Galantos: We Will Ride Eternal, Shiny and Chromite

[Mitth'urst'almiti]

"Mr. Thurstal, welcome to Galantos."

If there were ever any lies that the entirety of sentience shared, it was the false welcome of high-ranking officials to your operation.

A group of six Galantians stood at the foot of the transport shuttle, one holding a small sculp of chromite-heavy durasteel alloy. They bowed their heads deferentially as the Fleet Admiral strode down the shuttle ramp, flanked by a pair of administrators and a trio of Kuati ceremonial guards. His voice, rich and modulated in the morning sky, sang out over the muffled sounds of laser drilling and the whine of repulsorlifts hauling vast quantities of ore. "A pleasure and a privilege, Master Delis. Thank you for meeting us on such short notice."

Thurstal himself was wearing a variant of Kuati Sovereign garb - a rich shimmersilk cloak overlaying robes of burgundy and forest green. Her Imperial Highness was one for ceremony and displays of power and wealth, but the tooled leather boots peeking from beneath the hem of his garb indicated attention to detail of his surroundings. A brief hand motion, and the guards peeled off to take up a neutral defensive formation around the shuttle's landing gear, their helms oriented to take in the whole of the horizon surrounding the plateau.

"A gift to Her Majesty, my Lord." The man holding the sculp stepped forward, presenting the token to Thurstal's red eyes before passing it to one of the administrators. "A token of our commitment to the continued business between us and Kuat Drive Yards." The Galantians were equally heavy on ceremony, at least respecting the authority of the offworlders that purchased a large majority of their supply. While there were other shipyards that would purchase the Chromite coming from this system, none had been able to provide the steadiness of work through times of economic downfall as his company.

"I will present this to Her Majesty as soon as we return." His lips turned in a faint smile, almost sarcastic but not quite. "Which I know you hope is as soon as possible, so you can get back to normal operations."

Delis laughed aloud into the morning sky, then laid his hand over the admiral's shoulders as they started for the mine. "It's been entirely too long, Admiral. We were beginning to think you had forgotten about us." The rest of the administrators visibly relaxed as Thurstal removed the robes and cloak, revealing a well-tooled, functional PPE-suit with helmet fasteners at the neck. The group started for the largest mine shaft, where a waiting repulsorlift transport was waiting to take them into the heart of their work.

"So, for the sake of my accountants and your newest operations manager, describe to me what it is you do here."

Delis looked over the main shipping port to the northwest as they walked down the side of the plateau. "We supply the majority of the chromite that your corporation eventually alloys into the durasteel it uses for framing, decorative plating, and the highly reflective ChroDura used to lend stability and reliability to the higher-end hyperdrives. Thanks to Her Imperial Majesty's generosity..." Here his voice turned from jovial to the mocking cynicism of someone that appreciates business done, but not the way it was. "...and a highly aggressive negotiation on the part of your accountants, we now smelt the ore into ingots of 99.5 percent purity to be sent to the smelters on Vulptor. You are contracted for sixty-five percent of our total net output, as audited by our internal affairs office in conjunction with KDY accountant oversight."

Here, the group mounted the transport - one clearly used for daily work, and cleaned up as best it could be given limited time. No stranger to getting his hands dirty, Thurstal relaxed in the small, hard seats the front-line miners used, and propped his feet on one of the small boxes that contained conventional explosives for area clearing. "And most appreciative of it we are. Not only do we alloy it, but occasionally we have used the ingots as currency for some of the more 'traditional' banking guilds. The Muuns especially appreciate a good hard currency as opposed to the Galactic Credit, and of course any favor to them is returned tenfold by reputation alone."

The transport gently hummed to life, taking the group down the mineshaft and into the heart of Galantos, passing another bucket on repulsors carrying dark grey ore flecked with silverish specks - the bread and butter of the system.

 

[Mitth'urst'almiti]

"We employ mostly 'droids here for the grunt work, but we maintain living oversight for the more technical aspects. I happen to trust my sentient coworkers more than their mechanical counterparts."

The transport hummed down the main mining shaft, passed occasionally by a transport laden with tons of ore. "Just this facility refines three hundred thousand tons of Chromite every year. At a cost to you, presently, of 12 credits per kilo for sixty-five percent of our total output, we receive..." here, his brow furrowed slightly in thought. "2.34 million credits just to this facility. Total planetary output is over ten million credits per year in Chromite alone, not to mention the other precious metals and materials we synthesize from the tailings."

"An impressive turnaround from our first experience here. The facilities were dilapidated, human workers were exploited and paid pittances for the 'privilege' of dying in unsafe conditions, only to develop black lung disease if they survived long enough to retire." Thurstal was watching the corridors, seeing occasional patches in the smooth rock facings. The entire facility had been swept thoroughly for safety hazards prior to the Admiral's arrival, and he felt no tension being underground instead of his normal position high above. "It pleases Her Imperial Majesty to hear that her investment has been wisely utilized."

