Phrik it to Me

[Laira Darkhold]

(Phrik Mining on Seltos)

The Durasteel Dragon blinked into realspace on the fringes of the system. The bright blue world shone infront of me, the star eclipsed by world. I turn the ship down towards the planet, a small sliver just within the nightside of the planet and thought to myself. “That should give me plenty of time get there and get out with the ores I need before they even notice I’m planetside.” The ship began descending, and I could hear parts of it rattling around.

I turn to read one of the datascreens to check the local time and system information.
Location: Seltos; Seltos System; Mulgard Sector; Mid Rim
Time: 0100 Hours Galactic Standard
Local Time for Destination: 11 Hours (20 Hour Rotations)
“Sith spit, that’s a short rotation. I guess I might have to hold up here for a day or so within the mine.”

A buddy I got back on Nar Shaddaa told be about a Phrik mine on Seltos that had an active vein in it but wasn’t heavily mined due to the whole rapture thing, but I’m sure somebody checks important mines like this every now and again. Heck they may even have perimeter sensors to alert them about folks trouncing through. I guess I’ll deal with whatever I need to in order to get this stuff.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The Dragon shook as I passed into the atmosphere. Good, that sensor scrambler I got must be working ‘cause they haven’t checked on me yet. My holomap indicated I was coming down right on top of where I wanted to be. An old mining town that had been abandoned after the population plummeted, it looked like it had been rundown even before it became a ghost town. I circle once overhead to check and see if there are people or things running around down on the ground.

I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary so I brought my bucket of bolts down at the loading area they had installed when the mine was in use. As the Dragon came to a rest I could hear the metal wince under the weight, but it held.

“Unidentified vessel, Identify yourself and your intentions.” The comm screeched as the people on the other end came in fuzzy with a lot of static.

“Come in control, you’ve got a lot of static on my end.” I say stalling as I lower the ramp and power on the two mining droids I bought on Nar Shaddaa. They grumbled to life alright, but I needed to escort them down to the vein to make sure there wasn’t anything in the mine.

"Unidentified vessel, Identify yourself and your intentions.” This time they came through loud and clear.

“Out on a camping trip in the mountains, be back soon.” It’s the best I could come up with given the short notice. Dang sensor scrambler don’t work, waste of credits.

“Unidentified vessel you need to get out of th-“ I don’t feel like hearing a lecture about restricted space yadda yadda yadda.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The two droids squeaked around behind me as I lead them down into the mine, rusted pieces of junk. I just hope they are able to mine Phrik, it’s supposed to be awful tough stuff. The holomap indicates the main vein is down about a kilometer into this mine, which I guess will be okay. I only need to make one or two trips to get all the ore I need. Heck, I’ll carry some of it back up if I have too.

I must have gotten lost in my thoughts cause I hardly heard the hawkbats until they were swarming. Just my luck, I have to stumble upon the mother of all hawkbat flocks. It takes a few minutes for them to calm down and get out of the dang tunnel so I can move on deeper into the mine. The main tunnel branches off in several directions, and the Holomap doesn’t show any of these secondary tunnels. When I finally make to the main excavation site, it’s a giant hole in the cavern with little veins of phrik in its walls.

I decide to put a lot of trust in this old mining equipment and put a single droid on two of the pump-jack scaffolding platforms. The first one is tough going, like it’s been stuck for five years, but the other one was either easier going or it was just I was getting anxious and my adrenaline was already up, but I got the two droids working.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Once I got the droids working, I decided to climb back up to the top of the hole. No use sitting down there with them, I can’t exactly mine the stuff from the rock, nor do I know how. Not five minutes after getting good and started, one of the droids gives off an error alarm. The shrill sound resonates through the tunnel, barely over the din of the drills, picks, engine roar, and other noises they are making. I have to climb down to it, but it’s not too bad, nothing like the walls they made us climb in basic.

The droid has gotten its extractor stuck in the rock. By looking at the drill head, this stuff is doing a number on these droids, but they are getting the job done. It takes me a minute to get the extractor out of the rock, lots of pulling and running the drill in reverse, wiggling it around and then finally it comes loose. It takes another five minutes to replace the drill bit, and that was working quickly on the blasted thing. Once I finish, I put the droid back to work and look over at the other one, still hard at work drilling away, pulling out fresh ore. By dawn they should have full loads in the carts at the top of the hole and we should be able to leave this dark place.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

It’s been about an hour since I started mining, and I’m sure that Customs is up checking my ship, they might even be able to hear mining sounds from the tunnel’s entrance as loud as the droids are, but they haven’t come down here to stop me. Even if they were planning on stopping me, it’s not like I was going down without a good fight, and I mean good. Down here, with the few shaped charges I’ve got, I could turn this place into a butcher’s shop.

