Chapter 123 · The Vanishing Point

The cockpit lights were dimmed to twilight glow, soft enough that the starlight beyond the canopy did most of the work. Stent sat in his usual place, posture aligned, eyes fixed on the navigational console as though the universe might offer clarity if he held still enough.

Eli hovered beside him, one hand braced on the back of the pilot’s chair, watching the purrgil pulse patterns cycle across the display. They shimmered in faint waves — alive, unresolved, maddening in their refusal to settle into anything the charts recognized.

Stent ran the triangulation again. Three pulses. Three origin points. Three incomplete vectors.

The projection folded across the screen, shrinking into a narrow intersection of possibilities so thin it looked like a hairline fracture in the map. Eli felt his breath shorten at the sight — not fear, exactly, but the realization that this wasn’t just a path.

It was a direction that had no right to exist. Stent tapped the filter. The projection sharpened. “Here,” he said, voice low. “This is where the intervals converge.”

Eli blinked at the empty black beyond the map’s edge. “That’s… off-grid.”

“Yes.”

“There’s nothing there.”

Stent didn’t answer immediately. His fingers drifted over the controls, isolating one last fragment of waveform — a faint harmonic they hadn’t noticed before. He fed it into the calculation. The map rippled, expanded, and then pushed the intersection even farther outward.

Beyond anything that had been ever mapped on Lesser space.

Stent exhaled once — a slow, controlled release of air. “They go farther than anyone ever thought possible,” he murmured.

Eli stared at the impossible void on the map, feeling the weight of the moment settle like dust. “And we’re following them?”

Stent didn’t look up. “We must.”

The datapad on his lap pulsed once — faint, steady, almost like agreement.

Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “Stars help us.”

Stent entered the final parameter. “May warrior’s fortune smile at us.” He added.

The map folded inwards. A single point remained — distant, unreachable, singular.

Their destination. Or their boundary.

The final coordinate hung in the air like a suspended heartbeat — a tiny point of light floating above the console, pulsing with the faint echo of the purrgil’s signal. Eli watched it flicker, then fade, then reassert itself, as though the universe were undecided about whether it wanted them to see it at all.

Stent didn’t hesitate. He keyed the value into the navigation matrix with the same quiet certainty he used for every impossible calculation he’d ever solved. The console accepted the input without protest, though several indicators dimmed as if reluctant to acknowledge where it led.

Eli let out a low breath. “We don’t know what’s out there.”

Stent’s hands paused over the controls — not dramatically, just a fractional stillness, the kind that meant the weight of Eli’s words had been heard, absorbed, set gently aside.

He turned his head just enough that Eli could see the line of his profile in the dim light. “Neither did he. And none if his crew seemed to be at the helm at the time.”

The words settled in the cabin like dust. Soft. Undeniable.

Eli leaned back in the co-pilot’s seat, arms folded, staring at the wild, uncharted vector stretching beyond the edge of the known galaxy. “That’s not exactly comforting.”

“It is not meant to comfort,” Stent said. “It is meant to align.”

Eli let out a dry, half-choked laugh. “You and your alignment.”

Stent inclined his head in acknowledgment, that faint Chiss version of amusement barely brushing the edges of his composure.

But the silence that followed held something else — a mutual understanding that this was no longer reconnaissance, no longer pursuit, no longer a duty laid on them by anyone living.

This was choice. Their own.

Eli looked at the starfield ahead — the battered horizon of Lothal behind them, the void waiting beyond the map — and felt something shift inside him. The kind of shift that came when fear stopped trying to stop him.

“All right,” he murmured. “Then we go.”

Stent didn’t nod. Didn’t smile. Didn’t speak.He simply set the final parameter, and the ship responded with a quiet hum that felt like acceptance.

The course was set.

What waited on the other side no longer mattered.

They were following Thrawn’s fate.

The Faded Glory lifted out of Lothal’s gravity well with a slow, deliberate ascent, its engines humming through the scarred atmosphere as if sensing the weight of the moment. Eli watched the planet shrink on the viewport — brown fields, fractured plains, the faint smudge of industry and smoke clinging stubbornly to the horizon.

And beyond it, the small, pale sun of Lothal. Ordinary. Frail. A light that had seen too many battles.

Stent throttled back, letting them drift for a moment on minimal thrust. Not to adjust course — the vector was already locked — but to look.

Eli glanced sideways at him, then back at the fading world. “Last chance to turn around.”

Stent said nothing. He didn’t need to.

Eli huffed a breath, leaning closer to the viewport. “Take a good look. This’ll be the last familiar sunrise we see for a long while.”

Stent answered without shifting his gaze. “Sunset.”

“What?”

