2920, Fragments of the Death Star
The Death Star was destroyed.
Darth Malthael launched the Proton Torpedo from the most precise position. The torpedo traveled 57.98 kilometers through a ventilation shaft just two meters in diameter without striking the walls once, plunging straight into the Death Star's energy core.
And Galen Erso had already made preparations there.
Under his deliberately concealed arrangement, countless energy transmission conduits passed through that location. It might not have been the point with the greatest energy within the core, but every energy conduit passed through it.
As long as the Proton Torpedo detonated there, it would trigger a chain reaction, and that chain reaction would travel through the energy conduits to every critical node inside the Death Star.
All of this happened in less than 0.1 seconds. In other words, there was no time to react at all. More than 340,000 energy transmission conduits, over 9,700 energy nodes, and more than 14,000 relays inside the Death Star all erupted in catastrophic explosions at once.
It took less than five seconds for the entire Death Star to be destroyed.
In other words, the 840,000 officers, soldiers, engineers, and scientists of every rank aboard the Death Star, including Wilhuff Tarkin, were blasted into cosmic dust before they even realized what had happened.
Well, no pilots—because all the pilots had already been shot down.
At the same time Darth Malthael fired the Proton Torpedo, every member of Death Star Squadron broke free of the Death Star's gravitational range and was instantly flung outside. Then, traveling at 0.96% of light speed, the Death Star covered several thousand kilometers in a single second.
After the Death Star exploded, those 200 elite pilots were essentially cut off behind it.
Why?
Because what destroyed the Death Star was an explosion from