Reborn as Anakin

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***

Archaeology is not a story armed with a shovel, but a detective in which the investigator is a thousand years late to the scene.

I decided to return to Alderaan not immediately. First I thought I'd go to Naboo. To see the city, the scenery, that sort of thing, to see my mother, of course.... But I had to give up on that idea - the current status quo, namely getting away from the Jedi Order and going deeper into the "simple" life, was like air to me. Becoming who I was in "that" reality, but at the same time bowing down to either the Sith or the Jedi Council was not something I wanted to do. The council in general made me treat it with great caution. I might have thought they were suddenly concerned about my person, but I saw no sign of investigation. If they had been looking for me seriously, they would have found me in a couple of days - all they had to do was to make an official enquiry to the government, where they would have found me easily, because that's where all the data on transactions and contracts, such as training contracts or land purchases, are registered and stored....

But that didn't happen - no one found me, though I was sure that with the level of midichlorians I had they wouldn't have just left me and dragged me into the temple. I remember in canon, Yoda was being flirtatious, pretending he wouldn't take me as a Jedi... little green coquette - they paddle everyone they can get their hands on. And if not to the central temple, then to any other temple - Coruscant wasn't the only place to go.

While I had nothing against the Jedi themselves, despite the council's misdirection, the Jedi were generally positive people who had kept the Republic from falling apart until now. They prevented wars and other cataclysms, stayed out of the caca that is politics and private consumption, and thus remained quite healthy mentally. Like Buddhist monks or samurai, who honour high matters like karma or honour above carnal pleasures and the presence or absence of material values....

I gave up the idea of visiting my relatives, but the desire to find out how my mother was was not leaving me. Opening my eyes and looking at the dashboard of the ship, I turned and lazily threw to the droid:

- Erdva, prepare the ship for departure. We're going to Tatooine.

- Aye, Captain! - he squeaked. Where did he pick up that slang?

The droid began to prepare the ship for departure. All I could find out was that Mum was in the retinue of the Queen of Naboo, Padme Amidala. There was nothing more about Mum on the local network, and the Nabooan Infoset was the same. This was... sad, as in my opinion, the Queen's SB had rubbed all mentions of Mum, leaving only one official entry in the list of the Queen's retinue. But that was something I knew anyway, so I was quite saddened. I couldn't find out at once, but we Bolsheviks are persistent guys - I'll hire a man to find out everything and bring me the information.

In ten minutes the ship was ready for departure and I, having talked to the spaceport, received permission to take off. The ship lifted off the concrete of the pad and sailed upwards into the sky. Overcoming the atmosphere, due to the lack of opportunity to accelerate well is not a quick matter - the height of the stationary orbit, from which you could start in hyper was four hundred and a little kilometres, and the speed of my flying stool with a motor - about five hundred kilometres per hour. And despite the fact that I could accelerate in the thin layers of the atmosphere, it took about a quarter of an hour to get into orbit. During this time the captain left the bridge and went to his cabin - Erdva is a clever guy, he will drive me himself, I don't need to get under his arm. I couldn't make such a big flight with the help of power navigation, so I could only rest. Tatooine wasn't close, or rather it was the edge of the galaxy, even in the Hutt sector.

While I had time, I sat down to meditate and checked my sword once more after the first real use - there were no excesses. The data from the systems was recorded and I quickly reviewed it and dumped it onto the datapad, into the collection. As the first real fight involving a light saber and force.

And then... then it was pretty boring - I meditated, honing my control of the subtle streams of force even more and more - eventually I, not being able to rely on the amount of force, as it was prohibitive, trained the subtle influence first. It was... fantastic. If you discounted the fact that I was now flying in my own starship, it was still fantastic. In order to control the power, I found more and more training, more and more areas for self-development.

Sitting on my bed, I reached down to the speedbike that stood below and began its incomplete disassembly - using telekinesis to remove the bolts, steel panels, repulsor fork, and microreactor. As it turned out, I was worried for nothing - the local equipment ate petrol and oil in very limited quantities - only as lubricant for droids and fuel for jet engines, and in no other way, because all the marching engines of starships were exclusively powered by reactors. The reactors in turn were fed by a special synthetic fuel, which was more of a concentrate-jelly created from a wide variety of minerals and materials. Theoretically, the range of fuels for ships and ground vehicles was extremely wide, and reactors, almost all of them, gobbled up just about anything. But, as is always the case, reality intervened. It was possible to pour fuel into the reactor that it was not designed for in the normal mode and get an increase in power output, and it was possible to increase the resource by deforcing the engines and power system with the help of soft, low-saturated fuel. True, the output will drop drastically. Partly such universal solution of the energy problem multiplied all fuel crises by zero. And how many stories and legends among smugglers such a detail sowed - not to count, from mythical superfuel, to evil trains, "diluted with donkey urine". But the flight from Corellia to Tatooine only cost me, fuel-wise, about a hundred credits - incredibly cheap, considering the engines and hyperdrive would last a long time.

