Tyrant 2 (Patreon)

Tyrant
Chapter 2

-VB-

82 BBY

The Simurgh and I disappeared soon after everyone on Feldwes learned that something funky was going on with their skies. A quick teleport and a walk after, I found myself in a local computer cafe.

Thanks to the industrial and polluting nature of Feldwes’s major employers, the culture of this planet ended up revolving around indoor entertainment. It wasn’t like back on Earth where everyone had to share a single planet; there were millions of planets out there, nevermind asteroid stations, space stations, and orbital habitats, and as such, no one really cared if a few planets blacked itself with smog and acid. 

I digressed. 

Due to its indoorsie entertainment culture, shops like holonet cafes were easy to see and use. 

It was from one such cafe that I began to plot how I was going to go about being a king. It didn’t take me long to find local (as in local star cluster) geopolitical issues to take advantage of. Namely, slavery, and its mere prescence drew me in. 

I thought about it. 

My head knew that this attraction was because of the damnable Geas the ROB had ingrained in me without my permission. My body just wanted it. To lord myself over sentient properties and be … a king.

I groaned as I realized that I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. The more time passed, the more this desire became. Merely sitting in this cafe and looking up slavery was enough to drive me up the walls, and only my tight control over myself kept it from showing up.

… Blast it. 

Alright, I needed a ship. 

But first, what exactly was I going to do? I’ve already established to myself that I wanted to be some kind of a king. But what kind of king did I want to become? 

I knew that it had to be some sort of dictator or tyrant if not because of how I wanted, but also because of what the bastard ROB did to me. 

A slaver tyrant?

I sighed in part resignation and in part acceptance. 

I was going to be a slaving tyrant like the rulers of old Earth. 

My course set, I knew what I had to do next.

A ruler reigned over a region. In the vastness of the Star Wars galaxy, one could not overstate just how mindbogglingly many people lived in this place. Coruscant alone probably had more than a trillion heads and there are other ecumenopolis like Coruscant. 

The best thing I could do was put a distance between myself and the center of the galaxy.

It came down to the Outer Rim, right where I was.

It had to be in this region that I built my empire, which meant that I had to take over a planet or even a solar system to start my empire building.

Beyond that, I needed to find my Enemy.

It came back to ships. I had no intention of becoming my new empire’s infrastructure with my powers. I could not be its sole military, sole “road builder,” and more. 

‘Simurgh,’ I called to the Endbringer. The winged Beast of Chaos answered my call with a thrill not unlike a bird call. ‘Can you build a non-Tinkertech spaceship on par with small capital ships?’ It answered in positive. ‘What do you need?’

It explained to me - in ways I could only dub as “Shardspeak” - that it didn’t need anything so much as it only required operational freedom to extract, refine, and manufacture the ship in question. 

But it suggested something else. While it can provide me with the ship to my specification, it assured me that it can also plot a course for a profitable raid on unsuspecting colonies. A quick jump and I would have my first “subjects.”

It sent me a mental map of planets to teleport to and ships already there.

‘You’ve been using other Shards for this information, haven’t you?’

It thrilled in shameless affirmation. 

I rolled my eyes as I stood up and left the cafe, paying a few chits for the stay and crap caff I’d been served. I made my way between two factories right across the street and turned a corner-.

-My Shards teleported me to the destination Simurgh had in mind-

-into a whole different planet with more green and ships. In fact, I actually had turned a corner of a ship. 

And fire. 

Lots of fire.

Lots of screaming, too.

Simurgh updated me on where I was and what was happening. 

It was a slave raid on a planet, and they were just starting to load up their prisoners.

The slavers, a collection of species primarily made up of humans and transdoshans, bipedal reptilian humanoids famous for their conflict with the wookies and also known for their common appearance amongst slavers. 

Someone saw me and began shouting. I merely rolled my eyes and reached for a power. 

I used two Shards, one for time dilation and another for an Alexandria package with a hint of blue halo. As time dilated to a tenth of its normal speed for me while my thought process remained, I used the third slot for a Thinker power. 

But just as I had wanted a time stop but got time dilation and asked for an invulnerability power and got an Alexandria package of unknown power level with a blue halo, I got a Thinker power that let me better understand the situation, not tell me what happened.