“In this hemisphere, at this altitude, and at this hour, the visible light is—”

Eli groaned, rubbing his face. “Stent. Please. Let me have one dramatic moment.”

A faint tilt of Stent’s head — almost a smirk in Chiss terms.

Eli shook his head, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth despite the ache in his chest. “If we die, I’m haunting you.”

“That would be inefficient,” Stent said. “I’d be dead too.”

Eli snorted. “See? This is why.”

But the humor faded softly, without force. The moment stretched, quiet and real.

Lothal glowed dimly behind them — battered, human, imperfect. A reminder of everything they were leaving: the fight, the suffering, the cause that could have claimed them if their path had bent even slightly another way.

Eli felt the weight of it settle into his bones. “We’re not coming back, are we?”

Stent’s reply was steady, barely above a whisper. “I don’t know.”

A long breath. Not regret. Not finality. Just truth, spoken simply, like all the most important truths.

Eli let the last sliver of Lothal slide below the canopy frame.

“All right,” he murmured. “Farewell, known space.”

Stent eased the thrusters forward, and the Faded Glory turned toward the uncharted dark.

The sun behind them dimmed, then vanished.

The Faded Glory settled into a gentle cruise, inertial dampeners humming at a soft, contented pitch. The ship felt smaller now — not cramped, just intimate, as though it knew they were preparing to go somewhere even its circuits couldn’t predict.

Eli laid out their supplies on the galley counter in orderly piles: ration cubes stacked three high, sealed water canisters, the last of the dried fruit packs the Lothal rebels had shoved into their hands. Tee hovered beside him, projecting soft inventory icons and occasionally nudging a container back into perfect alignment.

Stent carried the fuel tallies from engineering, datapad tucked under one arm. His footsteps were slow, measured, the kind of stride he took when cataloging something more than numbers.

Eli tapped the nearest canister. “We’re stocked to the teeth. That should get us through… stars, I don’t know. Weeks? Months?”

“Assuming moderate consumption,” Stent said, “and no unplanned environmental failures.”

“Comforting,” Eli muttered.

Stent set his datapad down next to the rations. “Fuel reserves are at ninety-three percent. Reactor strain is minimal. Water reclamation is functioning at optimal capacity.”

“And food?” Eli asked.

Stent surveyed the scattered piles. “Enough for two. Reduced comfort, but adequate.”

“Story of our lives.” Tee beeped judgmentally. Eli flicked him on the dome. “Enough for three,” he corrected.

When the last crate was stowed, they sat down at the small table, a reheated pot of stew between them — the same bland, overcooked mixture they’d made a dozen times over the past month. It tasted no better now than it had then, but the warmth of it filled the quiet.

Eli ate slowly, letting the rhythm of the ship settle in his chest. “Feels strange. Doing something normal.”

“Normal is relative,” Stent said.

“Don’t philosophize. I’m eating.”

Stent inclined his head, as if accepting the reprimand at face value. He took another bite, unbothered by the flavor or the texture or anything resembling a complaint.

Outside, hyperspace preparations hummed softly — a low undercurrent like an old song sung from another room, familiar and distant all at once.

Eli let his spoon rest. “How long do you think this part will take?”

Stent considered the navigation projections, their faint glow reflecting off the metal fixtures around them. “There is no estimate,” he said. “The vector extends beyond our frame of calculation. Our fuel and supplies are our limit.”

“That’s a poetic way of saying we have no idea.”

“Yes.”

Eli leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face. “Well… we’ve got food. Fuel. Air. A ship held together with optimism and spite. And a datapad that hums like it knows secrets.”

Stent lifted an eyebrow. “The datapad does not hum.”

“It does. It’s smug.”

Tee chirped agreement.

Stent exhaled — barely a sound, barely a motion — but Eli caught the shade of amusement buried in it.

The stew cooled between them. The lights dimmed a fraction, settling into evening cycle.

For a few minutes, they simply existed — two men sharing a quiet meal on the edge of everything they had ever known.

A small calm before the unknown.

The cockpit lights dimmed to their midnight setting as Stent and Eli returned to their seats. The ship felt different now—not heavier, not lighter, but settled, as though bracing for a change it couldn’t fully articulate. Eli fastened his harness with deliberate calm, feeling the leather straps tighten across his chest.

Stent keyed the last coordinates into the navicomputer. The uncharted vector glowed faintly, pulsing with the residual rhythm of the purrgil’s call. It hovered at the edge of the map like a door left ajar.

“Course is locked,” Stent said, voice low.

Eli exhaled. “All right. No turning back.”

Stent didn’t reply. He reached for the hyperspace lever.

Eli rested his hand beside his. “Together.”

A brief pause. Stent nodded once.

They pushed.