It all began in Uncle Garrek's workshop, where Alex worked part-time after school. Old Corellian music played softly from the speakers.
Alex sat at the workbench, meticulously restoring the motivation unit of an old protocol droid, when a client entered the workshop. A Lieutenant of the Corellian Defense Forces, judging by his uniform – a young officer with a tired face and a cleaning droid under his arm.
"Garrek, old man," the lieutenant greeted, placing the droid on the floor. "This iron blockhead broke down again. Third time this month."
Uncle shook his head displement.
"Told you, Jason, buy proper equipment. These cheap models just waste time."
"You can't buy proper equipment on an officer's salary," Lieutenant Jason sighed. "Especially after the command decided to cut bonus payments."
Alex continued to work, but listened intently to the conversation. The military often brought interesting equipment, and sometimes you could learn something useful.
"And what's going on in the academy?" Garrek asked, beginning to inspect the broken droid. "Heard you had some exercises."
"Yes, routine maneuvers in Sector Seven-Alpha," the lieutenant sank wearily onto a chair. "We thought it was empty space, but we stumbled upon a drifting ship. Ancient, from the time of the Old Republic. Half the hull is mangled, life support systems are dead."
Alex tensed imperceptibly, continuing to tinker with the motivation unit. A ship from the Old Republic...
"And what are you going to do with it?" Garrek inquired.
"We towed it to the shipyards," Jason shrugged. "Command decided to scrap it. It's beyond repair, and it's taking up space. Tomorrow or the day after, it'll be sent to the automatic recycling plant."
"A shame," Garrek shook his head. "There were probably interesting things on it."
"There were, but they're gone. All the valuable stuff has already been looted. Who needs ancient hyperdrives?"
Alex barely managed to restrain himself from jumping up. Ancient hyperdrives! Collectors would pay fortunes for them! But he continued to work, trying to look uninterested.
When the lieutenant left, promising to pick up the droid in two days, Alex couldn't hold back: "Uncle Garrek, what if there really is something valuable on that ship?"
Garrek looked up from the droid: "What are you talking about, boy?"
"Well, components from the Old Republic era... I read that collectors pay a lot of money for them."
"Read?" Garrek chuckled. "And where did you read that?"
Alex blushed, but decided to tell the truth: "In the auction archives. Navigational blocks from that era sell for ten to fifteen thousand credits apiece."
Garrek put down his tools and looked closely at his nephew: "Show me."
Alex immediately sat down at the computer, showing his uncle the archives of antique technology auctions. Garrek studied the numbers carefully, whistling occasionally.
"Well, I'll be," he muttered. "And I thought old junk was only good for melting down."
"Uncle, what if we try to buy some components from that ship?" Alex cautiously suggested. "As scrap metal, before recycling?"
Garrek pondered. The idea was risky, but potentially very profitable. And he happened to have the right connections...
"You know what, boy," he finally said. "Talk to your parents. If they agree, we'll try."
Alex planned the conversation with his father very carefully. Kairen was sitting in the living room, watching the evening news, when his son approached him with a serious expression.
"Dad, I need to talk to you. About business."
"About business?" Kairen raised an eyebrow. "Sounds serious for a twelve-year-old boy."
Alex told his father about the ship, about the prices of antique components, about the opportunity to earn money. Kairen listened attentively, asking clarifying questions from time to time.
"And Uncle Garrek agrees to help?" he asked at the end.
"Yes. He says he has connections at the shipyards."
Kairen thought. In recent months, his own business had been doing well – he often got side jobs at his new workplace. He repaired ships for smugglers, earning many times more than at his old job. At the same time, he tried to stay away from outright crime – just repairs, nothing more.
"This is serious money, son," he finally said. "And there are certain risks."
"But we're not stealing anything," Alex objected. "We're just buying scrap metal before recycling."
"Technically, you're right," Kairen agreed. "Okay, I'll talk to Garrek."
The next day, the Korren brothers met in the workshop after closing. Garrek poured some Corellian whiskey into glasses and looked seriously at his brother.
"Kairen, the deal is risky, but profitable," he began. "I have a guy at the scrap yard. For the right amount, he can sell us some components as scrap metal."