Eidolon’s power, people. 

Maybe I should have slotted for conscious selection of Shards rather than conscious control over Endbringers. … Actually, let’s not change that even by accident. I liked the control very much.

Ugh, I digressed. 

I looked around and my Thinker-aligned Shard told me a few things. One, this colony was in the Mid Rim, not the Outer Rim where I wanted to settle-.

[Acknowledgement. Resettlement?]

-but I can move my new … slaves, yes. Speaking of resettlement, was there a suitable planet for colonization? I intended to be a king, and by no means was I going to work my way up through asslicking and bureaucracy.

[Pinging Shard Network]

… So the parsing was going to take some time. It made sense considering how many habitable planets were in the Star Wars galaxy.

I turned my focus to the slavers whose slow movements in my time dilated perspective made me want to yawn. They were reaching for their meager blaster pistols and rifles, which were no match against a high-tier Alexandria package. 

Not that they knew. 

I turned off the time dilation effect and switched out the Thinker for a Mover. What came to me was a “blitz” style Mover power; each “move” I made left behind two afterimages, and allowed me to cross a hundred-thirty-one meters in a single second. 

Good enough for me. 

In an instant, I crashed into a human with my fist extended. His head exploded into a shower of bone fragments and gore. I allowed myself to inspect if I’ve been damaged from the high speed impact, but saw nothing on my fist. 

It took two seconds before the rest of the people realized what happened.

“JEDI!”

… The fuck? Seriously?

I was half-tempted to play along with it, but knew better than to let it happen; the Jedi Order on Coruscant was a narrow minded genocidal religious order that struck down even their own sects with extreme prejudice. 

If they heard that there was a murderous “Jedi” out here in the Mid Rim, then they were going to start investigating. 

I ain’t taking another Wanted without getting the points.

“You just had to call me a Jedi,” I sighed before I blitzed across the burning settlement. One by one, I decimated each slaver by decapitating their heads. 

I was done within the minute. 

I turned to the huddled and shivering slaves who looked at me with wide eyes and trembling lips. I grinned maliciously.

One of them fainted.

Time to put up a show.

“Greetings, my new property!” I called out cheerfully (because killing these slavers actually made me feel better). “I will be your new benevolent master instead of these fools who would have sold you off to die in some mine somewhere or a brothel where you will be infected with numerous sexually transmitted diseases!”

Some of them grimaced at what could have been their future while most looked wary of me. 

“Fear not, I have no need for the likes of you to die meaninglessly like these slavers!” I nodded to myself as I picked up one of the heads of a … huh, a Neimodian. I smiled with all of my teeth out… and crushed the head into a pulp with but a single squeeze. “You will be taken very well as my new property, and you can certainly believe that I am not one to needlessly sell off my asset.”

I surveyed my property (and didn’t that make my spine shiver in delight). There were a lot less men here and a lot more women. I switched out the “blitz” Shard for a Thinker power that let me scan the area around and … yup, the slavers killed a lot more men than women. 

This slave run was meant to supply some slave world’s need for feminine touch.

I snorted. 

I supposed that these slaves will be serving me, instead.

Actually, where in the Mid Rim was this planet? If it was close enough to the Outer Rim, then I might not even have to move. 

Hell, I can declare myself king right here right now if the location was suitable enough.

I pointed to the nearest slave, a moogan. “You. What planet is this?” I demanded.

“T-This is the planet Velddan of Unnamal system in the Perkell Sector.”

Perkell Sector? That was a sector that bordered the Outer Rim directly. The sector itself was not an important sector with very little distinguishing features. It had a hyperlane running through it, but that was about it. 

Such hyperlane would make any “oppressive” force sent by the Core and the Galactic Republic a hassle to deal with. Jedi Order could send a dozen of their knights and masters in a jiffy if the situation called for it.

And I certainly would warrant it over time.

I tsked my tongue. ‘I guess I can’t make this world mine, yet.’ I looked over my new slaves and couldn’t help but feel that they were … lacking. 

“Are there any objections to my takeover?”

There were none.

“Good. Then separate yourselves into groups. To my left, I want groups that have specialization that isn’t manual labor. Everyone else, I want you to step to my right.”

