The Kantaros Station rescue of Thi Xon Yimmon turns a covert infiltration into an urgent extraction when Jax Pavan and his allies learn that Darth Vader intends to have Yimmon’s brain surgically separated. They kill the Inquisitor overseeing the operation, retrieve the barely responsive Whiplash leader, and conceal their movement through Imperial security by posing as a guard detail. Their escape reaches the civilian side of the station, but the account ends before they are clear of danger.

The Transfer and the Threat

The crisis begins when I-Five reports that the Empire is moving Yimmon. Den Dhur and Sacha Swiftbird watch the station feed: six stormtroopers and an Inquisitor lead Yimmon, shambling, down a short corridor and through sliding doors. The doors snap shut behind them, making the transfer both visible and suddenly inaccessible. I-Five identifies the destination as the medbay, two levels above the high-security area and almost as well protected. The rescue target is no longer merely being held; Imperial forces are moving him into a medical facility.

I-Five quickly accesses the medbay’s artificial intelligence and learns that an operating room has been set up. The AI confirms that neurosurgery is planned but cannot disclose what the procedure involves: Darth Vader has personally sealed that information. The combination of a prepared operating room and deliberate secrecy raises the stakes before the rescuers know the exact danger. I-Five leaves for the outer docking portal, where two stormtroopers and security equipment stand in his way, and tells Den and Sacha to enter at the exact moment he exits. Their approach depends on timing as much as force; even the first movement toward Yimmon must be coordinated around the station’s guards.

The Discovery and the Inquisitor’s Death

Jax’s attempt to read the Inquisitor’s intentions supplies the missing explanation. He has blurred his Force signature, but senses that the Inquisitor’s attention is fixed on the duality of Yimmon’s consciousness and on separating it. The implication comes to him with the force of a sudden revelation: Vader intends to surgically divide the two halves of Yimmon’s brain. The sealed procedure is therefore not routine treatment but an operation meant to split the very consciousness whose duality has attracted the Inquisitor. Jax understands the horror of Vader’s plan before the rescue reaches the medbay.

The Inquisitor, Probus Tesla, is dead by the time the group can move forward. Sacha stands over him in stormtrooper armor, holding a Sith lightsaber; her hair is damp with sweat, and she deactivates the blade before looking to Jax. The killing removes the immediate authority overseeing the operation, but it also leaves the rescuers with Tesla’s body to manage. They drag him into the corridor and deposit him just inside the medbay, out of sight of its door. I-Five, using his R2 persona, has opened the doors and then disappeared. Jax tells Den to lock the medbay and stand by, then follows Sacha to find the droid.

Reaching Yimmon

They find I-Five speaking with the computer controlling Yimmon’s autonomic processes. Jax sees that the Whiplash leader, once a powerful intellect, has been reduced to a sleeping, unresponsive figure. The sight renews his horror at what Vader intended to do. The rescue has reached Yimmon physically, but getting him away is complicated by his condition: he cannot simply walk out with them, and the medbay’s life-support controls are part of the problem they must confront.

Yimmon manages to whisper Jax’s name and a broken thought about spirit and body. He raises a shaking hand, concentrates on it, and lets it fall. The gesture shows how little control he has regained; recognition and will are present, but his body remains profoundly weak. Jax says they must move him and asks whether he can stand. I-Five answers the practical question with an antigrav medical gurney. He proposes a cover story that fits the setting: the Inquisitor on duty has ordered the prisoner moved to safety. The plan turns the Empire’s own command structure into camouflage, while the gurney makes Yimmon’s incapacity look like a reason for an official transfer rather than evidence of a rescue.

Disguise and the Civilian Sector

The group leaves the medbay as an apprentice Inquisitor, a stormtrooper, and a droid escorting two prisoners. They board the nearest turbolift and travel upward; three levels later they get off and head toward the station’s commercial sector. Most Imperial forces are concentrated below, leaving fewer enemy soldiers on these levels. Although the station has been alerted, its personnel are looking for a Jedi infiltrator, not a security detail burdened with prisoners. The disguises work partly because the Empire’s paranoid secrecy has made its own personnel cautious about questioning apparent operations.

Jax knows the deception cannot protect them for long. Vader will realize that the Inquisitor he is pursuing is a phantom, then search for Jax. Jax has blurred his Force signature, but judges that Vader is too powerful for the concealment to last. The group therefore moves under pressure even while its cover holds: the danger is not only the guards they pass, but the pursuit Jax expects once Vader sees through the false trail. At the exits opening onto the civilian sector, Sacha leads them through the gate. The guards give the party only a cursory look. As they cross the threshold, the stormtrooper on the right asks Sacha whether the infiltrator has been caught. The question leaves the escape unresolved, poised between the apparent success of the disguise and the possibility that the Imperial search is still closing in.