So a Shard and a Shifter Mine a Mine with a Mine (or Ten)

[Laguz Vald]

They say a pretty face gets you anywhere, but pretty IFF codes get you even more places. On the off chance that you have both, plus the right clearances to boot? Hoooboy, practically every door is open for you. Hell, not just open, it's held by a butler while a red carpet is unrolled in front of you.

Okay maybe not that last bit about the carpet, but the rest of it was pretty much true. Having obscene amounts of credits to flash also didn't hurt your cause; a lesson that Laguz had learned and internalized a great many decades ago.

Putting all this practical knowledge to good use, the shifter now stood filing xir nails disinterestedly while waiting for xir less-than-organic companion to arrive. Whether he'd come wearing a chassis or the HRD suit with… additonal capabilities remained to be seen, but given the purpose of their visit here, Laguz was rather neutral on that particular choice.

The only mandatory accessory that [member="Rusty"] was required to bring were explosives. Lots of them.

Sure, the Exemplar could've bothered and gone through official channels – or the closest thing to official that Primeval had, anyway – but xe'd never been fond of getting tangled up in red tape and bureaucracy. Cutting through it, or, better yet, circumventing it entirely had always been the smoothest, simplest solution as far as Laguz was concerned.

Somehow, xe doubted that xir metal associate would mind.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty had been tempted to wear his HRD chassis this time. Getting hammered with the shifter had been quite entertaining last time, but as the Shard pulled up to the spaceport in his rented speeder truck, he was reminded just how bad of an idea it would be to drink around the cargo when he saw the look on the security guards' faces when they saw his manifest.

The paperwork was in order, of course. Rusty had done some smuggling in his day, but this was not the sort of load he wanted to be futzing around with while running from the law. The cargo container on the back was fully fifteen meters long, four meters tall, and four meters wide. The box itself resembled a normal cargo container on the outside.

On the inside, there was a modified entropy field to keep the fifteen thousand pounds of various different explosives from going off, as well as a few choice pieces of mining equipment. It wasn't perfect, but it was about as good as it was going to get.

"Howdy," Rusty said as he got out of the truck and let the spaceport's loading droids handle the fun part. "I got the goods."

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

A grin that couldn't possibly mean anything good spread across Laguz's face at [member="Rusty"]'s declaration, and xe gave a small nod of affirmation. Today xe looked neither man nor woman, but rather something confusingly androgynous; partially to obfuscate their tracks, partially because karking with people was one of xir favorite past-times. Fun times.

"Let's get on with it, then. We've got some ground to cover, and the place is… " the merc trailed off with a vague wave of xir hand, at a loss for words. The Primeval had a fondness for nature, and it showed in the most unfortunate of forms, like underbrush and vines growing over the paths cleared for speeders.

Karking annoying, was what it was. Tree hugging schuttas.

The shifter led the way through the main spaceport complex of Echoy'la, dismissing a few overly inqusitive guardsmen with a flash of xir ring. Old-fashioned – typical – but effective in its own way. Laguz wasn't going to complain as long as it could work its magic, and work its magic it certainly did.

Once they'd maneuvered their way outside, a sizeable speeder outfitted especially for the terrain they were about to traverse was already waiting, Rusty's shipment loaded and secured in the back.

"Benefits," xe remarked somewhat unnecessarily and poured into the driver's seat. The navicomputer was already blinking with the site Laguz had marked for demo, and with a smirk and a blas from the repulsor coils, the pair was off.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty shrugged, then climbed out on the back and mag clamped Gertrude to the roof by the bipod.

They weren't exactly expecting trouble. [member="Laguz Vald"] had excellent contacts, but this was still not an place where Rusty felt safe.

The truck made its way along the road, the repulsorlift suspension soaking up any potential bumps from ruts or potholes. The Shard had chosen this particular vehicle not because of its speed, but because it was reputed to have an extraordinarily stable ride. Protected by the entropy field though the load may have been, one learned quickly that one could never be too careful with high explosives. The alternative was to utter the famous last words of any failure in the field of demolitions: oops.

