Koros 1

Back we left already prepared for the long autonomous flight. Supplies, water, fuel, everything was in abundance.

The only thing that bothered me was the problem of double travel. The barque did not fit into the hangar, and I was alone, and I could only lead one ship. In this case, as it turned out, there was a trick - the control of the ships could be linked and the barque could automatically follow the yacht. It took several hours to set up the automatics, and it was good that our crew was trained and managed the task. It was not as easy as it seemed at first glance. The barque was piloted by a droid with lots of instructions about following us.

I returned to my quarters when I was sure the barque was following us in an obedient tail.

Shi'ai was busy from morning until midafternoon with Mekoi, nurse and teacher at the same time. But at first, on his first day on Corellia, he was capricious, and I had to order him to behave like a man, not a little child. It worked, he calmed down, but not for long. Trouble with him, he was too active.

But I was calm now, and I could work without the distraction of the little one. My work consisted of studying historical references on the center of the galaxy and experimenting with Force replication of various material objects. I had to stop him, because it would take a legion of Forsuers to fill a crystal with power. The power doesn't just lie around in the middle of space. He hung his head and got annoyed, but I reassured him that we will save money on expensive equipment when we are able to make the cloning machine better and ready for mass production. But that's all toys. The main thing is the galactic nucleus, everything else is secondary.

The flight to the core lay through the Coruscant system, where the yacht left in a few hours. I put aside the details of the new duplicator and went up to the bridge, where the masters of my yacht were-the captain, a Mandalorian named Cal, and his entourage.

- What have we here? - I walked to my chair, where all the maneuvering controls were tied up.

- Everything's fine, no accidents," the captain immediately responded, "we're in the Coruscant system.

- I'll take it from here," I turned on all the instruments and checked the controls and looked in the direction of the navigator, "turn on the hyperdrive and write your route.

- But we have no coordinates, - tried to be indignant with the navigator.

- In general, turn off the navicomputer, - I grinned back, - I'll drive from here.

Although the crew looked at me as a suicide, the order was not disobeyed - navicomputer off, and hyperdrive again prepared to jump. Once the hyperdrive was activated again, I had to concentrate on flying. About twenty minutes after I entered hyperspace, the situation changed dramatically-the danger was almost in every direction. It was only through strength that I was able to keep moving. Still, I had to try a lower-class hyperdrive, because it would be safer for longer.

The flight continued for an hour and a half. Not far, very far, you could say, a couple of steps on a galactic scale. We flew to the planet Koros. All the while in hyperspace, the crew was very tense - in this sector of the galaxy, the navigation instruments indicated that we were out of the navigation zone. Finally, we came out, nearly hitting an asteroid field.

The Koros system was about as the guidebooks described it. Four planets, two of them inhabited Coruscant-type, Coros Major and Coros Minor. We set a course for Big Koros, the former capital of a former empire that existed before the core went into another destabilization cycle and navigation in the core became impossible.

- Cal, let's go to this planet. Koros.

- Koros? - The captain was surprised," he said. It's...

- Abandoned. It's been abandoned for a long time. Let's go to Koros. Land wherever you see fit.

The captain nodded and began to command the crew, while I went to my quarters. I had to get ready to go out into the system.

Julian was already waiting for me in my quarters, jumping up impatiently as soon as I entered:

- Well? What's up? What's up?

- Hey, take it easy," I grinned, "not all at once, okay?

- Where are we? - Ju cooled down.

- We're near the planet Koros. We're about to land. Get ready to land.

Julian nodded and ran off to his quarters, and I went to mine as well. Erdva was in my quarters, but he didn't have to explain, since he always had a connection to the ship.

- Am I coming with you? - The droid squeaked questioningly.

- Of course," I looked around my quarters. There was plenty of room, so everything I needed was in the cabin-the gear cabinets, the terminals, and all my junk. It wasn't convenient to use all the space - it took too long to walk around, but everything was at my fingertips. And the rest of the space was ruled by Shia, and he's too nosy - he might unscrew something from my spacesuit and say goodbye, Skywalker...

The landing on Koros went smoothly. Putting on a light spacesuit and taking my blaster and sword, just in case, I went down to the hangar. Zhu and all the honest company were waiting for me there - Shia and Makoi, the technicians, the captain, the XO. The ship had landed.

