I, Wanna Roch(e) and Roll all Night [Republic]

[Laira Darkhold]

I stood when [member="Lady Kay"] entered the room, returning her bow respectfully, and nodding in recognition of her presence. “There is no need to apologize. This meeting is hardly mandatory, I just felt it appropriate that both of you become familiar with this location and its function. This is our most important mine, the most vital to many of our operations. Here we mine Phrik for special orders, and large projects, like the Immortal we are here discussing.” I said motioning to [member="Zreame Ithrac Zeibitha"]as I spoke. “Please come in and relax. The life of a COO shouldn’t be hectic or involve too much work. If it did, you would never be able to spend your money.” I joked, trying to let them both know that for the most part I was very informal. Rarely did I demand to be addressed properly, and even then, never by people as high ranking as them, whether they were employees of the company or not. “The Immortal Battle Armor is the next step in the evolution of the Olympian Battle Armor you have already been introduced to. It is better in as many ways as our engineers could come up with, and is more than capable of making a difference on the field.” I said to the two women, retaking my seat.

 

[Zreame Ithrac Zeibitha]

Turning her head toward the door as it opened zreame waved to [member="Lady Kay"] while still sitting in her chair and killed the butt of her cigarillo into a small onyx cylinder she had bought to have a portable ashtray should she need it. "Welcome, we were just going over the designs of the immortal at the moment while I familiarized myself with my end of the job." She said with her usual smile and cheerful tone as she gestured to the seat next to her which was empty. "This is quite an interesting facility though what's with the Verpine? I thought I was being interogated when I arrived... was kinda weird to be honest, thought they did let up when my position was confirmed." She then said as she directed her question towards both [member="Draco Vereen"] and [member="Lady Kay"], mostly because Draco had prior experience with them and Kay was the diplomat among them.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Mining on Roche was simple, easy even given my facilities and the amount of workers within the asteroid field. Most, if not all, of the workers were from the facility on Taanab, where the manufacturing of basic equipment and components took place. The facilities on Roche, were also simple. Nothing but a refinement plant and several mining tunnels on four or five of the phrik enriched space rocks. Even still with now four thousand workers, and more than twice as many droids within the complex, the IM-455 garrison and the Indominus sitting about the primary asteroid, ArmaTech was able to continue mining the mineral at a break neck pace, pulling the ore from the asteroids and placing them on mining carts to be taken back to the refining plant. Once processed the ore would be smelted into a pure liquid state and then combined with neutronium in a metal matric composite, granting Phrik the neutroniums energy dispersive properties without decreasing its resistance to damage. Thus was the process, now all that was left was to complete that process. Mining itself was easy, especially from the perspective of an Executive.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

I turned to address Zreame, she was intelligent, and it wasn’t surprising the Verpine had been cautious with her either, especially given my encounter with them. “They were uncomfortable having the Indominus appear in their system without much warning. It should be handled now. If they stop you again, tell them you are with me and everything should be alright,” I told the Cernun. She was bright, and an excellent engineer. She was also not even vaguely close to human. Some people that bothered. Some people it didn’t. I was one of the ones that didn’t mind an alien, so long as they were good people and not crazy. She was a little on the crazy side, but she made up for it in a number of ways.

Down in the mines the workers were going at it, as they always did. Foreman Ark Norick was directing traffic in the primary mine shaft, keeping them in line, like he always did. The increased work force just made the cramped and claustrophobic tunnels even more so, with a third more bodies pushing through them. Luckily there weren’t additional walkers down here and the droids worked deep in the mines, transporting it up to the hub at about mid-point.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Ark took a drag on his cigarillo, breathing in the smoke before letting it out, slightly fogging his veiwplate and leaving smoke to trail out through the vents on his environment suit. “Aight, the boss says we work harder for him, the boss gets what he wants.” The big bear of a man called to the mass of workers in the hub. The hub was where the ores were separated into the repulsor crates for transport. The smallest, finest pieces got shifted into one bin, then four other bins, each going up in scale of size and weight. It was fairly simple work; the droids handled the vast majority of the manual labor. Only thing the workers did was operate machinery within the mines.