I took the reactor off the speedboat, absentmindedly thinking about it, and changed the fuel and oil and moved on to modifying it. I'll be done in a week. The first victims were the repulsors - they were cleaned from the slightest flaws and accelerated almost one and a half times, then it was the turn of power cables. Unlike the car, these are the main fuel lines, so I carefully took them to pieces and turned the metal of the wires into an alloy, having found a more suitable composition for this case, in which the resistance decreased by five per cent. Having put them back together and put them aside, and feeling everything that was going on right under me, in the lorry cab, I felt perfectly well, I took the wheel. Overall the layout of the Hawk was classic, in terms of design it was similar to the motorbikes of the eighties and early nineties. I had nothing against the design, but I removed the body panels and reshaped them to look like a racing motorbike, the most modern one in my opinion. Smooth contours of the sides were also laid next to the bike - the work took me a couple of hours, but I was not going to stop - the next dissected were the seats, fork repulsor handlebars. By slightly lowering and making the seat more recessed, I ensured a good fit in the future. And finally, and most importantly, the heart of the bike, its reactor. Since the other parts could produce parameters greater than it could provide, I reinforced the reactor. Really, it's easy to say - the machine was quite complex, and I had to do a good job of understanding how it worked before I started. It was very different from the ship's reactor. Having tweaked the metals and the core, where electricity was released by the chemical reaction of the loaded fuel and catalysts. The fuel was already in the reactor, and it was running "at idle", giving out power to nowhere. To increase its power, we had to tweak the catalyst mechanism itself a bit to make the reaction more active and get more fuel into the active zone, as well as significantly rework the process of electricity generation - all the conductors were replaced by the chromium-copper-steel alloy, which I had already tested - the alloy proved itself well. Since chromium was a superconductor, I had to thread it thinly through the common fuel line, as if it were a big rope of threads, chromium, steel, copper.... The presence of the superconductor in the metal and its constant contact with the other metals gave a tremendous boost in system performance, although it required the resulting molecular rope to be separately insulated and stabilised with a winding of neuranium filaments. But it was already simple - all it took was to melt it and connect the thin, foil-like layer of neuranium and the wire itself. The system stabilised quickly - neuranium was an incredibly heavy metal with medium conductivity. However, it was too early to write me down as a genius technician - I was only "accelerating" the iron, strengthening and improving the metals and modifying the design, in the image and likeness of the top models that I had seen and felt in other machines. Such technical solutions were unnecessary for a bike - they were on high-altitude speeders whose reactors produced power almost like small shuttles. To do the same, but in miniature was too expensive - firstly, when you need more speed, you can use a more powerful bike or speeder, or even a fighter, but to put a mega-motor in the bike ... please.

I topped it all off with a nice stylised windscreen. It was above the level of the pilot's head, and the wind, according to the idea, should wrap around the whole upper surface of the bike, protecting me from an accidental pebble. It wasn't glass, of course, but the transparent metal used to make portholes on spaceships. Actually, it was easy to get metal for my experiments - it was enough to take old unnecessary parts at the spaceport rubbish dump and melt them down, cleaning the metal and restoring its structure.

After the work was done, I assembled the machine by telekinesis and force, and after probing it without finding any flaws, I didn't notice how I fell asleep. The work took a lot of time and mental strength - keeping my attention constantly was incredibly hard work. But I could boast that I could rebuild a bike even when I was in the next cabin - just by the power of thought. I'm cool. That ability could come in handy, like disabling the droids that are considered cannon fodder here, or quickly repairing something without even physically looking at it. As a flight mechanic, I was a definite merician, but I wasn't particularly proud of it, or rather, I didn't care. I trained my power control perfectly, becoming more and more skilled at changing the physical world. My dream was to be able to influence living organisms the way I could with metals. I had even decided to buy some guinea pigs, but I had not yet been able to make it happen. There were local lizards on Tatooine, and desert creatures like mice were not uncommon.

Thinking about mice, I finally fell asleep.....

In the morning, dressed in my ship's traveller's costume - a rough cloth shirt, similar trousers and slippers, I took a cup with hot herbal tea and entered the control station. There, in the spacious cabin, was Erdva. In front of the ship was a haze of hyperspace, a multitude of dots flying past, darkened objects that could not be seen. Most likely, these were optical illusions created by the hyperdrive field.

- How's it going in here? - I asked Erdv, taking a sip from my cup.

- We're on a general course, Captain! - replied the droid, and buzzed some servo-motors or repulsors.

- Is that so? ETA?

- Five days, four hours and twenty minutes, Captain!

- So, five more days..." I frowned, counting the remaining days until the end of the holidays. So, except for the round trip, I had nineteen days, which I could spend on anything I wanted. I didn't want to stay on Tatooine for long - I couldn't loot much money there, and I couldn't race? It's kind of a season, but there's no need to shine a light on it yet, and the odds on the winner of the last season must not be as favourable as they were last time. The only thing I could get from Tatooine, besides hiring someone to track me, was the purchase of illegal goods - powerful weaponry for the ship, which I didn't really need, since I could always go into hyper, even without a navicomp and path calculation. There were also high-end hyperdrives, weapons, metals....

Metals... Tatooine was basically a giant, colossal ship graveyard. In its sands, ships from all sorts of races and all sorts of eras had found their final resting place - starting with the ships of the endless Rakata Empire. The Jawas make their living by searching the deserts for scrap metal and other debris and selling it - and they're not out of work! On these ships, you can find ancient machines that are over ten thousand years old. Of course, they're long out of date, but I thought it would be a good idea to use my power scanner to see what I could find in the sands. You could find a devil with horns and a hyperdrive between them....

However, most of the ships were just left there, because they had outlived their useful life - recycling is not the cheapest way to get rid of a ship, besides, it is not always possible to scrap it, so they threw it anywhere....

I had a pretty good power scanner - on Mandalore I could sense very scattered metal through many metres of rock, so the ship....

It could have been a great training ground for my abilities. Of course, I wouldn't mind learning how to fight, since I was a complete zero in terms of fencing, but the circle of power abilities doesn't end with waving a light saber and harming others, does it?

Actually, travelling in hyperspace, I mean normal, legal travel, it's so boring! Smugglers have a really interesting life - patrols, from which they run, pass through asteroid fields, which in addition have a monstrously unstable gravity, land on planets with thin atmosphere, where you have to look for temporary shelter, burrow into the ice of the poles of planets with water, and just drive for nothing in those places where no normal person would not lead his ship. A smuggler-pilot is a real ace in piloting, who can squeeze every last drop out of his ship's capabilities. And so - he sat down, ordered the droid to fly there, and fly himself a white swan, no malfunctions, no adrenaline, no acceleration ...

We set a general course - in the smugglers' lexicon this means that the navicomputer the ship was equipped with had calculated the main jump - from Corellia on a secondary route one jump to the main interstellar route, and then again, but this time to Tatooine. Tatooine was a favourable location for smugglers of all stripes, which kept the sandball alive.

