The explosion that destroyed the shield generator collapsed a great deal of rubble down onto the hall, which once again gave Kuallue some separation from Grievous. The hunt is still on, but Kuallue is now out of explosives. The trick that saved him twice will not help a third time. He reaches out to Sadiya, letting her know that he got the job done, and can feel that she is tantalizingly close as well. Assuming she isn't wrong, it means that his sacrifice was not in vain.
It also means that this hunt is likely in vain because they're all bound to be blasted into oblivion by turbolasers from on high. As Kuallue hears the general's footsteps come closer to where he hides, he knows the end is near. Even though they're about to be united in death, Grievous now feels strangely distant. The cyborg is furious and frantic, apparently aware of his incoming doom. He must have heard some sort of warning about Sadiya's imminent triumph.
Grievous strides around a corner and proclaims, "Jedi! I could do this with two- no, three arms tied behind my back!" Kuallue forgets about the strange, seemingly impossible brag - It might be a reference to how Celegians have more than two tentacles as limbs, but it seems strange to Kuallue, since Kaleesh don't even have three arms to tie up in the first place.
Grievous seems weirdly gleeful compared to what he sensed, but perhaps the chance to go out while killing a Jedi is the sort of the thing that would lift his spirits. Before Grievous can fully close the distance, Kuallue reaches out with telekinesis, trying to push him back. Grievous's magnetized feet latch onto the deck, and he remains in place. Then he takes a step forward. Then another.
A couple of droids arrive beside Grievous, and Kuallue widens his telekinetic push to knock them back, but that just allows Grievous to advance even quicker, brandishing two lightsabers.
He can hear turbolasers thundering overhead, so Sadiya must have succeeded. The bulk of the Venture will collapse, but it will take time. Kuallue hurls a few bits of rubble at Grievous, but he ducks under some and cuts up others with his lightsabers. Death is approaching, and he can do nothing to stop it. But it will be a worthwhile death.
Then, death stops and turns around.
Kuallue is completely stunned, frozen in place in what is now an empty hall. Grievous would never be merciful, for the sake of mercy alone. But perhaps… Perhaps Grievous values his survival more than this kill. Kuallue doesn't think that Grievous has any chance of escaping, but the general apparently wants to try.
Kuallue zooms off in pursuit, still keeping his distance from the receding droids. He has a hard time sensing them with the Potentium, but that might be Grievous's cybernetics taking over his mind, making him basically a droid. It doesn't particularly matter, because Kuallue can hear them as they make their way down towards their escape. If they take a ship, he'll take one too and follow them. He can hail the Kalpana and tell them which ship has their target aboard.
At this point, nobody is bothering to look for Kuallue, and it's much easier to go down than up, so when he sees the Separatists hop into a turbolift, he smashes the doors open afterwards, and he leaps into the shaft, landing on the top of their car as they are quickly whisked down. They go down far faster than he went up, and it's only a minute before it comes to a halt. Kuallue turns on his repulsors, waits for about twenty seconds, and yanks off the ceiling of the turbolift car with a powerful touch of the Potentium.
If anyone notices him as he descends and keeps following, they're simply in too much of a rush to care. Kuallue's chase eventually leads him to a smaller bay, where he sees three Sheathipede-class shuttles.
Grievous has already entered the center one along with some of the droids, taking off right as Kuallue enters the hangar. He sees five more veer right to enter the one beside it, while the final two stragglers go for the leftmost shuttle. They're diversions, perhaps, and only Kuallue knows which shuttle actually has their quarry. He chases, and just before the last shuttle can close the door at its back, Kuallue reaches out and tosses a crate in the way, jamming it open.
By the time one of the B2s can step over to dislodge the blocker, he is close enough to step inside and push the super battle droid out. Another droid still inside fires a wrist rocket, but he redirects the shot away from himself before tossing a hydrospanner directly into the droid's red eye.
As the droid falls, Kuallue sits his tank at the controls and telekinetically closes the door behind him. Grievous isn't that far ahead, but Kuallue isn't much of a pilot, especially when the ship is unfamiliar, and he can only interface with the controls telekinetically. He gets the engines going, but turns are tricky, and he doesn't even want to think about trying to manipulate the guns.
Above Selbar, the airspace has been filled with dogfighting starfighters. Vulture droids alongside an irregular fleet of Meerian ships have been launched en masse out of the Venture and from the surrounding airfield, while the Republic has launched its own V-19 Torrent starfighters from camp aurek to counter.
They haven't deployed their full aerial strength and are mostly using the V-19s to keep the droids from performing strafing runs on the camps. That gives the droids enough of a numerical advantage to protect the three shuttles, which are taking off to the west. Torrents give them only occasional attacks before getting warded off, while the Kalpana remains fixed in place above Selbar, using its guns for bombardment and for fending off any starfighters that get too close. All it needs to do to finish off the general is to fire a few well-aimed shots. Unfortunately, the crew doesn't know that.
Unless the Republic commits more fully to attacking this shuttle, Grievous has a slim chance to get away after all this. Kuallue cannot and will not allow that to happen. He considers trying to telekinetically press the icons on a screen that controls the shuttle's communications and put out a simple, unencrypted text broadcast that could ask for help, but he would have no way to demonstrate any credibility.
Only his telepathy, amplified by the Potentium, can pull this off. He reaches out to everyone in the Praetor and makes his demands. To speak to so many at once at such a great distance would be impossible for any ordinary Celegian, but all things are possible with the Potentium. The officers aren't familiar with him, and they don't trust him, but he doesn't intend to give them a choice.
It's not a request, it's a demand. Like the powers of the Potentium itself, these beings are just tools who can control an even bigger tool, and he will use it to complete this justice. He will make them see and feel the rage that he has towards that one shuttle, toward that one enemy.
