My very first meeting with the intruder went unexpectedly, though perhaps I should have seen it coming. Anyone who thought it was a good idea to attack a heavily defended Eden Ship was either truly powerful or completely insane. I was a man well known for taming a massive chunk of the galaxy right next to the Hutts, a man who fought off powerful Force users without a single moment of hesitation. Yet, this bounty hunter did not seem to care about my reputation. He opened fire the moment he laid eyes on me.
Blaster fire splashed across every surface in the hallway, causing blackened burn marks on the walls and melting the decorative trim. Everything was scorched except for me. My fat suit, which usually served as a mobile healing tank and a tool for social deception, was now fully kitted out with high grade armor. I had spent years and millions of credits sourcing the rarest materials. It was mostly composed of lightsaber resistant metals. My logic was simple: anything that could stop a lightsaber would have no trouble stopping standard blaster fire.
I had woven Cortosis, Phrik, Norris Root, and heavy Armorweave into the very fabric of my suit. I would have loved to include some Beskar, but the Mandalorians kept the secret of how to work that metal under lock and key. I actually had a few ingots of the stuff sitting in my vault, but without a master smith, I did not know how to form it into anything useful. Still, the current suit was more than enough.
The first volley of blaster fire soon ceased. The bounty hunter realized that the "Bee" he was shooting at was a mere shadow. He had been pouring high energy bolts into an illusion. A soft, wet chuckle came from behind the bounty hunter's helmet.
"Clever," the hunter rasped. "I was told you were more than a merchant. It seems the rumors were understated."
I spoke through the ship's internal speakers, my voice echoing from a dozen different directions. "You are currently trespassing on a sovereign vessel, friend. I suggest you drop your weapons and we can discuss your funeral arrangements like civilized beings."
The bounty hunter did not answer. He simply began to walk deeper into the ship. As he moved, various turrets and specially manufactured war droids rose from the floor and ceiling to interrupt his travels. These turrets were tied directly to the ship's main computer. Even though the primary defenses had been damaged by his reckless entry, the internal systems were still functional.
The turrets were not particularly accurate, they could hardly hit a barn door at ten paces, but they served as excellent crowd control devices. They filled the air with so much fire that it forced the intruder to move in specific directions. My war droids followed up with consistent firing and retreating, utilizing the exact guerrilla tactics I had programmed into their logic centers.
I spied on the results of the fight through hidden cameras, adding holographic layers and mental illusions to the chaos. I wanted to disorient him, to make him question what was real and what was a trap. However, it bothered me that the physical damage did not seem to matter. No matter how many blaster bolts or high velocity metal slugs the bounty hunter took, he just kept healing.
The heavy armor he had worn when he arrived was now ripped apart, hanging in useless shreds. This revealed his true form: a wiggling, pulsing body made entirely of gray and red tentacles. It was a sight that would have made a lesser man vomit.
By the time he reached the central arboretum, the weapons he had been using were gone. Some had run out of ammunition, while others had been destroyed by the concentrated fire of my droids. However, this did not mean he was weak. His regeneration power was simply amazing. I had seen many species across the galaxy that could heal wounds or repair lost limbs, but never at this speed. It literally took seconds for a severed tentacle to reattach itself or for a blackened blaster burn to disappear completely.
"You are wasting your time, Bee," the Gen'Dai called out. He swatted a war droid into a wall, the machine exploding on impact. "I have lived for a thousand years. I have been burned, buried, and blasted. You have nothing in this garden that can stop me."
This was troubling. It was clear to me that the intruder thought he was untouchable and unkillable. And the sad fact was, up until this point, he was right. None of my automated defenses had stopped him for long. He was a force of nature wrapped in a gray, muscular nightmare.
Desperate times called for desperate measures. I decided to use the environment itself. I triggered a series of demolition charges in the support beams above him. The floor of the deck above collapsed, dropping tons of reinforced durasteel and stone on top of the bounty hunter. If my artificial gravity systems were fully functional, I could have simply increased the pressure until he was a pancake, but I had to work with what I had.
