An old friend is better than two new ones.

- That's how it happened..." I finished my speech, sitting in the spacious living room with a cup of hot tea in my hands.

Julian listened attentively to my heartfelt speech about adventures. I hadn't forgotten anything - from my admission to the university to the latest events.

My only friend had settled in pretty well. As time went on, justice began to squeeze smugglers black and blue. And it wasn't the laws of the republic, it was the profits of the private sector. Smugglers were hurting the economy, so the systems often supplied the justice system themselves on a voluntary basis. Of course, we're not talking about handing over money, in which case it would simply be stolen; we're talking about arming the ships. Patrol ships, equipment, supplies... all together cut the cost to the Republic almost in half. Of course, de jure this was also formalized - the purchased equipment, including ships were registered to the planetary armed forces and transferred to the corps for perpetual use - if something went wrong, the ships would have to be returned. The most common was the "Marauder," a corvette of the Corellian Engineering Corvette. About ten thousand of these ships are already on active duty-they've cut hundreds of smuggling paths through which the black cargo flow used to go. All of this had resulted in a sea of smugglers behind bars. Julian was smart enough to get out before it was too late and change careers again. He's now a simple farmer, though, with a lot of land. A planet in the Middle Ring, a small profit margin, his own food... what else do you need to be happy?

I wasn't greeted warmly, but he didn't recognize me at first. And understandably, I wasn't offended.

- Good story..." Julian got up and turned the poker on the crackling embers in the real fireplace, tossing in a handful of splinters and a couple of logs. The fire rekindled - it had been cold here at night, and the heat from the electric heaters was not the same as the heat from the fire, and with the pleasant scent of burning wood, too.

- Not a word," I nodded.

- What do you want to do next? - Ju asked with interest. - Will you go back to your kin?

- I doubt it," I shook my head, "I have a contact inside the queen of Naboo, and I only get up to date information. And going back... why would they want me? - I raised one eyebrow. - My mom's got her own life now, her husband, her daughter...

- You're talking," Ju grinned, "Are you jealous?

- No, no," I shook my head, "I just don't have any reason to go there. I don't have any plans to go back to my relatives yet. And besides, I have some family of my own," I nodded toward the room where Mekoi had put Shiay to bed, "and I have some aggressive plans. I don't want to be setting my family up in any way. After all, there might be people who, not being able to attack me directly, would try to influence me through my relatives... and I can't have guards on them.

- Well, that's true," Julian nodded yes, "I can't argue with that. Well, I won't pry into your soul.

- I don't mind," I shrugged, "I have other plans. There's such a sector of the galaxy as the deep core... have you heard of it?

- Yes," Ju nodded, "it used to be a densely populated part of the galaxy, but then it was sort of abandoned. Hyperspace travel is virtually impossible because of the gravitational disturbances of the core and the too close arrangement of the stars.

- Also, according to the theory, this sector should not only be rich - there should be just tons of valuable minerals, metals, other useful substances. And it's all just lying around.

- Oh, come now," Julian said, taking a sip of Corellian brandy from his glass, "I told you, it's impossible to navigate there. Though yes, if you get to the sector, it's a stroke of luck. And if you get back, it's a fairy tale.

- Have you forgotten that I can find my way even in places where there is no route? - I can guide a ship through even such circumstances," I smiled as I saw my companion's face grow pensive. It's not easy, but I can do it.

- Damn," Ju slapped his hand on his knee, "right! The adventure of the century! Though it's unrealistic, to put it mildly. How are we going to find the planets we want? How do we find the resources?

- It may take years, - I nodded, - though according to my theory, the proximity to the core will do its job, - the quantity and quality of deposits on the planets and moreover in the asteroids must exceed all reasonable limits. There is another question - how to extract it and turn it into money, and the problems of transport can be considered solved... at least partially.

Julian thought again.

- I know one way," he turned to me, "there is such a vessel as a mining barque. The essence is simple - it creates a directed gravity beam in the direction of the deposit and it lifts up, to the ship, the ore. And then the molecular furnace, which extracts all the useful elements from the ore, works. True, the barque doesn't come cheap...

