Welcome to the fourth day of Star Wars Xmas! I hope everyone is having some good holidays this December, and are enjoy the story so far. Reception has honestly blown me away!
So a few people were asking how long this story is going to be and I am not sure tbh, but I would guess prob around 450k+ words total. I may break that into two story parts, I am not sure yet.
Chapter 4
Harry awoke to some mild shaking and the sound of blaster fire coming from outside, which had him alert in an instant. Using magic to quickly don his suit, he quickly dashed outside to see what by Merlin's sweaty ballsack was going on. He let the tight reins he kept on his magic go to gain an understanding of his surroundings, and realized that someone was attacking his shop. Running outside he saw a few air speeder bikes, and his battle droids exchanging fire. He saw a few bikes already knocked out, as clearly they didn't expect the level of resistance his GU's were putting up.
In fact, he only saw a single GU unit on the ground disabled with a blaster shot having hit it in the neck. Not wasting anymore time Harry pointed his finder and started firing blasting curses at the assholes attacking his shop.
His first spell hit one of the riders straight on, blowing him and part of his bike into pieces. It rained speeder and person parts down on part of his property as he quickly gained the attention of the other three remaining airborne attackers. They started to shoot at him as they continued to try and avoid the concentrated fire from his droids.
Harry was having none of it though, as these fuckers were trying to screw up his launch of his shop. Summoning a protego around himself without even using his hands he sent another blasting curse at one of the riders, who dodge right into it as it was coming at him. While he was doing that he was building up his magic inside him, and then trusted his hands out to the last remaining two airspeeders. As he did so he directed his magic to grasp both bikes and their riders, stopping them in place regardless of the whines of their bikes engines.
Harry actually felt a bit of strain doing this as he pulled them out of the air and to the ground where two GU droids walked up with shock batons and knocked them out. The whole fight only took a few dozen seconds since he came out, but it had felt like far longer. However now he could hear noise coming from some of his neighbors who were waking up to the noise and light show caused by the blasters.
Walking towards the two downed armoured attackers, Harry reached around the neck of the first, looking for the release for the helmet. Inside was a 50 something human, or close human species, and by looking at his gear it seemed far better off than most here on Tatooine. Pulling the unconscious man's eyes open Harry peered into his eyes and entered the man's mind smoothly without difficulties.
Inside he found the information he was looking for. Apparently this six men merc group were hired by some Death Stick producer and dealer who had already heard about Cannabis from a friend at Jabba's and felt that it was a big threat to his business. He wanted Harry dead, and the secrets to Cannabis to die with him, however the mercs had a different idea. They were going to torture the secrets out of him, then kill him, and collect the bounty. They would later then sell the secrets to cannabis to the highest bidder, most likely a Hutt or do something else with it.
Harry looked through the man's memories and was shocked at how skilled he was at his profession, but then that was the reputation most Mandlorians had in the business. Harry had gotten lucky to catch him off guard. He made a quick decision that would inconvenience him somewhat, but turning down the opportunity to not get all this man knowledge on battles and fighting in hand to hand combat was simply a waste. His skills he had gotten from the Rodian and Voldemort did not translate well to close combat. With that thought Harry started to internalize the spell he had created just for this purpose, and sent it to the man, starting the process of ripping the man's mind apart and absorbing his memories.
Sure this made him a bit dark to some, but that was just fine with him, as he already planned to kill the man, and this was basically the same thing. The simple fact was he really didn't want to turn down this opportunity, because as Harry observed from the Mando's memories, the only reason Harry had so easily taken this man down, was because he 'cheated'. If he had not used his magic in such a way, there was little chance he would have hit this man with a blaster, or spell before he could escape. Partially because he had a jetpack on his back for a quick getaway into the town, but mostly because he was just that skilled.
It took a few hours before Harry was back to himself, and saw that the droids and Elves were cleaning up after the attack, and had already fixed all the damage. That brought a smile to Harry's face. He saw PA-01 giving them directions, and could already see some droids breaking down some of the speeders that had crashed and stocking piling their components. The other downed attacker was gone, and was nowhere to be seen. Harry just sat there observing things for about ten minutes, just letting his new memories settle.
After that, he quickly went into his shop before returning to the front of his property where he put another sign up that simply said 'Kill Count, HPI: 26, Morons who have attacked my shop: 0'. He admired his new addition a bit more before going back inside the store and back to sleep. He needed it after seeing some of the nasty shit that the Mando he had just killed had done in the past. This guy had been part of a loose group who would take money for nearly any job as long as it paid to further their own goals.
The grand opening of his shop was going well, and while there had not been a line out the door, there certainly had been a steady line inside at the sales desks throughout the day. There was a combination of droids and Elves manning the desk, with PA-01 directing everything and handling any customers who had made requests the Elves or droids couldn't help with, it was smooth sailing.
Harry basically just stood back observing everything, and had only handled the first customer as he was Jabba's assistant Bib Fotuna, so someone he needed to serve personally, at least for the first time. Apparently Jabba had tried the Cannabis Harry had left, and had loved it, and wanted to immediately start exporting it, as the Hutt could see the credits that could be made already.
Fotuna ended up leaving with dozens of crates loaded up by goons who came with him. Jabba had bought fifty bottles of each of his liquors, and nearly 100kg of Cannabis. Which was a ton of money, as Harry was charging 5 credits per gram of Cannabis, though he gave Jabba a 30% discount. He also had taken nearly all the bags of Jerky on display. So off walked nearly twenty guys as they loaded boxes into large speeders before the store was swarmed by other patrons waiting for Jabba's people to finish before coming in.
Harry had just made 355,000 credits or 8,750 Peggats on his first ever sale, and surprisingly Fotuna paid in credits. Fotuna had also told Harry as he was leaving that if this order of Cannabis sold well off world, Jabba would like to discuss exclusive rights to sell Cannabis outside of Harry's shops.
He had honestly not thought about that possibility, and it didn't sound too bad to him. It may even get some of the heat of his back, as Jabba would not want his business partner to be put at risk. In fact, now that he thought about it the more he liked this idea, the only drawback was that he had to go into business with someone like Jabba. That being said, it sounded like the best route he had at the moment, and would maybe even allow him to extend a bit more influence over this area around here.
The size of Jabba's order took him a bit by surprise as it was only the first customer and they had already bought up 20% of his supply set aside for the day. He may have to put maximums on the size of purchases of Cannabis if he starts to run low. Dobby ensured him that more crops were going to be ready soon, and even more were being planted at this very moment to expand their harvest sizes. Harry had even had to go and create a bunch more expanded trunk yesterday because their stockpile of spares was running out. Thankfully with his new levels of magical power, he could create some truly huge spaces for farms.
He had also experimented a bit by focusing his power to ensure a far longer and wider trunk space than tall. Though it didn't work perfectly but now his trunks were only about 100m tall and a few km long and wide now. It was fun to play around with the same spell but using his intent and will to get largely different results. After expansion it was the somewhat tedious process of setting them up to have a proper environment. So he had gone a bit crazy and had made more than enough trunks to last him a good amount of time, at least that is what he hoped. It combined with his exertions during the battle earlier had left him exhausted, ensuring he had a good sleep the night before his grand opening.
Even still he was feeling quite tired today. So he was happy to simply watch as customers left his store happy, with only very few not buying anything just checking things out. One thing Harry had to watch however was water, because he didn't want to run the moisture farmers out of business with his new shop. So he only sold his 'Guaranteed 100% Pure Crystal Clean Water' at one and a half times the market rate for normal drinking water. He had PA monitoring to ensure demand didn't rise too far to put too much strain on the farmers, and also so that he didn't supply too much to take away their business. His presence was going to attract more people and therefore more demand for water, so him being here was actually a good thing otherwise the cost of water may spike too much.
