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"I could make it my personal quest to change that state of affairs," Harry said, his voice deadly serious, as he helped one young boy who looked about three years older than himself except for the fact that he was emaciated to his feet. Luckily for Harry's state of mind there weren't any women aboard this group, these were all laborers rather than pleasure slaves.
"I think you will find that some things are beyond even Jedi, my young padawan. Doing what you can when you run into the issue is the best you can do for the most part." Fay said, sighing again.
Harry, Master Fay and Lily were soon joined by several shuttles coming up from the planet below to take possession of the pirate ships one after another, while the pirates remained asleep. The pirates were taken down planet and summarily executed to a man. Regardless of circumstances, piracy and slave-taking were still nominally illegal, and carried the death sentence in most Republic systems save for a few, as Lily put it, bleeding heart, Core Worlds like Alderaan and Chandrilla.
The trio remained on Tenaab for a time while Master Fay did what she could to help train the locals in how to use their new ships. The largest four ships Master Fay sent to Gizer, a system somewhat further out along the Perliman Trade Route, to be retrofitted and rebuilt as system defense ships.
Of course when the Gizer's governor was told what had happened, he ordered the systems construction yards to take up the job gratis so long as they in return got a deal on food supplies from Tenaab. A nearly barren world with massive mineral resources and a thriving orbital industry, Gizer could not feed its people and needed to import most of its food.
It had deals already with a few food corporations to bring in food, ironically the same who had initially pushed Tenaab's colonization. The same companies who were too skinflint to employ a defense force or build real orbital defenses, and who had been voted out of control of the planet several years ago because of this neglect. But who still controlled a monopoly on out-system shipping to and from the planet.
It would be much cheaper to buy direct from Tenaab than work through these food corporations of course even if Gizer had to pay for the transportation, which it would at first. Master Fay negotiated a deal between the two systems to this effect, which gave Gizer what amounted to enough food for its population for two years in return for the work on the ships and the creation of enough orbital industry to service them and the transports which would now ply the space-lanes between the two planets. This would eventually evolve into mutual defense treaties and an almost equal alliance between the two systems, cutting out the greedy corporations entirely from the ongoing profit.
After several months work the agreement was in place, the planet had its first real defense, and Master Fay felt the Force calling her on.
It was only after they left Tenaab that Master Fay began to realize that for all her skill in listening to the Force, she could not match Harry's penchant for finding trouble, mostly trouble of the violent kind unfortunately.
The planet the Force called her to next was named Vena. It was a relatively high tech world situated near the Hapes cluster along the only hyperspace route into that cluster so it did a brisk business with the Hapan Shield Worlds and the rest of the Republic. Despite that, because it had been developed by ancient Hapan colonists, it was remarkably isolationist in its policies, with no other Republic companies or corporations allowed to operate within its system.
That had changed a few years ago. The pro-Republic Baron and Baroness, both of whom had been trained and educated elsewhere in the Republic, had slowly begun to open its borders to Republic companies and businesses. This brought money pouring into their own coffers.
There was a lot of pressure from the rest of the planet to stop this process, both social and economic based. It was after all only the Baron and Baroness becoming rich on this policy, not the rest of the nobility. And there really wasn't a lot that the Republic could provide that the planet itself could not at this point. Local businesses were suffering hugely, and the opposition was growing. In return, the Baron and Baroness had begun to crack down on any such often times violently according to what little news of the planet Master Fay had going in.
Moments afterthey exited hyperspace and she told the local system controllers who she was, Master Fay started to broker a meeting between the two rulers and the nominal head of their opposition. Setting it up would take days even with her Jedi powers and reputation helping the process along, there was a lot of arrogance, distrust and venom at work here. Master Fay spent a few days doing legwork with Harry, though when she finally had set up the meeting Harry had begged off of actually joining the discussion.
"What will you do instead?" Master Fay asked, looking up at him from a reader she was reading on a few of the local issues. She couldn't just give an arbitrary decision here, far too many lives would be impacted by their decisions to let any Jedi do that. And the Force, while an excellent tool to put an individual where they needed need be, wasn't so very good at providing all the information needed to do the task in front of you.
"I thought I would check out the local markets," Harry said with a shrug. "It's been a while since we've taken on food after all, and apparently Vena has some unique animals and spices."
"Trust you to look up that information when you're supposed to be helping me figure out this planet's issues," Fay said jokingly, reaching out to pull Harry's ear lightly. "I don't know about you going off on your own though," she said more seriously. "Lily, would you go with him?"
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