I had had enough.
The patience I had cultivated over two centuries was vast. It was deep. It was like an ocean that could swallow insults and setbacks without a ripple. But every ocean has a floor, and the Nightsisters had finally dredged mine.
I did not want to stay on this planet any longer. The air tasted of rot and betrayal. The red light of the star felt like an accusation. But the final straw that broke the camel's back was not an insult to my face or a failed assassination attempt by my incompetent students. It was the attack on my Eden ship using a wild Rancor.
I stood outside the ship, my boots sinking into the crimson mud. Before me lay the smoking carcass of the beast. It was a magnificent creature, a mountain of muscle and instinct that had been mind twisted by the witches into a frenzy. It had charged my ship, roaring in confusion and pain, only to be met by the automated point defense systems.
A well placed missile had removed its head.
"Poor bastard," I muttered, looking at the cauterized stump of its neck.
I genuinely felt bad about it. The Rancor had no quarrel with me. It was just an animal living its life until these hags decided to use it as a battering ram. That casual disregard for life, that wasteful expenditure of a biological resource, offended the businessman in me. It offended the living being in me.
Because of that, I had taken action. I was done playing the benevolent uncle. I was done being the eccentric off worlder.
In the medical bay of my ship, strapped to a bio bed, was one of the Elder Nightsisters. She was the one who had coordinated the Rancor attack. She was ancient, her skin like crumpled parchment, her eyes milky with blind sight but sharp with malice.
"You cannot hold me, outlander," she rasped. "The Mother will come. The shadows will eat you."
"I am the one doing the eating today," I said coldly.
I was tired of being attacked. I wanted to retaliate, but I still did not know the why of it all. Why did they want me to train some low level, snot filled kids in the ways of the Force when they clearly did not care about the training? Why try to kill me while simultaneously demanding my help? It was contradictory. It was bad business.
I placed my hand on her forehead. Usually, I used a mix of Force Drain and pleasure stimulation to extract information painlessly. It was efficient. It left the subject pliable.
Today, I did not feel like being efficient.
I drove my mind into hers like a vibro spike. I did not use the pleasure centers. I used the pain receptors.
"Tell me," I commanded, my voice layered with the Force. "What is the plan?"
She screamed. It was a dry, rattling sound. Her mental barriers crumbled under my brute force assault. The truth poured out of her mind and into mine, disjointed and horrifying.
The answer was everything.
I had made the mistake of thinking that the Nightsisters only stayed in their home world, content to brew potions and ride giant slugs. That was true for the most part, but not always. The Nightsisters had had a change of heart. They wanted to branch out. They wanted security. They wanted a weapon that could walk among the stars without being tethered to Dathomir.
They wanted me.
But they did not want me as a partner. They wanted my body. They wanted my resources.
The images from her mind showed a ritual. A special funeral. They intended to kill me, mummify my corpse, and place it in a pod within one of their sacred Spirit Trees. Using their dark magic and the green ichor of the world, they wanted to reanimate me. They wanted to turn me into a revenant, a zombie puppet that retained my connection to the Force and my knowledge of technology, but with no will of its own.
They wanted to control my corporations, my fleets, and my wealth by puppeting my dead body.
But why the charade? Why the apprentices? Why not just attack me with the full might of the coven?
"The bond," the Elder gasped, tears of blood leaking from her eyes as I dug deeper. "It must be... betrayal."
It was a stipulation of their magic. For the green ichor to fully seep into a powerful Force user and bind them eternally, the victim had to view the killer as an ally. There had to be a severing of trust to create the metaphysical wound where the magic could enter.
I had to be seen as a friend, a teacher, a mentor. And then, one of the younglings, someone I had grown to trust, would murder me. That betrayal would open the door for their possession.
"You sick, twisted witches," I whispered, pulling my hand back.
Their damn magic was powerful, but it held many weaknesses and stipulations. It was bureaucracy in metaphysical form.
I looked down at the Elder. She was panting, broken, her mind fractured by my intrusion.
"You wanted my life force?" I asked. "You wanted to drain me to fill your trees?"
I reached out with both hands.
"Let me show you how it is done."
I did not pull punches. I did not use anesthesia. I drained her. I drank her life force like a man dying of thirst. I felt her energy, thick and spicy with Dark Side corruption, flood into me. She withered, turning from an old woman into a husk, and then into dust. Her scream died in her throat as her vocal cords desiccated.
It was not justice. It was consumption.
I felt a rush of power that was intoxicating. The Dark Side welled up inside me, fed by the planet's natural aura and my own righteous fury. My hands shook, not with fear, but with anticipation.
I turned and marched to the bridge.
"Status," I barked.
"Sir," Unit 5 reported. "Multiple life forms surrounding the ship. They are chanting."
"Let them chant."
I walked to the comms station and flipped the switch to open a channel to the external speakers. I cranked the volume to the maximum.
"Attention," my voice boomed across the swamp, echoing off the canyon walls. "Attention, you primitive, backwater swamp rats."
Outside, the chanting faltered.
"I am tired of your shit," I continued, my voice cold and hard as durasteel. "There are repercussions to your actions. I know everything. I know about the funeral. I know about the zombie puppet show. I know about your tiny, pathetic little plans."
I paused, letting the silence hang heavy over the gathering coven.
"You make me sick. The deal is off."
I signaled Unit 5. "Bring them in."