- Well, ready for the inspection? - I smiled and was the first to get into the speeder that was brought in. I was at the wheel, of course. Shia was offended that I hadn't brought him with me, but Maekoi quickly put him at ease and led him away from harm's way.

Julian climbed into the speeder next to me, and Erdva docked outside, thankfully the speeders had the proper space for a droid.

- Shall we go? - Erdva asked.

- Open the hatch, - I confirmed and the hangar opened its doors...

Koros was an urbanized planet. Although such a title is probably premature - not the entire planet was built up, but only ten percent, but that's already a lot. During the fighting, the planet was many times bombed and also was a beachhead, which the Sith wanted to seize - it was too easy to get to Coruscant from here - it's the closest planet to the capital. Nature, in the form of the galactic core, put an end to all this intrigue. It's not always stable, and every few hundred thousand years it can make an armageddest for everyone. Not on a global scale, of course, but it can create a level of hyperspace instability. Hyperspace at one point ceased to be an even and smooth layer of subspace and suddenly, all of a sudden, for the entire galaxy, became unstable. And in unstable hyperspace it is impossible to create a static route - the coordinates that led a week ago to a neighboring planet can lead to a galactic space, although if you're lucky - to crash into a star in this stormy hyperspace is a piece of cake. At one point, the Koros supersector, the Koros Empire, which spans nearly half of the galaxy's core, was crossed off all navigation charts. Coruscant was lucky-it was only a thousand light-years from the border of the "exclusion zone.

For three thousand years, no human or non-human had set foot on the surface of Koros. Chances of survival no one had - the planet could not provide food and, even more so, to supply themselves with everything they need - according to experts, most likely, the civilization on Koros declined sharply, descending almost into the Stone Age. And these are only those who were in protected buildings and bunkers at the moment of destabilization-people on the street had no chance to survive.

As I approached the surface of the planet, the belief that it was dead strengthened-the whole surface was covered with a thick layer of ruins, and among them, sometimes, there were large buildings that had stood the test of time. No skyscrapers survived - only bits of piles and rebar sticking up. Down below, the rubble buildings were almost swallowed up by nature - the surface of the ruins was covered with earth, with grass and bushes growing on it.

- Erdva, how is the atmosphere?

- Breathable. No harmful impurities detected.

Julian's comments weren't so censorious, but he was impressed. In fact, I was impressed as much as I could be, but I couldn't find the censorious words.

- Erdva, activate bioform scanners. We're looking for intelligent life.

- Yes... no intelligent life within range.

We circled over the ruins of the city for a while before heading back to the yacht. There Julian, impatiently getting out of the speeder, asked me:

- Interesting, of course, but why do we need Koros? There aren't any serious fossils on it...

- Just for fun," I grinned, "now let's get a move on. You go and get the geoscanner ready. Tomorrow we leave Koros for the other planets. I believe we've seen the former planets of the former Empire-if Koros, the farthest from the core and the most protected, wasn't intact, the others didn't stand a chance. Alas, they did. Julian ran off to prepare the equipment, and I returned to my quarters, where I began to prepare for future endeavors. Namely, I meditated that tomorrow the force would take me exactly where I wanted to go, wherever that might be.

Shi'ai was bursting with curiosity, but I deliberately didn't tell him the details-first, the Force alone knew how it would end, and second, he might have blabbed to someone because of his childlike spontaneity. Of course, it would not be critical from the point of view of the law, but then all the conspiracy would go down the drain. But there's no sense in conspiracy, because no one would be able to follow me or trace the ship. Peculiarities of the sector.

In the morning, after a good night's sleep and a good breakfast, I quickly made my way to the bridge. The captain was already waiting for me.

- Good morning, Mr. Skywalker.

- Morning, Cal. Ready for a new challenge?

- "That's for you to ask," the Captain grinned, "I didn't think we were really coming to Koros.

- That's just for the sake of the story. Nothing really interests me on Koros. What we came here for is the local ores and riches. According to my calculations, the closer you get to the center, the better your chances of finding certain ores and minerals, so... let's go searching today.

- Aye!" The captain stretched himself in a lengthening line.

- At ease. Now, I'll take the helm and activate the backup hyperdrive. Too much speed on the main one, it's hard to fly.

- Aye!" the captain repeated and began to give instructions to the others present on the bridge.