Even Gertrude was on her best behavior today. She had been fitted with a special suppressor that, while incapable of doing much to make her quiet, would at least prevent the usual massive bang associated with her firing from potentially setting off anything shock sensitive or starting any fires. The suppressor was huge, almost the size of a SCUBA tank and quite heavy, but it could save their lives if it dropped in the pot.

Eventually, the pair made it to the mining claim, which had already been staked out. The Shard assumed the paperwork was all in order, seeing as how they weren't being met by angry people with guns.

Once the truck settled gently onto its landing struts, he hopped down off the roof of the cab and nimbly worked his way around to the back of the truck to open the shipping container. The entropy field was still reading in the green, and the balance didn't seem to have shifted along the way, so he reckoned it should be safe to drop the field and crack the seal.

Immediately at the entrance were two mining droids, each designed to stow in crates roughly 3 meters long by 1.5 meters wide by 1.5 meters tall. They were heavy as all get out, which is why there was a repulsor trolley mounted on the back of the truck as well. He quickly unloaded the droids and deposited them on the ground. They would take a few minutes to get warmed up and run all their diagnostics.

Meanwhile, Rusty carefully hauled out the first crate of explosives from the back of the truck. It was a crate exactly one meter cubed. He checked the telltales on the crate, which indicated the contents were both stable and ready for use.

"Cratering charges," he explained as the shifter appeared next to him. "Basically, they're supersized versions of the foxhole charges soldiers carry into battle. They were originally designed to crater roads, runways, and anything else that might potentially hinder enemy movements. Each one is good for a crater six meters across and four meters deep on soil like this."

 

[Laguz Vald]

Half-hopping, half-flowing out of the speeder truck, the merc quickly eyed the chosen site to check if it was really the one xe'd reserved. It required pulling a few strings and dropping some fat credit chits into certain pockets, but xe was sure that the investment was worth it; Laguz and [member="Rusty"] stood only feet above one of the richest, thickest beskar veins this side of the equator, and the ore their little expedition would yield was likely going to be measured in tonnes.

Say what you will about the shifter's habits, but xe rarely did anything halfway.

Glacing up from the undisturbed ground and back to xir metal companion, the merc nodded slowly to the offered explanation about the explosives that the man had brought. While xe knew xir way around the basics, demo was hardly xir area of expertise; that's why Rusty was here. Part of staying alive in this business was knowing when to outsource to other professionals, and of course knowing the aforementioned professionals in the first place.

Networking was a funny thing.

"Need me to help set up anything, or should I go over there and cover my ears?" the shifter asked with a wide grin as xe stuck xir thumb in the direction of an imposing boulder a few meters behind them. Technically, the merc could probably just disable xir hearing to avoid the deafening effects of an explosion, but sometimes keeping it simple was the better option.

 

[Rusty]

"Wouldn't it make more sense just to get rid of you ears altogether?"

Rusty still wasn't sure exactly how extensive [member="Laguz Vald"]'s shapeshifting capabilities were. They'd worked together on a couple of different missions, and xe never seemed to wear the same face, gender, or size twice in a row. He'd gotten pretty good at picking xir out of a crowd, but he suspected that was because xe wanted to be spotted. At any rate, he was pretty sure xe could ditch xir ears if xe really wanted.

"I've got this part. Frankly, too many people handling the boom is a bad idea anyway. Get to cover and I'll join you in a second."

The Shard went to work, setting up the 40 kilogram cratering charges around the surveyed points. The bombs looked an awful lot like ship engines mounted on spindly little legs that held the mouths about a foot off the ground. The standoff distance was important, as the directional bombs needed a gap between them and the ground to do their magic.

Once they were arrayed, he hid behind the boulder.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" he shouted for the benefit of no one in particular.