- How much?

- About two hundred thousand...

- That's a reasonable price," I nodded, "let's take the barque and my boat and fly to the core. We'll have a look around...

- Well, if you wish, - Julian nodded, - but what do I have to do?

- From you? - I smiled. - I won't demand anything from you. You're just a shareholder. You have enough to live on, believe me. You're too young to settle down on this farm and wait for old age.

Julian finished his brandy in a gulp and took a snack and nodded with his words:

- You know, sometimes I get nostalgic for the old days. Smuggling is a much better paying profession now, but it requires a lot of training - no one uses ships like my Barloz anymore - it's too expensive to make a whole voyage with so little contraband. More and more popular are the same acclamators, the heavy CMC freighters that can land on unprepared sites. They are more difficult to inspect, and the profit from the flight is astronomical...

- Yes," I agreed without thinking, "probably a lot of people left the profession?

- You ask me," said Ju, with a chuckle, "almost all of them left. I'm from the last generation of smugglers.

- In that case, we'll change over to a mining company. And most importantly, a legal income.

Julian thought about the proposal for a few minutes, and then gave his consent.

No wonder - the Deep Core, the sector that was the progenitor of life in the galaxy, has been forgotten and abandoned over time. The ruins of many civilizations have been left behind, and life has moved on. The closest planet to the deep core was Coruscant - it was located literally a thousand light years from the border, dividing the galaxy into two zones. Just a stone's throw from Coruscant, on the other side of the barrier, was Koros, the former capital of the former Koros Empire. After the routes laid by the architects with the help of the balancer disappeared - the stars, planets, and asteroids shifted, it became impossible to fly inside. However, time is of the essence - I would be able, if not to clear the routes, then to lay at least temporary new ones that would last for several centuries. Then I would have to do it all over again, but that didn't scare me.

The richest system in the galaxy lay beneath my feet, as well as the oldest, and no one could get there. Or rather, no one could return from there.

It was time to fulfill another item of the plan-to fly into the deep core and look at the local possessions. If no one wanted it, maybe I could work out a plan to privatize the property into my own hands. One fucked up - no one but me could fly there.

I left a groggy Julian behind, and went to get some fresh air.

In the morning, when everyone had slept, a wrinkled Ju found me meditating on the porch and, thinking I was asleep, decided to shake me off, but it was not necessary.

Still, it's a nice planet-the air is fresh and humid in the morning, pleasantly cold on the skin. In the height of summer, morning is the time when the flowers are blooming and the moist and fresh air is filled with their subtle scents. Dawn has taken its toll and the sun has flooded the planet.

As Ju came up behind me, I stood up and nodded at him and asked:

- What's on your mind?

- You mean yesterday? - He asked again, with a headache, yes...

Without saying a word, I took away the pain and toned up Ju's body, earning him a surprised look.

Shaking his head and smiling, the former smuggler already replied confidently:

- Yes, of course, I'm in.

- In that case, let's go to my yacht, - I nodded at the huge cruiser standing on the horizon, - and then we will decide what to do. And we'll have to buy a barque too...

Julian nodded and went back to the house to get ready.

We had hardly had time to board the speeders before the hangar doors shut and the boat started to take off. Our route was to Corellia, the largest market after Coruscant, and not far from our destination.

It was absolutely impossible to do research on the sector without equipment - we had to buy and install what equipment we could install, namely a geological scanner and probe droids.

We had barely stepped out of the speeders when Julian whistled:

- And this stuff is yours?

- Sure," I immediately agreed, "nice boat.

- Strange that you converted her," Ju didn't understand, "so you'd have a whole battleship!

- It's obsolete as a battleship. If I ever need a cruiser, I know where to get one.

- I'm sure you do," Julian nodded, watching the Mandalorian crew take our speeders into the appropriate hold.

How nice to have a crew, after all! Instead of steering the ship myself, all I have to do is tell them where to go, and they can do it without me. I put Julian in my quarters - there were four staterooms - for me, Shia, Mekoi, and now Julian.