Harry's store was open all day, everyday, and will only close for major construction and such. That meant that Harry left the store front after about ten hours of watching, and was only surprised by a few things. One being blaster gas, even the yellow grade, was flying off the shelves. He had read some people's thoughts, and they felt at the prices Harry was selling at, he was going to run out soon, so they wanted to get theirs before they couldn't. If they only knew. It was not that he was flooding the market with ultra low prices, but simply the fact that getting blaster gas out here at the lower price found in the core was basically unheard of.
The second, was that few people bought powerpacks for blasters, and it wasn't the price. It seemed Harry overestimated how often people were replacing them in normal situations. Polukas' related memories were mostly from him doing crime, and getting into firefights, where he often lost or broke power packs for his blasters. So Harry had just assumed this was normal for most, which seemed to be incorrect, but that was alright, as they are cheap and still did sell, just not as well as he expected.
The third was a trader who bought dozens of crates of booze from him that he was going to take into the core and sell it there. Harry had wished him well and had even given the man a 10% discount on the large sale, as he bought nearly four thousand bottles. Thankfully Harry had thought ahead to build a loading area on the side of the shop so people could drive their speeders or anti-gravity sleds over to pick up their large orders. He may even put in a small landing pad in the future, it depends on how well he does.
Finally the last surprise of the day for Harry was how popular his new landspeeder was proving to be. They were all sold to order, meaning they were built for each customer and this allowed people to choose their colors and customize a few things. He expected to sell 2, maybe 3 today, not 16. So of course he had skimmed a few minds of their buyers, and dam was this ability amazing for market research.
Apparently 13,500 credits or 340 Peggats (his final decided price), was considered a very good price for what people are describing as a luxury speeder. However there was another group who loved that there was a hardpoint on the back, as it allowed them to equip their speeder with a weapon of their choice, or whatever they needed.
The overall design was well received, and the speed made it the fastest land speeder on Tatooine. This combined with the fact that it would require less maintenance because of the lack of sand going into the engine intakes were just some of the various reasons people were making orders for them. This meant Harry was going to be quite busy in the near future while he builds speeders to fulfill the orders, but that just made him smile. He loved the idea of people truly liking and enjoying something he created. A random thought popped into his mind and made him smile, as he hoped his parents would be able to find some pride in what he was creating here.
"Harry, I need your permission to send Trade One out to pick up some cargo." PA-01 said interrupting Harry from his work on building another speeder. He was certainly getting faster as each was only taking about thirty minutes for him to create now, as he gained an even better understanding of the craft that he was able to transfigure larger sections whole, without having to deal with attaching them together. It has been four days since they had opened up the store and things were going swimmingly, with word spreading his customer base has been steadily increasing.
It was actually kind of getting too busy inside his store, so much so that he was now even thinking of creating another building adjacent to his current one to handle customers looking for parts, and scrap. That being said, he had already finished the backorder for sand speeders, having already sold 28. The number of new orders was decreasing each day, however that was mostly because those who wanted one locally and could afford one had already put in an order. He had even needed to go over to one of his neighbors, a scrap and parts merchant and bought some bulk speeder scrap off of him to give him enough supplies to finish these back orders.
"What are we running low on already?" he asked, surprised that they needed to head out already. He had expected them to send out Trade One sometime in a week's time when they know more about what has been selling.
"Harry, we are nearly out of key components for the sandspeeders, especially Repulsorlifts." PA said, pointing out to Harry that he had nearly depleted the stock pile of repulsors they had accumulated over the last three years. Shit, that was truly something that Harry couldn't make himself, as a key component of all repulsor lifts could only be made deep in the gravity well of a certain type of singularity. "I have compiled a route and destinations for pick up." she said displaying a holographic map in front of her with the route highlighted.
It seemed they were stopping at a few places to pick up cargo. Corellia for a large assortment of parts, apparently those were selling well too, and they needed additional blaster components, as that was something Harry had neglected getting enough of. From Corellia they were gonna head back south through the Trade Spine, toward Sollust which was home to the SoroSuub Corporation. They were whose landspeeder he had based his own off of, and who also sold the repulsors and many other components he needed for his new company.
Finally it seemed they were going to stop at Naboo and drop off a few droids to start establishing their company presence there, and gaining contacts with Theed Hangars. As Harry looked over the map PA explained the reason for each stop. It was amazing, already only a few days and PA was saving him tons of time. She had already placed orders for the repulsors he was using up, even before he realized they were nearly out. He looked at the droid with a lot of fondness, and even a feeling he couldn't quite understand.
"PA-01 for this type of stuff, you don't need my permission every time, just get it when you plan to head to new planets we have not visited before. You have access to the business accounts, so there should not be any problem putting in orders." he said to the droid assistant who made some noises Harry assumed were Happy noises. It was kind of odd that droid electrical noise could be used to interpret their feelings, but he rolled with it.
"Alright Harry, I will handle this type of stuff from now on then, and will include it in my weekly written reports to you." PA said, before bobbing a bit and then asking a question in a more hesitant voice. "Harry, could you perhaps design me a few assistant droids or some kind of extension so I may be in more than one place at a time if needed?" she asked him.
It was kind of a funny concept, an assistance droid that wanted assistants, but Harry kind of understood, as she was only a single droid and couldn't be everywhere. She also loved to micro manage a lot of affairs that he had observed so far, but that was probably smart of her when she was mainly working with Elves, and droids that sometimes have limited intelligence. R3 was now mostly handling parts and scrap department, while often coming to assist Harry, as he was a wiz at programming, so that left a lot for PA to do.
"Hmm, yea I think that is possible, make sure you put in another order for a few dozen small repulsors, and I should be able to get started on design and coding." he said thinking about the new project a bit more. "I will make it in such a way that we can sell them in the shop. For obvious reasons they will not be as capable as you, but that's not what you wanted right?" he asked.
"No, that sounds just perfect and the repulsors are now included in our order." PA said with the voice that was just screaming to Harry that it was coming from a person who currently had a huge smile plaster on their face. Honestly it was kind of shocking to Harry how quickly it seemed PA was developing a proper consciousness and real personality. Though he expected that may be in part due to the utterly stupid concentrations of magic in her body with all the runes he carved in there and charms he had used. He may have gone overboard, but had been excited to truly combine technology and magic for once, even if it was in such a small package.
"Alright then I will get started on the design, but this one may take me a bit to get the cooling right without my magic, but we shall see." Harry said with a smile, and got back to work. He was loving his life here in this Galaxy, as he was working for himself and had no one trying to underhandedly manipulate him for their means. He was not being demanded to fix this, or go fight that. Expectations on him were of his own making, well mostly, rumours did create some exaggerations, but all in all it was a good living. Ironic when many thought of Tatooine as one of the assholes of the galaxy, and he only felt at home.
Things were fairly smooth for Harry over the next three months. Business just kept growing and growing… and growing. Jabba had ordered 100 cases of each alcohol a week, and 1000kg of Cannabis on top of that. At this time Harry came to an agreement with Jabba for him to have the exclusive rights to sell Cannabis outside HPI shops on a few conditions. This ended up getting some heat off of Harry's back, as he had even been attacked once more in the recent months over the stuff. One stipulation was that Jabba was prevented from selling at a lower price than Harry retailed it at, to ensure nothing prevented his own sales, as technically he was selling it cheaper to Jabba.