Here Delis looked uncomfortable for the first time. He had been one of the foremen of the mines under the old management. Empress Darke had picked him personally to lead the facility in its upgrades, and he had been responsible for demanding the credits necessary to implement appropriate safety measures and acquiring the mining 'droids necessary to keep his team out of harm's way. His policies and insight on the front lines brought swift change to the entire planetary safety structure, earning him not a few enemies in the quiet upper echelons. "And we appreciate Her continued influence in keeping our operators safe. There was an attempt at sabotage of our Gamma mine in the southern hemisphere a couple of weeks ago. Sophisticated explosives placement at the mouth of the mine - our sweepers caught it in time, thank goodness, otherwise we do not know how many casualties we would have sustained."

"Our security agents delivered their findings to my desk some three days ago. The mastermind remains at large, but the perpetrators are currently being... entertained at Carratos, where they were discovered among a load of chromite bound for the smelters." Here the ghost of a smile passed Thurstal's lips. He didn't feel it wise to bring up, at the moment, that he had handed down the sentence for the conspirators, against whom several witnesses had testified. Their constituent elements were currently mixed into a durasteel ingot that would, by his direction, being crafted into a new high-capacity transport for the Alpha Mine. Thurstal was a staunch believer in poetic, and overblown, justice. He still retained the holovids of them begging for mercy from the bottom of a crucible before molten iron was poured over them, along with constituent portions of molybdenum and chromite from the mine they had tried to sabotage.

The cart slowed to a safe distance from a terminating shaft, where several small holes were drilled into the rock face. One of the foremen gently picked up Thurstal's feet and moved them aside, picking up the explosives he had been lounging upon. "Detonation in six minutes. Don your helmets, everyone, and we can blow this pop stand." The box was opened, revealing small tubes of plastic explosive, labeled with a detonation velocity of 13,500 meters per second. A second box was retrieved from another personnel transport, with 'detonation caps' stenciled on the surface.

The crew retrieved helmets from the stowage compartment on the back of the transport, locking them into place as the explosives were placed and det caps primed. "We normally have droids do this, but being that today is a rather special day..." here snickers from the crew, mostly veterans of the trade that had met Thurstal on his first inspection. "We decided to give the old-fashioned way a go." Delis took the detonator from the second transport, and handed it to a surprised Thurstal. "Guest of honor."

"Face is primed, we are cleared for detonation." The call came from the shaft foreman, who was standing behind a chalked line. He had his hands cupped to his mouth, calling over to the executive team. "Personnel are clear. Equipment is clear. At your convenience, Admiral."

"Very well then." His attempt to conceal a childlike grin at being handed the detonator to some six hundred kilos of high explosives failed miserably, and the executive team could not surpress their own smiles as his modulated baritone called out to the shaft "Detonation in three! Two! One!"

*click*

 

[Mitth'urst'almiti]

The shockwave pulsed through the mine shaft, the helmets deadening the sound of high explosives and filtering the fine particulate cloud that rolled through the tunnel. While the fine white fog was blocking him from view from the rest of the team, Thurstal muted his comm and cackled, enjoying the euphoric rush of destruction.

He was able to regain his composure before the dust settled, though it seemed Delis knew what he had done anyway. The foreman's voice came over the comm, cool and composed. "We have full detonation. The crews are beginning to retrieve the ore. Atmospheric levels should stabilize in about forty-five seconds. Your suits will automatically unlock when it is safe to remove your helmets." The comm clicked off, and Thurstal turned to the rest of the team with a smile.

"Thank you for this experience, gentlemen - it is quite a thrill for a pencil pusher like myself to be able to engage in such... wholesale destruction." He clasped forearms with each administrator in turn, then strode towards the active ore recovery.

Human pilots sealed in their suits drove worn but well-maintained front-end loaders and scoops, dropping their yards of stone and ore into low hoppers. Conveyors and vibrating screens sorted the rubble by size, where they were sent to different transports bound for the breakers, crackers, grinders, and pulverizers meant to reduce the ore into a fine sand, for refining. A man with the nameplate of 'Musil' stepped alongside the admiral, looking out over the operation. "This particular vein has a chromite density of sixteen percent - that's 160 grams of chromite per kilogram of ore. Our cutoffs for mining were ten percent before the... restructuring. Now, we're able to profitably refine ore down to four point five percent with enough overhead to keep ourselves in operation."

Saying nothing, Thurstal laid his hand on the man's shoulder, then turned to face the team behind him. "Gentlemen, it has indeed been a pleasure. I'll leave you to your devices and methods - I have another inspection at Carratos in less than a day and a half." As they started for their transport, he took each of the operator's hands in turn, the newest executives breathing a sigh of relief as they mounted the vehicle. As far as inspections went it could have been a lot worse, they thought as the repulsors whined to life, pushing them back towards the mouth of the mine. The admiral hummed softly to himself as he watched the lights pass, seemingly unaware that he still held the detonator in his hand. His eyes half-closed, and the gentle rocking of the transport lulled him into a blissful relaxation, one he had not experienced since the raid on Kuat some time previous. Yes... this was a good day...