Chapter 43: Farmer

I sat at the head of a conference table. To my left was Jon as my general second in command. Sola, my ship/weapons designer was to my right. Also present were Captain Orson Willard, a summoned version of Sir Barristan whose divergences had led to superior performance and thus being appointed commander of my Paragon bodyguard company, and Leon Dannuz, a copy of a recent Nabooian college graduate who I had created to serve as my assistant/secretary.

“So, Sola, what can you tell me about the Trade Federation forces?” I asked.

She snorted. “Do you want the good news, or the bad news?”

“Bad, then good, please,” I replied.

“Well, bad news first then,” she said with a slightly sadistic smirk. “Although the Trade Federation calls them “battleships”, Lucrehulks are really carriers. Each one has fifteen hundred Vulture fighter droids. And the Trade Federation has shown up with eight ships. Worse, because the Vultures are droids, as long as they’re in low-power mode they can stay away from the ship indefinitely. The Trade Federation should have total orbital dominance, and running the blockade will be close to impossible for conventional ships. In other words, without the Nostos being fully functional, or the arrival of a Republic battle-group, nothing’s getting off planet.

“Other than the Vultures, on the Trade Federation fleet there are around two-point-two-five million B1 infantry droids, four thousand armored troop transports, and about fifty thousand hover tanks. The troop transports each carry a company of one hundred and twelve B1’s; those not in armored vehicles are mounted on unarmed, unarmored troop carriers. Using their full complement of over four hundred C-9979 landing craft, that entire army is orbital-assault ready, and can be dropped in a single wave.

“Now, that’s the official complement for the Lucrehulk class. Generally speaking, these ships are really armed freighters, not dedicated warships. There’s still room for up to four hundred million more B1 droids, if the ships are totally packed with them. In other words, they may have come with enough troops to put one in every household on Naboo.”

“Sorry, just one second,” I interrupted, causing Sola to pout a bit. “Jon, what did you find for Nabooian forces?”

He laughed a bit, looking at his tablet where he’d written down some numbers. “Far less than that. Over a population of about one point two billion Republic citizens, there are about two point four million law-enforcement officers and security forces. But of those, there are only a hundred and twenty five thousand armed police, only fifty thousand of whom carry lethal weapons. Granted, they’re all very well trained, highly experienced, and carefully picked. But they carry anti-personnel weapons, or ones designed to take down at most lightly armored vehicles. Not much good against a tank. And they’re used to fighting drug dealers, kidnappers, the occasional lunatic. Not enemy militaries.

“As for arming the population, that would be a long shot, if you’d pardon the pun. There are two point eight million registered long-arm owners, and nine million short-range gun owners. Most of these are only hunting-weight though, and would be of limited effectiveness against even a minimally armored target. I doubt that even a B1 would be taken out in a single shot, and most shots would need to hit more vulnerable locations.

“As for proper military equipment, the Nabooians have five fighter squadrons, each of which have a dozen N-1 starfighters. They’re nice ships, but not two-hundred to one nice.”

“So it looks like Naboo had better hope for a diplomatic solution,” I said. “Sola, you said there was some good news?”

“Right,” she nodded. “Good news. While the Trade Federation forces are great on paper, they’re fairly shit in practice. I could go on about the reasons: legal limitations, design by committee, evaluation criteria, issues with how comparison testing was run, inherent conceptual flaws in the battle-doctrine, and overly credit-conscious selection decisions.” She looked at me. I was interested in those, sure, but it hardly mattered at that moment why the Trade Federation equipment sucked, more how it did, and how we could take advantage. I shook my head and motioned for her to go on.

“But you’re not that interested,” she continued. “Instead, I’ll go down the list, and mention what those flaws are and how to take advantage. First, the Lucrehulk ships themselves. They’re not designed to be involved in combat, at all. The shields haven’t been significantly changed. That means that while they have a fair amount of endurance, because the ship itself is huge and thus they have a lot of power available, individual shield segments aren’t designed to protect against more than incidental environmental damage. Fighter-weight torpedoes would likely be highly effective; hells, a heavy assault boat’s blasters may be. Then, the hull isn’t heavily armored, and the support structure isn’t designed to take heavy damage. Nor are the ships heavily gunned; they only have forty-two quad-laser batteries to cover the entire ship. There are numerous blind spots close in, and few approaches are heavily invested to the point that a typical light frigate would have significant issues. In short, the carriers are very soft targets.