It was easier to fly with the reserve hyperdrive, because it was of the sixth class, which means that it was rather slow. And the slower we went, the more time I had to react. It was a lot easier to get around the most inconvenient parts of the path, though if we had walked from Coruscant to Koros for an hour and a half, we still had an hour and a half to go. I couldn't see where I was going, but I could feel the route. And I was looking for nothing less than a planet rich in fossils.

As we progressed, the excitement on the bridge began to subside - the navigator calmed down, the XO left the bridge, the captain took his chair and dragged a cup of tea from somewhere and sipped it.

The hyperspace flight was over in nine hours. After such a long flight, I had to struggle to get out of my chair and drag myself to the bathroom, after which I already pounced on the food. The cook wasn't bad, he cooked well. He was assisted by four droid cooks. After he gave me some meat pies, he calmed down, and I went to the bridge. The patties were just right as the captain was pouring himself a new cup of tea. Already refreshed and not so haggard, I returned to the crew.

- Where are we? - I asked a question, but the captain just shook his hands:

- I have no idea. That's for you to ask.

- All right," I put the tray of cakes next to the droid waiter and got into my chair, "navigator, scan the system, all the data on mine and the main monitors.

- Yes!" he answered, and five minutes later information appeared on my terminal, which was duplicated on the main, large monitor.

Unknown system, except for a couple of asteroid fields, two planets, one dwarf and one normal. No atmosphere on the first, carbon dioxide on the second, almost no impurities.

- Let's fly to this... what's it, the Coruscant type, - I poked my pie at the image of the planet. The captain began to give orders at once, and the ship began to move in the direction of the planet. It took us about forty minutes. I didn't wait, so I went to our number one miner. Julian was in his quarters, lying on his bed, leafing through something on his datapad.

- Wake up," I came in, knocking only for decorum, "the pipe is calling.

- What pipe? - Ju was surprised.

- Just a figure of speech. We have arrived. I can't tell you what planet it is, we haven't got any maps. But it must be what we were looking for.

- That's good news," Ju stood up, straightened his clothes, and came closer, "can I start working?

- Absolutely right. Take as many of the crew on the barque as you need.

- Aren't you coming? - You're the one who started all this," said Julian, astonished.

- I'm coming, I'm coming," I reassured him, "but not for long, I don't know how long I'll have to stay on that barge.

Julian scratched his nose thoughtfully and nodded, "I'll be in the hangar in an hour.

- Fine," I nodded, "I'd better get ready.

I had to get busy with the crew of the barque. It wasn't necessary especially, but if there are people, why not to take a pair of technicians? It's no use stopping work, and we're too lazy to be on duty ourselves.

Julian was out in the hangar in an hour, like a bayonet. A shuttle with supplies had already flown to the barque on my order and loaded it with everything I needed.

- Are you ready? - I asked him, - did you have everything? Keep in mind, we're either coming back now or not for a long time. That's if the Force guides me right.

- Ready, of course," Julian sighed, "where to go?

There was only one kappa shuttle in the hangar. It wasn't old anymore, but since there was so much room to upgrade... in short, the Kappa was almost a household name, a small but good transport ship with its own hyperdrive, and a floor design in the main compartment that allowed the shuttle to be quickly converted from cargo to passenger and vice versa. Shuttles differed from ships by their lack of an advanced life support system - it has no cabins, only one main cargo-passenger compartment.

That was the shuttle we climbed into. Two forklift droids with some kind of crates followed me. They were unmarked, but by the looks of them, they were fuel for the barque's reactors. Behind them flew Erdva, who always accompanied me. And Shia also looked into the hangar, but he didn't find anything of interest and left.

The pilot looked out of his compartment and when he saw Julian and me, he asked:

- Are we taking off?

- Yes. We're flying to the barque, docking.

- Understood," the pilot disappeared into his cabin and the shuttle lifted into the air, closing the cargo ramp.

The barca was a highly specialized ship. She was equipped with first class equipment - scanners, geo-scanners, micro-laboratories for checking mined materials, and so on and so forth. There were powerful lasers capable of cutting off part of the terrain, so that they could get to the mineral deposits faster. Julian was already slowly getting to grips with the operation and use of the barque, but I had little idea how to use this wunderwaffle. My only hope was in Erdwah, who could help with the controls of any ship.