The droids keep going at it, only a few more hours to go I keep telling myself, but we’ve only been here an hour and it was supposed to be a ten hour job. I guess I am just trying to stay optimistic about my chances of success. Who knows, maybe I can bark down whatever customs officer I encounter once I head back up with my take for the night. Maybe I can draw my blasters and make him back down, but that’s stuff to worry about in a few hours.

I figure I might as well get aquainted with this rock I’m here for, so I climb down and grab one of the chucks the droids have pulled out. It was real light and didn’t have as much heft to as I thought it would for being resistant to lightsabers and heat like it was. Well, I’m no metallurgist and the scanner says this crap is phrikite, so it must be what I’m looking for.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

One of the droids screeched to a halt and powered down, proving I paid too much for these pieces of crap. I ain’t no mechanic, so if the problem isn’t obvious or easily fixed, I’m straight fragged and will be in this dank hole well after daybreak. By the time I climb down to the droid and shine the illuminator on it I figured out the problem, the mynock attached to its powercell. I draw my pistol and blast the little vermin, and I can hear the sounds of others nearby. Flashing the illuminator around I spot them pretty easily. They’re everywhere, all around me and the droids in this hole. I guess the electrical tools bled energy into the ore and the ore dispersed it throughout the whole excavation site.

I lite up a flare as fast as I can and toss it up unto the ledge at the top of the chamber and lite up another to carry, and just start blasting the things down. They’re just vermin and the things live anywhere, it’s not like they are going extinct anytime soon. But I am determined to put a dent in their population today. After only a few short minutes of blasting away they fly off, after easier prey, but not without doing some serious damage to one of my droids.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

This little guy is dang near fried. Even if I get him working again tonight he won’t make longer than a couple of hours without frying his processor. I have to rewire the power feeds from the powercell into the tool arm and the excavator arm manually, which ain’t an easy task. Furthermore I have to do it in the dark holding a glow rod in my mouth like an idiot. Next time, I think, next time I will shell out for the stock model droid from this century. This is the last time I bank on some shoddy piece of crap working out for me. It takes a full hour but I am able to jury rig the droid to work, at least to some small degree, though its photoreceptors and lights don’t work anymore so I have to sit here and help guide the dang thing.

I look out across the drill site to see the other droid, hard at work, digging away through a patch of rock where I can see ore veins from here. At least I’m getting my monies worth outta that one. I might just have to scrap this droid for spare parts and keep the other one around in case I have to do one of these random mining missions again. The droid I am helping drones something in droid speak at me like I know what it’s saying. It takes me a fair amount of time to realize its telling me that the ore we have been digging around is ready to be extracted. I have to guide the extractor in manually to the ore and help it pull the rock out from the cavern wall.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Nine hours of sitting in this hole have worn on me. I’m tired, exhausted, hungry, can’t see good cause of the shoddy lights, and covered in grime and sweat from working the past three hours with this dang rundown droid. Surprisingly no customs officers have walked down here. I guess they are lazy and know I have to come out eventually so they are waiting for me to bring a payday right to them. Well, they’ll get more than they bargained for from me. I just hope they haven’t impounded my ship yet.

The other droid is still hard at work; it has even dug its own little ledge where it is now sitting digging deeper into it. I hear something rattling now, and I swear I hadn’t heard it before, like rocks knocking together rather than drill noises and engine roar. I go ahead and get back to work, but that rattling seems like it’s getting louder. I check the sensor I set up to real fast to make sure it isn’t the sound of boots down a tunnel. It comes up clear, no life signs nearby except my own. I pull up a couple of ore deposits and put them in the cart I brought down here. I intended to use the droids to carry it up, but as much ore as is in the cart, they will probably need help. Then I figured out what that rattling was.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The first stalactite fell from the ceiling of the cavern with a crash into the whole, and a dozen others followed it. Kark, it was loud, and worse yet it didn’t seem to be stopping, chucks of rock began falling down from the mine’s ceiling. I guess we’re done here. I run over to the broke droid first and haul it up the pump-jack to the main tunnel. It takes longer than I wanted to, but I get it connect to the cart, on the back so it can be lead up the tunnel by me and the working droid. The other droid was still digging away into the rock and doesn’t seem intent on stopping. I race over to the pump-jack and start climbing down to it when the earth writhes and heaves around me. I cling for dear life to the scaffolding and though the rumbling doesn’t stop the large movements do. A large fissure has opened where my droid was excavating and it is struggling to haul itself out of the crack.