“The problem of course is getting past the Vultures, so I’ll address those next. They were designed to fulfill all aerial roles, and as a result are a poor compromise. Because the Trade Federation wanted to make sure they could support ground troops, they went with a relatively high-power four blaster cannon configuration rather than lasers. But that means that in space combat they are very short ranged, relying on high speed to close with the enemy. To take on heavier targets they carry a pair of energy torpedo launchers; again, the lack of aiming means a limited range against other fast targets, but they can be effective against larger ships. As a cost-saving measure, they aren’t equipped with the very best inertial compensators, so they are somewhat slower than top-of-the-line fighters. Nor are they shielded. Most critically, they only carry enough energy to last thirty five minutes at full combat power. So the best way to fight them is at long range with lasers, staying out of their engagement window, and using high-acceleration evasive maneuvers to reduce the chances of a lucky shot.

“As for the landing craft, they are large, only lightly armored, and very lightly armed. As such, they are hilariously unsuited to making contested landings, and without fighter support are highly vulnerable. If Naboo had a sufficient quantity of camouflaged ground-to-orbit weapon emplacements, they’d be fairly easy prey, but to the best of my knowledge we don’t.

“The Federation armor, on the other hand, is fairly good. Their tanks in particular are well armed. That said, all of their armor is unshielded, tends to be relatively lightly armored, and has large profiles which is a definite negative for armored-warfare. Their troop carriers, both armored and not, are too large to fit into small urban environments, and the armored troop transports discharge their forces to the front, leaving them vulnerable when dismounting in combat. The single limitation all of their ground vehicles share is that they are slow, ranging in speed from thirty five to fifty five kilometers per hour. Between their lack of speed, large size, relatively weak armor, and forward-focused firing arcs, Trade Federation mechanized ground forces are vulnerable to rapidly repositioned guerilla style attacks.

“The B1 droids themselves were not designed with open combat in mind. They are very much “lowest bidder” options, and their guns are typically poorly calibrated, leading to very low accuracy. Further, the guns skimped on heat management to reduce costs; an unforeseen side effect of this means that after they are fired, parts become misaligned and accuracy suffers. The droids work fine for defending cargoes, or assaulting in the short-ranged, narrow confines of a space station, but are less effective otherwise.”

Sola had been speaking for a while, and was mostly reading off of her tablet, but now she looked up happily. “Last, and most important, is an issue that the entire Trade Federation force shares. They’re stupid. And I mean that very literally; their droids don’t have actual droid intelligences. The cost of hundreds of thousands of droid-minds might have doubled the cost of each ship’s complement. And we all know how cheap the Federation is.

“Instead, they’re run from central computers located on the Lucrehulks; with an army this big, and the possibility of the entire army operating at the same time on planet, they’ll need a control ship too. While some dumb programs will be on each droid, all the intelligent decisions will be subject to lag. Not to mention the possibilities this opens for jamming signals, or destroying the control ship. Either of those will knock out the droid forces until the signal is restored, or another ship can take command.”

Orson grinned ferally. “That is good news. Say the word, my lord, and me and the lads’ll go take the control ship for you.”

I chuckled. “Don’t be so enthusiastic, Captain. It hasn’t come to actual war between Naboo and the Trade Federation yet, and even if it does so long as we’re left alone we won’t involve ourselves. The last thing I want are Jedi, Sith, or even simply mundane powers breathing down our necks. But you and Sola should brief your men; come up with a list of equipment we can either procure or produce that might be useful as well.”

“What about the trials you did?” Sola asked.

I winced. “You mean of the Nostos over in Westeros?” I clarified. Sola had, by this point, been fully briefed on my magic.

“That’s right,” she nodded.

I could see Jon grinning off to the side. “Oh, stop it, Jon,” I snapped.

He laughed. “Stop what?” he asked innocently.

“Grinning,” I grumbled.

“I can’t!” he chuckled. “It was just too funny!”

Sola looked at us like we were a pair of idiots. “Care to share, boys?”

I sat back, and waved at Jon in permission.

“So, Odysseus was so excited to try out high technology back in Westeros, start the technological revolution in his lands,” he began. “He sends some equipment over, and what happens? Nothing.”

“What?” Sola gasped. “What do you mean? What went wrong?”

Jon just smiled. “Nothing happened. Nothing at all.”

I interrupted his gloating. “He’s right. My best guess is that the physical laws are subtly different. Purely chemical explosives worked reasonably within estimates. But anything electronic… not so much.”

“Damn it!” Sola hissed. “So there’s no way to test the ship then?”

I shook my head. “None.”

She looked at me irately. “And you didn’t think to send out some of your Ravens to other planets before we were blockaded?”

I rolled my eyes. “You already know the answer to that question.”

“Look on the bright side,” Jon interjected. “At least we have a good reason to tell the Palace why we can’t provide any significant forces.”

“Whatever,” Sola huffed. “If we’re all done, then? Because if so, Sir Orson and I have some work to be getting to. I need to make some new weapons because someone failed to take basic measures that would have let us use the Nostos platform as planned.”