The ground shook and the air was rent by a horrendous boom. A fine spray of dirt and rock began to drift down after a few moments, finely coating everything within a few hundred meters of the impromptu mine.

Once the smoke and the dust cleared, Rusty examined the new crater that had once been a peaceful little patch of earth. It looked like a turbolaser or meteor strike.

"Well, that worked," The Shard said, not quite sure if the shfiter could hear him and not quite sure he cared. "Time to let the droids get to work."

The droids were starting to perk up by now, and sure enough, they got to work. They were both molecular excavators, designed to scoop up vast amounts of earth and render it down to dust so fine, it could be compacted into superdense cubes. The cubes weighed a literal ton, but they were relatively small, and could be stored and disposed of fairly easily.

 

[Rusty]

Beskar was almost always found in the form of dull gray rock formations.

Veins of the stuff, though not anywhere near as hard as the processed beskar, were still among some of the hardest substances in nature. The veins of ore could take a tremendous beating. Thus, mining it could be a pain in the rear. That was why Rusty had brought so many bombs.

After about an hour or so, the mining droids had uncovered the top of the vein, leaving a large boulder-sized chunk of ore exposed. By Rusty's rough estimation, he figured it probably weighed in at about four or five hundred kilograms. The veins this close to the surface were never as rich as the deeper ones, but it would be more than sufficient for their purposes.

For safety's sake, the Shard wasn't about to try to uncover the whole thing in one go. Even if it was smaller than average, the vein could still go twenty meters into the ground or more. It was better to break it up into smaller chunks as they went rather than risking the thing collapsing on them in the hole.

To start, Rusty took out a crate of shaped charges from the cargo container. They weren't especially big, but that was fine. They didn't have to be. Their job was to bore into the rock so the larger charges could do their job. He planted them on the rock in a carefully guessed patterned, fuzed them up, and took cover once again behind the boulder.

They exploded with a sharp series of cracks.

Once the smoke cleared, Rusty inspected the handiwork. Everything was going to plan so far.

The next step was to flush the holes drilled with water, in order to cool it off. It wouldn't do to have the explosives he was about to pack into the holes go off prematurely.

The next few minutes were spent packing the holes with detonite, then rigging them all up with blasting caps. Once the thing was set, he covered the whole thing in an armorweave tarp and weighed down the corners of the tarp with grav-boosted counterweights.

Again, the detonation was heralded by a series of sharp cracks. The armorweave tarp did its job and contained the rock fragments, keeping them from flying all over the place in a manner that would have probably proved both fatal and wasteful. Instead, there was a neat pile of rubble that could easily be scooped up by the droids and stored in crates, to be loaded up once the container was devoid of explosives.

"I love my job."

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

Xe'd been right to assume that [member="Rusty"] would enjoy a nice, loud outing. The man's photoreceptors flashed in excitement, and Laguz could swear she saw the metal at the corners of his mouth twitch as he went to set the charges.

Shaking xir head – but grinning nonetheless – the merc stalked off to take cover behind the aforementioned boulder. Xe'd barely sat down when the droid rejoned her, yelling an age-old phrase. Song of his people, perhaps?

Laguz would wager the answer to that unspoken question was yes, because an hour later, the ringing and explosions were the only thing xe could still hear. Add to that the incessant banging and whirring of the excavation droids, and the shifter was on the verge of going crazy. Xe'd provided the place, the means, and the permit – well, 'permit' – and now xe had very little left to do. Were they somewhere else, the merc might've been tempted to wander off into the surrounding forest… but there was no forest to wander off into.

Echoy'la's fourteenth moon was second only to Ziost as far as barren planets went, and Ziost was a karking craphole. A freezing one.

Frowning, Laguz peered around the boulder to check on the man's progress, finding him alive and well; i.e. happily setting a new round of charges to blow up the vein even further. Unlike the shifter, he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, moving with a kind of spring to his metal step as he strode about the perimeter.