So I was looking for something to do. Time was slipping through my fingers - I had to endure the fact that I had five more days, five more precious days of travelling to the planet. It was... annoying. But no more than that - studying was not an impossible burden for me, and the desire to finally see Alessia loomed on the edge of my mind.

I looked at the instrument readings and the haze behind the front window for another five minutes and decided to go to my room and do some work. First I visited the bike I'd rebuilt yesterday - it was exactly as I'd felt it in the force - with smooth bodywork, a deep seat, and a powerful reactor... it could easily go up to seven hundred kilometres per hour - against the nameplate's four hundred, it was a good figure, but I wouldn't know the exact specifications of my bike until I'd taken all the readings back on the planet. Riding the sands of Tatooine was more nostalgia than necessity.

Jav's profession, or rather, digging all the scrap metal out of Tatooine's sands, was also on my mind. No, the prices for common metal weren't high enough to seriously pursue them, but purely from a historical perspective, it would be interesting to see what could be found there.

When I finished looking at the bike and satisfied with the work I had done, I decided to exercise my brains rather than my strength and went to find a secretary droid to start the next course. Unlike me, Alessia probably doesn't suffer from bullshit and would be happy to have me help her understand the lectures at the beginning of her second year. And with good reason, since not many students could instantly switch back to their studies after the holidays - I was familiar with the post-post-holiday syndrome from my previous life. And this was the first time I'd ever had the luxury of no tasks and no immediate goals - even on Tatooine, I always had a job to do, let alone smuggling time, where I'd had to work hard to get a good reputation and make money....

Tatooine didn't seem to have changed over the years - still the same desert baked mercilessly by the two stars, still the same spaceports that looked more like tent camps from a bird's eye view. But not a single bird is on Tatooine - too hot, too little water, too little food.

Tatooine has never changed. But I have changed a lot, and I've seen this planet in different ways. My transporter entered the planet's atmosphere. No one asked for call signs, of course - fly whoever you want, land wherever you want, a big Tortuga with no authority except for one Hutt who hadn't cared about anything for a long time.

As the G9 descended to the planet, I sat sprawled out in my chair. There were no parking rules here - put your trolley in an open space, or take it to the docks if it needed repairs. So we did without politeness and negotiations with the surface. The haze of hyperspace was replaced by the whistling of wind and repulsors, as well as overcoming rare feather clouds. We were descending - me in the first pilot's seat and Erdva, who stood between the seats and connected to the ship via shunt. I could have done it wirelessly, but it works about the same as wi-fi, that is, on microwave transmission, and considering that the real speed of the ship and droid computers is about thirty gigabits per second, Erdva's wireless connection turns the cabin into a small microwave. Of course, none of the equipment burns, but radiation of that intensity, above all else, could leave me without offspring, so the ship's control channel is primarily a standard shunt. If the USB standard lived a thousand years, its descendants would look the same. For exchanging small packets of information, though, Erdva uses a wireless standard, WSUN. This abbreviation means Wireless Standard of Unit Network, (no analogue in the great and mighty has not been found). That's how almost the whole galaxy worked. It doesn't sound so strange in galactic, of course.

Erdva lowered the ship lower and lower, the small patch dotted with buildings turned into a rather large spaceport. Mos Eisley, the Siamese brother of Mos Espa, which was located practically right there.

I took control of the ship and flicked the manual control toggle switch - Erdva pulled out the shunt and stared at me with his ocular eye. I, however, ignoring him, lowered the car down into the harbour area, and flying at a low angle over the outskirts of the harbour, which was littered with large pieces of ships buried in the ground, marking the boundary of the spaceport, landed the ship at the farthest corner of the spaceport. The ship could easily withstand temperatures up to plus two hundred degrees, and didn't require much of a parking space. It was about a kilometre to the spaceport building, and the entire ship landing area was about a kilometre by kilometre. On this rather imposing flying field, there were rows and rows of light transports, mostly made by my new partners, the KMC.

I unbuckled myself from my seat and looked at Erdv:

- Pack up, my iron mate, we're coming out.

- The sand is terrible. It's clogging the undercarriage," Erdva squeaked.

- Well, then close all the slits and fly higher. About a metre above the sand there isn't much of it in the air.

- I will," the droid squeaked again and turned around to shut down all the ship's systems. Theoretically, deeply theoretically, such ships have three crew members - pilot-captain, co-pilot-navigator, and storekeeper. But even the documents state that the minimum crew is one man, the nominal crew is two. The droid takes over the flight mechanic's duties, and any of the pilots can supervise loading and unloading.

When Erdva left, the cabin fell into complete silence - I thought I could hear my own breathing, and it was very loud. The lamp under the ceiling illuminated the cabin with a white light. It's still nice to be alone for a while, when it's just the droid and the ship with you. Sighing, I chased away the obsession and dropped the remnants of meditation - the habit of hanging around thinking about something of my own is not a good thing - I need to, I need to change into my travelling clothes as soon as possible and get to work. The first order of business is to hire a spy. Anyone will take such a relatively easy job, and ten grand, I think, will be enough. As a down payment. I got up and went to my quarters, changed my clothes, and dropped the ten thousand on one of my credit cards. My main credit card was a personal one, and they didn't take those here-it was too much trouble to change money into the local, semi-legal currency.

After I got dressed, I went down to the cargo hold and got on the bike with my sword, blaster, and money. Now it made sense to try out my handheld monster in action.

