Chapters 16 and 17 return to Devin, who was introduced in chapters 6 and 7 as the former AgriCorps Jedi who settled in the backwater prairie district known as the Moosachu Plains, on the planet Nechako, after hearing that the Jedi Order had been destroyed.

Chapter 16: Neighbours

If a little is good, more must be better. This, Devin concluded, had been his mother's adage for fertilizer application, because during his first growing season on Nechako he pulled in wholly acceptable grain crops and raised perfectly healthy inu calves without any additional fertilizer whatsoever.

A lot happened during that first growing season. When Devin and Shie made their decision to stay in Moosachu it was only spring, but by midsummer, to Devin's chagrin, the powers that be in the capital city of Bulkley saw fit to sign the Imperial Accord, bringing Nechako rapidly and smoothly under Imperial control. And not long after harvest that fall, Devin and Shie's son Jonah was born.

"Jonah is the first person in the Moosachu Plains to get an Imperial ID card from birth!" Mara Wong chirped as Devin stood at the counter of The Moosachu Farming and Community Cooperative, filling out the forms to get Jonah his ID card. Mara was one of several neighbours who took turns staffing The Co-op, as it was usually called. Housed in a boxy warehouse-like building plunked down in the middle of the prairie, The Co-op served as Moosachu's agricultural supply dealer, post office, government liaison, general store, community space, cafe and centre of pretty much everything.

Devin's polite response regarding his son's citizenship was sufficient encouragement for Mara.

"It's a new day for Nechako!" she sang, her smile showing up the wrinkles in her motherly face. "The Empire's going to invest in the mines and my daughter'll have a job again before winter is over. And when the mines get going again there'll be more demand for our crops and more money for schools and roads and..." Mara could likely have bubbled on like this about Nechako's bright future under Imperial rule, but Devin broke in.

"And I've heard Nechako made the cut for the Phosphate Acquisition Program," Devin said, forcing a smile.

"Yes, aren't we lucky? But you haven't signed up for the IAP yet, have you?"

"The IAP?" Devin gave her a confused look. After hearing the Imperial Minister of Agriculture give a radio broadcast telling farmers that the destruction of his beloved AgriCorps was the fault of the Jedi Knights, he'd forsworn listening to Galactic Ag Radio and its frequent broadcasts explaining the IAP.

"Yes, the Imperial Agriculture Program. They're being careful to make sure that only good farmers can buy phosphate now, since the supply is so limited, so you need to apply before you buy your fertilizer."

"And how do I do that?" Devin asked, trying to take the edge off his voice.

Mara opened a drawer behind the counter and pulled out a memory stick. "It's all on here," she said, handing it to him.

Devin took the fat, stubby memory stick, looked down at it and then looked up at Mara. "Is it really that long an application?" he asked.

"Well, you'll need your last three years' crop data to prove that you meet the yield targets."

"And what if I don't?" Devin asked, searching Mara's face, which was all calm optimism.

"Don't worry," she said, reaching out a work-worn hand across the counter to him. "If you don't, you just need to show that your production plan incorporates the methods outlined in the Best Agricultural Practices document, which is on there too. Then you can make sure that you'll get up to the targets for staying in the program."

Devin looked at the memory stick, then at Mara again, not sure what to say.

"Don't worry," Mara said again. "It might seem overwhelming now, but it will all be for the best. Silas signed up right away and we've had our best yields ever. We even have extra money to send his sister to the academy next year. I'm sure Silas can help you if you have any questions." Mara's son Silas farmed just west of Devin's place, and she was extremely proud of him for taking over the farm at age fifteen when his dad passed away.

"Thanks, that's good to know," Devin said, forcing himself to smile. What else could he do? He wanted to take Mara by the shoulders and shake her and scream, They aren't telling you everything! They lied about what they did to the AgriCorps, they lied about what they did to all the Jedi. You really think they aren't going to screw over a backwater planet like Nechako when it suits them? But he couldn't say that, not even if he put it more politely. He had a newborn son to care for now, and couldn't take the risk of finding out what would happen if word got around to the local Imperial Representative that he didn't share his neighbours' faith in their new government.

Mara was oblivious to all this. She smiled back at Devin and brushed her dyed-red hair out of her shining eyes. "It's a new day!" she said happily. "We finally have a Galactic government that's looking out for us farmers!"

Driving home over the golden prairie under endless blue skies, Devin drummed his fingers on the steering console of his little speeder. If it were just some faceless bureaucrat at the helm of the Imperial Agriculture Program, he might not have been so suspicious. But it was Ry Kyver, his own former colleague in the Jedi AgriCorps. He'd never really liked her, even back in those days. Not that he'd known her well. They met only once, a year ago, back at the AgriCorps station on Deema, one day when he'd gone to the refectory for lunch, and found a woman he didn't know sitting at the table and eating the sandwich he'd stowed in the fridge for himself.

"Hi, I'm Devin," he'd said, trying to start things off on the right foot. Her Force-signature suggested she might be a Jedi, so he added, "Are you new to the station here?"

The woman, about ten years old than him, he guessed, had taken her time to finish chewing a rather large bite of his sandwich and then said, "No, just visiting. I'm cross-posted with Core AgriChem." Core AgriChem was, at the time, the galaxy's leading supplier of agricultural inputs.