The shuttle docked with the barque, and we headed out. I grabbed the crates and, as soon as I was out of the airlock, I turned to the shuttle pilot:

- Tell the captain to hang on the orbit for a while, if we do not come back in twelve hours, then tell him to land the boat next to our barge.

- Aye!" the pilot barked and the airlock closed.

* * *

Scanning the terrain was a relatively interesting activity. I could see large deposits for several kilometers with the force, about the same could the barque's equipment. Julian sat at the consoles, letting Erdw drive the barque while he scanned the terrain himself. I duplicated his work, with the help of the Force. We flew over the surface of the planet. The surface was jagged; it looked like there had once been seas and oceans, but they had dried up long ago, after the planet had lost its atmosphere. It wasn't uncommon for a powerful stellar eruption to "blow" the atmosphere off a planet. And considering the sector we were in... the captain didn't turn off the deflectors at all, and the barque was sheltered by shields from the powerful star radiation.

Inside it was rather cramped - the main space was occupied by the hold and equipment, and the space for the crew was minimal. The barque resembled a submarine in its utilitarianism and simplicity, which was not far from the truth.

As a matter of fact, I trusted the force, and was not mistaken - after an hour of flight over the planet we came upon a large accumulation of metal below us. Before that there were iron ores, but we missed them on the grounds of uselessness. This metal was already different, much more valuable. From what I could feel, it certainly didn't fit into the ferrous metal category. Julian ran out to me, and shook my shoulder:

- Ani! Found it! Found it!

- Shh. I know, I can feel it. We're over some big metal deposits.

- Big? The scanners show deposits all over the horizon. There's a whole sea of it!

- I see, - I yawned and looked at my friend, - let's see what kind of fish got into our net...

- What fish? - didn't understand Ju.

- Yes, never mind. Turn on the equipment.

The barque hovered five meters above the surface. Julian went to the post of operator of our mining equipment, and spent half an hour turning everything on. As soon as it was time, the emitters of the tractor beam projector started to work, and began to lift up what was below the barque. The process of the mining barque itself consists of pulling ore from the planet's surface by the directional grav-beam and melting it into raw material in the molecular furnace. Since the rate of pulling was much greater than the rate of remelting, efficiency was limited by the molecular furnace. It was not enough just to extract the ore, the metals had to be carefully separated from the slag and then remelted and stockpiled.

The first mined samples went to the laboratory. Dirty gray stones the size of a fist, lighter than an ordinary stone. I took the ore, scanning it with my power. The stone was a jumbled metal with all sorts of slag that wasn't forged by force. Julian came up behind me:

- Give it to me.

- Her or the metal? It's not hard for me to smelt...

- No need," Julian grinned, "we'll smelt it in the furnace. We'll smelt it in the furnace..." "I'll have to look at the specifications...

What kind of characteristics he wanted to see, I found out right away, when I put the ore into the scanner. The holo-monitor, which Julian was working with, showed numbers and an image of the inside of the ore - about the same as it felt in the force - dust particles of metal mixed with slag. Only there were more dust particles than slag.

- Sixty-eight percent metal content..." muttered Ju.

- Is that good or bad?

- Good, of course," he said as a matter of course, "the ore is rich, but it is probably only the top layer, the most saturated. There's another one underneath, it's barely fifty percent... so...

- What kind of metal is that? I could not identify it, it was too destructured in the ore...

- Now, not all at once," Julian sat down in front of the monitor.

I walked around the lab waiting for the results-it was really small, more cramped than on the barloz. Seven or eight square meters of free space, bordered by the equipment standing close together - a cabinet of molecular oven, a scanner that looked like a microwave, a few more devices, remotely resembling a microscope, a laser scalpel, and so on and so forth. And all of this was crammed into a small room that could hardly be used.

The scanner, the one that looked like a microwave, finished its work and Julian fell back to the monitors.

For the next three minutes he dropped out of his life, judging by his keen study of the contents.

- What is it? - I couldn't take it anymore, when Jou was finally studying the readings.

- There's..." he looked excited, "there's something here!

- What is it? - I asked angrily, "What is it?

- You wouldn't believe it! You wouldn't believe what we've stumbled upon.

- It's not bescar or neuranium," I waved my hand, "it's not like gold either, it's heavy.

- No, no, look," Julian turned the monitor projector in my direction, "it's singing steel! It's a precious metal!

