Darth Vader had killed Jedi, soldiers, and civilians, but one of his coldest acts required no lightsaber and happened in front of the Empire’s own highest-ranking officers. After surviving attempts on his life, Vader gathered five men before the Emperor and killed all of them simultaneously. Why did he choose five officers instead of simply executing the conspirators?
Imperial Officers Tried to Remove Vader From the Empire
The story appeared in the canon comic series Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith, shortly after the creation of the Empire. Vader had recently been placed in command of the Inquisitorius, but his position within the Imperial hierarchy remained unclear. Senior officers saw an armored stranger receiving enormous authority from Palpatine without holding a conventional military rank.
Some of those officers decided that Vader had to be removed. They placed an expensive bounty on him and used a false report about a surviving Jedi to lure him into a trap on Cabarria. When Vader entered the cantina, the bounty hunters destroyed his lightsaber and attacked him with weapons specifically chosen to counter his abilities. Vader survived, pursued them, and forced them to trace the assassination contract back to Coruscant. The signal had come from the highest levels of the Imperial government.
In Darth Vader #12, Vader’s droid found only seven officers with the access codes needed to send the contract. The list included Tarkin, Corin Ferro, Joon Strephi, Tomas Azoras, and Zorta Bingan. Vader then used the dark side to look deeper into the conspiracy and saw Colonel Barokki, an officer he had previously Force-choked, among the men plotting against him.
Vader wanted the Imperial officers to understand that another failed attempt would not end with the death of only the person responsible. Palpatine initially reminded him that the Sith could not rule an Empire of dead subjects, but he allowed Vader to punish several officers. His only direct restriction was that Tarkin had to survive because Palpatine still needed him.
Vader Killed Five Officers at Once as a Warning
Palpatine summoned the leading members of the Imperial Officer Corps to an auditorium on Coruscant. He formally introduced Vader as his second-in-command and announced that Vader spoke with the Emperor’s authority. Any order issued by Vader was to be treated as though it had come directly from Palpatine himself.
Vader then called five officers forward by name: Corin Ferro, Zorta Bingan, Joon Strephi, Tomas Azoras, and Colonel Barokki. He told the assembled officers that two attempts had been made on his life. Although he claimed he could not prove who had arranged them, he promised that whenever they tried to kill him, he would survive.
The five men would not.
Vader raised one hand and seized all five officers through the Force at the same time. In front of Palpatine, the Royal Guards, and the entire officer corps, the men grabbed at their throats as the pressure tightened. Vader killed all five together, snapping their necks before walking away from the stage.
Vader presented the victims as five officers selected at random, but their names showed otherwise. Ferro, Bingan, Strephi, and Azoras had appeared on the list of people with the necessary Imperial access codes, while Vader had already identified Barokki as one of the actual conspirators. He had enough evidence to choose likely suspects, but he told the audience the deaths were random.
That meant nobody in the room could protect themselves by remaining innocent. An officer could be loyal to the Empire, follow every order, and still be selected to die because someone else had challenged Vader. One conspirator remained alive in the audience, identifiable by the two missing fingers Vader had seen in his vision, and was forced to watch five other officers die for the plot he had helped create.