Though they were not chained, they made no move to flee; they’d seen me move faster than they could see, so they knew that fleeing wasn’t an option. 

One of them ran for it anyway. A woman from the larger group to my right sprinted directly away from me from the back end of the group.

I sighed, switched some powers around, and in a blitz, I was facing her back with no more than half a meter between us. I snapped my hand out, and struck the side of her neck. There was a jerk as she took the hit and she collapsed onto the dirty rocky ground, unmoving.

Shards told me that she was still alive, just unconscious from the shock of the attack.

Good.

I turned to the rest of the slaves.

“I hope there won’t be a second time…?” I asked.

They kept their heads bowed and their eyes away from me.

I switched out the blitz for a different power: a master power that made semi-autonomous projections of my imagination. With a swish of my finger, a six-armed tiger rakshasa appeared by my side without any fanfare.

The slaves shrieked in fear when they saw the creature, despite being residents of a galaxy with far deadlier and fiercer looking creatur-.

I looked up and saw the tiger rakshasa.

“My, my. What big fans you have.”

Nonchalantly, I grabbed the girl - it was a girl barely in her adulthood, not a woman - and tossed her to the rakshasa. It caught her and tossed her over its shoulder, aware of the mental orders I gave it.

I turned back to the slaves.

“The next creature I have to call forth will eat the slave that tries to run. Understood?”

No answer, only more subservient shifting.

“Answer verbally to my direct questions. Understood?” I drawled louder.

“Y-Yes,” a small chorus answered me.

“Good.” More shifting of powers. While I did not have Doormaker, I had similar enough powers all scattered throughout. “Gate,” I declared as I stabbed into the air behind me, and a maw of darkness opened up. “Rakshasa, walk through first.” I turned to the slaves as it did so. “The non-specialists will follow through next, and then I will go. Finally, the specialists will walk through right behind me.”

There were only five people who claimed that they had some labor specialization anyway. 

-VB-

The planet that I opened this portal to was an Outer Rim planet that I - as in this body’s former owner - knew about. 

It was a simple agri-world in the Spadja Sector of the Outer Rim, not too far from Feldwes, with a population barely over one hundred thousand sentients. 

First thing I needed was infrastructure, and there were towns that had them for me and my five dozen slaves.

After making ten more rakshasa and putting them on guard duty, I flew over to one such town.

The town of Arrila had barely two thousand people, but they had an apartment complex and a small factory (closer to a workshop in size, but it was inside a warehouse to give it that “factory” feeling).

I came down from the sky with Khonsu above me, and the people began to move away from me while a few of the more hard headed and old fashioned men and women of the town went for their blasters for those who had them, anyways.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of Arrila. I demand to meet with the mayor of this town,” I declared. 

It wasn’t long before the mayor appeared, flanked on either side by wary and nervous guards(?) who kept on switching their attention between Khonsu and me. The mayor was an old human man.

“What are your demands?” the mayor asked.

“Become part of my new kingdom.”

The mayor stared at me, looked around, and then stared at me again before he spoke up. “You are serious.” The unspoken question was ‘You are but one man.’

“I have nineteen more of these guys at my command,” I replied as I thumbed at Khonsu, who stood watchfully behind me. 

“You will anger the entire planet with this.”

I raised a single eyebrow before I sent Khonsu away. In its place, Behemoth came out. Its single baleful eye glared down at the people around me.

“Behemoth, please blast that moon.”

It looked up and saw a single moon. It looked down at me with a question.

“No, no. Don’t destroy it. Just scorch the surface.”

It grumbled not out of frustration but just a simple way of acknowledgement and looked up. It opened its jaw and -

ZAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo

A beam of light blasted through the air and speared towards the moon. After a minute of howling minutes making all other sounds mute, we watched - I in glee and the others in horror - as the beam struck the surface of the moon, and blackened a visible portion of it.

Behemoth stopped after the third minute, but the rest of us continued to stare at a patch of black spot on the moon that hadn’t been there three minutes ago.

I looked back down.

Smiling maliciously with the corners of my lips stretched from jaw to jaw and my teeth displayed in a show of hostility, I replied to the mayor’s unspoken question. “I believe that this planet, if not the entire system, will be under my control within the day.”