"How much?" Kairen asked.
"Five thousand credits for a bribe. Plus the official cost of scrap metal – another thousand. So, six thousand in investment."
"And the potential profit?"
"If the boy is right about the prices – from one hundred to two hundred thousand credits."
Kairen was silent for a long time, processing the numbers. The profit sum was dizzying, but inside, everything tightened with the familiar, heavy feeling – the one that arose when you realized an idea was brilliant, but smelled dubious.
"Such money..." he finally exhaled. "With it, we can change everything. But, Garrek... a bribe. That's outright bribery of an official."
Garrek snorted, took a swig of whiskey straight from the bottle, and placed it on the workbench with a dull thud.
"Kairen, brother, you're looking in the wrong direction. Look around. What's 'clean' now? A bribe? And the way you were screwed at the shipyards – is that clean? How these bureaucrats in the Senate stuff their pockets by the millions under the guise of 'the people's good' – is that clean? The system is rotten, Kai. It doesn't work for people like us. It works against us. Playing by their rules means condemning yourself to eternal poverty and empty hopes."
He stepped closer, and there was no usual boisterousness in his eyes, only a cold, hard-won conviction.
"We're just buying back what idiots threw in the trash. Consider it... a tax on their stupidity. We're saving from destruction what has real value. Who will suffer from this? No one. Who will win? We will. And that little rat at the scrap yard, whom we'll grease. Everything is fair in this twisted world."
"But Lyra..." Kairen began, and hesitation sounded in his voice. "She... you know her. She'll never agree to something like this. She's afraid to even look askance at the security service."
"Lyra is a smart woman," Garrek said more softly. "She sees how you're slaving away. She sees how you and I are falling behind while others move forward. Talk to her. Explain it as a husband who wants to give his family a chance."
Kairen closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Two images clashed in his mind: a clean, but tired life by the rules, which had led them to this day... and a dirty, risky, but real opportunity to change everything. He remembered the cold in his spine when he received his final pay at the shipyard. He remembered the empty eyes of the supervisor saying, "Those are the orders from above."
"You're right," he said quietly, opening his eyes. "Okay. I'll talk to Lyra. I'll explain. But if she's against it... I can't step over her fear. This is our life together."
Garrek nodded silently, without reproach. It was more than he had expected.
"Fair enough. In the meantime... I'll find a way to approach that rat at the scrap yard. Let him know there are interested parties. Just in case. So that when you reach an agreement, everything will be ready."
Late in the evening, when the main lights in the Korren house had long since gone out, Alex was awake. He lay in his room, listening to the muffled conversation coming from beyond the thin wall separating his room from the living room.
At first, it was just indistinct fragments – his father's and mother's voices, sounding tired and serious.
"...about Alex, Lyra. We need to think."
"I know what you mean," his mother replied. Her voice was tired. "But I'm afraid."
"I'm afraid too. But I'm afraid of something else."
The sound of a chair being moved was heard, as if Kairen had stood up or sat closer.
"The boy, Lir... He has a bright mind. The kind I never had. People like that either break in our system, or... they break through. But you need tools for the road. And tools cost money."
Silence. Alex held his breath, pressing his ear to the cool wall.
"Right now, he's studying in the same crappy lyceum I did," his father continued, and a bitter regret sounded in his voice. "They teach you not to think, but to repeat. They teach you not to ask questions, but to be silent and listen. And you know what will happen to him? If we don't change anything? He'll come out with the same scrap of paper as me. He'll go tighten bolts, like me."
The automatic recycling plant of the Corellian shipyards worked around the clock, methodically turning decommissioned ships into standard metal ingots. Huge manipulators grabbed the hulls, cut them with plasma torches into manageable pieces, and then the conveyor system fed the metal into melting furnaces. The entire process was controlled by automation – from the moment the ship arrived until the finished ingots came out, it took no more than eight hours.
But before being sent for recycling, all ships underwent preliminary disassembly at the scrap yard. Here, workers removed potentially hazardous components – reactors, ammunition, toxic substances. The rest was considered safe waste and sent for melting.
It was at this stage that they could act.
