Usually, I would have my droids look over any contracts and paperwork. They were efficient, tireless, and capable of processing millions of words in a second. But the way the officials and the Jedi had behaved during our meeting caused me to go down one of my paranoia tunnels. Paranoia was a bad habit for a normal person, leading to sleepless nights and ruined relationships. But when you have the Force backing you up and basically whispering, "Yes, you are correct, they are out to get you," it became a powerful survival tool.
I sat in my office, the physical stack of durasheet paper towering on my desk like a small skyscraper. I had printed it out. I did not trust screens today.
"Unit 5," I said, rubbing my eyes. "Get me lawyers. Flesh and blood ones. The greediest, most paranoid legal minds money can buy. I want them here within the hour."
"Sir, human lawyers are significantly slower than my processing algorithms," Unit 5 protested mildly.
"I know," I replied. "But humans have something you don't. They have a sense for treachery."
I paid and threatened a team of five high-priced lawyers to go over the contract while I slowly read it line for line myself. Having many eyes on the contract would help me, even if I missed something. They sat around my conference table, sweating in their expensive suits, terrified of the man in the fat suit and the rumors that surrounded him.
The lawyers would send me many messages pointing out possible problems.
"Sir," one lawyer, a Rodian with twitchy antennae, said. "Clause 45 subsection B regarding tariff exemptions seems slightly unfavorable."
"Mark it," I grunted, not looking up. "But keep digging."
It took three days. My eyes burned, and my patience was wearing thin. But then, I found it. It was a little detail of a paragraph hiding under a headline near the back of the vast amount of pages. It was buried in the appendix regarding "Standard Ethical Standards for Galactic Representation."
I felt the Force prickle at the back of my neck. I read it once. Then I read it again.
"You have got to be joking," I whispered.
"What is it, sir?" the Rodian asked.
"Read this," I said, sliding the sheet down the table.
Anyone who joined the Senate as a leader of their piece of the galaxy could not hold a seat on the board of any corporation, company, firm, and so on. Even owning a peanut farm was too much and would need to be sold if you wanted to join the Senate. It was a total divestment clause.
For me, that meant I would have to get rid of my absolute control over my shares in my healing halls, food halls, Eden shipbuilding, shipping corporation, food production, medical corporation, and everything in between.
"If I sign this," I said, my voice cold, "I strip myself naked."
"It says here," the lawyer read, his voice trembling, "that if the assets are not sold within thirty standard days, the Galactic Senate will hold them in 'arrears' to prevent conflicts of interest. They will charge a management fee of twenty percent."
"Twenty percent," I laughed, a harsh sound. "And there is no doubt in my mind that the Galactic Senate would never give up their hold over my companies once they had them. They would manage them right into their own pockets."
I looked at Unit 5. "Why didn't you find this?"
"I have scanned the digital document four thousand times, Master Bee," the droid said, sounding genuinely distressed. "That paragraph does not exist in my file."
"Bring the pad here," I ordered.
I looked at the digital version. I scrolled to the section. It wasn't there. Then I scrolled back up. It wasn't there either. I used the Force to focus my eyes, slowing down my perception.
"There," I said, pointing. "It moved."
The answer was a nice bit of programming that worked against the droid's mega-fast computing power. The paragraph that held the conflict of interest rule was coded to "jump" to a different part of the contract if it was speedily analyzed. It was a quantum-text algorithm. If you read it at the speed of a droid, the text literally displaced itself to a section the droid had already scanned or had not yet reached.
"It is a ghost paragraph," I said, admiring the trap. "My droids would never see it because they read too fast. It relies on the observer effect."
"It is... a brilliant bit of coding," Unit 5 admitted, his vocabulator lowering in shame. "I have been fooled."
"Do not feel bad," I said, leaning back. "It is a good lesson that even my most useful tools can be fooled. This doesn't mean I won't strike back. However, I have to do it legally."
I turned to the lawyers. "Draft a response. We accept the seat."
The lawyers looked at me like I was insane. "But sir, your assets..."
"I said we accept the seat," I smiled. "I didn't say I was taking it."
And so, a puppet Prime Minister became part of the Galactic Senate. I found a man named Valen, a mid-level bureaucrat from one of my glassed worlds who had a nice smile and absolutely no spine. I appointed him the official Prime Minister of the Grove.
"I am... I am honored, Master Bee," Valen stammered as I pinned the sash on him. "But what do I actually own?"
"You own the title," I said, patting him on the shoulder. "And you rule over the citizens of the Grove."
"But who are the citizens?" he asked.
"Me," I said. "And since I own everything, you rule over one person. Yourself. Now go to Coruscant and sign whatever I tell you to sign."
++++++++
Because it was me who owned everything in the Grove, it essentially meant the Prime Minister ruled over nothing of value. The divestment clause didn't apply to me because I wasn't the Senator. It didn't apply to him because he didn't own anything to divest.
The Galactic Senate realized they had been played almost immediately. They tried to mess with me.
