STAR WARS AHSOKA [English]

THE SIXTH BROTHER did not hold the district commander’s failure to apprehend the Jedi Padawan against him. After all, if just anyone could catch Jedi, there would be no need for Inquisitors. He did make sure to file a report detailing where the commander had fallen short and outlining his suggestions for reprisals, but he did not hold a grudge. He was too much of a professional for that sort of pettiness.

He was significantly less impressed by the nonmilitary lackey who called himself Jenneth Pilar.

“You weren’t exactly what I had in mind,” Pilar said, winding down a long series of complaints about how he felt the Imperial base was understaffed and why his suggestions should be followed to fix it. “I am sure you are good at whatever your job is, but I need men to patrol, to enforce order, and to make sure the fieldwork gets done on schedule.”

“Then you will have to do it yourself,” the Inquisitor said. He enjoyed the way Pilar recoiled from the harshness of his tone. “The Empire has other priorities on Raada now.”

Pilar huffed for a while longer but finally fled as the Inquisitor’s expression got blacker and more threatening. That was the easiest way to deal with weak-minded bureaucrats. They didn’t listen anyway, so it was best to intimidate them until they gave up.

The Inquisitor called up the interrogation report on the girl called Kaeden Larte. She’d given no indication that she knew anything about a Jedi, but of course her interrogation had been mostly botched.

They’d pushed her too hard, trying to scare her, and then she hadn’t been physically capable of speech before her rescue. The rescue itself was almost certainly carried out by the Jedi. No one had seen anything, and the window was far too high for a girl who had a broken arm to climb through on her own.

A map of the surrounding area replaced the report on the Inquisitor’s screen. There was nowhere to hide in the agricultural region of the planet. It was too well patrolled, there was no cover, and it would take too long to cross. The insurgents couldn’t be hiding in the town itself. They would have been uncovered by now, by even the most inept stormtrooper patrol. That left the hills. Without use of the walkers, the commander had been slow to search the area, because it would require too much manpower.

Maybe that wretch Pilar had a point about being understaffed.

It didn’t matter. The Jedi Padawan was long gone. Her ship had been seen leaving the planet after the successful rescue mission. What the Sixth Brother needed to decide was the order in which to take his next steps. He was going to find the insurgents and torture them, but he thought it might be wiser to track down the Jedi first, so she would be sure to hear about the suffering of the people she’d left behind. Then she’d come back to save them, and he’d have her. He knew, or at least suspected, the general direction she