Vader is away.

Flight under a freight cover

Once airborne, they make a series of course adjustments toward the Hydian Way, presenting themselves as a freighter from Toprawa carrying machine parts. Their sensors sweep the surrounding space for pursuers, an ambush, or anything abnormal. The checks do not confirm that they are being followed; they show instead how little reassurance the group can take from the absence of an immediate attack. Departure has carried them away from the landing pad, not beyond the possibility of Imperial pursuit.

Den tries to steady himself by thinking of the ship as a tiny freighter from Toprawa, not worth investigating. He repeats the thought as a kind of mantra, even as he recognizes that brooding cannot alter their circumstances. The modest cover story and his private repetition give the escape its final tension: the group is moving through space while trying to seem unremarkable, but the evidence at Westport has made ordinary anonymity feel precarious. The episode closes with them heading for the Hydian Way, alert for pursuit and still unable to determine what the Inquisitor’s report will mean for Jax.