The silence that descended on the grand ballroom was heavy enough to crush a lesser man's lungs. It was a physical weight, composed of equal parts arrogance and impending violence. The weapons being pulled out slowly by each guest, the glint of blaster pistols and the hum of vibro-blades, would have caused any normal man to fold. The hysterical, triumphant laugh coming from the Black Sun Vigo, Rena Beenz, would cause any normal man to shiver away into a corner and beg for his life.
However, I do not respond to these threats well. I never have.
Admittedly, it has been a while since the last time I had to respond to something like this. Taking a step back from the public side of the business and keeping my hands clean from the underworld had allowed others with short memories to think that I was easy pickings. They looked at the corporate reports, the charity galas, and the agricultural initiatives, and they saw a soft target.
That was the problem. Erasing my footprint on the galaxy in preparation for the Galactic Empire to take over had given me a type of weakness that I had not expected: mediocrity.
I was anything but mediocre, but my enemies did not know that. They saw a businessman who was ready to be squeezed. They thought they had done their due diligence in researching me, but they made the fatal mistake of assuming that the Bee who founded Bee Grove and fought against the Sith, the Jedi, and the Senate was my ancestor. They assumed the name was a title passed down, not a singular, immortal identity.
Rena Beenz thought I was a soft, fourth-generation descendant living off old money. He thought I was easy prey.
It was time for a very costly lesson.
"You are shaking, my friend," Beenz mocked, stepping closer, his weapon lowered but ready. "Is the reality of your situation finally setting in? The Black Sun casts a long shadow. There is no shame in standing within it."
I looked at him. I looked at the three hundred armed guards posing as socialites. I looked at the exits, all blocked by heavy-set Gamorreans in suits.
"You have made a miscalculation, Vigo," I said, my voice trembling slightly. Not from fear, but from the effort of maintaining the projection. "You assume I came alone."
Beenz laughed again, a barking sound that grated on my nerves. "We scanned your shuttle. We scanned your entourage. You have a protocol droid and a pilot. Hardly an army."
"I am a supply chain magnate, Beenz," I said, straightening my lapels. "I move goods. I move containers. Do you know who catered this event?"
Beenz frowned. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"My company, Eden Fresh, provided the bantha steaks and the Alderaanian wine," I explained calmly. "We delivered six large shipping containers to your service entrance three hours ago. Did you scan the meat lockers?"
Beenz's eyes widened slightly. He tapped his comms earpiece. "Check the service entrance. Now."
I smiled. "Too late."
I pushed the panic button in my pocket for the third and last time.
The effect was instantaneous. The heavy double doors at the back of the room did not just open; they were blown off their hinges with a concussive force that rattled the teeth of everyone in the room.
Through the smoke and debris, they came.
A wave of droids poured into the banquet hall. But these were not the clunky B1 battle droids of the Trade Federation, nor were they the security models used by local militias. These were my personal design. The Asura-class.
They stood seven feet tall, their chassis gleaming with a matte-black finish that absorbed light. Each droid possessed four arms, fully articulated and moving with a speed that blurred the air. In each hand, they held a heavy repeater blaster. They fanned out and surrounded the room in seconds, their movements synchronized like a hive mind.
The surprised look on everyone's face greatly warmed my belly. I am not above taking pleasure in others' pain, but only if they deserve it. And this room was filled with slavers, spice runners, and murderers. They deserved it.
Rena Beenz stood frozen, his mouth slightly ajar. He was one of the highest members of the most powerful criminal underworld organization in history, and yet he did not see this coming. Moving this amount of heavy combat droids would normally grab so much attention that sector authorities would investigate. But he did not understand logistics.
He did not understand that I supply the high-class food. My company transports the containers that hold the food. My droids were hidden in those containers, powered down, shielding their energy signatures until the wake-up signal.
"Nobody moves," I said. My voice was no longer trembling. It was amplified by the droids' speakers, echoing from every corner of the room.
My Asura droids used their four arms to point weapons at the crowd. Each droid could track four independent targets simultaneously. The math was simple: three hundred guests, fifty droids, two hundred weapons. The guests were outgunned.
The silence that followed was one of fear, far more potent than what it was before. I could see many itchy trigger fingers resting on their weapons, sweat beading on foreheads. They were waiting for a signal.
However, the one who acted first was Rena Beenz.
To his credit, he was fast. With great practice born of a lifetime of violence, the Vigo pulled his embossed, elegant pistol smoothly out of his holster. He did not monologue. He did not bargain. He pointed it at my chest and fired.
The red blaster bolt screamed across the short distance between us.
I did not dodge. I did not raise a hand to block it.
The bolt went straight through my chest.
Beenz did not hesitate. He fired five more rounds in rapid succession, aiming for my head and heart, all while dodging to the left and diving over a banquet table, expecting a barrage of return fire from my droids.
He hit the floor, rolling into a defensive crouch behind a thick overturned table made of greel wood. He waited for the sound of plasma fire. He waited for the screams.
None came.
The room remained silent, save for the hum of the droids' servos. Beenz probably thought that the droids had deactivated, or were poorly built, or that with their master dead, they had shut down.
He risked a quick look over his cover.
What he saw defied his understanding of reality.
The person he had fired on, the man he had been conversing with for the last thirty minutes, was still standing there. But I was flickering. The holes in my chest and head were not bleeding. Instead, they swirled with a grey mist. My form wavered like a hologram with a bad connection, then stabilized.
