So, with my new 'business partner', things certainly took a turn from my original plan and I actually found a good means of making money while providing locals with goods that most of the time were not easy to get access to on account of Dantooine's–out of the way–location among the local hyperlanes.
It wasn't totally out of disinterest due to being a backwater agriworld in the Outer Rim, but rather ever since the Coruscant-Dantooine hyperlane became non-viable to travel, starships could only really reach planet via the much more less direct Myto's Arrow and Veragi Trade Route, which now only due to the Clone Wars' end could they be safely traveled once more. Still, unless you were a bulk hauler picking up lots of grains and other foodstuffs, it usually wasn't super profitable to transport over various things the locals actually wanted beyond the basics. This meant the locals had a natural strong desire for many things, mainly high tech and luxury goods.
And, thanks to Lul's various connections to local store owners, it was a market I was happy to take advantage of!
Most of Dantooine's population was spread all across the planet in smaller settlements, farms, homesteads, estates, and what have you, but given the presence of the local spaceport most people on the world stopped by Garang at least every once in a while to buy something they needed or ordered, or at least shipped it out to someplace else on planet. And given the primary export of Dantooine, most of their needs were usually farming-related in some way or another, and after that usually personal luxuries. With Lul acting as my middleman who had friends among the various local merchants, I was happy to provide them with new inventory they could sell for a reasonable profit in exchange for decent pay in turn.
Oh, and after some negotiations I made sure that Lul received a decent cut of whatever I made in exchange for his assistance, which I thought was fair and didn't complain much about considering what I ended up racking in. Cause while Dantooine was mostly self-sufficient, that didn't mean they didn't like having new stuff in general.
At first it was small things; medical supplies, tools, new parts and components, basic electronics, some uncommon foods and other goods, small stuff that didn't cost more than a couple of hundred credits at most. But after a few days of easily providing exact products at reasonable prices in a very timely manner, the local merchants started upping the requests, I think partly to see just how much they could actually get and what I was willing to offer. The joke was on them, since I was very accommodating so long as the price was right.
I started offering more pricey and useful things, with arguably my biggest sellers being more pit droid, power droids, and now things like ASP series labor droids, PK worker droids, and even J9 protocol droids due to their overall cheap price while still providing a wide range of useful skills the locals appreciated. Of course, by that point I ended up having to buy a used cargo skiff to reasonably transport the amount of product I was dropping off to various stores, but I quickly made the money back with a few trips and then some.
Heck, I even started selling off a few used civilian model speeders and slugthrowers of various types too to those asking for specific ones! Mostly rugged ones built for life on frontier planets, but still that got merchants to view me more and more as someone that could get you nearly anything you wanted so long as you had the credits for it. I earned so much trust in so little time, mostly due to Lul vouching for me, that people were even willing to pay me half up front, something that helped make it easier to balance my account in SFO that was rising day after day.
Of course, I couldn't be too fast in providing the goods or else people would get overly suspicious, anymore than they likely were at least, usually only delivering the requested items at the end of the day or early in the morning, swinging by spaceport to preserve the illusion, and since most of the day I didn't have much else to do I kept on doing salvaging runs just to make a little extra cash on the side and keep myself on the good side of the local clones. I admit I was tempted to spend most of my time indulging in various media on the local HoloNet my datapad, but sadly Dantooine's online selection was limited and I would need to go to a more developed planet to find good stuff… not that it stopped me from getting into this pretty neat animated series that vaguely reminded me of Star Trek with a Star Wars flair.
Anyway, the point was that after nearly three weeks of this I had a little over 30k in credits in my SFO account, triple of what I originally started out with! Enough to finally buy a decent starship and start exploring the galaxy!
…the only problem was that I had no idea how to safely fly a starship, which was much more complicated than your standard speeder to drive and the risks much higher if you screwed up. Which was why I was still working my little business to earn enough to buy a decent pilot droid who could safely fly me around and ideally teach me how to fly a spaceship too in time.
Sure, I could buy transport off planet, but that would actually require me getting a chain code for one, and second, I wanted my own spaceship, which should be reason enough to want to earn money!
Thankfully, Lul called me in via my commlink to stop by the bar to tell me about a very lucrative request that was likely to push things over the edge for me.
---
Lul's cantina, the Spacer's Stop, had become much more busy ever since Lul had bought the new food synthesizer, a couple of servant droids, a choice new alcohol selection, speciality ingredients, more holographic game tables, and a whole lot of other things to attract customers. Heck, I have even seen off-duty clones and Imperials start hanging out here more and more since the accommodations were much more to their liking. It was nice to know that was making the local watering hole much more fun for locals.
Naturally, due to our business arrangement, I made sure that Lul got a decent discount on all his purchases on top of his usual comission, and I still made decent money off of him.