Another event was when Harry had been making his way back from a pod race with two of his GU battle droids acting as guards for him when a spicy incident occurred. It was after the race while Harry was making his way home, that he felt an attack coming from behind him with his magic. A simple sidestep, and he saw a blaster bolt streak by him, however, as he was not just standing there watching it, he pulled out his own blaster and fired back in the way he felt his attacker coming from, even before he truly had a bead on him with his eyes.
It was a quick fire fight as two others had come out of side alleys boxing him in, and Harry had still been hit by one, but his armour had taken the blast with little aplomb. The GU's had acted quickly and taken out the two other attackers before Harry could even switch targets, and blasted them into the dirt. As a result of the action the streets had quickly cleared, but now that shots were not being fired anymore people made their way back onto the roadway to observe the aftermath or at least poke their heads out of wherever they had been hiding to observe that aftermath.
Rather than bothering with the attackers, Harry simply had his GU units grab two of the bodies so they could be searched later, and Harry walked off without seeming to be bothered by the blaster shot to his side. He imagined more rumours would be spreading about the incident, however, what he didn't expect was Jabba's response. Apparently the Hutt was incensed that someone would dare attack Harry let on 'his' planet, as Harry was one of his most important business partners now. The word quickly got out and any more trouble had yet to materialize.
Another major change was that Harry had been 'forced' to buy out his closest neighbor, who was slowly going out of business because of Harry, and Harry also needed more parts, and scrap materials for his builds, but more importantly extra space to expand his shop. The Twi'lek Harry had bought it off of had run a hard bargain, as he must have seen through Harry's needs, and managed to charge Harry about 15% over market price for his property.
Harry had decided there was a large enough need, so he extended his complex and shop, building a new parts and scrap department for R3 to run. This led to slightly reduced customer flow in his main shop, as a lot of his consumable goods were becoming FAR more popular than he expected. There were even a few new additions that he added to the products available in his store. It took a woman walking in and asking about any products targeted towards women, for Harry to realize he forgot an entire area of products and demographic. In fact he had apologized to his customer, and offered her a free sampling once they had acquired some, as well as a substantial gift voucher to the shop.
As a result a new line of cosmetic items and soaps was born that he sold at his shop. Most of them were fairly high quality, and cheap, as the Elves easily made them with some basic materials and a bit of magic. Even with some select magical plant's too for better results. He wanted them to be more of an item to draw people into his store, than to be a money maker. It truly had nothing to do with him wanting people around here to use his cheap quality soap and save his nose; no that had nothing at all to do with it. Definitely not. Though makeup made him a decent chunk of change too, as even sold cheap in comparison to competitors offerings it was still a massive markup.
With the expansion of his compound, he decided to introduce hot food items to be sold outside his shop from a stall. And so Donair was introduced to Tatooine, and it was extremely low maintenance for him, but still brought in a little money. He hired locals to run the stand for him, and just provided the supplies from his trunk farms, making very little profit, but adding an attraction to his shop. His trunk farms were certainly a cheat on a desert planet, and add on free labour from the Elves and it was simply not fair to competitors of his.
Donairs were a huge hit partly because they were meaty deliciousness, but also because they had a few watery vegetables that were rare around here, with tomatoes, lettice, and onions as options available. Finally they were mostly a product to draw customers in and priced respectively. They were even something slaves could afford, hence that fact he was only making a little profit from them. They were so popular, there was constantly a line at the stall, and he had even fielded questions from locals about opening up stalls in other areas, but he wasn't sure yet.
He had also finally finished his advanced droid control unit (DCU), which was to be installed in each of his new fighters. They were quite amazing in Harry's opinion, as each new unit introduced in a battle linked with all the others, and pooled their sensors and weapon tracking data. This meant that they all had a better understanding of the battle, and had increased accuracy as each new unit came online in the network. It was quite astonishing when Harry realized just what he had designed, and that was just one example of the droid control units networking capabilities.
The fact that he could also install one in larger ships was an awesome bonus too. Not to actually pilot it, but to instead feed that extra data, tactical, and strategic information to the ship's computers, which in turn fed it to the pilot droids. Right now his control unit just didn't quite have the computer power to operate such a large ship on its own while also coordinating strategic and tactical information across the battle too. For smaller ships they were easily capable of operating them without issues, and fighters would have ample extra computing power left over, hence the networking effect. It was something he was going to work on on an ongoing basis going forward to try and improve the DCU even more.
During this time his three new CR-90s were finished and he had them delivered to his rented hangars where his droids proceeded to crew them. PA-01 handled all of this and even sent them on their first cargo runs, with 2 going to Kuat Shipyards to start picking up his fighters. His ships would have to make a few runs for looks as they were picking up 50 fighters, but Harry knew the Elves were packing a few extra inside trunks each time.
Trade Four was going to set on a route from Coruscant to Tatooine to pick up BlasTech parts and blasters, apparently people out here loved having access to all sorts of parts for blaster, as modding blasters was a popular pastime for many here. That ship was also picking up things at Corellia as well on its way back up the Corellian Run. It was stupidly easy to hide their use of trunks when picking up cargo from multiple planets.
His current CR90, Trade One, was running trips between other systems for parts, consumables, and anything else his stores or he needed. Even stopping by Naboo to pick up Nubian Hyperdrives with a rating of class 1 for small crafts, he got each for just 12,000 credits, but he had to order 100 minimum to get them at that price. Often runs were also done to Sulusts as he was selling 1-3 sand speeders a day now, and they had even enquired about licensing his model for sale through their cooperation. The Galactic Patent System was one of the first things Harry learned about before he opened his store, and he was the happy owner to a number of patents already. Oddly enough it was also one of the few galactic systems that was regularly enforced within the Republic and beyond. Colour him surprised, that when corporate profits were at stake things finally happened.
He had sold SoroSuub a license to build 5000 units of his speeder a year, as Harry didn't want them to scoop up all of his sales from his shop, but he didn't think that was going to happen, as it seemed they were looking to sell it for around 14,500 credits base cost. That was a significant jump from Harry's cost, however their representative who actually came down here to Tatooine for discussions, had assured Harry there were thousands of desert worlds for it to be sold on. It was going to be sold as the HPI LSD-01, or simply as HPI Desert Landspeeder.
They had also asked him if he would produce other variants, so he worked up the 'Snow Speeder' which was tricky to get the cooling and heating right so it didn't frost over and ice up, but then didn't want it to overheat in normal climates either. It had an enclosed canopy and could seat four, with the similar hardpoint on the back, like with all his models. This one came in at bit pricier so SoroSuub was selling it at 15,500, Harry just added 500 credits cost to the sand speeder model, as it wasn't too much harder for him to make. It was called the HPI SLS-01, or HPI Snow Landspeeder.
The last one he made of the ALL terrain Luxury Model. Harry ended up putting a bit better engines in it, upped the repulsors to allow it to have even more ground clearance and be able to speed over small gaps of a few meters easily. It also had an improved deflector array, which allowed for it to reach staggering speeds of 400+ km/h, and even tank a few dozen heavy blaster shots or hitting something small while driving as said stupid speeds. It was going to be sold at the significantly higher price of 17,000 credits, and Harry decided to leave this one entirely in the hands of SoroSuub, and would instead sell theirs here at his shop. He still owned the rights to the LLS-01, or HPI Luxury Landspeeder, but they just manufactured and sold it.