After examining everything with square eyes, Julian decided to be quiet and retired to his cabin, having first met the cook and had a hearty breakfast.

Mekoi took Shia to the study, where they were studying general subjects, and I, left alone, returned to my charms.

Only a small laboratory could claim the position of my charms, and that was where I did my power forging. Unfortunately, from the old man I learned not only not everything, but almost nothing. So, little things for the initial development. The rest was to be understood by my own wits. The old man did not want to put the architects' technology at my disposal - their appearance in the galaxy was already too dangerous, and had once led to the political collapse of the entire system. To repeat the same thing, but with me in the leading role - the old man did not want that, so he did not give me anything really dangerous, which could create problems. And almost everything was dangerous, but I didn't get discouraged and started working on my technology in the image and likeness of what was known.

The lab was already set up quite nicely. On the tables were laid out hundreds of steel cubes with markings, crystals that I had taken out of old swords, and the rest of the spare parts. On the table was a most interesting design, which I began to assemble - an automatic assembler.

Its essence is as simple as three credits - the assembler is based on an image of some object, its molecular structure, or simply "structure". The structure is written on a special cube, inside which, under the strong dural-steel casing, was a crystal lattice. The principle was similar to the holocron, only instead of an image of my consciousness, I recorded a small part of it - the structure I needed. That was the simplest part of the device - the next part consisted of the assembler itself. To create a collector was the hardest part - when the force passes through, it must fill the metal with a certain force, from the first channel, and at the same time form the desired object, whose structure is written in the cube of the structure. I managed to assemble the first workable sample in three days - however, it required my constant presence for work and could only assemble two kinds of objects - a sphere and a cube. But the main thing was that the beginning was made. After the metal entered the active zone, I poured the power into the crystal-conductor, from which it gradually seeped inside, to the metal, and the second flow went to the cube of the structure. At first the structure was duplicated, i.e. a phantom of the Force was created - a formed force structure, a ghost of a future thing. If there was a metal or other material similar to the one in the phantom, then its Force and the Force inside the phantom, if they are identical in structure, were attracted to each other. Or rather, the Force within the metal was attracted to the Force within the phantom - to the molecule, everything fell into place. The number of metals and materials was unlimited - you could create anything, even a devil with horns, as long as the Great Force was flowing inside it. The charge in one crystal, once a sword crystal, lasts for twenty-four cycles, after which it must be recharged.

Experiments on the laboratory sample lasted a week - during that time I was able to get a lot of important information about automatic force forging. For example, the formation of the phantom, that is, roughly speaking, the force casting, should take place strictly in a vacuum, as well as further work - there is force in the air, and attempts to create a ball with the formation of the phantom in air led to the fact that I got a crooked and rough metal ball. Microscopic currents of force in the air created ripples in the phantom and it curved, which felt rough to the touch after the curved phantom filled the metal. Another important detail - the power in the phantom and the collector can be different in nature, but the same polarity - having scooped up some dark energy, I poured it into the phantom, and the light energy into the collector, which led to the fact that nothing happened. There was a conflict of energies inside the assembler, and the light neutral energy inside the metal was not attracted to the dark energy of the phantom.

Further advancement in the creation required the appointment of a direction of research and development. After sitting for half an hour over my ideas, I still made a simple list, which I engraved on the wall with the Force. The first was to increase the complexity of the phantom. The second was to increase the autonomy of the system from the crystals. I wanted to add automation of the structures recording process, but I decided to refuse - then the autocollector could be used by anyone, and it was not in my plans.

Modern automated factories can produce much more, much cheaper, and waste not scarce power, but electricity, which is more than cheap. So this limits the use of the autobuilder - it's stupidly unprofitable when everything from building materials to ship parts to weapons is already produced almost entirely automatically. I originally wanted to create something more imposing, like the famous Star Forge, but as it turned out, I had to solve the power problem. The Rakatans solved it simply by rounding up a bunch of slaves and torturing them, so the emanations of the dark side would be picked up by the forge and fed into the assembly process. I didn't agree to that, and besides, once such a thing had become a big problem for the galaxy, I had no intention of repeating the mistakes of a past civilization.