The ceiling came down with a thunderous roar. For a moment, there was silence. I felt a pang of genuine sadness as I looked at the monitors. This little attack had ruined my Eden ship. My favorite fruit trees, some of which were the last of their kind, were now burning or crushed. My personal space had been violated and my time had been wasted. The only thing that would slightly make up for this loss was the scientific value of the bounty hunter's body.
I made my way toward the mess of collapsed material. I brought several reinforced containment canisters and a team of medical droids. I intended to claim my prize while he was pinned down. However, I got arrogant. Just as I stepped into the clearing, the rubble turned over with a violent explosion of strength.
A massive, thick tentacle swiped me off my feet before I could even raise a hand. The force was incredible. I flew through the air, tearing through two interior walls before finally coming to a stop in the next compartment.
I groaned, my armor absorbing the worst of the impact, but my ego was bruised. It was my fault. I should have gassed the entire room. I should have blasted the rubble until it was nothing but molten slag. I should have poured liquid metal on him and then fired the entire ship into the heart of the nearest sun.
The bounty hunter pulled himself out of the debris. He seemed to have a bit of a classic villain in him. He walked over to where I lay, picked me up by the neck with a single massive limb, and began to monologue.
"Is this the great Bee?" he laughed, the sound bubbling deep in his chest. "A fat man in a metal suit. I expected a challenge. I expected a god. Instead, I find a merchant playing soldier."
His laughter did not last long. I reached up and grabbed the tentacle wrapped around my throat. With a surge of Force enhanced strength, I tore his appendage away from my neck. Before he could react, I stood up and slapped him so hard that his head twisted like a spinning top.
Nothing hit quite like a genetically enhanced body that had been infused with shadow magic from the Nightsisters and amplified by a technologically advanced suit. When you added the Force into that equation, I became a living wrecking ball.
I stepped forward and began to use a fighting technique I had learned during my time in prison. It was a brutal, efficient style that focused on open palm strikes. I rained blows down on the Gen'Dai, targeting his chest and head. I bruised and harmed him with every strike, and for the first time, he looked confused. His body would not listen to him. He tried to swing back, but his muscles seized up.
"What is this?" he hissed, his body rippling in agony. "You are just a man."
"I am a man who does his homework," I said, delivering another palm strike to his midsection.
The strikes were a bluff in a way. I knew that if a heavy blaster bolt could not permanently harm him, a slap certainly would not either. Instead, I had fused my Force lightning into each strike. My lightning was blood red, a byproduct of my unique history and temperament. It was incredibly effective against droids, but it was even better against this bounty hunter.
The Gen'Dai were tough, yes. Their bodies were clusters of regenerative tentacles without vital organs. They were perfect killing machines. But they had one glaring weakness: their nervous system. Because they were made of so many individual tentacles, they had an astronomical number of nerves running through their bodies.
Any type of high frequency electricity or Force lightning caused those nerve clusters to seize. It created a total paralysis effect. The more he tried to regenerate, the more the electricity traveled through his new cells, locking him in a cycle of pain and immobility.
The bounty hunter did not understand what was happening to him, but it did not matter. He was now defenseless. He slumped against the remains of a fountain, his tentacles twitching uselessly.
"You... you cheated," he managed to choke out.
"There is no such thing as cheating when someone breaks into my home," I said, standing over him. I adjusted my suit, feeling the power hum through the plates. "There is only winning and losing. You chose to lose the moment you touched my trees."
I waved the medical droids forward. They began to deploy the containment field.
"Unit 5, tell the crew to start the cleanup," I said into my comms. "And get the research team ready. I want to know everything about how this man's cells function. If I can bottle this regeneration, I will be the richest man in five different galaxies."
I looked down at the paralyzed hunter one last time. "Don't worry. You'll be very helpful to the Grove. Your body is going to save a lot of lives. Eventually."