Garrek's contact at the scrap yard turned out to be a middle-aged man named Bob Krenn. As shift supervisor, he had access to all incoming ships for recycling and could sell some components as scrap metal without any extra questions.
The meeting took place in a small bar on the outskirts of the industrial district. Bob turned out to be a short, somewhat plump man with a perpetually tired expression.
"Garrek says you're interested in scrap metal," he said, sipping his beer.
"Exactly," Kairen nodded. "We're interested in components from that ancient ship."
"It can be arranged," Bob lowered his voice. "But it will cost five thousand. Plus the official cost of scrap metal."
"Understood," Kairen handed him a credit card. "When can we pick it up?"
"Tomorrow evening. Come after your shift, and we'll process it as a regular sale."
The "Saynar-Utilization" automatic recycling plant was a sleeping giant. At night, its main hangar, the size of a small spaceport, plunged into a thick, oily darkness, broken only by emergency lights and the cold light of the stars through the retractable roof. It was here that the ancient ship was spending its last hours.
It lay not on the conveyor, but to the side, on a specially designated platform – a dark, angular silhouette, like a fossilized beast washed ashore. Half of its hull was mangled by old damage, the plating blackened by space radiation and time.
Bob led them along a short, detour path, his flashlight picking out piles of scrap already prepared for melting from the darkness.
"You have three hours," his whisper sounded loud in the silence. "Until the guard shift. The recyclers start at five. They'll start with it." He pointed his flashlight towards the ship. "Whatever you manage to remove and take away on that cart is yours. Whatever you don't..." He just shrugged. "I'll be at my post. If anything goes wrong, you don't know me."
He disappeared into the darkness, leaving them alone under the colossal wreck.
Garrek was the first to approach the hull. He ran his gloved hand over the plating. The metal was not smooth, but textured, covered with a barely visible relief pattern that merged into a single flow.
"Not durasteel," he muttered. "Something else."
Kairen shone his flashlight into the breach. A multi-layered blackness yawned inside. "Let's go. Carefully."
Getting inside proved more difficult than they thought. Standard emergency hatches were either welded with temporary patches, or their mechanisms were jammed solid for centuries. They had to use a compact plasma cutter that Garrek brought with him. The orange-white flame hissed, burning through the ancient alloy, and the air smelled of hot metal.
Inside, the ship was like a tomb. The beams of their flashlights snatched frozen forms of chairs, consoles, and fragments of internal bulkheads from the darkness. There were no signs of emergency evacuation – everything looked as if the crew had simply evaporated, leaving the ship to drift.
"Don't touch the walls," Garrek warned Alex, who was already reaching for an interesting panel. "There might be residual charge. Or something worse. We're looking for the main engineering section. That's where the most valuable stuff should be."
They moved slowly, their footsteps echoing dully in the metal corridors. Alex followed behind them. His heart pounded wildly – not only from fear, but from a burning, almost physical curiosity.
They found the engineering section by a massive, partially collapsed airtight door. Behind it was a room filled with rows of unfamiliar consoles and units. And here, finally, they saw what they had come for.
These were not just boxes of parts. These were the ship's organs. Whole units, integrated into the structure. Crystalline matrices, shimmering in the flashlight beams with a dim, deep light. Power regulators, covered with a complex web of symbols. A whole navigational computer block, resembling a frozen crystal flower.
Work began in earnest. Garrek identified the attachment points, Kairen, with a set of specific tools (some of which he seemed to have brought specifically for this purpose), carefully unscrewed, disconnected, and supported. Alex assisted, handing tools, packing the removed parts into soft anti-static bags they had brought with them.
It was hard, dirty, nerve-wracking work. The metal didn't always yield, some connections were fused solid, and they had to be very careful not to damage the fragile interior. They worked almost without words, communicating with gestures and short phrases, listening to every rustle in the vast hangar.
At one point, as Alex was pulling out a particularly large matrix, his flashlight caught the corner of a cockpit from the darkness. There, in a chair, sat a silhouette. Not a skeleton – an empty, collapsed spacesuit, the helmet slightly tilted to the side, as if the pilot had been looking at the instruments until the very end.
"Don't get distracted," Kairen said quietly, noticing his gaze. "Work."
