For one brief instant, Max genuinely felt the urge to kill.
"Mm… haah…" He drew a long breath. (Forget it—Hera's sake.) Then he asked, "So what do you plan to do?"
"Independence and self-reliance," Cham Syndulla answered firmly.
"Exactly!" // "That's right!" // "The commander's right!"
(Max glanced around. Right—inside Free Ryloth, Cham Syndulla already counts as the moderate.) He turned his head and scanned the room, then spoke. "Mr. Syndulla—everyone—openness brings progress. Isolation guarantees backwardness. Independence doesn't mean sealing yourselves off, and self-reliance doesn't mean blindly rejecting everything outside."
"Hah." Cham let out a cold laugh. "Are you seriously going to tell me you came all the way to Ryloth not to colonize it, but to help Twi'leks 'advance'?"
(Even if that's true, you can't say it. And you definitely can't say it that loudly.)
"What is colonization?" Max countered. "And what harm does it do to a colony?"
"Colo—" Cham started, then stalled.
Cham was well-read but shallow—he couldn't produce a clean definition on the spot. Seeing that, a young Free Ryloth fighter stepped forward.
"General Syndulla taught us this: colonization is when a stronger power sends settlers into conquered territory and plunders the interests of the local people."
"Heh. That wasn't something I taught." Cham smiled—this time not coldly, but with genuine pride. Then he pointed at the young man and explained to Max, "Smith Eirriss—one of our college students. Ryloth's future."
Max stood, extended his right hand, and smiled. "Hello, sunrise of Ryloth."
Smith Eirriss hurried forward and shook his hand. "Greetings, Lord Vizsla."
"If Mandalorians were to migrate to Ryloth in large numbers, dump industrial goods at low prices, and then strip away raw materials and labor…" Max swept his gaze across the room again. "That would be colonization, yes?"
Everyone nodded. Max continued, "Then what if we invest here and build factories—create jobs and wages for Twi'leks, pay taxes to the Ryloth government. Is that colonization?"
People hesitated. Some had answers; some didn't. This time no one spoke—until Smith Eirriss stepped out again.
"That is still colonization, Lord Vizsla. It's gentler in form than what you described earlier, but it's still colonization—economic colonization."
"Oh?" Max lifted an eyebrow. "Even that's not acceptable?"
"When modern enterprises move in, they'll crush our local agriculture and handicrafts—no question, it's a dimensional mismatch. Your so-called 'investment' and 'jobs' would likely begin by destroying our farms and workshops, bankrupting those workers… and only then pulling them into your factories as laborers."
"You're smart, Student Eirriss." Max smiled. "Since there are smart people in the room, I'll speak plainly."
"Ryloth's current reality is that criminal forces have artificially kept your development capped at a low level—Twi'leks are forced to eat dirt."
"I come in, drive out the criminals, break the blockade, and conduct economic colonization. I take most of the profit, leave a portion to Ryloth. I eat meat; Twi'leks get soup. Compared to your current situation, wouldn't that still be an enormous step forward?"
"Can't profits be split fifty-fifty?" a Free Ryloth fighter blurted out.
"Heh…" Max couldn't help laughing. "I may look friendly, but that doesn't make me an interstellar charity."
"Lord Vizsla," Cham asked, "how do you plan to split profits?"
"Honestly? Fifty-fifty isn't completely off the table."
"Oh?"
"Mining profits can be fifty-fifty. But across all industries combined—on the total balance sheet—the split should be eighty-twenty."
"Eighty-twenty?" Cham frowned.
Max nodded, then looked back at Smith Eirriss.
"What you just warned about isn't a possibility—it's inevitable. Modern mass industry will hit traditional agriculture and handicrafts. That impact can't be avoided. And the productivity boost from modern industry can't be stopped either. Twi'leks who go to work in factories will eat better and dress better than before. They won't have to sell daughters just to survive."
"Lord Vizsla," Cham asked again, "are Twi'leks only fit to drink soup—never to eat meat?"
"Today you eat dirt. Tomorrow you drink soup. The day after, when the industries scale up, we all eat meat together." Max grinned. "Mm… I smell roast meat. Lunch ready?"
Cham laughed and stood, gesturing for the two Mandalorians to follow. "Please—Ryloth specialty: roasted blurrg. Our guests are welcome to it."
"Lead the way."
On the walk to the dining room, Cham still couldn't resist a jab. "If you weren't such a deadeye, Lord Vizsla, the likes of us wouldn't get many chances to eat roast meat at all."
"Is it really that hard?" Max asked.
"It is."
"Aww." Max patted Cham's shoulder. "You should've said so earlier. I'm not short on roast meat—I'm short on people. If you can't feed your brothers anymore, toss them my way."
Before Cham could respond, Max continued, "I killed ten of your mounts. How about this—I'll send you ten iron mounts. Sound fair?"
"Iron mounts?" Cham blinked. "You mean the two speeder bikes you rode in on?"
"Yeah." Max nodded. "Balutar-class swoop bikes—MandalMotors Shipyards. Top speed 325 kilometers per hour. Best swoops in the galaxy."
"The two we rode in on can't be given away—those were gifts to me, and I can't re-gift them. But within a month, two at most, I'll send a dedicated ship with ten Balutar swoops to you."
Truth was, Max really didn't want to hand over the two outside. They were limited custom editions with beskar plating—only a hundred in the entire galaxy—given to him by James Roke, the shipyard chairman, when Max last purchased starfighter production lines.
"Lord Vizsla," Cham said with a helpless smile, "we probably don't have the capability to maintain precision machines like that."
"Relax." Max waved it off. "As long as you don't ride them like a savage, you'll be fine. Before the end of this year, MandalMotors will be investing and building a factory on Ryloth. The plant will be running long before your swoops break down."
With Max occasionally "guiding" him—and with the enormous profit lure of arms trading—James Roke had ultimately decided to bypass New Mandalorian government oversight and restart military production lines in a remote location.
He and Max already had a secret agreement: if Max cleans out Black Sun, Zygerrian slavers, and other criminal forces in and around Ryloth—creating a safe business environment—Roke would immediately invest in a military-industrial branch factory on Ryloth.
Ryloth sat along the Corellian Run hyperspace route, with convenient traffic. Given time, the New Mandalorians were confident they could build a second "Mandalore" here—meaning a Mandalore under New Mandalorian administration.
—
PS: Smith Eirriss is an original character created by the author.
In the original continuity, during the Galactic Empire era, Ryloth had a weapons manufacturer called Eirriss Ryloth Defense Tech (ERDT) that secretly supplied blasters to Free Ryloth. The owner was only recorded as the Eirriss Family.
Hera Syndulla long carried an ERDT-made Blurrg-1120 holdout blaster for self-defense.
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