The town of Selbar may have aided him earlier, but it doesn't matter now. The Kalpana needs to launch its fighter complement, power up its engines to chase to the west, and shoot down Grievous. Otherwise, this nightmare shall continue on forever.
At first, their responses are confusion and skepticism. The lower-level officers are disciplined and have no plans to disobey orders, but the higher-ups begin wondering, and then they begin chattering. He can feel their attention slowly being drawn toward the three shuttles which are soaring away from Selbar.
At long last, the one man whose opinions matter is swayed, and the Kalpana redirects its engines to begin accelerating westward. Starfighters launch as well, beginning to thin out the horde of vultures that surround them. They're not quite ready to shoot down the shuttles. Kuallue thinks that's because they can probably recognize the origin of his message and don't want to attack their strange ally. However, the Kalpana is beginning to cut off the escape. He tries to fly in toward the mammoth vessel, broadcasting his friendly intentions as much as possible. He can't tell if Grievous's shuttle is escaping or not, but that's out of his hands now.
Eventually, his ship is pulled into one of its hangars by a tractor beam, and he can see dozens of clones pointing blasters as he slowly sails in. A lone officer in a green uniform is also present, and he looks like he's conversing with one of the clones.
After activating the landing gear and settling his hijacked shuttle onto the floor of the hangar, Kuallue opens the doors at the back and slowly hovers his way down the ramp, projecting as much calm and non-threatening messages into his telepathy as he can. Once the clones see him, they lower their blasters slightly. The only one who doesn't look tense is the officer, a young man with red-brown hair and a prominent mustache. He is more open telepathically, projecting pride and relief in what they've been able to accomplish so far.
"Kuallue, I'm glad to have you. Welcome to the Kalpana. I'm second officer Takel," he greets, saluting briefly.
Kuallue bobs his head up and down in something close to nod, explaining that he's seen Grievous flee aboard the shuttle ahead of him.
Takel smiles broadly as explains, "We've captured both of the shuttles in a tractor beam, blasted apart their engines, and shot them with ion cannons. But we're keeping them at a distance for now. Does the high general have any orders on whether the shuttles are to be destroyed, or if we should take Grievous into this ship alive?"
Kuallue made the mistake of letting Grievous live once, thinking his capture was in hand, and it would be so tempting right now to just finish the job. But Sadiya has made her orders clear that if Grievous can be taken alive, they should do it. Kuallue relays that and instructs Takel to assemble as large of an army as they can to give the general an extremely well-armed greeting party.
Every gun they have needs to be trained on that shuttle as soon as they let it in.
Rescuing Grievous had come at a cost, and while TeenPat knew quite well what that cost was, he had no idea of what the reward might have been. The Republic had a lot of questions for him and not a lot of answers for him, which made his guesses about the latest events extremely speculative. If Selbar had fallen to the Republic, he suspected that he would've been deposited to some prisoner of war camp.
Instead, he was stuck on the brig of what could only be the Kalpana. It has been a place without day or night, so he can't even make a routine for himself. It could've been a week or a month, and he honestly doesn't know.
The monotony of sitting with nothing to do, the lights at a constant level of dimness, and meals getting slid through a small hatch at what have to be irregular intervals is what gets to him. He almost looks forward to the occasional interrogation, and his captors know it, using that to their advantage. He's revealed a few things, and some of them were even true. In exchange, they responded to him with some idle chatter. Apparently, the Babteer tied the Temlisfit.
Most of the time, TeenPat wishes that he'd just gone down fighting the way that MalWon had. It would've been simpler that way.
He's surprised when his cell door opens to reveal, rather than one of the two humans who usually interrogate him, a fellow Meerian even smaller than himself. I didn't know that any of us supported the Republic enough to learn their trust. He gives a brief greeting as a hand signal before rising, happy to see one of his kin, even if it's on opposite sides. But the Meerian announces, "I'm SalDin! We're getting out of here!" He throws TeenPat a DC-15S, and he catches the weapon easily.
"What happened?" he asks, still trying to process this sudden glimmer of hope. As he steps into the light of the hallway outside his cell, he can see a gathering force of at least a dozen Meerians, plus two Svivreni and an Imbat. All look to be fellow liberated prisoners, including his rescuer, SalDin.
"You've rescued quite a few, I see," he remarks, just glad to finally have some company if nothing else. They're wearied and look confused; many seem to be examining their newly acquired clone blasters as novelties. Their clothes are dirty and wrinkled, and they all stink. So, who got this all started?
Eventually, he sees his answer at the end of line: a droid, the likes of which he has never seen before. It vaguely resembles a droideka, with a squat posture and an elegant, curved back, but it has four legs rather than three. It has long arms that end in blades, and he thinks he can see the barrels of E-11 blasters attached to its torso. Its two large red photoreceptors eye the lineup of liberated prisoners carefully.
"It called itself an Infiltrator-series," murmurs SalDin, "and apparently it's been lurking on the ship for quite some time." SalDin was never under TeenPat's direct command, but the name is familiar.
"What took it so long?" TeenPat asks, reflecting on the many long days and nights in his cell.
Another Meerian he doesn't recognize leans in and replies, "Do you really want to question that thing?"
TeenPat swallows whatever fears he may have about the strange, deadly-looking droid. He's spent way too long having no one tell him anything, and now is his time to talk with someone. "We're eternally grateful for your rescue, droid," he greets, sifting his way through the crowd of prisoners and giving it a salute.
"I am TeenPat, a belrat of Babteer Pil. I need to know what's been going on over the past few weeks, and what Grievous has been up to," he demands.
"You will be following me," it replies in an emotionless but surprisingly lifelike voice, "because we have a mission to complete."