“Yes, yes. And I am most sorry and appreciative, Sola,” I replied. “But no, that was basically it. If nothing changes, we’ll meet again in a week.”

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Luckily for me and Naboo, nothing did change. Oh, food got scarcer, and tensions continued to increase. The Queen left for a negotiation with TF representatives, only to be attacked by “pirates”. That fiction fooled no-one; it was obvious that the Federation was growing tired of the situation. Senator Palpatine, Naboo’s representative on Coruscant, attempted to increase political pressure on the Trade Federation, though apparently ineffectively.

Honestly, from what I could gather from local and galactic news sources, this whole thing was Amidala’s fault. Her overly idealistic concept of “fairness” and profit sharing meant that instead of offering a deal which was better for Naboo, and still great for the Trade Federation (if a bit less so), while setting the stage for future negotiations to close the gap even more, she went for a “my way or the highway” approach. Needless to say, said approach backfired, and now Naboo’s trade dispute had ballooned into Naboo being both example (not to fuck with) and a hostage that the Trade Federation was using in an attempt to re-establish highly profitable tax exemptions.

But still, something wasn’t quite right. The Federation were acting far too arrogantly, aggressively. They were, despite everything, a trade company. I’d seen less aggression from expansionist warlords. The fact of the matter was that as a trade company, the Federation was highly vulnerable to actions from local governments as well as the Republic. Their aggressive stance could easily result in widespread sanctions and penalties.

Still, food supplies were running low due to the Trade Federation’s cessation of its agricultural labor. After three weeks, starvation was becoming more and more likely. People had complained immensely when perishable luxury foods weren’t available; now, there was panic and unrest. Even with rationing, Naboo was looking at about one and a half weeks before food started to run out; hoarding and transportation snafus had already resulted in limited cases of starvation.

To make matters worse, if someone didn’t get things working in the farms soon, the harvests designed to feed the planet for the next weeks to months would start to rot. It wasn’t all farms that were down, but between transportation shortages and the farm-bot shutdown that hit most of big-agriculture, Naboo’s food supply was sitting at about thirty percent of what it was before the blockade. At starvation rations they could support only three quarters of the population long term, and short term reserves were running dry due to a focus on just-in-time, super-ripe produce.

There’s an economic theory about supply and demand of essential goods in a shortage. Basically, let’s say when you have a small excess (say, ten percent more than is needed), food costs five credits a day; pretty much everyone is eating, other than a very few people who can’t look after themselves. At par, in other words with just enough food, food might cost seven credits a day; some people are probably hungry while others have excess, but again generally speaking people don’t starve.

Now, reduce that slight excess further from just enough to a slight deficit and things get interesting. Food is no longer five or seven credits a day; it’s twenty, fifty, a hundred. In a free market system, people will pay whatever they can for essential goods needed to live. In other words, the food will end up priced so that it is unaffordable for however many people to starve (whether partially or in full) as is needed to re-balance the food supply.

That was where Naboo was. That’s where shit goes crazy, law and order breaks down, people die and peasants storm Bastilles. People will do anything to eat, and almost no-one on Naboo had ever gone hungry, not properly at least. Things were, in short, fucked up.

This gave me a massive opportunity.

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Queen Amidala was in her makeup and regalia, her face impassive, but I could sense the worry and stress wafting off of her. Despite the almost armor-thick makeup, she was just so young. Honestly, why this planet thought electing a teenager was a good idea was completely beyond me. I mean, look at the result - a year in office, and the place was blockaded and starving.

“We are told you have a proposal to end the food shortages, Mr. Gangari,” she pronounced.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“We have read your proposal, and are not impressed.”

Girl, you’re fourteen, I thought. I could give a shit about you being impressed, but I don’t.

“I am sorry to hear that, Your Majesty. Perhaps I might answer any issues you have?” I answered as if butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.

I could see her clench her teeth. “Perhaps you can explain to Us why We should give all of Naboo’s farms to you,” she stated with icy sarcasm. And a bit of exaggeration too; I didn’t want all the farms, just the ones currently shuttered by the Trade Federation.

“Because I can get operational again, Your Majesty. As my pilot project demonstrated. And the alternative is starvation.”

And that was the beauty of my plan. It turned out that I could overwrite the essential command code for a droid, essentially taking control of it. It wasn’t a cheap process mana-wise, growing exponentially more expensive as the droid was more intelligent, but farming droids were generally sub-sapient. As a pilot, I had bought one of the farms which was owned by a Nabooian but previously administered by the Trade Federation, and converted it to my control.

Naboo needed food, and Amidala refused to concede to the Trade Federation to get it. I was the only other option. And when you control something someone needs for survival, well, is any price too steep?

She stared me in the eye. “We could order you to repeat your actions.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Without pay? Why, Your Majesty, that would be slavery, and a very dangerous precedent.”