This worked out for him because they were a key supplier for him for his other speeders and equipment, and he wanted to keep them happy as well. The fact that they have been going out of their way, and even sent someone on a somewhat dangerous trip to Tatooine to talk shop with him, said a lot about their company and the way they did business. This would also give him more influence over them at the same time as well, because he could simply stop licensing them the designs, and that would hurt their bottom line, somewhat. Thankfully PA handled almost all of that with just quick updates to Harry when something new occurred, she had even sent another one million Peggats, to Naboo this time, to be converted to Credits. She said something about it benefiting the local government a bit there by going to Naboo to do it, but he hadn't really listened because he was too busy with what had resulted with the next major event to happen.
The next and biggest thing to occur was when Trade 2, and 3 arrived on Tatooine from Kuat with his first load of new starfighters onboard. It was a major step forwards for Harry, as these fighters can pose a threat to capital ships if not dealt with soon enough, and with each CR90 being followed by three starfighters, with and additional 7 docked on it, 3 outside, 4 inside, created for a very difficult target to take on. His plans were to have two of the fighters lead the 'wolf pack' into hyperspace by a few seconds, just enough time to allow the CR90 time to drop out of hyperspace if something happens to them, and then another following behind to protect the rear.
The reason he had the others docked and to be launched if needed, was because having them fly around beside the ship would be 99.999% of the time a waste of fuel, and putting unneeded wear on the crafts. So the CR90 was even more ideal for the role Harry chose for it with its external latching points for fighters. He was super excited about them, however to actualize that goal he needed to get to work doing some MAJOR modifications to the CS Fighters he just got. The CS starfighter was about 15m wide and 7.5m long, with a slim profile and tail fin. So while not the prettiest machines, they packed a mean punch, and were difficult to take out.
He had gotten to work ripping them apart, and getting parts from all over his facility brought to him as he needed them. The first major hurdle was replacing the cockpit with the DCU and reworking the structure to be able to handle removing such a large section. But it was these types of problems, and the process of working them out that he found so much fun, and quite frankly relaxing, allowing him to dive in and get lost in his work for days at a time.
So here he was four months since his shop had opened looking at his first finished starfighter about to fire it up. He had started the process by taking out everything that needed to be removed to make room for other components, or was no longer needed with no pilot onboard anymore. This meant the cockpit area, life support, and a lot of little things that were needed for an organic pilot to interact with the craft, such as physical controls, and other things like that. This surprisingly to Harry left quite a bit of extra space for him to work with, and allowed him to remove the astromech slot on the sled as well.
With that done there were now a ton of components to install, and major decisions to be made. See while the CS could go through hyperspace, it required a sled which was part of the reason Harry could only fit 4 on his ship. A small part of the hangar space was reserved for the 7 hyperspace sleds, which were about 5m wide 2m tall, and 1.5m meter thick. However they were rectangular in shape, so racks were made to stack them up in the hangar. When needed they can be launched for the fighters to allow them to go into hyperspace.
So the first major decision Harry had to make was to either install the hyperdrives directly in the CS, and drop the sled altogether, or keep it and use that space for additional combat hardware. There were other things to consider too, being fuel for the hyperdrive being limited in the fighter, and if he did keep the sleds, he was still going to upgrade them, and their hyperdrives with the Nubian ones.
In the end after a few days of just stepping back to think on the issue he decided to keep the sleds, and simply use any extra space for additions to make the fighter even more deadly. With that route in mind he first started to install the droid control unit. To ensure everything would be operating optimally he also replaced the entire power distribution system for the whole fighter.
From there he started to add things he felt were needed, such as improved sensors, and a robust communication system so all of the fighters could be constantly communicating with each other. He also added a few more control thrusters to improve the maneuverability and allow it to pull some stunts that organics truly wouldn't be able to. He added additional databanks, and targeting computers and finally after he finished all that she still had a small amount of space to work with.
So the thought came to him, instead of installing a larger more powerful hyperdrive inside the fighter, he could put a smaller class 10 with a tiny fuel tank to allow the fighter to escape from battle and get away from a fight if the sled is lost or out of range. With a bit of research, he found something like that wasn't too expensive to achieve, but as he was looking for space savers he once again came back to Theed Hangars to get some Nubian parts off of them.
For the hyperdrive sled he ended up going back on a decision he had made after having a discussion with R3, and that was about removing the Astromech. R3 convinced him that having an astromech gave the craft an element of repairability, and would allow some fighters that people have thought knocked out of a fight, to return to battle. Or a damaged craft that escaped, could find a hiding spot, enact repairs, then return home. After that discussion he had ordered 100 more R2 units for his fighters, as any others but an R-series Astromechs and R3 may feel betrayed by him.
Everything else about the sled was pretty much changed at the same time too. He installed his class 1 Nubian hyperdrives, and upgraded the communication package to include a small long range holonet transceiver. Meaning each of his fighters will be in contact as long as they are within range of a holonet relay, and not being signal jammed. The sled had its own deflectors as well to protect it from debris or stray shots during a battle.
In the end with all his upgrades the total cost of his fighters was brought to 92,000 credits. However he also ended up with about 10,000 credits worth of stuff to resell at his shop, so really each cost him about 82,000 each total. That was still lower than many on the market, and with his changes you will be hard pressed to find any fighter that will beat his CSs 1 on 1. Their ability to attack up class because of their missiles and two torpedoes also increased their threat ratings. All in all he was extremely happy with the results, and it seemed like his happiness was spilling into the surrounding magic as it was almost bubbly too.
With only 4 CR90s at the moment, that meant Harry was going to have ten CSs here on Tatooine to act as a backup in case he needed some more heavy protection. However that all left Harry just standing there with a small control box, ready to activate the craft for the first time to see if it actually worked as he anticipated. He trusted in his technical skills and his magic in doing what he needed to get done, but this was something completely untested and new for him, regardless he pressed the button.
The CS's repulsors activated almost as soon as it started up and righted the vehicle just 1m off the ground. It was giving off a far deeper hum than the sound his landspeeder made, as it floated there. Looking it over he couldn't see anything wrong with it, but only tests could really tell him if he had fucked it all up.
"CS-01 please perform a full diagnostic on all your systems and report." he ordered the new droid fighter.
"Orders confirmed. Initiating diagnostics." said the clearly robot male voice. The CSs had only an extremely basic personality matrix for limited interaction vocally. Their droid brains, processing circuits, and data banks were all instead dedicated towards combat related features, so giving them a complex and true personality was not on his agenda. "Diagnostics complete, no anomalies. All parameters within acceptable ranges." CS-01 replied back after about two minutes.
"Alright, activate your sled, and connect up and run a full set of diagnostics again." he ordered.
"Orders confirmed. Initiating diagnostics." said the fighter again after hooking up to the nearby sled. Harry may have to work on that before he rolls that personality matrix out to the rest of them. "Diagnostics complete, no anomalies. All parameters within acceptable ranges. Hypermater fuel low." finished the droid starfighter just a bit longer than last time. Harry rubbed his forehead at the brisk responses, at least it was all correct information so far. He had only put a small amount of fuel in the sled, in case something went wrong or more worryingly, boom.
The fighter was not small, at nearly 15m wide, but Harry almost found it a bit adorable, but maybe that was because it was made with a lot of his own work. "Perform series 1-3 atmospheric, and space tests." he told the droid fighter. Those were a series of tests he programmed in to test out and ensure that all the functions of the fighter were working correctly. It would zoom around Tatooine for a bit, obviously avoiding people, avoiding things it may damage, and performing its needed tests. Then it will come back, reattach its sled, and take off into space.
