Of course I know we don’t possess the leverage to survive a breach with him, Daemon screamed in his thoughts, a heavy bead of cold sweat rolling down his temple.
The galaxy was an incomprehensibly vast canvas; how had he managed to cross vectors with the single most powerful, hidden puppet master currently manipulating the stars?
“I thought your plan was to set a course for Mos Espa to handle some business?” Trent asked the moment the Falleen woman vacated the hovel.
“Disregard that,” Daemon replied, letting out a sharp breath.
“This contract carries a strict eighty-nine-hour expiration window.
We break orbit immediately and lock in the coordinates for Mygeeto.
We can map out a vector to Mos Espa later.”
He shook his head firmly.
“More importantly, given the identity of the individual who issued this commission, it appears running this leg is no longer optional.”
While he desperately wanted to secure a pipeline to the Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker, the sudden emergence of Hego Damask II forced him to freeze that operational plan.
If the young Skywalker inadvertently popped up on Damask’s financial tracking networks, it could trigger an early exposure, causing the entire Star Wars timeline to fracture completely out of his control.
Returning to the Freelancer, they found Quinto and Spard completing the pre-flight checks in the rear maintenance bays.
Old Truda had executed his work flawlessly; the freighter’s plasma fuel reserves were packed to the red line, and the fresh water and ration cells were fully replenished.
Yet, Daemon remained thoroughly unmoored, staring blankly out the cockpit viewport into the shimmering desert heat.
Trent walked over, leaning against the co-pilot console.
“You recognized our client, didn’t you?”
“You mean that Muun?” Quinto cut in, wiping grease from his hands as he stepped onto the flight deck.
“From his profile, he’s clearly a high-tier executive within the InterGalactic Banking Clan.
Damask Holdings is likely one of their primary shadow corporations.
It’s an absolute certainty that we don’t possess the teeth to push back against a giant like that.
The Banking Clan’s assets influence every civilized trade route in the galaxy.”
” Nobody breaks a contract with them; if your ledger slides into defalcation, their Collections Fleet drops out of hyperspace and strips your entire world down to the bedrock.”
The reality is far more lethal than a Collections Fleet, Daemon thought, letting out a slow, heavy sigh.
“The name, the respirator, the tailored cloak…
I wouldn’t say I know him personally, but I have mapped out the legends surrounding his operation.
He represents one of the most terrifying, unyielding shadows in galactic history, though his public profile masks his true capacity.
Our luck truly is atrocious; of all the spent ports in the Outer Rim, we had to land in the one alley he was watching.”
If his memories of the Star Wars timeline remained accurate, the Muun who had just purchased their corporate leverage was a Dark Lord of the Sith.
The Sith were the ancient, resilient remnants of an empire that had waged an apocalyptic, galaxy-spanning total war against the Galactic Republic thousands of years ago.
However, while the Jedi aligned with the light side of the current—reining in their base desires, maintaining emotional discipline, and using their gifts to preserve peace—the Sith Lords weaponized the dark side.
They indulged their raw ambitions, acted on pure instinct, and manipulated external variables with zero regard for the suffering or chaos they unleashed upon others.
Although the ancient wars had concluded with a decisive Republic victory, shattering the Sith military apparatus down to the soot, the Dark Lords had survived.
Their lineage remained anchored in the deep underbelly of the Republic, biding their time and systematically manipulating the socio-political grid to dismantle the democratic government from within.
And Daemon knew, with absolute certainty, that their conspiracy would succeed in just over a decade.
This was precisely why he had established a martial creed for the Fourth Civilization: total preparation for war.
He needed to build enough industrial leverage to carve out a secure sovereign domain before the galactic structural alignment collapsed entirely.
According to the technological specs of the Kushan mothership, their long-term potential was practically limitless.
Given a stable, uninterrupted developmental window of a century, the Fourth Civilization could comfortably field a fleet capable of challenging the absolute authority of the Republic.
But the chronological calendar didn’t grant him a century.
He had barely ten years.
Forcing a small, localized colony world to scale into an empire capable of surviving a total interstellar conflict within ten years was an industrial impossibility.
Therefore, the moment he recognized Hego Damask, a radical shift occurred in his long-term calculations.
The surface settlements on Planet Dawn could not achieve military readiness alone within a decade, but the InterGalactic Banking Clan already possessed that capacity.