- Oh yes," I grinned, "by the way, yes... but there's only one problem... it's very hard to melt, so it can take years to mine it...

- Don't you get it? - Julian was astonished, - there's almost seventy percent of it in the ore! And melting it in a molecular kiln would be fast. It was you who had to worry about beskar because your partners melted it down into an alloy. If we don't have to process the metal, and just use a molecular kiln to sinter the ore, it'll be an order of magnitude faster.

- Well..." I scratched my ear, "are you sure?

- More than that, my friend, more than that! Shall we begin mining?

- Beginning, - I nodded, and Julian flew off to work.

I stayed in the laboratory and opened a calculator on my datapad, quickly calculated the profits and losses. The barque could carry three thousand tons, the price of one kilogram of singing steel was about two and a half thousand credits... and this was raw steel, the products made of the steel itself cost a lot more - the metal was simply very strong and refractory, so creating anything from singing steel was very difficult and required special equipment, high-temperature furnaces and equipment capable of working at high temperatures until the metal cooled down.

The value is also understandable - on average, from army equipment, weapons cost about one to two thousand credits, armor from five thousand for a lightweight armor suit of duralplast and ballistic fabric, to fifty thousand for full duralplast armor. Mandalorian karless armor set, from fifty to one hundred, and singing steel armor from one hundred to three hundred thousand for the light and heavy armor suits respectively. The average armored suit, which contained about ten kilograms of valuable metal, went for fifteen hundred thousand, that is, a kilogram of metal, when used for business, went for fifteen thousand credits. The markup is also understandable, and it is a rare metal which is not enough for everyone, even if we learned how to make mass-produced goods... And no one will invent this method - first of all, it is unprofitable, and secondly, meaningless. There is not enough metal.

Refractoriness, of course, gives the ability to resist blaster fire, in the case of singing steel even withstands the blows of a lightsaber. That's something for something.

The other thing is the numbers. I took the datapad and went to the mining equipment control room, a narrow corridor leading from the cockpit and the lab to the tail of the ship. That's where I found Julian.

- Ju, we've got a problem...

- What kind of problem? - The ex-smuggler came over right away.

- Look at this. It's the price of the metal we're going to get.

- That's..." Ju's eyes widened, "that's...

- Big trouble," I finished for him, and seeing the incomprehensible look, I explained:

- The mining is illegal, and there are people who would like to know where we've found it, and that's only half the trouble. The other half is that there are always some people who want to know who suddenly got rich.

- Sith is with you, Anakin. Are you frightened?

- No, not at all. I'm just taking a realistic view. You see, my friend, money doesn't just fall from the sky. If you got that kind of money from somewhere, somebody's bound to be interested. Besides, what are we going to do with all this money? We and our grandchildren, let's say, have earned a comfortable old age...

- You're right..." Ju bit his lip and rubbed his neck thoughtfully, "I'm sorry, I lost my temper. I made a vow when I was smuggling, not to get involved with shady deals... Greed, it's led a lot of people to a knife in the back...

- All right, that's taken care of. If it had been a million or two, we could have realized such sums quickly and without much trouble. It's a lot, of course, but by no means a fabulous fortune. But this much...

- Any suggestions? - Julian asked.

- We're not changing our plans yet. I've already had contacts with KVMK when I was pushing the Bescar. I think they can keep the seller's name a secret. As for the money... it's too much. Take as much as you want, there's enough for everybody.

- "No way, Anakin," Julian disagreed, "you're right. Better to be able to get more just in case, than to plunder the maximum amount at once. Ten percent would be enough for me, and that would be a lot..." "Well...

- Well..." I shrugged, "I agree with that. I'll have to think it over. This planet isn't the only one in the core, far from it.

Leaving the last word to myself, I left the cabin and went to my quarters. It was also very cramped, but I wasn't used to it.

There really was so much money, I wouldn't be surprised if mining companies were interested in me as a future competitor. The core is an ideal mining site in this regard - only I can come here, no one else. The area is tightly isolated from the rest of the galaxy, so there's nothing to be afraid of. Another thing is that you can't just blacklist mining, because the laws of the Republic are being violated. The last time, with Beskar, I was the sole owner of the land, and although I had no right to mine it, I leased my land, and the KMK had all the necessary documents to mine it... Now we're operating illegally on both counts, permission and ownership.