"Heya Lul, glad to see business is doing well," I said as the duros turned and smiled at me, already pouring me a glass of blue milk.
"It's all thanks to a new supplier I met recently, he is way too easy to bargain down," Lul smirked at me as I took my drink.
"Sounds like a real idiot, and you should totally keep taking advantage of him for as long as possible," I returned the smirk after taking a drink. "So, what are people asking for this time? I already told you that my guy doesn't do anything organic."
You would likely not be surprised about how many herders kept asking for various farm animals from across the galaxy, only to be turned down cause the SFO didn't offer anything like that, which is good for so many reasons and kept my mind from thinking about the implications of if it did.
"Naw, they got it by now," Lul assured me. "It's actually a bit of a bulk order, and I'm talking size here, not quantity."
"Oh?" I asked curiously, wondering what a local buyer would buy that was considered big considering the stuff I had been selling already so far.
"A bunch of the larger land owners got together to pool their credits and want to buy a big investment they plan to share among themselves, and wanted me to ask if it's possible for your 'guy' to bring it here in the first place," Lul explained. "Feel free to say if it's not, since goodness knows this has to be the most ridiculous request yet."
"Okay, now you have me morbidly curious," I admitted. "I mean, I already sold weapons to them, how hard could this request be?"
"A couple of slugthrowers, which aren't even covered by law on most planets compared to blasters, have nothing on this," Lul says as he reached for a datapad under his bar and handed it to me. "This is real heavy duty equipment."
As I read over the request, I realized he was being quite literal. For you see, what was being asked for was a CD-2_Harvester, which was an agridroid that was as big as a freaking building! No joke either, 'cause at 20 meters tall and about as wide, this thing could easily crush most buildings here in town with its bulk alone.
"Well, they certainly aim big, I will give them that," I admitted with my eyes a bit widened. "What the heck do they need something like this for though?"
"I'm no farmer myself, but I know for a fact something like that could help bring in larger harvests much faster and thus bring in more credits for the land owners, even with them rotating its use among themselves," Lul explained. "Those labor droids you have been selling alone are likely to see most local farmers around here get way more for their crops than they did before, which given the higher demand in food production now with the war over they want to take advantage of it."
"Fair enough, and with this thing you can harvest whole fields with the push of a button," I admitted as I read over the huge droid's specs. "Of course, given how hard it would be to transport something like his, to say nothing about how expensive it is in general and actually getting it from Corporate Sector, I hope they are ready to pay a great deal to-"
I stopped as Lul took back his datapad, typed it in a number, and handed it back to me. I am pretty sure if I was drinking my blue milk right then I would have spit it all over his face as I read the offered amount.
"Given your track record, and my endorsement, they are willing to follow through on usual a deal of half up front, in this case being 35,000 credits, for a total amount of 70,000 on delivery," Lul explained with a slightly hushed tone. "I already negotiated my own cut as well, so you don't have to worry about subtracting that from your amount."
That was a potential profit of 25k! However, I quickly learned from Lul that the first offer should never be the final one without a little back and forth, since as the duros said, 'bargaining was an important skill for any good trader.'
"They willing to go up to 90?" I asked curiously, earning a chuckle from the duros.
"Glad to see you are finally taking my bargaining lessons to heart," he said before shaking his head. "Already asked and I was able to push them up to 80, which is where I'll get my cut, so in truth you are looking at 75."
"And if I hadn't asked?" I raised a brow at the duros.
"I would have told you!... eventually."
That made us both laugh as we both took a drink. Over the last few weeks I had quickly learned the duros had a little bit of a checkered past, nothing overly shady but enough that I am pretty sure he skirted the edges of the law more than a few times during his journeys in his youth before settling down here. I was reasonably sure he settled on Dantooine in the first place since it was out of the way location that was unlikely to have his past catch up with him too.
Point was, while he was a friend and business partner, I think he saw trying to cheat me a little as a way to teach me and keep me on my toes, which I oddly appreciated in a weird way since I would likely need those skills later on in my planned line of work.
I would miss it when I finally left the planet… but then again, nothing says I couldn't visit again in the future.
Anyway, with a true profit of 30k before me, it wasn't a hard decision to make.
"Let them know that their brand new agridroid will be delivered to them by tomorrow morning at the location of their choosing," I finally said.
"Heh, somehow I'm not surprised your 'guy' would be willing to do this, though I have no idea how 'they' will pull it off," Lul chuckled as he stepped back from the bar. "Follow me back into my office and I will get you your up front payment."
I nodded, quickly finishing off my blue milk and following after the duros into the back of the bar and his private office, a place full of souvenirs from across the galaxy, most of which I couldn't even begin to place, closing the door behind me as he opened up a hidden safe in the floor and pulled out a case. I watched as he opened it, turned it around, and showed me enough ingots inside to make my jaw feel a little weak.