In space it will leave the gravity well of the planet, do a small hyperspace jump, test its weapons systems, then jump back. After that it was simple reentry tests, and atmosphere tests with the sled attached. Thankfully the sled sat above the thrusters so it could stay attached while the CS was in full operation and would simply just reduce its top speed and maneuverability by about 5-10%. However because it did have a small deflector on board, it actually increased the overall defense of the fighter.
After about forty five minutes of Harry cleaning up a few things in the programming of the CSs personality matrix, the fighter flew back into his workshop through the big open hangar like doors. The droid brain seemed to control it extremely well, as the ship came in smoothly and seemed to almost glide into place. It certainly had to be calculating a half dozen force vectors at once to achieve that smooth as silk landing. It made him extremely happy with his droid control unit.
"Tests in Series 1 to 3 have been completed. All tests performed nominally, transmitting data." CS-01 said.
"Alright land softly and then deactivate." he told the droid. When it did, he then updated the personality matrix, and then reactivated the droid.
"Perform a diagnostic on your control unit and on both droid brains." he told the once again activated fighter to test the Droid Control Unit or DCU.
"All readings are in the green commander." the same robot voice said, but this time was a bit less monotone, and with a bit more personality.
"Alright, move over there and enter sleep mode," he told the CS fighter pointing towards a corner of his workshop that was empty. Now all Harry needed to do was reconfigure each of the fighters he had ordered, as they were all now here on Tatooine in a trunk waiting for him to get around to finishing. However, now that he knew what he was doing he didn't expect each fighter to take longer than a day to do.
Not that he could devote every day to producing them, as he was still needed around the shop every once and awhile, and Jabba invited him to join him for their monthly podrace they were now going together to. Betting was good, and he still had orders for his speeders to fulfill. On top of all that Harry tried to spend at least 10 hours learning about something new everyday, usually something tech or magic related. Politics in this galaxy was almost as corrupt as it was back in the Wizarding world, so he tended to avoid topics like that except for those that directly pertained to his business interests. He left most of that to PA-01.
And that was how the next five years passed for Harry. With him often doing what he had grown to love doing, that being tinkering away, and building things using both his brains, and his magic at the same time. It was soothing to him, and almost acted as a form of meditation, without the distraction of feeling all the people around him when he was focused on his work it seemed to calm his soul. He also grew both in knowledge, and power. His magic had not stopped growing, and he now has more armed assets than ever before.
His business has been growing steadily under the close watch of PA, and his PAM series personal assistant MINOR droids that were basically all slaved to PA. The ones they actually sold, had a variety of personality matrices installed, but they paled in comparison to PA as they didn't have her magical enhancements nor the crazy extensive hardware. His shop was now attracting customers from all over the planet, and even many from off world, so major expansions were undertaken multiple times over the years.
The compound now had three separate massive buildings for shop fronts, and he had bought out, or basically ran nearly all of his competitors in the area out of business. There was only a single holdout in Mos Espa and a few others in each of the other major cities around the planet. The fact that he offered reliable and cheap delivery service from his store to the entire planet didn't help his competitors either.
It was kind of funny watching the larger operations of transporting scrap from the other cities that were sometimes undertaken to move Harry's purchases to his massive scrap and part processing site out behind his shop. The last scrap and parts dealer here in Mos Espa was a stubborn little Toydarian, who was only surviving because he was surprisingly good at gambling at the podracers, but Harry felt he would cave soon. Or at least his magic was indicating that was the case, and so he was in no rush to try and get a better deal out of the stubborn alien.
There was now an even larger loading bay area where repulsor crafts, or speeders could come to be loaded up, and even two small landing pads for small cargo ships or shuttles. Business was simply that good, in fact, it would not be wrong to say that he accounted for far more than 90% of the legal GDP of Tatooine. There were no real figures so that was just his guess, but he didn't think it was far off.
He was racking in so much money a day, it was a bit scary. A few of his items, he even had to increase the price on, as demand had outreached his supply at times, those were Brandy, Whisky, and weirdly Gin as few alien species just loved the stuff. Cannabis at 5 credits a gram seemed to be a good price point, and already made it a fairly nice luxury, but not too expensive. Traders from off world were often coming in and simply filling up their ships with cases of booze and other goods before taking back off.
Certain other products flew off the shelves fast as well, but Harry kept their prices low still as he wanted them to be accessible to low income families, and even the few slaves who lived lives more like Roman slaves than those of Caribbean days. Those were mainly his soaps, donairs (Halifax Style), and makeup for the woman. It was awesome seeing a battle hardened, no nonsense female bounty hunter pick up her yearly supply of makeup and bath soaps. Even more hilarious is when a mean rough looking no-nonsense guy doing the same. He would be a liar if he said he didn't also enjoy some of the bath bombs, everyone deserves to feel that heavenly every once and awhile.
His best sellers were certainly Cannabis, Booze, Jerky, Blaster Gas, and new or 'refurbished' parts. He was selling so much of certain things, the amount of credits he was pulling in was a bit sickening, and his gold was starting to pile up again. On a normal day he would sell at least 100kg of cannabis, and a thousand cases of booze at minimum. That alone is over half a million credits a day, and the reality was even on a bad day he did about 1.5m credits in profit. The reason was that about 80% of what he sold had no cost to him, zero, as it was produced and manufactured by his droids and Elves from his trunks. Well there was the magical cost, but that was minimal to him in terms of power taken for what he produces naturally each day.
His bank accounts were ballooning, but this did also have big effects on the city surrounding him. As a result of his business taking off he needed to hire quite a few locals to help with all sorts of tasks, often with loading cargo onto ships, or unloading and doing basic sorting for scrap that was arriving. Ensuring things between his shop and the spaceport were in good repair, and clean. Construction and maintenance really was a large employer too. It was also amazing what people called 'scrap' here when it was often still a 90% working piece of equipment with one minor or major thing wrong with it. So most of the stuff they got was extremely easy to repair with magic to be resold at near retail price of a new part.
He had also ended up purchasing the spaceport here in Mos Espa from the owners when he approached them about it for just under 10 million credits, and since then it has been expanded twice more to account for all the traffic his company was attracting. The extra money, and commerce the spaceport and his shop was bringing in was having a clear effect on the city, and crime even had gone down as Harry had a number of his droids 'patrol' around his properties, and his 'local' area. No one messed with them though, as his reputation had only grown over the years, and some people have even whispered that he was a rogue Jedi monster that they failed to tame and exiled to Outer Rim.
Like he was some stupid celibate monk who used telekinetic powers and laser swords. Harry had learned a bit about them from his memories he absorbed from his two victims of his personal memory spell. They had known only limited things, and all of it was rumour or hearsay. From Harry's studies the Jedi were often mentioned in history, so were their enemy the Sith, but that was from the long in the past. However there were few details about the Jedi today, except they seemed to be able to move things with their mind, use it to help them move quickly, and used something called a mind trick. Which to his understanding was like a mild hypnosis when applied or a perception filter. He wasn't really that interested in learning more about them for now, and finding information about them is hard in the first place, so he had given up doing any holonet searches on them long ago.
Another major change to the city as a result of him, was that during one rather good podrace, where Harry was imbibing a bit of his personal stash of Firewhisky, and got a tad bit drunk, he let slip that he hates slavery to one of the other drunk race goers. Somehow he stupidly had answered when asked about it and told them it was because he had been treated as a slave when he was young by his own family that was supposed to raise him, even though ironically he was in fact a wealthy lord while they were simple plebs. That came to bite him in the ass only in that it had increased the mythos of the "wealthy, kind businessman, lord, and hidden monster that was Hadrian Peverell."