Figures.

"How's it going?"

Small talk and assassins… not a great combination.

 

[Rusty]

"Going quite well, I think," Rusty half-shouted, not realizing that his mechanical ears were still in noise dampening mode. "This is a rich vein. Should get all kinds of goodies out of it. I think I might have brought too many bombs though."

They were nearing the bottom of the vein, and the shipping container still had several crates of explosives left over. The gaping hole in the ground etched out by the Shard and his pet mining droids was impressive to be sure, but he had been using the explosives as a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer. It was efficient to be sure, but he had overestimated the amount of boom it would take to extract the ore.

Oh well. It wasn't like they could take the stuff back. Once the seal on the shipping container was broken, there wasn't a customs agent in the galaxy that would let back through.

"We should be wrapped up here shortly. The droids are pretty good about getting the ore in easy to transport cubes, so it won't be hard to load. We just gotta do something with all the fun stuff before we head out. Probably drop them in the hole and see what happens when they all go off at once. Wanna hit the button?"

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Rusty]

Getting the ore loaded was the easy part. The droids were able compress it down into cubes, each one a half meter to a side, and soon they had the connex fully loaded and ready to go. Each one was heavy as hell, weighing in at exactly 20 kilograms. The connex was going to weigh something like a forty or fifty tons, fully loaded. By any reasonable estimation, that was a lot of ore.

Unfortunately, that didn't necessarily translate out to a lot of metal. Most of the mass of the ore was some impurity or another. By the time he was done smelting, Rusty would be lucky if he got a kilogram of ore out of each block, but that would still turn into a hefty haul. Strength be damned, beskar was one of the most versatile metals in existence. Even if this trip netted only a ton of usable metal, that was still a ton more than he had ever played with in the past.

A half hour later, and the loading was done. The truck's repulsorlifts were fairly screaming, but they were rated for the load, and anything else was the insurance company's problem.

All that was left was to do something with the remaining several tons of explosives.

 

[Rusty]

The answer to that problem was the droids.

There simply wasn't room on the truck. It would barely tolerate the passengers and Gertrude at this point. Though the mining droids were secondhand, they were still on the pricey side, and Rusty wasn't fond of the idea of leaving them behind for someone else to pick up. So he was going to blow them the kark up.

What fun.

The poor droids were far too stupid to be truly self aware. They didn't know that they were being stuffed with enough boom to level a few square kilometers of city. Out here the blast wouldn't be focused by any sort of buildings, so the resultant fireball would be a sight to behold indeed.

The Shard and the shapeshifter loaded into the hovertruck and trundled away from the blast at its top speed, which was basically walking speed. It would be one hell of a long ride back to the spaceport at this rate. Good thing they were going to liven it up a bit.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

Even from three kilometers away, the shockwave was impressive. If they had been moving at any sort of speed with anything less of a load, the hovertruck would have probably been blown out of control, killing its occupants in a blaze of fire and tragedy. As it was, the damn thing barely rocked. That said, if Rusty hadn't mag clamped himself and Gertrude to their perch on the roof, they'd have been torn clean and tossed like a ragdoll with a really badass accessory.

The heat wave wasn't quite as impressive. Well attenuated by the atmosphere, it merely made Rusty's perch on the truck a tad bit uncomfortable, rather than lighting his clothing on fire. That said, any vegetation within a kilometer of the temporary mine pit was likely scorched all to hell. And the mine? It looked like nothing so much as an impact crater. A trained forensic investigator might be able to tell that several tons of beskar ore had been extracted from the area, but somehow, he didn't think the locals had those kinds of resources.

Once the connex was loaded into Rusty's rented freighter some hours later, he and [member="Laguz Vald"] said their goodbyes and parted ways. As much fun as this excursion had been, xe had work to do, and the Shard did as well. Neither of them could afford to be out of the loop for long these days. Until the next job popped up, it was back to their regularly scheduled programming.