And Hego Damask II was one of the absolute pillars directing that monolithic economic entity.
If Daemon could navigate this contract to secure the financial backing and logistical network of a cartel that influenced trillions of credit accounts across the Core, the militarization of the Fourth Civilization would accelerate exponentially.
They would be ready for the fires of the Clone Wars.
But the transactional cost was staggering.
To secure that leverage, he would have to step directly into the sights of the most calculating apex predator in the galaxy—the Dark Lord of the Sith.
His thoughts a tangled mess, Daemon stared out into the tracking lanes as the Freelancer roared off the packed dirt, breaking through Tatooine’s atmospheric wall and climbing into the deep dark of open space.
The moment they cleared the planet’s gravity well, Trent stabilized the vector and engaged the hyperdrive.
Starlight stretched into long, blinding lines of brilliant blue before the freighter plunged into hyperspace, vanishing from real-space in a fraction of a second.
Simultaneously, along the outer perimeter of the Arkanis sector, a Z-10 Explorer-class light scout ship was charting a course through the shifting blue corridors of hyperspace.
“Master Jinn, we are approaching our scheduled reversion point,” the pilot reported, turning back toward the passengers standing behind the flight console.
Both individuals were enveloped in heavy, unrefined linen cloaks, their hoods drawn low to cast deep shadows across their features.
“Do you sense it, Obi-Wan?
The dissonance within the current,” Qui-Gon Jinn noted, his voice calm and deeply grounded.
“I can feel it, Master,” the second individual replied, throwing back his hood to reveal a young, clean-shaven face.
His hair was cropped into a sharp, military-style buzz, save for a single, long silken braid hanging over his right temple—the definitive biological signature of a Jedi Padawan.
“The Force feels strained here, as if an unmapped mass recently disrupted the flow.”
“Residual ripples linger across the coordinate grid. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
It appears Yoda’s intuition was accurate; we have reached the source,” Qui-Gon said, his eyes scanning the navigation screens.
“But whatever triggered the disturbance—and whether the asset remains stationary or has already broken orbit—we must maintain absolute tactical readiness.
”
“For a disruption to ripple across the Core Worlds clearly enough to alert Master Yoda, the underlying variable must be monumental.”
“Understood, Master,” Obi-Wan Kenobi replied, checking his utility belt.
“How do you wish to proceed once we drop?”
“Observe the guidance of the Force, Obi-Wan; do not attempt to force your own intent onto the environment.
The cosmos moves according to an instinctual balance.
Forcing a premature alignment only introduces greater chaos into the current.”
“So, in truth, you remain skeptical of this assignment?”
Qui-Gon offered a subtle, knowing smile.
“I never said that.”
The blue light outside the viewport suddenly snapped off, and the scout ship reverted to real-space, anchored in the cold vacuum of the unmapped sector.
The pale blue sphere of the gas giant dominated their forward display, flanked by its system of nine moons trailing along distinct orbital tracks.
A sharp warning chime rang out from the primary scanner array.
The co-pilot’s fingers flew across the terminal, bringing up a three-dimensional holographic layout of the local stellar network, highlighting several structural coordinates in red.
“Master, we have active artificial infrastructure in low orbit,” the co-pilot reported, magnifying the visual tracking data.
The monitor displayed three massive, fan-shaped atmospheric extraction platforms anchored within the upper clouds of the gas giant, surrounded by over a dozen utility transports running continuous, organized logistical patterns to harvest resources.
Qui-Gon’s brow furrowed, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the industrial operation.
“Why would an enterprise establish a heavy mining grid in a desolate system like Endor?
This sector possesses zero stable hyper-lanes; the material transport costs alone should render this operation completely unprofitable.”
“Perhaps the Neimoidians of the Trade Federation have isolated a new black-market loop to pad their ledger,” Obi-Wan noted, his lips twisting into a slight sneer.
“Those corporate bureaucrats have never demonstrated an ounce of structural restraint when credits are on the line.”
Qui-Gon turned his head slightly, his tone dropping into a firm, educational register.
“Never allow personal irritation to dictate your analytical assessment, Obi-Wan.
It remains your most prominent tactical vulnerability.”
The young Padawan lowered his gaze.
“I understand, Master.”