“Ewok meat rations?” Daemon’s brow furrowed, a chill settling into his expression.
These smugglers were actively hunting down Ewoks, slaughtering them, and curing their flesh into basic food stock.
He was fully aware that exotic delicacies of this nature found a steady market across certain dark corners of the galaxy, but what he found utterly repulsive was the simple fact that Ewoks were an intelligent, sentient species.
Primitive as they were, they possessed cognitive capacity and a distinct cultural architecture.
One of the foundational facts Daemon understood was that while the Ewoks were currently locked in a Neolithic stone-age developmental loop, their neurological and physiological evolution was virtually complete.
They were an exceptionally clever, adaptable people, possessing a remarkably high baseline for technological internalization.
Despite their short stature, they carried immense physical leverage and a natural, fluid agility.
In Daemon’s analytical matrix, the Ewoks represented the definitive framework for specialized scouts, deep-wilderness irregulars, and combat mechanical engineers.
Consequently, under Daemon’s explicit directives, every active colonist within the Fourth Civilization was mandated to demonstrate absolute goodwill toward the native tribes.
They provided refined sugar rations, reinforced their clearings, and assisted with the assembly of weather-resistant modular timber lodges.
The data specialists were already processing a linguistic profile for the Ewok dialect, though its structural primitiveness kept their translation progress heavily throttled.
With these socio-political vectors already locking into place, Daemon had zero intention of allowing external scavengers to hunt his prospective assets down for black-market rations.
Granted, operations of this nature were a common institutional reality across the broader Star Wars universe, where numerous sentient species routinely found themselves on the literal menus of their neighbors.
It was a classic manifestation of inter-species friction.
If a common Terran beast of burden suddenly demonstrated higher cognitive reasoning on Earth, humanity could hardly guarantee that the global beef syndicates would immediately halt production.
Most individuals on the frontier operated on a very simple premise: I am human, you are a beast; your intelligence dictates your problem, not my menu.
“And you need to understand, this manifest belongs to Jabba the Hutt,” Quinto added quickly, catching the slight hesitation on Daemon’s face and pushing his perceived advantage.
“I don’t think I need to explain what happens to border runners who lose his cargo.”
“Jabba…” Daemon’s expression darkened, his fingers tracing a rhythmic tap against the armrest.
If their current operational path crossed vectors with Jabba, the strategic complications scaled significantly.
Jabba was one of the most powerful and ruthless criminal syndicalists within the massive Hutt network, a prominent lord of the ancient Desilijick clan.
From his fortified palace anchored on the sands of Tatooine, he directed a sprawling criminal cartel that influenced trade lines across multiple Outer Rim sectors.
Antagonizing a regional apex predator of that caliber at their current industrial tier was a severe structural liability.
Daemon locked his gaze onto Quinto, evaluating the smuggler in absolute silence.
The man was an exceptional variable—a localized, street-level guide who had fallen directly into his hands.
As border runners who navigated the deep trade rifts on a daily basis, Quinto and his crew represented the perfect navigation layer the Fourth Civilization required to slip past the Republic’s radar and engage the wider galaxy.”
Weighing the strategic yield, Daemon gave a slow, decisive nod.
“The manifest will be delivered to Tatooine as scheduled.
“However, your release carries an explicit condition.
From this day forward, your crew is officially transitioned into the payroll of the Fourth Group.
When the flight clears, our representatives will accompany you to Tatooine.”
“No!
The Cheap Hunter is my entire life!
You can’t just strip her hull from me!” Quinto blurted out, his posture fracturing.
“You arrogant little bastard!” Rianna Velas snarled, her restraint snapping as she lunged across the desk toward Daemon.
Before her hands could clear the terminal line, Daemon raised his left hand, snapping his fingers through a sharp, vertical gesture.
An invisible, hyper-dense current of kinetic energy exploded from his palm, striking Velas dead-on and hurling her backward across the command deck.
She slammed violently against the reinforced durasteel floor, her breath escaping in a ragged gasp as she struggled to clear her vision.
Scrambling back to her feet, she stared at Daemon, her eyes widening in absolute, paralyzing terror.
“You’re…
a Jedi?!”
Daemon remained entirely unbothered, neither confirming nor denying her conclusion.
He raised two fingers, his voice dropping into a cold, transactional register.
“I am presenting your crew with two explicit choices.
First, you can refuse my terms, in which case my security personnel will execute your crew and vent your remains into the orbital void like common refuse.