However as a result of those moments of laps in judgement, Jabba had gotten word of the incident. At first Harry was a bit concerned, but he shouldn't have been and his magic even let him know so by giving him the feeling all was well in his area, as Jabba had the slave market here in Mos Espa shut down. He even had scaled back the slave markets on most of the planet to boot. It seemed that the money he was making off of Harry through their partnership, was worth far more than what he was making off the small bit off the slave markets on 'his palace world'. That was not to say slaves were outlawed, just that the markets were either disappearing or downsizing.
Jabba must have thought that Harry may possibly leave the planet if the markets stayed open. Not something he was really considering, but he didn't change Jabba mind of the matter, as he did like the reduction in slavery. Or maybe Jabba simply wanted to do something nice for Harry, as they do often enjoy the pod races together, and Jabba has even gotten Harry into smoking Cannabis which he had admitted to never actually having tried before to the large Alien. Jabba was a crime boss, a slaver, and a bit of an asshole, but he definitely was interesting company for the pod races, and oddly likeable?
The only other major change related to the business was PA purchasing Trade 5-24 who were even now plying the dozens of trades routes they operated to ensure they had their products to sell. It was less about cargo space, as he was definitely abusing the crap out of his trunks, but more about needing to actually go to the source planet to buy those bulk amounts. Each ship could be filled beyond capacity at multiple stops along the same trade route before returning. The extra parts and components did mean a lot more 'work' for himself, but he loved it, so he was not complaining.
There had been four attacks of note on his ships since he started using them. One attack he lost 3 fighters to a group of pirates trying to intercept one of his shipments. They had a small corvette, an armed freighter, and two starfighters, but had seriously underestimated his fighters, or the strength of his CR90s deflectors. The battle had been devastating for the pirates.
The other two instances had been stupid pirates attacking his lead fighters as they came out of hyperspace, and then shitting their pants when the rest of the 'wolf pack' showed up. They were disabled and taken into custody, and any with bounties were taken to Naboo on one of their transports when it was leaving that way. It ended up actually raising their company's credibility with the Royal Naboo Security Forces. The fact that their business was making millions in taxes a year for the planet didn't hurt either.
PA had purchased land for Hadrian Peverell Incorporated, and had a medium sized company building built in the capital city of Naboo, Theed. It also acted as their warehouse for incoming parts from Theed Hangars, where they were stored before a CR90 arrived to pick up the delicate cargo. It did raise his company's profile on the planet by quite a bit, but not too terribly, and he still hasn't actually gone to visit, being too busy with what he's been doing here on Tatooine.
It was funny to him that in only five years Tatooine had become a supplier for quite a few Outer Rim planets, and even the south-eastern portion of Hutt space. It clearly has increased in importance, and that was reflected with the rising population. Harry now had nearly 1000 GU series combat droids, and even a few hundred unregistered various combat models he had picked up, repaired, and even improved in some cases, before sending them out to defend various places on Tatooine.
They mainly patrolled his property, the spaceport, or sat in sentry mode wherever they were deemed necessary. Harry had learnt quite a bit from the droids as he repaired a few, or scrapped those that were too badly damaged. He wanted to someday in the future, when he had finally worked down his list of projects and ideas, to create his own combat droids, but that was still far off. It would allow him to make what he wanted while also not being held back by what he could purchase due to regulations or lacking contacts with the right groups.
Harry had also increased the defenses around his quite expanded property. He installed in each corner and by the now three gates, laser cannon turrets, and in the back he even had a salvaged dual turbo laser to shoot down anything in the air bigger than an airspeeder. It was funny what you could do when he had tons of parts from spaceships just lying around, but it did make Harry feel far more secure. He also had his Elves and droids start to dig out an underground bunker facility for his shop in case it was ever attacked by a large enough space force to defeat the ground defenses and wards.
In a spur of the moment decision, when Harry realized that his immunity to normal alcohol beverages was becoming so pronounced he could no longer get drunk, he had worked on replicating Fire Whisky. For some reason the magic in the brew allowed it to affect him unlike normal alcohol, however it turned out to be far harder to replicate than expected. Harry should have realized that, but he stubbornly spent two months perfecting it and now proudly displayed it in his store at a price of 10,000 credits a bottle. Hardly anyone buys it, but a few bottles do sell a week.
Harry's musings on the past were interrupted by PA when she floated into his office. His office now looked down from the second level upon the shop floor through a number of one way Transparisteel panels.
"Harry, I need you to go to the Toydarian Watto, and negotiate a deal to purchase his property and scrap from him." PA said as she came into the room. "He said he won't deal with a droid, and will only bargain with you." she said, sounding a bit miffed. "I would not usually ask, but his property is in the middle of a few of ours and is in the way of doing some major expansions, and as you know he is the only remaining scrap and parts dealer here in Mos Espa." PA explained to Harry what he already knew.
Watto had been a stubborn hold out, and apparently he finally cracked. That being said the alien had spent decades before Harry arrived amassing a fairly substantial stockpile of parts and scrap. It was not going to be cheap, and he had been in no rush, but apparently PA was. That fact that his magic was also pulling him towards doing this now as well, a bit more insistent than usual, so he just smiled and laughed at the droid being miffed while getting up.
"Don't worry PA, I will deal with the stubborn luddite." he said as he walked out of his office. The upstairs of the store was still his personal space, but the other two storefront buildings had offices and management space above their sales floors.
Harry decided to walk, as Watto's place was only about a km away. As he walked through the shop, everyone gave him a wide berth but smiled at him and he nodded as he went past. When he left the main gate four GU droids in sentry mode there peeled off and started to escort him on his journey. R3 had given them orders to do so ever since the first attack on him when he was coming back from the pod races. He didn't see any reason to not have them around, so he didn't bother counter manning the orders of his friend.
Walking up to Watto's less than stellar store front, he could really see why the man's store wasn't doing too well. He was going to just give the man a good offer and get out of here because it wasn't really worth his time, but his magic warned him not to and encouraged him to bargain hard for some reason.
"Ah, Watto I have heard you have asked for me to come over." he said to the Ulgy Alien who was hovering behind his counter as Harry walked in. Like even for his species he was Ugly, and this was not him being speciest or anything.
"You are the man who has ruined my business!" he yelled as he pointed his finger at him. "Now come to buy me out too hu? Well let me tell you I am gonna squeeze every little drop out of you if you want my property or wares." Watto hovered over to him showing a bit more gumption than Harry expected. Deciding to scan his mind quickly Harry found it more difficult to do so than normal, but still prevailed, what he found was that Watto was nearly completely customerless and his money was running dry fast. He actually respected Harry as a merchant and gambler, and was mostly angry at being forced to open shop somewhere else.
"Well I can offer 600,000 credits." Harry said, making the Alien's eyes narrow at him, as Harry was offering something that they both knew was fully well below the value of Watto's place and more importantly the scrap.
"I don't accept credits here! Only good hard Peggats! I want 60,000 Peggats for this shop and all my parts and scrap!" Watto exclaimed at Harry bobbing up and down on his wings, clearly agitated a bit.
"Watto, I can understand the credits part, you're not alone here on Tatooine who thinks that way, but come on, 60,000 Peggats? That's robbery and you know it. How about 17,500 Peggats" Harry countered again, still low balling.
"There are far too many good parts here to let it go at that price, and you know it and your droid knows it too!" Watto exclaimed, but clearly showing his cards in that he really did want to sell. Not that Harry hadn't already gleaned that with his magic. "50,000 Peggats."
