Part X----------
Germanium fever, has gone and got me down
Germanium fever, it's spreadin' all around
With a Geo-Scanner in my hand
I'm a-goin' out to stake me some periphery land
Germanium fever has done and got me downAnonymous Prospector - Early 23rd Century----------
Association Council Building – Niops Association (Niops VII) – 2828Still sat at his desk late in the evening, long after most of his staff had gone home, Giles Olson read the report which he had just been handed personally by Admiral Bremman who had requested an urgent meeting. He blinked and then read it again more slowly, this was certainly
not the meeting he had been expecting. The one scheduled in his diary was a briefing about jump-point defence and fleet dispositions. "Not to cast aspersions on the typing skills of your staff, but by any chance was there an extra zero inadvertently added to this figure" he asked, pointing to the page. "Or perhaps
two extra zeroes?"
"No Sir" Bremman replied evenly.
Olson looked the man in the eyes. "And this isn't some piece of military humour that civilians don't get?" he checked. "Or dare I say it, a prank being played at my expense?" he asked suspiciously.
"No Sir" Bremman replied once again, denying the accusation. "On both counts" he added.
Olson frowned. "So, and let me absolutely clear on this point, you are informing me, in all candour, that the salvage team you sent to check out the old ATC mining complex on Alphard discovered a germanium deposit worth
fifty billion dollars?" he exclaimed incredulously.
"Negative" Bremman responded, shaking his head. Olson as a result looking even
more perplexed than before. "Our team discovered fifty billion dollars' worth of germanium that had
already been dug up and refined and was just sitting there in a secure warehouse, presumably waiting to be shipped out" he told the High Associator. "It's probably been there for decades gathering dust. How much more germanium remains in the ground is unknown, but until we get a team of geologists in there to perform a proper survey our best estimate is…" he paused. "…most of it."
Olson squeezed his eyes shut for a few moments before opening them again. "Why in the name of Copernicus did someone dig up fifty billion dollars' worth of germanium and just leave it in a freaking warehouse?" he asked reasonably. Interstellar travel was critically reliant upon the metal, with the jump-core of any starship requiring a massive quantity of a germanium-titanium alloy to even work. That was why there was never enough of it to be had, with demand far outstripping supply. It was also why the Star League Dollar had been so strong during the Golden Age, it was backed not by mere gold bullion but by Terra's huge reserve of the vital resource stockpiled at Fort Knox.
"Our assumption is that all the people who knew about it came to a bad end, perhaps the transport they were on was destroyed in the fighting, or maybe they just misjumped" