Coorta

Coorta was a Miner at the Peragus Mining Facility in 3951 BBY with a notorious reputation for criminal activities and a strong desire to leave the facility to do something more profitable. He sought an opportunity by selling Meetra Surik, a Jedi who fought in the Mandalorian Wars and was exiled by her Order to the Exchange who had a Bounty for live Jedi. However, he was soon betrayed by a HK-50 series assassin droid posing as the Peragus Mining Facility Maintenance Officer and was killed in circumstances leading to the Skirmish at Peragus II.
==Biography==
===Arrival of Ebon Hawk===
Coorta was a well known miner around the Peragus Mining Facility because of his undergound activities such as smuggling contraband such as blasters, spice and grenades, which earned him the ire of a few high ranking personnel such as the Security Officer because of the volatile nature of mining Peragus II Fuel. When the fuel was initailly mined it caused Peragus II to explode, creating the Peragus Asteroid field and subsiquent mining facility.
In 3951 BBY, not long after the Jedi Civil War, Meetra Surik, an exiled Jedi arrived at the facility injured and unconscious aboard a battered Ebon Hawk helped by her Droid T3-M4 who managed to program the ship into the facilty despite lacking Astrogation charts. The ship also had a HK-50 Assassin droid that disabled T3-M4. The droid then posed as Meetra master and her protocol droid, through questioning informed the Administration Officer of Meetra history. The Officer hoped to keep the information away from the miners but Coorta would soon learn from another miner who had apparently been in her service. Coorta immediately began conspiring with his other miners, who were supposed to siphon the 32-18 asteroid shelf, the idea of selling Surik to the Exchange, which had posted a massive bounty on Jedi. Over time he tried to recruit others, several of the miners agreed that this would be in their best interests, while others, such as the Mine Foreman Sien wanted nothing to do with it. But the Administration Officer was able to put a stop to his plans. But knowing that Coorta won't give up, the Officer decided to make contact with the Republic, hoping to inform them of the location of Surik to get her of the facility to Telos IV before Coorta could ship her of to Nar Shaddaa.
===Plans for sabotage===
In order to accomplish his mission, the HK-50 set a plan in motion to prevent the Republic from coming to rescue Surik. He contacted Coorta, who was supposed to be ready for the 32-19K asteroid, using the maintenance officer's voice and convinced him that they would be able to sell Surik to the Exchange. The plan was to detain all of the miners in the dormitories with a few well timed explosions resulting in a lockdown and cover their tracks ensuring the Republic will not be alerted to their presence. Coorta was to use his contacts to provide transportation out of the Peragus system. Although slightly suspicious he proceeded anyway.
Sien, who earlier tried to reason with Coorta about his intentions to sell the Jedi but was unsuccessful, overheard the pair's plans wanted to report the scheme to the Administration Officer but hesitated because of the amount of trouble it would bring. Sien soon learned of the plans in clear detail but instead of the Administration Officer or Coorta, he confronted the real maintenance officer, who was unaware of the situation and said he had nothing to do with it. He was in the middle of his log called "Must Take Action! when Coorta knocked him out before he could take further action and his logs were flushed down the refresher in an unsuccessful attempt to get rid of the evidence.
===Betrayal and Death===
Within hours HK-50, using the Maintenance Officer voice, commanded the Mining droids to "mine" the miners while creating detonations that caused casualties within the facility. Soon the Droid triggered an explosion that caused much of the surviving crew to evacuate their stations to flood their dormitories. What they were not aware of was that the explosion damaged the ventilation systems which would soon flood the rooms with toxic fumes.
Coorta never realised that HK-50 had no intention of honoring their agreement. When the time came to trigger the emergency lockdown HK-50 attempted to lock Coorta with the other miners. Coorta barely made it out but his efforts were all for naught, as HK-50 reversed the turbolift codes in case Coorta managed to get far enough, the droid revealed its true colours to Coorta and ordered several mining droids, armed with mining lasers and drills, to kill him and his conspirators who couldn't get the lift to work.
===Legacy===
HK-50 gloated his victory to Coorta dead body and drugged the Jedi, and other miners in their Kolto tanks with enough sedatives to kill the miners, but caused her to be in a deep sleep to patiently wait for his own transport to take the bounty to Nar Shaddaa. However Meetra Surik woke up, much earlier then he predicted. She managed to pick up every log she could find, including Coorta, to piece together the story of what happened over the last 3 days. She, Kreia, another passenger of the Ebon Hawk and Atton Rand, a smuggler who was in the brig for a security violation that, ironically, spared his life would soon join together to try to escape the facility. They were confronted by the HK-50, who confessed his actions about sabotaging the facility and the Hammerhead-class cruiser Harbinger to her and after Surik refused to go back into the Kolto Tank, she fought the Droid destroying it, avenging the deaths of the miners. The facility was soon afterwards destroyed when the Harbinger fired on the Ebon hawk and in the insuring skirmish triggered the very chain reaction of explosions that made the facility dangerous from the very beginning. Coorta body was likely engulfed in the explosion.
==Personality and traits==
Coorta was a fair-skinned Human male with grey eyes and light brown hair. Coorta was someone who didn't care whether anything was legal or otherwise, as long as it meant a profit to him. He earned the Ire of the Security Officer, for this. Some miners were also suspicious of his motives; in fact, one of them who had a secret stash of illegal goods got wary of what was available for sale with this.
Coorta's desire to sell the Jedi because he wanted to get off the facility whatever it took, caused him to overlook his suspicions regarding the "Maintenance Officer" offering him a plan, commenting, "Since when did the Maintenance officer grow some horns?". He was also willing to attack Sien because of him attempting to stop the plan made by HK-50. However, Coorta did have some concern for the miners; after hearing that the other miners trapped in the dormitories were going to be killed by the toxic exhaust fumes in the ventilation, he was clearly horrified.
In his last moments, he ordered his conspirators to continue trying the turbolift codes in fear and begged to know why the "Officer" was doing this before the Droid showed his true colours before his death.
==Behind the scenes==
Coorta first appears as a NPC in the 2004 Xbox Video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords, which was then ported to Microsoft Windows in 2005 and in 2015 the Mac and Linux. Like the other miners and officers in the Peragus mining facility, Coorta is only seen in holorecords and a generic corpse which bears his name. His true appearance is clear only when the game's "Frame Buffer Effects" option is switched off.
==Appearances==
*Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords 
==Notes and references==
Category:Humans
Category:Males
Category:Miners