- Open it," I nodded to the droid, and the ramp slid down. When it didn't fully open, I leapt forward, jumping down. The repulsors buzzed, but prevented contact with the surface. A second later, the Tatooine wind was blowing across my shoulders-not as hot as I was used to feeling. The speed on the holographic indicators crept up - one hundred, two hundred, four hundred... - and with a deafening whistle of wind on the windscreen, I made a tight turn around the transporter and flew into a rather slender line of ships. They whizzed past, and after five seconds, when I had to keep my speed at three hundred kilometres, I saw the rapidly approaching structure of the local spaceport. Since there was no bureaucracy, I passed it - it was more of a trading post for fuel and other ship supplies. Erdva, helping himself to the rocket engines, was having trouble catching up with me. Flying at that speed through the city was mauvais, so I slowed down and drifted down the winding streets of Mos Eisley. The locals were coming around the fork of my bike, and bantams, the local draught animals, were walking leisurely down the street. Since they weren't going to go around me, I had to turn on the repulsors and climb higher, about four or five metres, to get a view of the town.

Beyond the town you could see the seemingly endless dune sea. It was, in a sense, endless - it stretched for many thousands and thousands of kilometres. The Jawas roamed it on their crowlers, searching the sand for the remains of long-dead ships.

After another jump over an obstacle, which turned out to be a wagon filled with some cargo, I pointed my bike in the direction of the area where the cantina I needed was located. A small restaurant, however, where hired men were regularly spotted. Unlike the one where Ju and I, or other smugglers, were usually hired, this one had a more serious crowd, and the work often involved assassination and espionage. As I flew closer, I left my bike outside in Erdw's care and went inside. Inside... pretty cool, civilised, the sort of thing you wouldn't even expect from Tatooine, you could see the work of the designers and air conditioning. I didn't attract much attention - in some second-rate vomitorium the local ghouls stare at the entrants, but here it's not customary to be annoying. In general, the higher the status, the more polite people are among themselves, and the meaner, greedier, meaner they are. I glimpsed those sitting there and took a table in a prominent place. Ordering lunch and some juice through the menu, I decided to see what kind of crowd was gathered here. The order came quickly.

The first to enter the cantina was a man who looked like a mercenary, a bounty hunter. The pay was so good that I thought of trying the job myself, but the risk was too great, and I preferred not to take any unnecessary risks.

When the food was finished, the waiter took the dishes away, and I was left to sit in a prominent place and wait for the visitor I wanted. Bounty hunters first and foremost. And though I had no one to kill yet, the other black market professions didn't suit me, neither smugglers nor pirates. So I sat in the corner for about an hour, until luck smiled on me in the form of what looked like a young hunter. He was a man, about twenty to twenty-five years old, dressed in light woven armour, with a blaster on his belt and a somewhat pensive look. He walked straight to my table-apparently he couldn't find another customer because of his age.

- Are you busy?

- It depends on what you are with, - I smiled, - are you interested in work?

- Yes, I could use it," he sat down opposite me. He looked me over, of course, from head to toe, but he didn't get impudent.

- Then I have one not very dusty business, - I took the bull by the horns, and after waiting until he ordered a cocktail, continued: - "I need to gather information on one man. Superficial. How he lives, where he lives, how he's doing and all that....

- It seems too simple," he shook his head, "and you haven't looked in the holonet?

- Do you take me for a fool, sir? In the holonet the information on this man is controlled, and there are no details.

- Interesting... - the hunter snorted, - and how much do you pay?

- Ten thousand. An advance, and the same amount upon your return. The conditions are simple, you should not be noticed.

- It's getting more and more interesting... - the man smiled. - And who would notice me?

- The royal guard, for example. A man from the Queen of Naboo's retinue. Chomell Sector.

- So I'll have to sneak under the queen's nose... - the man rubbed his chin, - and if they notice me?

- I don't think that would be much of an inconvenience. The death penalty for gathering information has not been invented yet, so the details after the contract is signed.

- Agreed," the hunter agreed, "how do I get the information to you?

- On a datapad. Encrypted packet. I don't think there's much classified information in there," I shrugged.

- Who am I looking for?

- Chomell Sector, planet Naboo, city of Tidus, royal palace, a maid named Shmi Skywalker. As far as I know from public sources, she's part of the Queen's retinue, so don't go easy on her. Don't say a word about me to anyone, even if you get caught, the laws there are pacifist, so the most you'll get is a fine for invasion of privacy, and that's unlikely.

We talked for a few more minutes and went our separate ways - the mercenary went to the hangar to fly to Naboo, and I flew back to my ship. I wanted to scour the desert sands for valuables I could steal from old ships. No matter what valuables - just disassembled hyperdrive gives me about forty kilograms of valuable metals, which can be used with my abilities as I wish.

The ship was still standing under the blazing sun - Erdva remotely opened the hatch, and we flew inside, where I had already stopped my bike. It was going to be an interesting job.

The question was how? How could I use the scanner while sitting in the ship? There was no way to do that - the ship, being metallic, was causing a lot of interference - on Mandalore, I could smell the deposits only after I'd pulled the ship aside. I had to sit in the pilot's chair and think. Think hard. Ideally, I'd like a speeder made of non-magnetic materials, but it was unrealistic to make one, given that I needed a material that wouldn't succumb to the force. Leaving the droid in the cockpit, I ordered him:

- Erdva, raise the ship, heading northwest, fifty miles.

- Aye, Captain! - The droid beeped.

And I went off to think. I went to the cargo cabin - here and waited for arrival at the place. All that remained was to look for new forms of working with the force.

* Hyperspace, bounty hunter *

The Dakard ship, aptly named the Star of Life, came out of hyperspace. I finished inspecting everything I would need in the surveillance process - microphones, bugs, cameras, sound recorders, and other equipment. It all went into a small case that was well shielded from weapon detection sensors. Besides, I took only civilian weapons with me - no need to risk unnecessary risks or to make the guards nervous.

When the ship finally approached the planet, I had to go to the cabin and report to the dispatchers about the purpose of my arrival. And it was quite simple, besides, no one tortured me with waiting as on Coruscant - they immediately gave me permission to fly to the capital, and to land near the royal palace.

Naboo... Naboo deceived my expectations. After strict orders of the customer and payment of the advance payment, I expected that the work would be difficult - the palace guards, which must be fooled and get inside, unfriendliness of the surrounding servants to the stranger....