A worker came up to Ark, sweating in his suit. “Sir, Walker A-Seven is having some malfunction down in the mine shaft. He wants you to come check it out. He said you might wanna drag a tech with you.” The worker panted out, obviously having ran up from the shaft in the heavy suit. They didn’t make them to be moved around in a lot, Ark thought to himself. “Aight, I’ll get a look at his problem.” He said, secretly loathing having to descend into the mine shaft.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Ark grabbed a technician and started the slow descent into mineshaft. First with a repulsor platform and then, after a certain point they were forced to continue on, on foot. Ark was used to this kind of work. He had been the one that banned non-mining vehicles from the shaft after a minor accident caused one of the AT-MP walkers to be disabled after it was rammed by an out of control platform. It sucked now, but it had been a good decision at the time. The droids were more than strong enough to transport ore fifty meters when their own mining carts got to full. The technician wasn’t far behind Ark, keeping pace as best as he could while carrying several kilograms of tools and equipment. Ark would have helped, if it had been necessary, but since the guy was still staying fairly close why bother with extra work. They came upon the walker, sure enough powered down and sitting open, its pilot and several others gathered around it like staring at it was going to make it better. What a bunch of idiots, Ark thought to himself, remembering having to instruct an HR seminar on work safety after some of the dumber workers tried playing with a laser drill and amputated one of their limbs.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Ark walked up, but rather than inspect it personally he figured he deserved a good laugh before he started to work on the mining walker. “What seems to be the issue,” he asked as he got to the small gathering of workers looking the craft over from about four meters away like they were helping.

One of the workers, the pilot, stepped up to explain the situation. Oh, this ought to be good Ark thought to himself, “Well, she started grindin her gears when I started drillin that part of the rock so I eased off the power and then she quieted down for a bit, but every time I tried to hit that outcrop it started up again.” He said, giving all the tale tell signs that he hadn’t told the whole truth. Ark could see by looking at the outcrop that the miner had tried to power through the material he had encountered. That said, it didn’t look like it was phrik and the laser should have disintegrated the other rocks at full power.

Okay, Ark thought to himself, let the tech look over the mining walker, I’ll check out that outcropping that’s giving us so much trouble.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

The technician crawled underneath the walker, working on diagnostics for the walker’s generator and heavy laser drill. He was keeping busy, but granted most of the workers were now just sitting around ‘supervising’ the technician as he worked, destroying any chance at being productive while the walker was down. A few of the workers followed him over to the outcropping, which while scorched and marked it had not given way to the laser and the drill had scored a hole in it, probably shredding the drill while he was at it. Ark glanced back at the drill head. Yep, he was right, melted the tip off it seemed. He glared at a couple of the workers who weren’t doing anything. “Oi, go grab a replacement drill bit and get it installed since you aren’t busy,” he snapped seeing them scamper away to do as instructed. They wouldn’t be gone long, not with him here keeping time. The most they could get away with would be about ten minutes.

Looking over the rock, he did a quick scan of it with his equipment, noticing an interesting mineral within the stone. Neutronium Ionite. Well that wouldn’t be hard to get hauled out of here and moved elsewhere

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Once the boys had returned with the drill head, Ark made them install it on their own. It was fairly easy work and knowing what the mineral was it would be easy for him to remove once he got set up and loaded up in the mining walker. Within about ten minutes the walker was powering on and Ark was pressing it forward. Rather than going straight for the metal, he used the laser to carve out part, or most of it from the asteroid. Then he used the mag-clamp to pull it out, with some assistance from the mining droids nearby. Within ten to fifteen minutes Ark had climbed out of the walker and surrendered it back to the pilot. “If you come up on that stuff again, carve it out with the laser then yank it out with the mag-clamp. It’s that easy. Wreck my walker again and I’ll shove you over to traffic.” Ark told the worker, giving him a stern warning. Stupid hurts.

By the time he made it back up to the hub the assistant foreman was getting ready to hand the reigns over to the day shift, night shift, whatever. It didn’t matter, shift was about over. “What do the numbers look like?” he asked the assistant, hoping they had made quota.

 

[Laira Darkhold]

Ark hopped on one of the carts full of men leaving the hub, heading back for general quarters while the assistant told him that the numbers had been high, even with the set back of the downed walker. That wasn’t so bad. Ark would have to deliver the good news to the boss, and his new executives. He didn’t know about those two, he had never met them, but apparently the one woman wanted to start a relief thingy and provide civilian peace equipment. The other one was supposed to be some fancy engineer.

It took Ark about ten minutes to clear through security and he got a good look at the black armored warriors that had become common sight when the CEO arrived. He walked into the conference room where Zreame, Kay, and I sat chatting amongst ourselves. “Sir, we have completed the mining operation. It seems we have enough phrik to move on with production of the armor. The Iego plant has accommodated for its production as we speak.” He said to us, looking over the girls.

“Good. Dismissed Ark.” I told him, having known him for a while. Good man. Hard Worker. “Ladies. I think we should take our leave of Roche. Iego awaits us, and I would prefer to escort the Phrik aboard the Indominus.” I lead them out, the black armored soldiers falling in behind the girls as we left the system.