Two and a half hours later, they carried out the last batch. The cart, provided by Krenn, was loaded to the brim with neat, packed bundles. They didn't take everything – there wasn't enough time, not enough strength. But they took the very heart of the engineering systems.
Emerging outside, into the slightly less dense gloom of the hangar, they stopped, catching their breath. Behind them, the black silhouette of the ship was silent.
"That's it," Garrek said hoarsely. "Time to go."
They rolled the cart to the service exit indicated by Bob. Loading into the cargo speeder took a few minutes.
"Let's go," Garrek said simply, getting behind the wheel.
The workshop had turned into a temporary warehouse. The loot now lay not in boxes, but was carefully laid out on several tables covered with clean anti-static cloths.
The first stage was to identify the components. There were no understandable serial numbers or markings on any of the parts. There were only those mysterious symbols, resembling stylized constellations or mathematical formulas. Garrek and Kairen, poring over hefty old reference books on ancient ships, tried to find at least some analogues. Alex, however, took a different approach. He photographed each symbol, each unit from different angles, and began to systematically upload the images online.
First, to closed forums for technology historians and restorers. Under the guise of an enthusiastic student who had found "old parts in his grandfather's warehouse." Responses came almost instantly. First, cautious questions, then growing excitement.
"Where did you find this? This is a chipset for an Arkanis-class navigational computer! Less than a thousand were produced!"
"These symbols... this is not a manufacturing mark. This is the personal seal of the master assembler. Possibly from the Fondal shipyards!"
Alex did not answer direct questions about the origin, only thanked for the information. Each such hint increased the potential value in his eyes manifold. He kept a separate file where, next to each part, a line appeared: "Navigational coprocessor, Fondal, limited edition."
The second stage was evaluation. The prices mentioned in these academic discussions were astronomical, but... abstract. They needed real money. Garrek, digging into his shady contacts, found out that they paid about a third of the "museum" valuation. But even these were sums that made your head spin.
"One hundred and fifty, two hundred... maybe two hundred and fifty thousand if we're lucky and sell them individually," Garrek summarized after a week of such informal inquiries. His voice was hoarse from fatigue and restrained excitement. "But that's if everything sells. And if no one starts asking unnecessary questions about how a small mechanic from Corellia suddenly has a whole warehouse of rarities from a scrapped dreadnought."
The most important part remained – the sale. They decided to proceed through two channels. Garrek, through his "shadowy" acquaintances, put a few less remarkable, but still valuable units up for trial – energy regulators, auxiliary sensors. Money for them came quickly, on disposable credit chips, but the amounts were more modest.
They placed their main bet on Alex and his auctions. But not public ones. Using knowledge gleaned from forums and sheer audacity, Alex came up with a primitive legend. He was an "anonymous heir to the collection of an elderly restoration engineer who recently passed away." Now the "grandson," who didn't understand technology, wanted to sell the collection as a whole.
The lots were not put up all at once, but in batches, on different platforms for serious collectors.
Sales went in waves. Some lots sold for good money, others for more modest, but still incredible sums for them. Alex played a complex game, sometimes withdrawing a lot from auction if the price seemed low, and re-listing it later under a different name. He studied buyer behavior, identified two or three of the most eager ones, and drove up the bids, artificially creating competition.
Money flowed into specially created, anonymous accounts, which Garrek cashed out. He was quite good at it.
When, after a month and a half, the last, largest lot – a whole engine control unit – was sold, they tallied the final results.
Garrek laid out several credit chips and a printed statement.
"Net profit," he said, his voice trembling, "one hundred and forty-three thousand seven hundred and twenty credits. Minus our initial investment and expenses for... logistics."
Kairen took one of the chips and twirled it in his fingers.
"Alex," he finally said, not looking at his son. "Your share. We discussed it with Garrek. Forty thousand. You've earned it. Spend it wisely."
"Not bad for a first try," Garrek said.
"We might be able to repeat it," Kairen added. "Ships for recycling come in regularly."
Alex held the chip with his share – a third of the profit, forty thousand credits. For a twelve-year-old boy, it was incredible wealth, and he knew that such luck was rare.