It was just my imagination. The excursion to the royal palace cost me five hundred credits. A large sum by the standards of an ordinary man, but for a non-Nabuan, an adult, alone, and in the daytime, not in the morning, the rates were maximum. Thankfully, finances allowed - after half an hour of rather boring walk around the palace with stops at each fresco or painting, the guide let the group go and we all dispersed... It was also possible to look at the queen - when she went out to her subjects, or on business walked around the palace. It was on one of these walks that our paths crossed. I stood near the painting, looking at the work of Nabuan artists with one eye, and with the other looking towards the royal chambers. My expectations were not deceived - after a few minutes, rather a dozen minutes, the doors opened and a procession came out of the room. First were the guards, and between them, a woman with high hair, all in make-up. Of course, I didn't bring any weapons or microphones with me, otherwise they wouldn't let me through. Following the queen came a flock of women or girls wrapped in bright sunset-coloured clothes. No faces could be seen, but according to the customer, one of them was the target. I looked at them - it was far enough away, no one would let me within shooting distance. The queen disappeared into the other chambers, followed by the maids.

I finished my inspection - all I needed to know, I recognised - namely, a complete disregard for personal safety. It seemed the Queen wasn't too afraid of my colleagues. And for good reason.

A plan was immediately devised - the maids are women, and must have someone close to them among the men of the palace. Why don't I ask the common servants what's going on in the retinue?

It would give me some information, if not comprehensive information, at least some threads that would allow me to pull out what I needed. The plan was put into action immediately.

- Excuse me, lady, am I interrupting you? - I asked, seeing a young lady with cleaning supplies doing some minor cleaning.

- No, no, not at all..." she smiled. A blush touched her cheeks. It was understandable-I hadn't taken much care of myself on Tatooine, but as soon as I got into decent society, I took care of my appearance-face, hands, and everything else, so I looked as good as an aristocrat. Women always liked that.

- Can I ask you a small thing? I'm just curious about those ladies who walked with the queen... who were they?

- The orange clothes? They are servants from the Queen's retinue," the maid began to tell me, "they say the Queen chooses them personally and they all look like her. It's a tradition," the maid said. The servants liked to gossip a lot. They knew better than the head of the guard what was going on in the palace. The girl continued: - You know, they are usually so quiet, although they sometimes talk to us, yes... recently one of them decided to get married at all... although it seems to be against the rules....

- Marriage? - I raised my eyebrows involuntarily. Luckily, there would probably be a lot of guests at the wedding, so I could find out something.

- Yes, yes, Shmi Skywalker is getting married next week," the girl nodded, "there's bound to be a big celebration.

I stood there thinking there must be a catch. Right, a catch, because there can't be a job like this for such good pay. Examining the girl, I smiled at her, causing another explosion of embarrassment.

- Who is she marrying?

- Oh, some man from the local technicians. Sort of like a supervisor in ship construction...I don't know exactly, Edward I think. I saw him once, a handsome man, about forty years old... quite..." she bit her lip, which made her look more seductive. In fact, during the whole conversation she stood up like that, then she shot her eyes... it was obvious that she was single, but very much wanted to be.

- Thank you. I think I'll go... - I said.

- Wait, why are you interested? - She asked, shooting me another glance.

- I'm just... working for a media portal, writing an article about Naboo, and the life of the royal palace..." I lied. It's easy to make up a legend just in case - there are a lot of media companies with their own journalists, and they sometimes go where a normal sane person would never go. So as a legend for my work, it's very good...

- Would you by any chance like to attend the wedding? - asked the lady, smiling.

- Is it possible? - I wondered.

- You're on Naboo, not Coruscant, and we have pretty simple rules. If you want, everyone is invited, if it's someone's wedding, they invite all their friends, acquaintances, colleagues....

I wondered. To attend a target's wedding? Isn't that the pinnacle of desirability when observing? I decided that it would be better to check with the customer and give him all the accumulated information, and ask to be a guest at the wedding. At a decent wedding, a couple of thousand credits are usually enough for a gift. The customer's own words are not enough here, and Edward should be asked for all the information first. Pretend to be a reporter for some portal that wrote about Nabuan traditional weddings... I smiled.

- Lady, I never got your name...

- Inga," she replied with a little gasp, "and you are....

- Tyber Kossler, at your service," I indicated a bow. The girl blushed a little again, but after a second she got over herself, gathered her courage, and before I could say goodbye, she turned to me:

- Can I ask you a small favour... you see... I'd really like to go to the wedding and see the Queen! Can you take me with you? - she raised her eyes to me. Blue.

I had to capitulate:

- Er... if I'm allowed to attend... I don't see what the big deal is... - I wondered what I'd gotten myself into again. Inga was quite beautiful, though. I would even say, very beautiful, so inside I struggled with the desire to get to know the girl better and the requirement to do my job cleanly and without traces. In the end, the essence of a man weak to female beauty overcame the arguments of professionalism - if I came with someone from the locals, it would be even more preferable than a lonely guest, and Inga...

- Wonderful! - She glowed, and moved closer to me. I wanted to pull away, but didn't. She hugged me briefly by the shoulders and smiled. - So you're going to the wedding?

- I don't know anything yet! - I blurted out immediately. The girl looked away a little discouraged, and I continued. - But I'll try to go. Inga, I will have a request to you... of a personal nature... - I hesitated and cleared my throat. The conversation, together with the pauses and redeployment of us from the corridor to the bench, took about twenty minutes, which was a lot of talking.

- Yes?" she asked in surprise. I moved closer to her ear and wrought iron while it was hot.

- You see, nobody knows me here, so I don't know how they'd feel about the idea..... if you could just play along a little bit. Like, say we have a relationship? - The girl's face got a little hot, but I kept going. - Say, just for this time only, can I say that I'm connected to Naboo in this particular way?

- Wh... what do you mean? - She interjected in surprise. Ostentatious, I could tell she'd got me right. It's a good thing to have someone close to the target.