"I didn't know AgriCorps Jedi were allowed to take corporate placements," he'd said, a bit surprised, and watched her take another bite of his sandwich.

"There's a lot of things you don't know about the AgriCorps," she'd said with her mouth full, at which point he turned around and left. He learned later by asking around that she was Ry Kyver. How she had managed to not only survive the Jedi Purge, but even to live openly and serve as the Imperial Minister of Agriculture he hardly dared to guess. All he knew was that hundreds of other Jedi who he'd rather see alive were gone and she was still here.

Hold no grudge, said his memory of Master Lu, his former Jedi mentor, for to hold a grudge is the death of a Jedi. Devin sighed and shook his head. But what could he do? With one hand he ran his fingers through his short brown hair and scratched his head. Do what you have always done, came the answer, as if Master Lu were there beside him. What he'd always done in the AgriCorps was to keep an open mind and go talk to local farmers about how things were actually working in practice. With that in mind, he decided to take Mara at her word and stop in to see her son Silas on his way home.

He arrived just in time to see a shiny new spray-rig taxi up to a big, red metal barn. A tall, skinny figure in a dirty blue hazmat suit waved, took off its safety mask, and yelled, "Hey Dev-man!"

Devin was never sure why that nickname managed to haunt him wherever he went, but he never had the heart to ask people to stop using it, so he just waved and called back, "Hey Silas, you busy right now?"

Silas climbed down from the spray-rig, safety mask dangling around his neck, and loped over to where Devin was standing. "I'm not busy if you're here to visit," he said, and grinned.

Devin smiled back a little awkwardly. Silas was only seventeen to Devin's twenty-three, and always seemed ridiculously happy to see Devin. Was he lonely? Devin wondered. He didn't seem to have any friends in the area. Under normal circumstances, Devin would quickly have taken Silas under his wing as a little brother. But with Nechako's short planetary cycle, spring had turned to harvest in just four months standard time, and so the loss of the young Jedi he'd mentored in the AgriCorps was still too raw for him to feel up to befriending Silas just now. Besides, Silas was always happy to talk about the one thing he knew a lot about, and so Devin didn't feel too bad about getting straight down to the business of agriculture.

"Your mom said I should come talk to you about the IAP," Devin said, "apparently I need to sign up if I want to buy fertilizer for next season."

"It's not that complicated," Silas said and shrugged. "There's only two things: you got to follow the BAP guidelines and you got to keep your yields up. But it's easy 'cause if you follow the BAP stuff there's almost no way you couldn't produce that much."

"BAP? I thought it was IAP."

"Best Agricultural Practices. It's part of the IAP. It's great. I used to have a hell of a time dealing with bugs and stuff on my grain crops, but with the BAP way I just spray Azopel three times before the season starts and that deals with all the soil-borne bugs, then four rounds of Matrazine during the season to clean up all the broad-leafed weeds. You should see it! Best yields ever."

"Is that why you got a new spray rig?" Devin looked beyond Silas to the shiny airplane-like structure behind him, with its 30 m wingspan of chemical spray jets.

"I wasn't going to, but they've got a subsidy so if you sign up in the first three years of the program you get to trade in your old equipment for new stuff made to work better with the BAP guidelines. I even got a new drill seeder out of it too! Oh yeah, and about drill seeding...they've got it all figured out. You just spray AllGone and it kills everything and you just plant into clean stubble. It's great."

Devin scanned the nearby fields. A herd of red-and-white Nechako Longhorns mooed in a pen nearby, waiting to head off for slaughter. There was more to raising them than just growing grain for them to eat, Devin knew. "But what about your pasture management?" he asked.

"Oh, I spot treat that with Matrazine too, to kill down the Nechako thistle and stuff. But they've got stuff for livestock too so you can raise more head in closer quarters without them getting worms and stuff. At least it works great on my Nechako Longhorns. It's probably good on those inu you raise too."

"It sounds pretty different from what I've been doing," Devin said. Back on Deema, he was used to spraying lots of things on crops: plant hormones to steer crop growth for more fruit versus more leaves, micronutrients for improved disease resistance and crop nutrient content, and amino acid analogs (lethal to plants) to spot-treat perennial weeds. But he'd never heard of any of the chemicals Silas mentioned, and didn't like the way they smelled on his young neighbour's hazmat suit.

Silas noticed Devin's uncertain look and clapped Devin on the shoulder. "Just try it, man," he said, "you won't look back."

Devin gave Silas a slightly cross-eyed look, but Silas just smiled at him. "Don't worry," he said, "if you have any trouble getting going with it, I'm here to help. That's what neighbours are for, right?"

Devin looked blankly at Silas for a moment, not sure what to say. He was realizing suddenly, painfully, that he really liked this homeschooled farm kid and his Moosachu-born-and-bred mother, who'd brought Devin's family a whole week's worth of homemade casseroles when Devin's mom passed away. His heart sank all the more to think just how much he doubted that the Empire they had such great hopes for would ultimately be kind to people like them. But he couldn't say that, and so for the nth time that day, Devin forced a smile. "Thanks," he said, with a little nod. "I'll let you know if I need any help."