"You missed," the figure said.
Beenz stared, his eyes wide. "What... what tech is this?"
"Tech?" the figure laughed, but the voice sounded distant, as if coming from down a long tunnel. "You think small, Beenz. That is why you will lose."
He did not understand because he did not understand the Force. The person he had been interacting with was a Doppelganger. It was a projection, a phantom created by the Force.
I had been practicing my Alter abilities, refining the Tempest, blending the Light and Dark. One of the applications of this mastery was the ability to project an image of myself that was so real it could fool sensors, droids, and sentient beings. It could hold a glass of wine. It could shake a hand. But it could not die.
My real body was sitting comfortably in the captain's chair of my ship, currently in orbit, monitoring the situation through the droids' sensory feeds. There was no way in hell I was going to physically walk into a Black Sun stronghold without a guarantee of safety. I let my ghost take the risk.
"Unit 5," I said, sipping a cup of tea on my bridge. "Execute Order 66. Just kidding. Execute Order Liquidation."
"Affirmative, sir," the droid replied.
On the planet's surface, the Vigo stood out of cover in confusion, his blaster pointed at my ghost.
"Die!" he screamed, firing again.
The bolt passed harmlessly through the mist.
"Your turn," my ghost whispered.
The answer Beenz got was his last.
All fifty Asura droids worked as one. They did not spray and pray. They did not fire wildly. They fired with the cold, mathematical precision of machines programmed by a genius.
The room lit up with a blinding flash of red light.
It was a precise blood bath. Each droid targeted four different hostiles. Headshots. Heart shots. No wasted energy.
The sound was a single, deafening thunderclap that lasted for three seconds.
When the light faded, silence returned.
As one, everyone in the room dropped to the ground. There were no groans. There were no cries for medics. Three hundred bodies hit the floor in unison.
Only Rena Beenz was left alive.
The droids had spared him, not out of mercy, but because I had specific instructions for him.
He stood amidst the carnage, the smell of ozone and burnt flesh assaulting his nose. He looked around, his face pale, his gun hand shaking uncontrollably. He looked at my ghost, which was now fading, turning into a wisp of smoke before disappearing entirely.
"Where are you?" Beenz screamed, spinning around. "Show yourself!"
"I am everywhere," my voice came through the speakers of the lead droid.
Beenz turned to the droid. He raised his gun.
"Don't," I warned.
He fired. The bolt splashed harmlessly against the droid's personal deflector shield.
I reached out with my mind from orbit. The distance was great, but my connection to the Force had grown. And I had a beacon; the fear radiating off Beenz was like a lighthouse in the dark.
I gripped him.
Beenz gasped. He dropped his gun and clawed at his throat. He felt invisible fingers tightening around his windpipe. He tried to struggle, kicking his legs, but he found that he could not move.
Slowly, terrifyingly, he lifted off the ground. He floated two meters in the air, his feet dangling helplessly.
"You wanted to squeeze me, Beenz," I spoke through the droid. "You wanted to pressure me. Let me show you what real pressure feels like."
I began to fold him.
I did not do it quickly. I did it with the deliberate slowness of folding a napkin.
The first snap came from his spine. It was a loud, dry crack that echoed in the empty hall. Beenz's eyes bulged. His mouth opened in a silent scream as his back was bent unnaturally backward.
Blood began to pour from his nose and mouth.
"The Black Sun is powerful," I said, my voice cold. "But the sun sets. And night is my domain."
I twisted his left leg. The femur snapped. The shin bone shattered. He was being compacted, his body distorted into a grotesque shape.
"Please," he gurgled, blood bubbling on his lips. "Credits... I have... credits."
"I have more," I replied.
I clenched my fist on the bridge of my ship.
On the surface, Beenz was crushed. His ribcage collapsed inward. His limbs were wrapped around his torso. The final wet crunch signaled the end of the Vigo's ambition. I released the grip, and what was left of Rena Beenz fell to the floor, a broken, unrecognizable pile of expensive velvet and bone.
I exhaled, releasing the tension of the long-distance manipulation.
"Status," I ordered.
"Hostiles neutral. Target eliminated," Unit 5 reported. "Shall we initiate the clean-up protocol?"
"No," I said, looking at the screens. "Leave the bodies. Leave the mess. Let the Black Sun see exactly what happens when they try to strong-arm me."
"That will declare war, sir," Unit 5 noted.
"The war was declared the moment they invited me here," I said. "Prepare for departure. We need to leave the system before the rest of the fleet arrives."
As the ship powered up its hyperdrive, I sat back and analyzed the board.
I had just killed a Vigo. I had massacred his entire retinue. I was now the enemy of the Black Sun. They did not know the full details yet, but even if I got rid of the evidence, the Black Sun would find out. They had spies everywhere. They might just guess and get it correct. The Black Sun did not need courtroom proof; they just had to make someone pay to maintain their reputation.
The reach they had was far and wide. I had a lot to protect. My corporations, my people, the Grove. Did I cover all of my bases? I did not know, and I did not want to find out the hard way if I was weak in certain areas.
This was going to be a war. A dirty, shadow war fought in back alleys and boardrooms across the galaxy.
The Black Sun had numbers. They had brutality. They had the element of lurking in every shadow.
But I had something they did not. I had resources they could not imagine. And more importantly, I had competition I could leverage.