- That's exactly what I mean. Why don't we just tell everyone that we have a thing? Well, you understand me... - I made an indefinite gesture with my hand. Inga followed him and after a second leaned over to my ear:

- If a young man promises not to let his hands loose. At least until the wedding... - she realised how ambiguous it sounded and blushed, but she didn't pull away.

- I promise," I smiled, "I want to talk to Edward... So it's okay if I say that I'm yours.

- I think that's perfectly acceptable," she smiled.

I just had to talk to the customer and take a cold shower. The colder the better - now I understood why the mission was so difficult - the girls on Naboo were beautiful.... to say the least. And hard to resist. In a confusion of feelings, keeping the remnants of my mind intact, I said goodbye to Inga and walked out of the palace towards the local technicians' building she had indicated...

* Tatooine, Anakin Skywalker *

Twenty-four hours. For twenty-four hours the ship flew over the surface of the dune sea. The terrible heat, the relentless sun turned me into a Jawa-like creature. Thank the Force, before my visit to Tatooine, I had managed to fill all the water tanks and take about fifteen hundred litres of water with me in large thirty-litre office bottles. The heat was killing me, and wrapping myself in a white cloth like a turban and robe made the situation much better, but it didn't save me completely. I had to endure the discomfort.

The hours between four and six and eight to midnight are the most active on Tatooine. During that time, the temperature stays at a reasonable level. I had to take measures to work during the day, but the morning was still bearable. I drank my tea and climbed out onto the surface of the ship, which was hovering a short distance from the ground, about ten metres away, so that the Jawas and other desert nasties wouldn't get in. The G9 had a pylon - sticking out to the side like an aeroplane wing, but only one, and it fulfilled the function of additional space - there was no place to cram a relatively large hyperdrive into the main body, so the developers had to try their best. I went out to this pylon, which had been moved aside. A small hatch led to its surface from the cargo hold - for astrodroids-repairers, but considering my rather small size, I could easily pass through it. Once on the pylon, I walked to its middle - its length from the hull to the turbolaser cannon at the end of the pylon was a decent seven metres. After walking to the middle, I sat down in pseudolotos, though actually I could just lie down. That the pylon would not heat up, I forcefully changed the top layer of metal and choosing a piece of alloy with chromium from the scrap metal in the hold, allocated a kilogram of three chromium, threw the remaining steel back. Actually, the alloy "steel-chromium-chromium" in which three per cent of chromium, the rest steel and chromium in half, was used in the inner lining of fuel lines and as a cheap material for the core of reactors. The alloy resisted acid corrosion well and gave the fuel system a decent life and low cost. It was a piece of the fuel line that I dismantled, extracting chrome and covering the pylon with it, and the whole ship from above, having "smoothed" by force - melted the top quarter millimetre of the cladding by force and covered it with chrome. It was still yesterday and took only five minutes - the job was extremely simple - no complicated metamorphosis was required. Such work was not just simple - I could do it while dozing off, too primitive for my level. I was working with class zero-five hyperdrives, which by the standards of metal work is the pinnacle of complexity. You could look into the pylon like a mirror - the distortions are only those intended by the design, and the pylon was straight. But in the evening, after the chrome had been applied, the ship's skin had stopped getting hot - according to Erdwah, who had interrogated the sensors, the absorption of starlight radiation had dropped by ninety-eight per cent. It was... well, how do you describe the thrill of melting sand from the heat and lying on cold metal and smiling?

The ship moved leisurely towards the dune sea. Actually, it was everywhere around here, but I was flying to the centre, away from the spaceports. Erdva steered the ship, which floated leisurely over the surface of the endless dunes. I had the power scanner on full blast-the ship glowed, of course, but not as much as it would have if I had been inside the ship.

As the warming breeze blew across my face, I sat in a pseudolothos pose with my eyes closed. The perception was much stronger that way. My "feelers" stuck into the sand, going several dozen metres deep and the ship, moving, moved me along with them. An analogy came into my mind - a plough being dragged across a field, also sinks its knives into the ground. A rake, a hoe... it's hard to explain. Following the example of the modern plough, I split the stylus into several and stabbed them into the sand.

Empty, empty, empty... empty, sand, sometimes small desert creatures - lizards and worms... emptiness below. Erdva gave the throttle and the breeze hit his face with a new force - we would cover at least one hundred kilometres per hour. The ship flew like that for a few hours until I realised I could see something metallic below.

- Halt! - I shouted into the comlink, and the ship braked sharply, swinging like a swing forwards - otherwise I would have flown off the mirror-smooth surface of the pylon.

We came to a stop. I ran the feelers down again and this time I felt the metal clearly. Next I had to climb into the ship, sighing, and land it on the sand. Erdva stayed to keep an eye on the situation, and I stepped off the rear ramp and felt the ship clearly. It was big, bigger than mine, but not a battleship or even a corvette. Its shape was rather peculiar - the sensation of exploring the ship by force cannot be conveyed in words.

Having put a deaf mask on my face beforehand, I reached out to it by force and felt it. Next, I simply pulled it upwards using telekinesis. When I used telekinesis to move hyperdrives weighing five to ten tonnes, I learned not to pay attention to the mass of the object. The force was governed by other laws, and moving a single spoonful of neuranium weighing five kilograms could be heavier than moving a hundred-tonne ship. That was...

But first things first. First, the sand swelled up in front of me, like a deep-sea explosion, and then the bow of the ship slowly began to emerge from it. The sand that was at my feet was pulled towards it - even though the ship was going upwards, it was releasing quite a large volume and the sands tended to fill it. A moment later, a large transport ship was hovering directly in the air above the unfurled barchan. I laid it down on the sand in front of me and opened my eyes as the dust settled.

A transport, with a horseshoe-shaped fuselage and a maintenance bay ridge leading to the engines. The nose of the ship was straight, not aerodynamically shaped. Thirty by thirty metres approximately. A rather... interesting specimen. I wasn't much of a ship connoisseur, though I was interested in the subject, but historical ships had never been one of my interests. A transport could have been lying here for ten years or ten thousand - sand preserved metals as well as swamps preserved mammoth carcasses.

