Salvador Grim
Active Member
The Quest For Nykkalt
Image Credit:ArcherBlack - DeviantArt
Xanatos Bloodstone was building a new ship for his company it would be his pride and joy coated in the rare Liquid Nykkalt and it would be the pride of any fleet. He knew it would not be easy to find the Liquid Nykkalt as it was rumored only to exist on one moon and there was no current information about the moons population.
The only relevant information was perhaps at least 800 years old that claimed the source of Liquid Nykkalt was Kufs a mysterious moon located in the Outer Rim Territories within the galaxy but that didn't help much either because you cant exactly scan for Liquid Nykkalt. It has the same effects as a high end jammer making any attempts to find it with electronics useless. He would have to do this old school gather star maps and go threw the outer rim and search for it planet by planet, but even with the best ship that could take at least ten years.
He had a genius idea to send probes into the outer rim and have them scan the outer rim, He would send seven probes into different parts of the outer rim and have them map and scan the system the one probe he did not receive a signal from would be the probe that has found the technological dead zone because the Liquid Nykkalt would prevent the probes signal creating a dead Zone around Kufs, making it very easy to find. By simple process of elimination once he knew were the moon was not he would know were the moon was. There was on big problem with all of this , he had no ship and limited credits just under 1.5 million credits since he spent nearly everything had build this new ship and the Mark X-42. This whole operation would be tossed and there would be no sense it acquiring the probes if he could not at least get his hands on a hauler at the space ports.
He would leave the Cantina and begin his search of the space ports, once he got there he realized the selections were very limited a few war ships and some cargo haulers but they were all beyond his price range. After about four hours of talking to captains and searching he found one very interesting ship it came with seven probes , it was a container ship nothing special pretty banged up but the captain a man named Jakob a zabrak was getting out of the business and offered his class two Calipsan 560 mining ship for the heavy price of 1 million creds with the probes. he didn't exactly have a choice and couldn't exactly argue the price when he had no other options.
So he made the deal Xanatos paid the man what else could he do, honestly the ship looked like a piece of crap and with its current engines and abilities this journey would at least take a month there and a month back. It was not perfect conditions or ideal in any sort of the word but it had to be done what choice did he have.
He would board the ship and check the probes making sure they were in working condition before he lifted off into the atmosphere once he had established a stable orbit above the planet, he would run the checks , communications check , shields check, weapons check, thrusters check , life support check, once he ran a system check on the life support systems he would realize why the ship was so cheap as a computer voice repeated :Life support functioning to lowest safety requirements, this should be fixed at the nearest space station: as the computer voice paused for a moment he swore under his breath and smacked the computer consul, just what he needed another problem to fix. the computer voice would spark back to life :Environmental system operating at minimal safety requirements expect random temperature fluxes: he just shakes his head and curses once more under his breath. Just wonderful he thought to himself he had bought a piece of junk. One he was satisfied with the status of this crap Calipsan 560 mining ship, he would open the computer and check the max cargo capacity 1000 metric tons. This ship did have a AEA-500 mineral extractor in the cargo bay so that wasn't so bad it could haul a 10 ton load of Liquid Nykkalt off the planet, he figured he would need at least a hundred tons of this substance for his ship so he would have to make a few trips.The AEA-500 mineral extractor was Twenty meters long, it carried one pilot, one dig operator and was equipped with tri-beam lasers, which were used for mining. The craft could carry ten metric tons of ore and minerals that were gathered from planetoids.
He knew for a fact he would not be able to siphon off 1000 tons of Nykkalt from the planet with out some one coming and asking him questions and the fact he did not even know if the planet had any sort of population brought up another problem plus the outer rim pirates and any faction or group that may exist in those depths of space may not be happy with him looting there moon for Nykkalt.
he had only one choice he would stop by his company workshop and pick up two Mark X-42 war droids and load them into the cargo bay they weighed 1 metric ton each. At least if anything went bad there would be a ton of fire power to deal with the problem.
Once he got back into orbit he would blast out the probes and send them forth into the outer rim, then sit back as he waited and watched there signals going to the outer rim, he would go grab himself a big bottle and drink the days away. For his ship to get there and back it would take months probes were faster but it would still take a few weeks and he figured what better did he have to do then drink his face off and slowly fly towards the outer rim just drifting across the stars.
One by One he would start to remove locations from his star charts as the weeks passed and he got closer to the edges of the Outer Rim, he would smile at his computer screen :Hmm:sector seven beacon seven has not reported in and the signal is completely scrambled that's the one he thought to himself after almost a month he had finally found the moon not much further now and he would be able to take his Nykkalt and finish building his awesome ship.
After another week of deep space travel into the rim slipping threw asteroids and avoiding major trade routes to avoid detection , Xanatos would come across his prize. Before him in space there was a huge moon that looked kinda purple with green celestial waves of cosmic radiation floating past he had to admit it looked rather beautiful. Xanatos would open the bay doors and pull back in his seven probes before he got to work on this moon and its liquid Nykkalt from beneath the surface.
The scanners were useless and this close to the moon so were communications, so he did the smart thing and dropped both of the Mark-42 war droids on the moon giving them orders to scout and Terminate any hostile population's on the moon. Once the droids were in action doing there jobs he would bring his class two Calipsan 560 mining ship around and begin to break orbit, he knew he only had a short amount of time before perhaps out rim pirates or a security patrol would pass threw this sector. So as he descended below the clouds in his mining Vessel , he would prep the drills and suction tubes so he could get as much Liquid Nykkalt in the storage tanks as he could as fast as possible. Once he hit the hard solid surface of the rocky moon in his class two Calipsan 560 mining ship, the drills would begin to whirl into life and begin tearing threw the hard rock into the very depths of the moon as both of the Mark-42 war droids continued there patrols. The mark 42 droids would return back and go into security mode waiting for further orders as the drills tore into the surface, it felt like weeks but it was only a matter of days until the drill finally broke threw into the liquid center of the Moon, the drill started making some weird noises and when he brought it back up it was covered in a weird blue hue of some sticky goo. The goo had started too harden and jam up the drill and the drill bit cracked up. He decided to try the suction tube and lowered it down the hole and started pumping the goo into the containment chambers. At first it made a lot of slugging and wield noises but once it got going it was smooth sailing pumping that goo up in the containment chambers, that goo was moving fast into the containment chambers. According too the gauges he was pulling in a easy 500 pounds a hour, too reach the capacity he needed it would take at least 16 hours. He would step out of the mining rig and let it do its thing and order the mark-42's too hold the perimeter it would be a long night. it was about 10 hours in when the trouble hit the fan and he had to run back to the mining ship detach the hose and prepare for lift after he loaded up his droids. He got ready to go turning on his atmospheric thrusters and pushing the ship out into orbit the one big problem was once he hit orbit, what was he going to do the reason he began to run was he noticed out rim pirates the shadows of there ships in the above the moon. He had a plan to vent some ion plasma from his engines and fire a low particle cannon blast into the ion field as the pirate flew threw it he would cripple there ship, Only problem with that was heading back would take twice as long as he had less fuel and he would have to drain some fuel from the AEA-500 mineral extractor. Well there wasn't any choice and he did what had to be done as he broke the atmosphere slightly in front of the pirate ship he would vent as much ion plasma as he could with out getting stuck in space then he would do a 45 degree arc spin light up the plasma and rip it out of there as fast as this big piece of junk miner could move. The pirate ship would get ripped in the ion blast wave and start descending towards the moon. Blood stone would only smile and laugh as he made his way into deep space, Pulling a smoke out of his pocket he would light it up and watch the stars as he plotted a course home.