The Vector was an Imperial-class Star Destroyer of the Imperial Navy in service prior to the Battle of Yavin.
In 1 BBY, under orders from Darth Vader, the ship and its crew arrived at the planet Meglumine to retrieve materials related to the Blackwing virus. They were to take the materials to a testing facility at the planet Khonji Seven. However, one of the tanks containing the virus breached as the ship traveled into the Mid Rim, infecting the majority of the crew and mutating them into mindless creatures. At least 46,700 Imperial personnel, including 9,700 stormtroopers, had been traveling on board the Vector, and almost all were killed by the virus. Thirty men, including Commander Gorrister, sealed themselves off in one section of the ship and took refuge in the shuttle Freebird.
Ten weeks later, the prison barge Purge happened across the vessel, having suffered damage to its engines. A team from the barge, led by Captain of the Guard Jareth Sartoris, boarded Vector to salvage components from the ship's engines. Within hours of the crew returning to Purge, however, the majority of the barge's population also contracted the virus. With no chance of escape on the crippled barge, the survivors of the prison ship boarded Vector in an attempt to utilize it as an escape vessel. Of the six survivors who left the Purge and entered the Star Destroyer, four escaped.
Vector is one of the primary settings of the novel Death Troopers, written by Joe Schreiber. The ship is unnamed in the novel, but is named in the in-universe Twitter account of an Imperial stormtrooper set up prior to the book's release, detailing his life on board the Vector prior to the events in the novel.
The name Vector is likely a reference to the epidemiology term meaning a carrier of pathogen.
- Death Troopers: Recovered Messages from Purge
- Stormtrooper TK 329 (TK329) on Twitter
- The Essential Reader's Companion
- "Classic Moment: Evil Empire!" — Star Wars Insider 149