An automated factory, by my calculations, can create items many times faster than an autobuilder, and using an autobuilder for mass production would be idiotic. I can build two or three small ships in an hour with my power reserve, but the autobuilder can only build one ship with the same amount of power. But the autobuilder had a key advantage - the difficulty of assembly was nothing to him. It could produce axes, lightsabers, complex laboratory equipment, and other highly complex systems with equal efficiency. It had the advantage of accuracy and size - the autobuilder took up several tables in lab form, and in its ready-to-use form it was quite feasible to design it into a large cabinet.

The only thing I proceeded to do after the experiments were over was to build an oven to create crystals. The furnace worked on power, just like the auto-collector, but with a completely different principle. The old man taught me how to make crystals and even demonstrated the furnace itself. On the outside it is just a box made of composite - on the outside there is a thin layer of durastalium, and on the inside it is lined with a thick layer of neuranium, which shields the crystal at the stage of creation from external influences. On one side there is a small hole, for the force to pass through, and inside is a steel rod, around which the crystal is formed. Since the volume of force was directly proportional to the size of the crystal, I immediately put in the requirement for the maximum size and began melting.

In general, the whole work was similar to electrical engineering - the force, like electricity, was controllable. There were several kinds of elementary power circuit blocks - a diode, for example, which lets the force flow in one direction only, or a rectifier, which stabilizes the Force flowing through it into a solid stream. That is, the Force can be poured into it in any way you want - the output is a thin, directional stream. There were also fuses that interrupted the passage of the Force if its volume exceeded any permissible norm; the list could go on and on. The main thing is that all this could be miniaturized into a single circuit - thus even a small object could contain a very complex power structure. Of course, it took time to master the principles. Remotely, it resembled a classic electronic circuit. So far, I had not been able to put any complex circuitry into the block - I had to "play dice" - to put different circuits into blocks of different sizes and connect them with power strings. The result was a rather unwieldy construction.

With practice, however, it was possible to miniaturize or simplify individual blocks by inserting their structure into other blocks, but so far this was only the beginning.

The autobuilder got a name of its own - "duplicator". I sought to achieve something else - to put in my laboratory a machine that could, if sufficiently filled with the power of crystals, collect in non-stop mode any objects - armor, weapons, small parts of machines and mechanisms.

The crystal was created in about two days - during that time I managed to make serious progress in creating a duplicator - one of the main components, the control unit, was created in a single block. It was responsible for analyzing the loaded materials, starting work, tracking the rationed supply of Energy. The rest could easily be done by ordinary electronics - controlling loading and unloading, monitoring the pumping of air from the core, and storing the resulting samples.

The use of the primitive aspect of power, raw energy, could not be registered by the electronics, so there were problems with this in terms of control - the electronics were stupidly unable to see what was going on inside.

I finally finished testing the first workable sample by inserting a cube into the slot, inside which was the structure of a tablet that came to hand. From the outside, it looked like a box in the shape of a microwave oven, with an opening door, only twice as big. Next to it on the table was a similar box, in the top of which, in a notch, was inserted a memory block, and in the back in a cylindrical container in the form of small containers with sand were various materials - a total of more than three dozen different primary materials.

After inserting the block, I placed a crystal filled with power in a separate recess and closed its cover, shielded by Neuranium. The lid of the duplicator was transparent, so I could see - if I turned on the power vision, then in the air in the middle of the chamber, immediately after the insertion of the crystal there hung a phantom of a tablet, or as they say here, datapad, but with normal vision I could see only slight vibrations of air. Turning on the apparatus, the chamber begins to collect materials and infuse them into the structure. If you melted the tablet, filmed it, and then let the recording run backwards, it would probably be a bit like that. After half a minute, a brand new tablet lay in the active zone. Unfortunately, the duplicator cannot copy energy, so the permanent memory was pristine and should have been flashed with all programs before turning it on.

To transfer the memory chip from the old tablet to the new one was not a big job, and here I had a fully functional sample in my hands.

The only thing that distracted me from my work was my arrival on Corellia.