Second, you conform to my corporate hierarchy.
If your operational performance satisfies my metrics, you will eventually be issued a significantly higher tier of starship.”
Quinto looked down at Velas, helping her up from the deck as a bitter, defeated smile touched his lips.
“Do we actually possess a choice here?”
“The structural reality of your employment has already been demonstrated over the past week,” Daemon noted, rising from his command chair.
“Consider the absolute security and comfortable rations you have enjoyed within our borders an operational luxury you will never secure across the lawless sectors of the Republic.
Go.
I will leave the task of conditioning your remaining crew members to your discretion.”
“And our baseline compensation?” Quinto called out, desperate to salvage a shred of leverage.
Compensation?
My friend, I don’t possess a single standard credit to my own name right now, Daemon thought, letting out a dry internal sneer.
Externally, he maintained an enigmatic, freezing smile, spreading his arms to frame the sprawling command architecture of the bridge.
“Do you truly believe there is any material or financial term the Fourth Group cannot ultimately satisfy?”
Quinto and Velas looked around the vast, pristine command deck, its advanced systems humming with silent, monumental power.
They slowly lowered their heads in absolute submission.
“Retool your flight logs,” Daemon added, turning back toward his terminal. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
“I will be accompanying you to Tatooine personally.
Velas, however, will remain within our residential sectors to enjoy our hospitality while you are in transit.”
The underlying implication landed like a physical blow.
Quinto understood instantly that his partner was being retained as a high-value collateral asset to guarantee his compliance.
He lifted his gaze to object, but Velas caught his wrist, her sharp eyes signaling him to hold his tongue.
Two standard days slipped past.
With Daemon’s executive signature finalizing the charter, the Fourth Civilization was officially locked in as their sovereign collective designation, while their outward commercial operations were formalized under a corporate entity: the Fourth Group.
The rapidly scaling surface settlement was officially cataloged as ‘Dawn City,’ designated as the future sovereign capital of the Fourth Civilization.
With the foundation set, Daemon enacted a mandatory domestic directive: every newly established family unit within the civilian sectors was required to legally adopt a specimen from the embryo banks, assuming full structural guardianship over the child.
These children represented the initial extraction of the five billion dormant specimens stored within the deep cryogenic vaults.
Their genetic profiles had been meticulously adjusted; utilizing specialized biotechnology, their primary growth cycles were accelerated to full biological maturity within a five-year window, rendering them a highly advanced, stable generation of synthetic citizens far superior to standard mass-produced clones.
Integrating them directly into traditional family units was a calculated sociological move, ensuring they developed authentic emotional bonds, familial empathy, and societal loyalty rather than growing up as hollow, institutional tools of a frozen warehouse.
To ensure their cognitive development kept pace with their rapid physical scaling, every adopted youth was hooked into automated neural education arrays during their sleep cycles, systematically printing baseline scientific, linguistic, and technical data directly into their memories.
Since the colony’s entire logistics network operated strictly on a state-rationed allocation framework, the material costs of raising the children introduced zero financial strain to the civilian sectors.
Parallel to the domestic grid, Daemon initialized a heavily classified operation.
He issued a covert execution order to the engineering division, directing them to isolate a remote, unmapped territory deep within the jagged mountain ranges of Planet Dawn and construct a highly fortified, black-budget military facility.
This outpost would operate under absolute martial law, dedicated exclusively to the mass cultivation of specialized combat embryo batches.
Throughout their accelerated growth cycle, the neural arrays would print nothing but advanced tactical data, weapons proficiency, fleet aviation matrices, and pure, unadulterated combat conditioning directly into their brains.
The initial vanguard batch consisted of exactly one hundred units, their incubation pods flickering to life within the subterranean base.
As the infrastructure scaled, the recruitment metrics would expand exponentially.
This was Daemon Kane’s ultimate hidden card, a sovereign weapon forged in total shadow to meet the coming galactic storm.
The unit carried zero public records and no official names, identified across the system network strictly by a closed operational code: the Fourth Legion.
Every uniform manufactured for the detachment featured a single, minimalist insignia stamped over the chest:
4TH.
These one hundred warriors were merely the seed.
At their current industrial tier, the Fourth Civilization lacked the raw resource surplus to supply a massive standing army or sustain heavy orbital training arrays.
But as Daemon looked down at the glowing terminal, his eyes narrowed with a cold, absolute certainty.
A day was coming when the designation of 4TH.
would make the entire galaxy tremble.
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