"Now, I know you have been collecting a good amount of parts and scrap here Watto, but you know now that my shop is here, most people are wanting newer, and less used parts." he said underselling the man's components. It clearly worked as that man got agitated even more. "25,000" Harry countered again.
"My parts are not poor! I sell high quality parts, in good repair, and I make my customers pay for it!" said the agitated alien. "30,000 and not a Peggat less." the alien said, and Harry was about to accept when his magic screamed at him to holdout and ask for something more.
"Watto, Watto, that's almost an acceptable price, but you need to throw in something more to sweeten the deal for me to accept." he said to the alien nonchalantly, but internally he was extremely interested as this was the strongest response he had ever gotten from his magic yet since arriving here. The Toydarian looked at him while thinking and giving him the evil eye before his eyes lit up.
"I just recently got two slaves in a bet from Gardulla the Hutt, a mother son duo. The boy is a natural with machines, and I was gonna take him with me to set up my next shop. But I will throw them in to sweeten the pot!" Watto said confidently thinking it would work, but Harry was about to reject out of principle, when his magic screamed at him to accept. He was really wondering what was up, as clearly something about these two was important enough or instrumental to Harry to get such a response from his magic.
"Alright Watto you have a deal." he said as he held out his hand to seal the agreement. Which Watto promptly shook, with clear relief on his face, as he had just gotten a good deal, so Harry could understand. "Come by this afternoon to get your payment and bring the slaves, and don't think about making off with a select few parts, I will have a few of my droids stay and watch." he said to the shady ass little alien.
Harry left without looking back and signaled to two of his dorids to stay back and watch Watoo, and the property. It took him only a few minutes to return to his place, and walked in to find PA. "PA, I have gotten the property, but there was an interesting development." he said to her as he found her floating behind the managers podium off to the side of the main sales desk. He said that as he kept walking up to the second floor and indicating her to follow.
"How so Harry?" she asked finally when they were on the private floor.
"I ended up getting two slaves as part of the deal," he answered as he took a seat behind his desk. "Not something I certainly set out to do, or wanted really." he answered back.
"Well I don't see how this is really an issue, just set them free when you gain ownership." the droid answered not really understanding the problem, as she didn't really deal with slaves due to his preferences and her own personal opinion on the subject. Slaves had no part in Harry's business, so they were something PA had not really worked with as they were not too pertinent to her job of either running his business or as his assistant. Other than that they existed, Harry didn't like the practice, and according to her they were bad for the economy; that was all that mattered to PA.
"The problem is that one is a single mother, and the other her young son. They would not last long on a planet like Tatooine without serious help, and I can't simply put them on a ship and send them to a republic world, as they won't have any identification or money to make a start." he answered, neglecting to mention the fact that his magic was giving him the feeling he should keep them, which really was interesting to Harry.
What was so important to his magic about these two, maybe they were more magical beings, as Harry had not encountered a single magical being since he had arrived. Sure there seemed to be some who had higher concentration of the natural magic from the environment in them, and it even seemed to be a bit more active around them. However that was a far cry from having a magic core, so Harry was kind of interested in meeting these slaves.
"Well you can always keep them and simply put them to work here paying them instead." PA said as if this was an easy problem to fix. It made him chuckle a bit because the Droid could be so literal and logical at times it was nice, as really that would work out just fine as a solution to his problem. "If I am not needed anymore I will go and prepare to have our new purchases moved from Watto's former place. How much did you end up spending anyway?" she asked in her motherly tone.
"30,000 Peggats, and he got angry when I offered credits. Seems he may have something against the Republic." Harry said as he chuckled a bit to his assistant.
"Hmm, acceptable price. A bit higher than expected, but an acceptable cost to expedite expansion." PA said almost muttering to herself as she floated out of the room. Harry loved his droid friends, both PA and R3 were good company for him, along with Dobby and Hedwig, he hadn't really needed anyone else around for any extended periods of time, and did not really feel lonely at all. However he would be lying if he didn't say that having two other people around wouldn't be nice, and he had been devoid of any 'real' female contact lately.
Harry spent the remainder of the afternoon in his office waiting for his two new additions to arrive by surfing through the holonet. The waves caused as a result of the ending of the Stark Hyperspace War were finally petering out, and the tense atmosphere was cooling a bit. At least that is what it seemed like on the HoloNet, but Harry knew from experiences it was more likely tensions were just removed from the limelight. However that did mean that there was now a surplus of extra arms, ships, and even salvage to be had from the war that Harry might be able to snag if he was quick. He may get something nice out of it to repair or something, he would have to get PA on it soon if she was not already doing so.
As he was thinking that, PA floated in with two dirty humans following behind her. One was a woman who looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, with a new tan, and was evidence that if she didn't start using some sunscreen, a well selling product of his store, then her skin would start showing its age far too early. She was actually quite pretty, not gorgeous or anything, but still to Harry she was quite attractive in the way Hermione had been in their last few years of school. Magic seemed to be in higher concentration in her than anyone else he had seen yet to date here in this universe, that is except for her boy.
The little tyke was looking around at everything with excitement, and was even looking at Harry with the biggest brightest eyes ever. It seemed his life in slavery so far had not dimmed his excitement for life. However what had most of Harry's attention was how concentrated magic was in the boy and how the magic in the environment seemed to be naturally reacting to the boy's subconscious thoughts. Nothing too pronounced like accidental magic, but almost like when Harry is using his magic to scan the environment around him.
The most interesting thing was that even with this connection to magic, the boy didn't seem to have a core to Harry's mage sight, as there was no major singularity of magic in the boy. Instead the magic was spread evenly throughout his whole body. It was quite interesting and something Harry would have to take some time to study in the future. However the somewhat tense atmosphere since their arrival in the room was broken by the little three to four year old boy.
"Are you a Jedi? I heard rumours that you were!" the boy asked or accused Harry of, which brought a smile to his face, and made him chuckle.
"Ani!" his mother reached over to pinch his cheek lightly in a scolding manner, and looked at him apologetically. Which only made him laugh harder.
"It's fine." he said to reassure the mother after he finished laughing. "And no I am not a Jedi, I don't have telekinetic powers that I know of." he answered honestly.
"But the Jedi don't have telekinetic powers, they have the force and use laser swords!" Ani exclaimed happily like only a little kid could. He certainly was growing quickly on Harry, and brought something up Harry hadn't heard yet about Jedi. Sure he had heard about their swords, but nothing about this force being their source of power.
"That's something I have not heard yet, but I will look it up." Harry said thoughtfully to the kid. "But no I am not a Jedi, unlike what the rumours say. Though I do have my own set of skills." he said with humour in his voice before looking up to the mother who had a smile on her face as she watched her son. She was obviously a loving mother, and most likely tries her best to blunt the reality of being a slave for her son.
"I am Hadrian Peverell, but Harry to my friends." he said to the mother. "And you are?" he asked, not having caught their names yet, and he usually avoided looking into people's minds unless there was a real reason to, like making a profit.
"I am Shmi Skywalker, and this is my son Anakin, Master." she said to him, bowing her head a bit.
"None of that now, please call me Harry." he said to her sternly before loosening his tone up again and continued. "I would set you free, however you and I both know there is a level of protection that the title slave provides you here on Tatooine. I will offer you room and board here in spare rooms that go unused in my home, and will employ you downstairs if that is your wish? Otherwise I can give you a bit of money and set you free, and you can be on your way?" he asked her. "Either way I will be permanently disabling those transmitters in your heads." he finished to her brightening eyes and excitement.
"I would like to stay here in your service Harry." she said bowing her head a bit before looking back up at him with a big smile on her face.