"Master Bee," Unit 5 reported a week later. "We have received a proposal from the Senate Trade Commission. They want to trade your 'dead' solar system for a thriving, habitable system in the Mid-Rim. They claim it is a gesture of goodwill."
"A trade?" I frowned. "Something like that is too good to be true. And if it is too good to be true, it is a lie."
I looked at the star charts. The system they wanted to trade for was empty. It was a dead star with a few rock planets. Why would they want that?
"Zoom out," I ordered. "Show me the hyperlanes."
The map expanded. There it was.
"They don't want the system," I realized. "They want the stellar routes that lay just outside of the dead solar system. They are trying to nationalize my trade routes."
If they owned the system, they owned the space around it. They could set up toll booths on the main arteries of my shipping lines. They were trying to take my extensive trade routes and tax me into oblivion.
The greedy little shits learned that the puppet Prime Minister had no power. When they presented the trade deal to Valen, he simply shrugged.
"I cannot sign that," Valen had told the furious Senators. "I don't own the trade routes. A private corporation called 'Bee Logistics' owns the navigational data."
When the legal route failed, the Senate got nasty. They believed that under some obscure maritime law, they now owned the jurisdiction regardless of the deed. They sent Judicial Forces to start interfering with my ships. They started boarding my transports and, more importantly, they started stopping the Hutt Cartel's spice runners who paid me for safe passage.
"This is unacceptable," a Hutt representative barked at me over a hologram. "We pay you for the fast lane, Bee. Not for Republic inspections."
"Don't worry," I said, checking the readiness of my fleets. "I am about to close the road for construction."
A nice little fleet of Pirates, bounty hunters, and a private army full of the scum of the galaxy forced its way to the front lines. I had called in every favor and opened the coffers. Alongside them were the Hutts' enforcers. They hovered there menacingly, neither taking action nor sending messages. Each one had heavy weapons charged and ready to fire.
The pressure the simple Galactic Law Enforcement agencies felt was intense. These were glorified police officers in patrol cruisers staring down heavy frigate-class pirate vessels.
"Unidentified fleet," a Republic Captain hailed us, his voice cracking with stress. "You are impeding a lawful government operation. Disperse immediately or we will... we will take action."
"Unit 5, reply to them," I said, eating a grape.
"Republic Vessel," Unit 5 transmitted. "This is a private security contractor conducting a live-fire exercise. You are currently in the blast zone. We suggest you relocate."
The Galactic Law Enforcement agencies issued a warning, and then threats, followed by an almost pleading begging.
"Please," the Captain said. "We have orders to secure this lane."
"And we have orders to test our new mining equipment," I replied personally this time. "Deploy the swarm."
The mercenaries deployed a vast amount of mining droids designed by me. I had made these little bots years ago. They were small, spherical, and equipped with high-intensity cutting lasers. The problem was, I had found that they destroyed the ore they picked up because the lasers were too powerful. They were useless for mining, but they were perfect for this.
If the Senate tried to take my trade routes again, they would find cheap little bots ramming and cutting their expensive battlecruisers.
"Sir!" the Republic Captain shouted over the comms. "We have thousands of small contacts. They are latching onto our hulls!"
"They are just mining samples," I said innocently. "They are programmed to cut through heavy minerals. Sometimes they confuse durasteel hull plating for ore. It is a glitch. I would leave before they turn your life support systems into scrap metal."
The mining bots were easy to destroy and to outmaneuver, but they were cheap to make. The best part was that with a little tweak, the mining bots turned into explosive ship-seeking mines. And that was how the borders of the Grove and most of my trading routes were armed.
It was only after a brief message from one of my droids confirming the bots were cutting into their engines that the Galactic Law Enforcement agencies calmed down and relaxed. They realized this whole thing was above their pay grade. Something like this was a Galactic Senate fleet problem, not a police matter.
"Retreat!" I heard the Captain order. "All units, fall back to the sector border!"
This little act was a combined maneuver of the Hutts and myself. It cost me a pretty penny to hire the mercenaries, but I did the math. A whole four hours of trade on the stellar routes would cover the cost of the entire operation. It was a bargain.
The law enforcers backed down quickly as they were only trained in dealing with defenseless citizens. They didn't know how to handle a corporation that hit back.
As I watched the Republic ships jump away, I sat back in my chair.
"We have secured the perimeter, Master Bee," Unit 5 said. "The Trade Federation has also sent a message applauding your defense of 'free trade'."
"Of course they did," I grunted.
There were many things to learn from this whole situation. One thing was that my most useful tools known as droids could be fooled. The code in the contract was a wake-up call. I had relied too much on automation and not enough on intuition.
"Unit 5," I said, standing up. "Order a full diagnostic of your optical subroutines. And order me a set of slicing tools."
"Slicing tools, sir?"
"Yes," I said, looking at my hands. "I think it might be a good idea to get good with my tools personally. Next time they try to hide code from me, I want to be the one to rewrite it."
I looked at the carbon-frozen Gen'Dai in the corner, then at the empty space where the Republic fleet had been.
"The galaxy is getting smarter," I murmured. "I need to get smarter with it."