"Hot damn," I couldn't help but say, since this was the most wealth I ever saw in one place in either universe I lived in. "That's a lot of money."
"Yup, all 40,000 upfront," Lul said as he closed the case and handed it over to me. "Try not to run off with it before completing the deal or else that would make me look very bad."
"I swear that idea was only in my head for about… 10 seconds! Honest!"
That earned a bit of a laugh from the duros before a more serious look on his face appeared.
"One last thing, after this job is done I think you should keep your head down or even get off planet as soon as possible, since there have been rumors going around lately about the Imperials looking for a smuggler avoiding local tariffs and selling cheaply to locals," Lul explained, making me freeze up a bit in shock. "They have no idea who it is, but the troopers have been talking about increased security sweeps at the spaceport and such."
"Shit, you're serious," I groaned as I hit my head on the credit case. "Crappppp."
"Don't worry, no one local is gonna give you up, not after the all the cred you built up and without implicating themselves, but I think it would just be safer to get out of the picture as soon as you can before they start putting two and two together," Lul explained.
Unfortunate, but it was bound to happen sooner to later considering how active I had been in the area and how I knew how hard the Imperials would get on tax dodging in time. Oddly enough, it fit with my own plans, so it wasn't the biggest loss. I just hated being forced into the situation.
"Well… I planned to tell you this later, but after this job I was gonna likely head off-world anyway. Explore, find new opportunities, that kind of thing," I explained. "But I do promise to keep in touch and visit once in a while, just maybe a bit later than originally planned."
"Heh, I wouldn't mind that, kid, not at all," the duros nodded and shook my hand. "So, got any plans for your last night on Dantooine?"
"Eh, not really," I said as I thought about my options before shrugging. "Might as well leave the way I began!"
Besides, I doubted I would be picking up garbage for fun any time soon after tomorrow.
---
It might not have been the most inspiring way to spend my last real day on the planet, but after starting up my business with Lul I actually found going out to dig up old military salvage with my droid crew to be pretty relaxing, especially since I didn't need to actually do much hard labor. I think it was the same kinda feeling that beachcombers back home got as they just enjoyed digging up random stuff as a hobby, though in this case it was me watching as the pits dug up and put various droid bits into a pile on the skiff while also sneaking peaks on my datapad to watch stuff over HoloNet.
The skiff turned out to be a nice investment since it carried more cargo in general, and made for a nice place to sit and relax on.
"Wow, that is almost a whole torso," I couldn't help but comment as Dewey loaded up most of the top section of a B2 onto the skiff, with something that looked oddly like the impression of a fist in the middle of it. "Great job, Dewey."
"(No problem, Boss!)"
It was about midday and the skiff was only about a third full, and I was debating about calling it early to avoid the line at drop off later and cause it wasn't super needed anymore, when I spotted a large cargo speeder heading our way from the edge of the crater we were working.
I was a little nervous at first, since after several weeks of working on this part of the battlefield I only ever interacted with the salvagers at the drop=off site, and barely that, and reached for my blaster just in case. I relaxed though when I realized it was Carste and his crew in the speeder. I had gotten to know the older man and even a few of his fellows after several weeks making small talk at the drop-off area with them, and once my business got going even directed him towards the required merchant so he and his crew could buy a couple things to make their jobs easier. I even saw a few of the pits I sold off among them!
I waved as they stopped close by and climbed out of their vehicle.
"Heya Carste and company! Surprised to see you guys out here," I commented as he and about a half dozen of his friends walked up to me. "Are you guys scouting out a new potential claim? Well, I can tell you that a lot of stuff is buried here, it just takes work to reach it."
"Naw, nothing like that," Carste waved me off with a smile. "We actually have an easier job lined up that should pay more relatively soon, and even get us off this dirt ball."
"Oh! That's great to hear, happy for you guys," I smiled at their good fortune.
"Heh, thanks. Honestly, it's all thanks to you that we got it," Carste said, surprising me. "Your earlier offer and advice really helped us step things up. You were right, these pits sure are useful so long as you got a decent handle on them."
"Glad to hear they are working well for ya, goodness knows I wouldn't have gone nearly as far without my own crew," I said while waving to the triplets and Gonkington, earning a round of happy droidspeak.
"Still think it's a little weird to have a droid only crew, but I guess that just makes this next part easier."
"Make what easier?" I asked in confusion as I turned back to Carste, only for my blood to run cold as I noticed he and his buddies had drawn their blasters and were pointing them at me.
"To hold you hostage and rob your supplier," Carste said with that same easy smile on his face, as if he wasn't holding me at gunpoint.
"Ahhh shit," I said as I raised my hands, realizing that maybe I wasn't as good at reading people as I had thought.
---
AN: And now, we see the natural consequences of being a 'businessman' and staying around in one area too long, people on both sides of law get ideas.