Space Mining

[Laira Darkhold]

In space, mining for minerals was a different process. Standard mining involved massive machines, excavators, processing lines, and of course miners and mining droids. In the depths of space, in a nebula, or in a gas giant, it was different. Not anything as straight forward as just applying the same concept to the vast emptiness of outer space. Instead, logically, it was more like fishing. So much more like fishing that they called the men who mined and sought rare and expensive gems in the gas clouds Corusca Fishermen. The concept was simple, grab a giant energy net with some tethers, a ship with a pair of trawlers on either side, drag it through a space you thought there would be gems, collect, repeat.

For a man like Draco Vereen, corusca gem hunting wasn't something he did or had his people work towards. It could be extremely profitable, but the major mining spots he was aware of were well trafficked by Mandal Hypernautics, which meant that the best places on those worlds had long been scoped out. Those were the reasons he never got into the trade. But, he wasn't planning on getting into the trade, he just needed some supplies. Supplies best garnered without everyone having books and datalogs to show he was collecting things.

In order to build his cover, the first job was to send HRD's to make small purchases, posing as whoever. Buying a ship, cash off Narshadda, ordering a pair of replacement trawlers from a major dealer posing as a long time Corusca fisherman. All of that was simple to do, simple to see to, and even just tracing it back to a conglomerate would probably take an omniscient mastermind the likes of which the Galaxy had never known. It was just some of the things that in a wide galaxy was easy to go missing, and it just didn't take a lot of hard work to get done.

For now, the Mandalorian waited to hear that his four little minions had found and purchased what he requested.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Draco had four little helpers out gathering his supplies. It was nothing too seriously important to anyone else, but to him, it would help with the gathering of certain things that were harder to come by and that people might like knowing he had them lying around. True, many people in the galaxy collected and gathered rare and mysterious artifacts, but it wasn't something Draco wanted people having logs of.

First, there was an HRD with a small back ground, not enough to fool a full scale investigation, but enough to fool the trawler dealership on Nar Shaddaa he was supposed to make a purchase from. The droid was purchasing a heavily armored mining vessel, intended for use in a high temperature world, like Mustafar. Parts for its modification were being purchased off Raxus, the trash world by a second HRD, who was buying a handful of parts to hide what he was actually after under a small veil of secrecy.

Second, the skiffs were being purchased from a dealer, with some modification parts bought off the same dealer. Modifications that would likely sit in a garage on Taris and never be used. Maybe someone would cannibalize the parts down the road. Hundreds of thousands of planets, trillions of people, unless someone was looking into it and tracing a lot of purchases, it was likely that these two would go unnoticed.

Third, the mining equipment was being bought by a worker claiming to be an independent fisherman. For now it was just waiting for them to return to Taris, the city complexes of the Corporate metropolis stretching out over a large geographical space, towers looming, their shadows cast over the massive factories. Once all the pieces were gathered, then it was the simple task of throwing it all together and getting everything ready to go for the first missions.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The first calls began coming in from the HRD units that had been sent out. It was a decent bit of trouble to cover one's tracks in this way, but not overly so. Had he been purchasing in the open, instead of using barely established counter identities and providing them with cash from his personal, relatively hidden stash of wealth, he would have been using employees to do so, still paying cash from his own personal wealth. This way was two steps out of the norm for him, but would require a master detective to locate and piece together.

"Once all the pieces arrive, have the droids complete the necessary alterations to the parts and then give it a nice new paint job. Include a false identification and sensor scrambler transponder in the ship and all of the skiffs. The nets are stock model and shouldn't be that traceable." The Mandalorian relayed his orders to the droid waiting on him, providing him with excellent scotch and passing his orders onto the droids in the maintenance hangar that had been clear out for the use of the mining trawler and its constituent parts.

Now that the pieces were being delivered and the droids slowly working on modifying the system, all that was left was to find an appropriate crew for the mission. He would have to accompany them of course, otherwise they wouldn't be able to tell the quality of the items they would be gathering, but the rest of the crew wouldn't be able to be entirely consisting of droids. There would need to be some experienced miners on board to guide him. As skilled as the Mandalorian was, knowledge in the process of space mining wasn't his strongest subject. He would need to look for and appropriate a crew of skilled miners.

"Bring me a list of miners known for taking quiet jobs." They wouldn't ever see his face, and a few quick memory rubs here and there, and they wouldn't remember the trip or where they had gone. Just a week missing from their memories. Or, if they were reputable and preformed well, he could add them on as consultants. "And find a list of employees that are qualified for deep space mining operations." Or he could keep it under the roof and not have to worry about that business. Lots of options.