- Erdva," I turned over my shoulder, hearing the noise of the droid's repulsors, "can you find out what kind of ship this is?

- Of course, Captain! - squeaked the droid.

I meant to climb into the holonet, but Erdva didn't bother with such complications and flew straight to the pulled transport. In a second his shunt was in a groove, and then he squeaked and grunted, blew compressed air into the groove, and inserted his shunt into it.

The process did not take ten seconds before something clicked in the door of the ship, and a heavy cargo ramp fell down under its weight. Erdva, just in time to bounce, flew inside. From my seat I could see the black yawn of the cargo hold and the boxes scattered in disorder.

Five minutes later, Erdva came back to me with glad tidings:

- A dynamic-class transport ship. Built by the Corellian Machine Corporation, in the twenty-one thousand two hundred and seventh year of the founding of the Republic. That is three thousand seven hundred and sixty years ago.

All I could do was whistle. I'd never dealt with anything that old. On earth, they're already dragging a thousand-year-old squiggle into a museum!

- What's inside? - I asked, hoping for an answer.

- The reactor has finally shut down, the hull damage is moderate, they were fired upon by interceptors.

- What do you mean? - I didn't understand. - Which ones, can you find out?

- Relatively... no. All the crew members are dead, there's not a single entry in the ship's log. The last one was about the start of the shipment to Mos Espa.

- Mos Espa is a long way from here," I interrupted the droid.

- They were hoping to get through without trouble, but they were ambushed. Pirates or Sith or local barons... who knows now," the droid squeaked uncertainly. - What do we do with them?

- Who's "them"? - I didn't understand.

- The ship and crew," the droid replied.

Oh, boy... I had to take the lantern myself and look at the local smugglers of the Sith Wars era. The air in the ship was stale, so I had to take a breathing apparatus - it would be enough for half an hour. Shining my torch, I stepped inside. Erdva followed me and gave me directions. However, I quickly figured it out myself and reached the cockpit. Yeah... something like I expected to see. Two skeletons in decaying clothes. There was no trace or odour - they were more than a thousand years old. Even with the ship's airtightness broken, the airflow was decent and the ship wasn't a tin can. On the pilot's chair sat, strapped skeleton in, judging by the iron parts of the jumpsuit, which did not decay, a man. Next to him, in the co-pilot's chair, a skeleton also lay.

Unlike horror films, these were not frightening. Though I was uncomfortable-the silence of the long-dead ship was getting on my nerves. Erdva whistled his repulsors over my shoulder.

- Well, let's bury the pilots' remains first, then see what we can take from their ship. I was hoping to find something like this and rebuild it, but we don't need this transport," I said. Erdva flew back in silence, and I took out the skeletons by force and brought them out into the sunlight.

The co-pilot, judging by the shiny chain and pendant left on her, was a woman, no other than the wife of the first.

Having finished with the black business, namely, burying the skeletons in the sand with the help of "power hands", I returned to the transport ship and went through it for valuables. Erdwa wasn't left out either. The crates gave us nothing, as their contents had long since decayed, but the hyperdrive and reactor shared at least a dozen tonnes of high-end rare metals. Just in case, I separated them and, having smelted them into metal pellets, threw them into my ship.

- Let's go, Erdva," I said, and we returned to our G9, leaving the transport to the desert sands.

The flight and scouring of the area continued. I have enough metals for my experiments. I could have bought some, but I didn't see the point, if there were tonnes of valuable metals buried in the sand. The scrap I found was worth five to ten thousand credits. It was a very good salary by the standards of the galaxy - novice officials were paid about a thousand. And the burial of former colleagues was not superfluous. There's no reason for them to sit in their pilot's chairs forever, it's time to retire..." I smiled. It is impossible to deal with death without black humour - otherwise I will be afraid. And what can make you laugh to be afraid is problematic, so black humour is necessary for a person as a cure for the fear of death.

The combing resumed. We flew over the dunes for about three hours, and the sun was already beginning to burn to the point that I thought to have a siesta, as under the belly of the transporter my dipstick hit the metal. Again. I'd only just got over my thoughts of the dead smuggler when I heard the signal again.

It seemed the rumours were true - more than a thousand ships had found their final resting place in the sands of Tatooine.

- Halt! - I shouted into the comlink. Deja vu. Or is it the sun?

The ship rocked and again I, after coming to a complete stop, went to the cockpit, landing it on the sand again.

This time the outing was marked by my incomprehensible face. The stylus, launched downwards, hit metal half a hundred metres below. I moved the stylus from side to side, but the metal was everywhere!

- Erdwa, there's something big down there. There's something fucking big down there," the rest of the meditation I'd been immersing myself in while sitting on the pylon came off. - There's something fucking big in there! - I turned to the droid.

- I get it, you don't have to tell me again," the droid replied, "shall we lift it?

- Yeah sith knows... - I thought.

Indeed, I could lift a tonne, I could lift ten, a hundred tonnes without feeling the difference, but according to the most approximate estimates, what was under us weighed many millions of tonnes! Ships of that weight had never landed on planets - at least not at that time. If the depth of the transport was shallower than that, and it had been buried almost the same way, then this thing had been here for at least a few thousand years.

- I..." I gathered my thoughts, standing in the shadow of the ship, "I'll think about it. I'll give it a try.

The greed in me fought with caution.

Erdva didn't stop me from thinking.

An hour later I was up on the pylon, but not to fly away. If when the transport was pulled out, the sand moved to its side, filling the voids, this time I am afraid to imagine what will happen here!

The main thing for me is to believe that I can do it. The force doesn't care about the mass of the object, don't care. Saying it like a mantra, I raised my hands towards the sands and fell into a deep trance, allowing myself to feel with the force. There was indeed something huge below.