Across the sky, the clouds parted. They did not part for sunlight. They parted for durasteel.
A fleet of killing machines entered the atmosphere. These were not trade ships. These were my private enforcers. Sleek, predator class frigates and swarms of automated droid fighters descended like a plague of locusts. The sound of their engines was a deafening roar that shook the trees to their roots.
The Nightsisters who had surrounded my ship looked up. I could see them on the monitors. Their arrogance evaporated, replaced by the primal fear of a species realizing it is no longer the top of the food chain.
"This is going to be the hardest lesson you will ever learn," I said into the microphone. "And I am glad to teach you."
The Dark Side surged. My vision tinged red. I was shaking.
"Fire," I whispered.
Laser batteries locked onto the surrounding forest. They did not target the witches directly yet. They targeted the perimeter. Explosions bloomed like fiery flowers, vaporizing ancient trees and turning the swamp water to steam.
The ground shook. The ship vibrated.
I gripped the console. The Dark Side was controlling me. It was whispering sweet, violent things in my ear.
Glass the planet, it said. Burn them all. Strip the atmosphere. Watch them suffocate. Do it. It is efficient. It is safe. It is final.
I desperately wanted to do it. I wanted to turn Dathomir into a lifeless rock. I wanted to erase this stain from the galaxy.
But my mind battled the dark and stupid side. My intelligence, my knowledge of the timeline, fought back against the red haze.
What would be the repercussions of killing this entire sect of Nightsisters?
The answer was messy. Any survivors would go into hiding. They would buy their time. They would nurse a grudge that would span centuries. I would earn myself a blood feud with a powerful, unified group of magical Force users who specialized in assassination.
Furthermore, the Nightsisters had a part to play in history. Palpatine needed Mother Talzin. Asajj Ventress needed to be born. Darth Maul needed to be restored. By destroying them now, I would change the future. I would create variables I could not predict.
This was unacceptable. Stability was profit. Chaos was a risk.
However, the Nightsisters could not get away with this. The Dark Side was messing with me, but it was right about one thing. They had to pay.
I demanded to be paid in blood.
"Unit 5," I ordered, my voice straining as I held back the urge to order a planetary bombardment. "Target the clearing. Maximum yield. Non nuclear."
"Sir?" the droid queried. "The clearing is empty."
"It won't be," I said.
I ordered the droids to load the desiccated remains of the Elder Nightsister onto a transport skiff. We launched it out of the cargo bay. It hovered over the clearing where the Nightsisters had gathered, a silent, mocking offering.
"Watch," I commanded the witches over the speakers. "Watch what happens to those who think they can own me."
Every weapon from the battleships, every turbolaser, every ion cannon, every concussion missile, locked onto that single, floating transport.
"Burn."
The sky turned white.
The resulting firepower was enough to crack a continent. A pillar of pure energy slammed into the ground. It did not stop. I kept the order active. For minutes that felt like hours, the beam drilled into the planet.
The Nightsisters who had surrounded my Eden ship scattered, diving into their caves, taking shelter in the bosom of their green ichor magic, praying to gods that had no power against physics.
The sound was beyond deafening. It was a physical weight that pressed the air out of your lungs.
When the dust finally settled, days later, the landscape was changed.
The crater left behind was larger than a city. It was deeper than a lake. The rock had been turned to glass. Smoke rose from it in lazy spirals.
All for a single Elder Nightsister's grave.
The message was very clear. Mess with me at your peril.
I stood on the bridge, watching the devastation. The rage in my blood began to cool, replaced by a cold, calculating pragmatism.
If the Nightsisters thought I was finished, they were sorely mistaken. Violence was just the punctuation. The sentence was isolation.
I removed myself from the Dark Side powered planet. I felt the pressure lift from my mind as we broke orbit. I gave up the revenge I so desperately wanted, the satisfaction of hearing their screams, and chose the path of the long game.
"Station the fleet in high orbit," I ordered. "Activate the blockade protocols."
I left my ships there. They were a constant reminder. A sword of Damocles hovering over their heads.
"Open a channel to the Senate Banking Clan."
"Channel open, Master Bee."
"This is Bee," I said, my voice returning to its smooth, corporate timbre. "Effective immediately, the Dathomir system is under a Class One quarantine. There is a... plague. A magical plague. Highly contagious."
I paused.
"Any ship attempting to land or leave will be fired upon. Any trade guild offering supplies will have their contracts with my corporation terminated. Any Senator advocating for aid will find their funding for the next election cycle disappearing."
Trade was cut from the planet. The Senate was bribed, ordered, and even threatened with my displeasure if they offered any help at all. No one entered. No one left.
The Nightsisters would truly be alone. They would be an isolationist clan not by choice, but by my word. The word of Bee.
I sat back in my command chair. I was still trying to keep a low profile ready for the Empire, but this was one of those times when a very public message needed to be sent. It was necessary to ease my mind from the Dark Side. It was necessary for the protection of the Nightsisters, strangely enough.
After all, if I did not get the satisfaction I wanted from their agony now, through isolation and fear, I might come back later. And if I came back, I would not be so restrained.
"Course set for The Grove, sir," Unit 5 said.
"Engage," I said. "And Unit 5?"
"Sir?"
"Remind me never to visit a swamp again."
The stars stretched into lines of light. I left Dathomir behind, a green jewel wrapped in a cage of durasteel. They wanted to be alone in the dark? Fine. I just turned off the lights.