AN:
The next goal is 150 power stones in 24 hours , and I'll bless you with an extra chapter. But if we hit 200 , guess what? Double release! That's right—two chapters, back to back!
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All in all it was a fairly modest step towards Serenno's independence, but better than nothing. When the time came for Tan'ya to inherit the County, she would have stepping stones already in place.
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The first step towards manufacturing your own navy was developing the means to maintain your own fleet. A naval facility on Serenno's moon was a far cry from the orbital shipyards of Corellia or Kuat, but definitely movement in the right direction.
A militia wasn't a bad idea, either. Tan'ya was sure many of Serenno's young men would be grateful for the chance to find work outside the Lumber yards, but most importantly any number of soldiers would be worthless without officers to lead them.
Establishing an effective training school for officers would be extremely important for creating the skeleton of a military. In her mind Tan'ya was already thinking of ways they could build it up into something bigger, more important than what Jenza intended, but she would have to run her ideas by Sifo first.
Finally there was the Serenno Royal Guard. At first glance, it was a mostly ceremonial force of around ten thousand men, whose main role would be parade duties. Royal Guards were mostly only allowed by Senate regulations to try and entice members of the Outer Rim's aristocracy to rejoin the republic at the end of the New Sith War.
At the time it was thought that such a small force could only ever really serve a symbolic purpose anyway, and wouldn't have much effect on the stability of the galactic community.
Tan'ya thought it seemed like a reasonable compromise, and it wasn't like the rich and powerful didn't have a legitimate fear of being assassinated.
Of course, there was nothing preventing Tan'ya from setting an extremely high bar of entry to the Royal Guard, and personally overseeing their training to prepare them for the realities of battle. It was only natural that the Royal Guard would be an elite force with the best equipment and tactics.
After that, the meeting turned to the issue of budgeting and recruitment, and Tan'ya spoke up for the first time.
"Can we inspect the lumber yards?" She asked.
Both adults looked at her in surprise, and Jenza almost seemed like she'd forgotten Tan'ya was there.
"The yards are a very dangerous place." Jenza said, carefully. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to go there."
"Master Sifo Dyas will be with me." Tan'ya said.
"We do need to inspect our potential recruits." Sifo added. "I was thinking it may be a good idea to get Tan'ya out of the Palace, anyway."
"She's not even ten years old."
"And very mature for her age. Besides, it's not like I'm taking her to a warzone." Sifo smiled at her reassuringly. "If you want to, we can call Dooku and see what he thinks."
At the mention of the Count's name, Jenza looked reluctant. Eventually after a long pause, she conceded. "We can arrange something."
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The speeder zoomed over the vast jungles of Serenno, its plasma engine humming and warbling electronically as it did. It was a wet day, pouring with rain that threatened to spill over the river banks and flood the forest floor. Tan'a looked out the backseat window of the speeder at the passing sea of leafy green tree tops and fast flowing rivers, that eventually hit a line drawn in the earth by vibrosaws and hoverdollies as they came to a vast field of barren mud.
"Forest here's already cleared." The speeder driver explained. "Stumps burned, too. Probably be sold pretty soon for someone a' try and turn into their farm."
His name was Hewno Bask, and he spoke Galactic Standard with an odd accent. Tan'ya suspected it wasn't his first language. His clothes were safety gear, with bands of interlinked durasteel sewn into it for protection, and chainmail gloves tucked into his belt. He was a little chubby, but he had huge, calloused hands and broad shoulders with meaty upper arms. Sifo and the man were about the same height, but the Jedi Master seemed almost slender compared to him.
Hewno wasn't a lumberjack, but instead a foreman, one of the few paths of social mobility open to the lower classes of Serenno who were serfs in all but name. Tan'ya noticed that among the equipment he prepared for his workday was a shockstick and a blaster, so hopefully that meant they would be seeing a real lumberyard and not some kind of Potemkin version of one. No doubt Hewno was a ruthless man when he had to be, or he wouldn't be able to afford his own speeder.
"Don't be too scared now, Princess." Hewno said to Tan'ya, watching her face in the rear view mirror. "Be sure to keep around me and Mister Sifo here, don't wander."
No doubt he didn't want to anger Tan'ya's father should she become injured. There had to be many men like him on Serenno, a few years younger and a little thinner. Excellent material to turn into NCOs.
The speeder tilted forward, and Tan'ya smiled as she felt the momentum push her stomach up. Even as a passenger she enjoyed flying. She had yet to be able to persuade her father to give her a speeder of her own, but her piloting lessons had been good fun so far. Apparently it was easy to be mistaken as a prodigy when you had a good amount of experience flying in a past life.
Eventually the speeder landed, and Tan'ya unbuckled herself from the back seat and threw open the door just as Hewno was reaching to open it for her.
The first thing that hit Tan'ya was the smell. Mud, and unwashed flesh, and something rotten almost like old vegetation. A reasonable distance from the landing site was what looked like a row of latrine pits, and she watched as a man came out of one and walked away with nowhere to wash his hands.
The next thing Tan'ya noticed was the sound. There was a distant, constant, electronic buzz that seemed completely unnatural in a forest. It took her a moment to realize that was the distant whine of countless vibro-saws, and she couldn't help but suspect being closer to the source of the noise would set her ears ringing. Reaching into her pocket she took out a pair of ear plugs she was given earlier, and stuffed them in.
Serenno was a large verdant world with a population of almost twenty billion that had been inhabited for at least fifty thousand years. Of course it had a wide variety of different ethnicities and cultures, but broadly it could be divided into three groups: the paler skinned men closest to the northern and southern poles, the darker skinned men of the plains and deserts, and those who sat somewhere in the middle who mostly inhabited the forests and mountains.
These different racial groups weren't strictly geographically bound, there were plenty of tribes of plains dwellers who had conquered a forest or tundra, or vice versa, but that was an approximate division.
This lumberyard had representation from all three groups, though in different quantities. A little more than half of the people here were from the forests, about a third of them were from the plains, and the remainder were from the poles. There were no women present in the yard that Tan'ya could see, and if there were they were doing their best to blend in. Transportation came in the form of a large speedercoach, with room to transport two hundred men.
Seeing it, Tan'ya asked Hewno about the vehicle.
"I own it. Most of them men can't bring themselves from their village to here, so I got a transport. Take it out of their pay anyway, it's not a problem for me." He explained. "They want to keep more of their pay, they can just sleep on site." He pointed to a small set of temporary structures that even from this distance Tan'ya suspected were dirty and cramped.
The lumberjacks were to a man filthy; covered in grease from their tools, mud from the environment, and speckled with saw dust from cutting timber. Many of them were hunchbacked or sported a limp, or a missing limb without any kind of bionic replacement, and speckled among them were what looked like the occasional emaciated teenager carrying tools or water for the men.
It was hot and humid, so most of them worked without shirts, stripped down to the waist with their only clothes being plastoid helmets, and the sleeves of chainmail-like safety mesh to protect them from the teeth of a misplaced vibro-saw.
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