- Erdwa, pull back. One hundred metres," I said, and fell back into the trance.

The hand probes were discarded as an ineffective neophyte method - I felt the force in the object and pulled it upwards with willpower. Not immediately, but it yielded - the effort to pull it out, buried under a giant layer of sand, was even greater than I had imagined.

But it was only an effort of will. The further the climbing operation went, the more interesting it became. A hundred metres away from me the sands rose, all the sand together with the barchans, and gradually began to crumble away. Under the belly of the ship the sand also came into motion and began to pull towards the object with great speed. It seemed as if a sandy eruption had begun in the middle of the desert. A fountain of sand soared into the air as I finally started to pull it out. I had to help forcefully push the sands apart, otherwise they would have crushed the hull of the ship.

It was a ship - a Giant, shaped like a white claw. I pulled it out metre by metre until it was free and held it suspended above the sand. Gently placed it on the sand. Even such a small thing created a shock that made the barchans around it crumble, slightly inviting to the surface.

The droid beeped oddly as the ship was pulled out.

- What is it, Erdwa?

- It's huge! - the droid beeped immediately, only military ships are that big.

- Yes?" I fell tiredly onto the pylon and after a minute, when the cold metal cooled me down, I climbed into my ship. From the cockpit of the G9, the view of the raised monster inspired respect - a claw shape, with two blocks - top and bottom. From above, the ship looked like an Imperial Star Destroyer, only it had a smooth shape. At the back, the engines were visible - big, black ones.

It took me another few dozen minutes to get a good look at the ship.

- Just a second, I'll find the information," the droid said, and then fell silent.

While I stared at the ship, the droid found what I needed and began to tell me:

"Forbidden type cruiser, designed by the Galactic Republic, manufactured by the Sith Empire. Six hundred metres long, crew of five thousand two hundred and twenty-four, minimum allowable crew seventeen, thirty droids. Class two hyperdrive, reserve class nine. Hangars hold forty-eight Sith interceptors, two shuttles, one transport ship.

All I can do is whistle:

- That's a lucky break...

The droid commented:

- But we don't know the technical condition.

- Let's go for a reconnaissance. Hopefully we won't have to bury anyone this time.

As we approached, the ship was overwhelming in its monumentality and size. It is understandable - the height even in the standing on the belly position was like a skyscraper, and if you put it on the engines, then in height it will shut up many terrestrial skyscrapers. The bridge superstructure over the engine room alone was as tall as a sixteen-storey building.

I drove the ship by hand. The hull of warships was thick, armoured, and if it weren't for that it would have been crushed by the sands before I got there, but the shape and compressive strength must have been an afterthought. I flew closer and sat right on top of the ship, near the superstructure. Funny to say, but there was a door in the superstructure so that the crew and droids could get out onto the hull. At least, I knew right away it was an airlock.

Landing, I immediately ran outside. The giant ship was standing steady and solid, so I wasn't afraid to look away from it.

The same thing that had happened to the transport was repeated again, except that the area of all the decks of the ship was such that I would never dream of it. Good thing there were no bodies inside. And there was no damage - the ship had kept its tightness to the very end.

Through the dark corridors, in the trembling light of my torch and Erdv's searchlights, we reached the bridge. The bridge was a room the size of a large university classroom, filled with computer terminals, chairs, things like a table with a holoprojector.

It was... quiet. Quiet, dark. It felt like Erdwa and I were explorers looking inside the pyramid for the first time.

I scanned the area with my power, but there was no sign of organics. Erdva flew up to the terminal and beeped:

- Captain, can you give me a hand?

- Asik? - I was distracted from looking at the ship's ancient controls.

- We need to get the memory module out of this terminal.

- Yes, yes... - I nodded, and started. Breaking - not building, so I quickly pulled out the necessary module and gave it to Erdva. He started looking at the logbooks and stuff, and I continued to look around. After a few minutes, I got bored with it.

- What is it, Erdva?

- Just a second. The ship was built in the Sith Empire. No shipyard listed. Crashed, crew abandoned ship.

- That's it," I nodded, "Anything else useful?

- Description of damage. Damaged hyperdrive. Badly damaged, the backup is working, they jumped here on it. Hull damage, several compartments depressurised, heavy damage to the fuel and water tanks, several hits to the sublight engines, one was malfunctioning. The crew abandoned ship and fled.

I had an idea of the work front. Theoretically, it was feasible to get it back up and running, but to do so, I had to first repair all the damage. It would be much easier to do with the force, but still, it would be a lot of work.

* * *

Morning is the morning - that saying was never followed on Tatooine, as morning and evening were working hours. So today I got up early. I stretched and went to the deckhouse, but stopped when, instead of the usual desert or space, I saw a huge ship with ours on top of it. It was a sight to behold.

I thought of all the injuries, and I grimaced - it would take a week to heal such wounds, at least on a rudimentary level. And a week in galactic terms is five days! Groaning, I, cursing fate, went to look at the property. The droid had stayed all night on the finder ship, fixing high-priority electronic equipment. He'd learnt enough about the capabilities of the force while flying with me as an assistant flight mechanic that he could easily distinguish what I could fix with a wave of my hand from what he needed to fix himself.

Surprisingly, the first steps in the repair were simple to the point of obscenity - caulking. It's so simple I won't even be able to find the words - melt the metal and put it back together the way it was.

Erdva had found a detailed schematic drawing in the cruiser's storerooms, so he would tell me how it had originally been, or project an illusion over me, and I would figure it out on my own.

Repairing the hull took two hours exactly - about a hundred holes were fixed in that time. But that was only the beginning of the journey - after looking at the hyperdrive through the force, I flatly refused to repair it. This mishmash of metals, punctured by turbolasers, only for scrap! The hyperdrive of such a ship weighed about nine hundred tonnes, so I extracted valuable metals from it not quickly either, but I got a reserve for repair.

There was no more energy left for the reactor, so I returned to my ship, where I got a call from the man I had hired to contact Naboo.