She half-raised herself out of her throne. “That is hardly-!” she exclaimed before regaining control of herself and sitting back down. If she were savvier, she’d probably force me to accept some more reasonable remuneration. But she wasn’t – that’s the problem with child rulers. “This is extortion.”

“No, Your Majesty. This is business. And, I will admit, a bit of punishment. Your noble Nabooian landowners surrendered control of your food supply. If I am to become responsible for Naboo’s produce, I will ensure that it is secure. And I will be responsible. I refuse to bail out those so foolish as to allow the Trade Federation their monopoly, creating this situation. Not without reward.” This was a pretty pointed remark in general, as that foolishness could be applied to the entirety of Naboo’s economy. I could tell from her spike of inner turmoil that she understood my subtext.

To her side, one of her advisors, an older male, leant over and whispered in her ear. Little did they know, I could hear every word. “Your Majesty, I strongly advise we take his offer, however distasteful. We can hardly risk otherwise, given the circumstances, and how we came to be in them.” He was right. Honestly, with the current state of affairs I gave it two weeks before the populace revolted and overthrew the government. At that point, the Trade Federation would probably end up practically owning the whole planet and all its inhabitants soon after.

At that reproach, the queen ducked her head, closing her eyes for a moment in shame. Then she looked up at me. “Very well, Mr. Gangari. For every farm you restore to working order before this crisis is over, you will own it. Of the goods produced for the next hundred years, you will have fifty percent, with twenty-five percent resting with the original owner, and twenty-five percent the Nabooian throne. After that, you, or your heirs, will have sixty percent, and the throne forty. No other taxes will be levied. In return, you must ensure that agricultural yields do not fall below eighty percent of what they currently are, or the farms may be re-apportioned.”

It was a little off from what I had offered, but I’d take it. Honestly, it was fairly clever of her; even a quarter of the food supply, especially if she took her quarter in lower-cost grains, would be enough to ensure a basic food ration for the Nabooians who couldn’t afford better. Granted they’d be hungry, and a low-calorie boring diet is no fun for anyone, but they’d be alive.

She also kept her nobles partially on-board; I’d initially suggested a seventy-thirty split between myself and the throne, and nothing for the previous land-owners. Small farmers, the sort of local equivalent to the mom-and-pop farm, organic hobbyists and the like, weren’t in trouble in the first place. I had little issue giving the wealthy landowning class the shaft. As far as I was concerned, that class had a certain unwritten social contract. They had a lot of privileges, social cachet, and money; in return, they had to take a long view and look out for the nation’s best interests. Trading control of the food supply for less work and slightly higher profits broke that contract, as far as I was concerned.

In fact, in some ways I was getting shafted. Over the prior hundred years, as plasma sales dominated Naboo’s economy, the previous taxes on massive landowners were eliminated (as were many other taxes) by monarchs pandering to Naboo’s elite. A tax of 50% now, 40% later, was very steep, especially since the tax was effectively applied before taking into account my expenses.

I could sense this was the best deal I’d get. A negotiator Amidala was not. “Agreed, Your Majesty.”

“You are dismissed, Mr. Gangari.” Yeah, she basically thought I was scum, taking advantage of peoples’ needs as I did. That sort of naivete is why young teenagers shouldn’t rule entire worlds. I wasn’t sure she even recognized what situation the Nabooians would be without me, assuming that it would “be alright somehow.” Another reason why teenagers who have never experienced set-backs shouldn’t be rulers.

Later that day, an emergency law allowing the confiscation and redistribution of unworkable farms during a time of food-shortages to those who could work it was passed. I was in business.

There were about four hundred thousand droids over a thousand farms that provided the bulk of the food on Naboo. Using teleportation and my minions, I could visit a hundred farms a day. It was a pretty simple procedure; one of my minions (typically a paragon) collected droids, set up a jammer and activated an EMP pulse (all of which was really for show, hiding my magic), then I teleported in, re-wrote their loyalty, and sent a general repair-field to fix anything the pulse broke. The jamming and EMP gear was provided by Sola, then copied via magic as needed.

Ten days after meeting Amidala, I owned a few billion acres of prime Nabooian farmland, worth over a trillion credits. I was just glad the Trade Federation hadn’t ordered their droids to self-destruct; that would have been problematic. I guess they just thought that in a month or two it wouldn’t matter; either they’d have a deal, which would likely include return of their property, or they’d have either taken over the system and seized control themselves or have much more serious issues to worry about.

For the most part, the Nabooians loved me; I had, after all, just saved them from starvation. Had I screwed over a load of the wealthy landowners? Sure, but what working-class (or, given that this was Naboo dole-class) stiff didn’t want to do the same?

War-profiteering was the best.

Then the Jedi showed up, and, predictably, everything went to hell.