"Alright that sounds great, we will get a PAM droid to help you get settled in, and you Anakin, what do you like doing?" he asked the boy not quite sure what to do with him. With that much natural magic inside him, it made Harry wonder if he would be able to do spells or perform something similar to accidental magic. However that would have to wait until later in life, as Wizards usually started around 11, as being magically exhausted can be bad for a person's development, especially when one was young.
"I am a mechanic!" the young boy beamed seemingly happy all of a sudden. "And I want to be a pilot, and a Jedi!" he said with the excitement that only a young kid could have and managed to once again get a chuckle from Harry.
"Well I definitely think we can help you with those first two around here. Not so sure about the last." he said with a bit of humour, but the honest truth. If this 'Force' was anything like magic, and Harry was beginning to think it may be, then there was a possibility he could help young Anakin on his path to becoming a Jedi. "Now Shmi is there anything you are good at, or wish to get into?" he asked, trying to see where she would fit in.
"Well like Ani, I have a few technical skills that I have been teaching him, but not his natural talent. I am also good with numbers, and enjoy interacting with people." she answered honestly according to Harry's magic, which was becoming better and better at letting him know if people were lying, or even omitting things.
"Alright sounds like you could fit into quite a few roles here at HPI." he said after thinking about it. "I would suggest talking with PA through a PAM and finding what you want to do, because we do minor RnD, production, and a large number of sales related to many different technical fields." he said honestly, as it looked like he was going to now have a new full time employee for his company. Most others he had hired locally were in low positions, such as cargo hands or maintenance crews. However, he felt that seeing these were his 'slaves' he may as well extend a bit more trust and give them a higher position and let them in on a few of his secrets he does not advertise.
"Thank you for this opportunity, I will prove to you that we are worth keeping around." said Shmi as a PAM came up the stairs to lead them to two bedrooms and introduce them to their new home. Since the most recent expansion of the store had been finished Harry had taken to actually staying in his residence on the second floor. Unlike before when he first arrived where he would only rarely stay nights under the stars of Tatooine, instead he slept under the artificial Earth night sky from within his trunk.
However due to his large apartment's size, there was still ample room for more people to live up here, and the space even had three kitchens so they could all stay up here and never interact. Not that he planned to be so distant.
"They seem like they will fit in well." PA said from beside him when the others had left the room. "If Shmi is half as skilled as she assesses herself to be, then you may have managed to actually get a very good deal from Watto." PA said happily, somehow bringing the topic back to HPI.
"Yea my senses give me the feeling that they will work out." While Harry certainly didn't hide his magic from most of his droids, he didn't really talk about it much with anyone besides PA and R3, and for some reason his droids didn't ask. Maybe they asked the Elves and didn't feel the need to bother him, it was something to possibly look into. For some reason there was that hold over from Earth not to tell or show non-magicals magic, and he just kept feeling silly about it, but it was something he was slowly shrugging off over the years. He was almost there.
"Harry the latest report from the medical droids have come in." PA said reminding him about a report he wanted to see. Harry quickly pulled it up on his computer and started to read. When he had finally gotten around to getting some medical droids to do some scans on him, they had nearly blown a circuit with how many anomalies he had within.
First his magic makes it hard for them to even scan him, as it seemed to cause a bit of interference, but nothing some expensive modifications couldn't overcome. Then it was the fact that no matter what they tried they could not get any form of DNA from him, and that sucked as Harry wanted to compare his to the Humans of this Galaxy to see the difference.
They had finally discovered that this problem was a result of the small part of the Basilisk fang in his body, and the unique properties of his blood and cells as a result. Regardless they were trying to isolate the Phoenix tears and Basilisk venom running through his veins but they were having no luck. According to this report he was basically immune to any foreign pathogens or microbes, as they simply died when they entered his system to the poison.
Tests showed most types of chemicals simply had little effect on him, unless they were imbued with magic, like potions, or his Fire whisky. This meant poisons, gasses, or even decently strong acids, simply did nothing, though breathing could be a problem, but he had magic to supplement that.
Something that Harry had realized a bit too late, was the possibility of him carrying some pathogen from his Earth to this galaxy, but that turned out to be not a worry, as apparently medical technology here was quite advanced. There was even extensive tech to reduce, or reverse ageing if you could afford it. Though there were some limits.
However the big things for Harry, and what the droids said may be possible, but that they wanted to confirm with further testing, was that he had stopped aging. Harry had hit about his late 20s physically in these last eight years he had been here on Tatooine, and since then nothing. In fact pinning his age down was not easy from either tests, looking at him, or his birthdate, because he had been using his time turner a lot since coming here, and he had a bit of an ageless look to him.
The other part of the report was around potions, which were brought up when Harry had mentioned they still affected him. Now that was a mistake, and a headache for him as the droids went crazy when he started describing their effects and bringing out a few examples. Apparently these were things they could test, and scan, however they could not make heads or tails of its chemical compounds. It simply was not reproducible for them with any known technology due in part to their chemical bonds constantly changing.
This made Harry think about the possibility of them being another product line he could start selling. So he had set the droids to start testing a few of his potions, and seeing if they would have negative effects on different species. Weirdly enough, or not weirdly if you thought about it thoroughly, the potions seemed to affect all of the species they tested exactly the same way as long as the body weight to potion ratio was maintained. The only ones that had weird effects were ones that did something physically not possible, like regrowing bones in a lifeform that doesn't have bones. That had interesting results, thankfully for all involved that lifeform was brainless. A funny example was a species without follicles getting a hair growth potion, nothing dangerous, just amusing, as they started to grow extremely long nose 'hairs'.
PA had somehow gotten word of what was going on and would have already been salivating over the idea of getting potions in the store if she was physically able to do so. That was what this report was about mainly, it was the final report before Harry gave PA, R3, His head medical Droid MX-43, and Winky, the now mother of Dobby's children, the go ahead to start the project.
There was even a price list for various things and what potions they were going to consider offering. Most of them were going to be under 250 credits in cost, but some were more expensive like Skeligrow which they were planning to offer. That being said they were all getting new fancy medical sounding names, and proper medical descriptions in what they actually did from the droids. That was something the medical droids were extremely helpful with doing, as the descriptions in all his magical books were fairly vague and often contradicted themselves, even the medical ones.
They were offering a mild pain relieving potion, dreamless sleep potion, a hair growth potion, a cream to be spread to fix minor wounds or burnt skin, a blood replenisher, a nutrition potion, and even a potion to fix bad eyesight, something that had Harry a bit upset to find out existed. Harry was fairly skilled in potions, as it was one of the areas he had practiced a lot before leaving his world, so he had even experimented and came up with a potion to be drank in an emergency by a person to suspend major body functions in a form of stasis while keeping their brain alive and well for about ten hours to allow time for them to get proper medical attention.
After looking over the pricing, and adjusting a few things, for example he dropped the healing paste from 100 credits a small jar to 50, but otherwise PA probably knew best. So he looked to her and smiled giving her a thumbs up and the ok to go ahead with her rollout plans. PA quickly zoomed off making happy noises probably already sending out orders via her PAM droids. Causing him to laugh at her antics. He smiled and looked around his room, damn did he love his life these days.
Ooof that chapter break. If you can't tell by now, I wrote these not by chapters, but one long long word document and simply broke what I had up into chapter segments. Sometimes the cut offs I chose work FAR better than others. As you can see from this chapter, and the next I am trying to skip some time and build up as best as I can to get more to the meat of the story and a bit more action!
I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter, and the introduction of Anakin and his mother into the story! Let me know what you think, and may the Force be with you!