Star Wars: Reborn As A Sith Medical Droid

Ned POV

Lady Maresh Vorhess surrendered in silk.

That was my first warning.

Real defeat is rarely so well dressed. It limps, sweats, bargains too quickly, offers children before jewels, jewels before land, land before pride. Vorhess received us in a marble hall beneath three moons and a roof of red glass, with musicians along the walls and servants carrying bowls of black salt as if ceremony could domesticate conquest.

Varis stood to my left.

Omega to my right.

Lana and Sorel behind, each pretending not to stare.

"Lord Asura," Maresh said, bowing. "Vorhess recognizes the new gravity."

Pretty sentence.

I disliked it.

Order moved inside my armor, quiet. "No visible military threat. Heat signatures consistent with court presence."

"Visible," I murmured.

"Yes."

The hall smelled of flowers, old stone, and poison wearing perfume.

Maresh offered terms. Grain levies. Dock access. Acolyte tribute. Archive rights. Her family would remain local governors under my oversight. Her enemies would be turned over. Her workers would be spared because she spoke of them as assets and thought that sounded merciful.

I listened.

Listening is one of the underestimated violences of rule. Men reveal where they think your hunger lives.

The music changed.

Only slightly.

Varis's hand twitched.

I saw it because my mind was already everywhere: in the angle of Maresh's left shoulder, the pulse in the servant's throat, the reflection in the red glass, the singer's tongue touching a tooth before the next line.

Then the poison entered.

Not through cup or blade.

Through sound.

Force-threaded poison carried in the court prayer, tuned to the telemetry rhythms of living vessels. It struck my body like a false command. Heart slow. Muscle loosen. Nanite mesh desynchronize. Emotion regulation spike. Order's voice broke into static.

"Father-"

The hall folded.

For one breath I was not faster than them.

That was all they needed.

Bloodline assassins dropped from behind the red glass.

Vorhess smiled.

Varis moved before I did.

He crossed in front of me and cut the singer's throat before the final verse could complete. His blade then turned, not to defend himself, but to open the first assassin's mask from chin to crown.

"Old family prayer," he said, voice hard. "I warned you about dressed surrender."

No, he had not.

But he would claim he had in spirit.

Order returned in fragments. "Telemetry compromised. Nanite cohesion at sixty-one percent."

"Manual control."

"Pain response will increase."

"Good."

I shut the regulation gates.

Not down.

Open.

Complete control is not the absence of feeling. It is the refusal to let feeling drive uninvited. Pain came bright and clean. Poison burned through muscle. Rage rose with it. Grief under that. Nereth under that. I held them all like blades by the edge.

Then I moved.

The first assassin expected weakness. I gave him weight. Shoulder into sternum, left foot behind his, sword low across both knees. He fell. I reversed grip and put the blade through the floor beside his face, close enough to burn skin but not kill.

"Live," I told him. "Tell me which servants knew."

The second came from above.

Force pull. Not on body. On belt buckle. His own momentum betrayed him. I stepped aside and cut through spine as he passed.

Omega took the right side of the hall.

She did not wait for permission. Two assassins came at her together, curved blades singing. She caught one wrist, let the other's blade slide along her guard, turned inside both, and made a single cut that opened one throat and the other's weapon hand. Then she kicked the hand across the marble before it stopped closing.

Lana watched too long and nearly died.

Sorel dragged her back from a thrown dart. It struck his shoulder instead. He cursed with surprising creativity and fell to one knee.

"Lana," I said.

Her eyes snapped to mine.

"Fight the room. Not me."

She flushed with fury because I had named the truth. Then she turned and killed the servant reaching for the alarm cord.

Maresh retreated toward her throne.

Of course there was a throne.

Varis met her champion halfway up the dais. Their duel was elegant, old, Sith in all the worst and best ways: feints within feints, contempt measured by inches, lightning held behind the eyes until pride demanded weather. Varis won by stepping close when the champion expected display. His blade entered under the ribs.

Small. Exact.

Reaper work before the name had fully dried.

I reached Maresh with poison still shaking my hands under the armor.

She lifted her chin. "You will need families like mine."

"I know."

"Then you cannot kill us all."

That was the tragedy.

She was almost right.

I looked across the hall. Workers pressed behind side doors. Children of the house hidden in alcoves. Guards disarmed. Servants terrified. Assassin blood running through marble grooves designed for rainwater.

"Not all," I said.

Maresh understood too late.

I executed the ruling adults of Vorhess before the red glass roof. Not the children. Not the servants. Not the workers. Not the guards who had surrendered before the music changed.

The line between justice and terror blurred there.

I will not pretend otherwise.

When the hall quieted, I sat on Maresh's throne because standing became briefly inefficient. Poison still crawled through my body. Nanites repaired what they could. Order counted damage. Omega watched me as if she could see every excuse forming before I did.

Varis stood below the dais.

"Politics," he said, "is battle with better manners."

"No," I answered. "It is battle where the knives learn music."

Outside, red rain began against the glass.

For a moment, the whole hall looked like it was falling upward.

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