Now I ain’t a weak man, but lifting a two hundred kilogram mining droid ain’t easy work either. I heave and grit my teeth as a raise up the dang thing, and let out a big breath once I finally get it back on the platform. It takes me a good minute to catch my breath while winching the levels to raise the pump-jack up to the tunnel above me. I’m almost panicking now, as pieces of the tunnel are collapsing around me and the droids as I struggle to connect the second droid to the mining cart with a glow rod in mouth and darkness closing in all around me.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Times almost up. Big rocks are starting to fall around me and only be a stroke of luck or the grace of a higher power I haven’t been flattened with one yet. I’m moving up the cave a whole heck of a lot faster than I came down, and I keep checking the holomap to make sure I don’t take a wrong turn, but the tunnels seem to have changed during the cave in and the earthquake I may or may not have caused. I am sure if the Seltosi weren’t already pissed off they are now. There may not be people in this mine but causing it to come crashing down and cover this vein ain’t gonna be a cheap fine.

I feel like I have made a few wrong turns. Even with the droids in tow, I should be out by now, not still stumbling around in the dark with no bright light at the end of the tunnel. I run up to a dead end and curse “Sith Spit.” It’s a solid rock barrier and I am hopelessly lost down in these tunnels. I go to turn around but a massive boulder slams into my path. Just as I start to lose hope, I get mad. No I get royally pissed off. Screw it, I ain’t gonna beg. This planet is gonna bear the scars of swallowing me for the rest of its existence. I pull out my explosives and prepare to take this section of the mine with me, but a massive roar followed by a terrifying crack knocks me to the ground, hitting my head.

I get dizzy and am having trouble getting to my feet and keeping my head from swimming, but I can clearly see a fissure in the dead end and light beyond it. Quickly I press a shaped charge into the crack and run to the back of the cave that has been formed. The explosive detonates and I loose my hearing and vision in a bright flash for a few moments. My chest hurts and my ears are bleeding when I finally get my bearings. Everything is still swimming around me but I can see the morning light shining down the last hundred meters.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I take off running, my droids and ore in tow, at least the akward stumble that looked like I was drunk and on spice was what I call running right now. I lost some of the ore, but not a whole lot. I guess I still have enough of this crap, so long as I can survive this place. For one only hundred meters it took me almost a whole minute to clamber out of the cave and into the morning light. I drag myself a safe distance away from the tunnel and collapse.

I felt like I laid here for a long time, but it was actually only few minutes. When I blinked my eyes open there was a customs officer sitting nearby with a security droid standing next to him. I quietly check to make sure my pistols are still on my side, and reassured that they were I stand to address the officer.

“Well you sure made a mess didn’t you? We tried to warn you that this mine was unstable, but your comms were off.” The customs officer stood and began to walk over to my cart. “Mining some phrikite illegally, huh. Well I would have just fined you if sections of the mine hadn’t of collapsed, but we’re way past fines aren’t we?”

“Yeah way past that.” I was too tired to put up with this crap. I drew my pistol and blasted his security droid before it could react and pointed it at the customs officer. He was still fumbling with his side arm, when he realized I had him dead to rights.

“Just calm down now. You haven’t done anything that can’t go away yet?” he pleaded.

“Yeah and I’m not gonna unless you make me. Put your blaster, your comm-link, and your boots in a pile and stand over there.” When he complied I blasted his stuff to pieces, then lead my droids with my ore onto my ship, powered up and got ready to put Seltos behind me. I came back down the ramp to grab up anything I might have left and to restrain the customs officer. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Today he lost.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The Customs officer was fairly compliant when I tied him up and left him in a ghost town, almost like his choices were don’t aggravate me or get shot repeatedly while I get rid of a lot of pent up aggression. I was anxious to get off Seltos, I don’t much like staying somewhere I almost died. I boarded the Dragon and started the power up sequence. I could already taste a good meal from the food processor and feel a nice hot shower. I had my Phrik, now I just need to get it to Balmorra to get it processed and smelted into something useful.

“Been a long day, and got a lot more long days to come.” I said under my breath sighing as the ship rattled through the atmosphere. I plugged in the coordinates for Balmorra and the stars elongated into lines just before entering hyperspace.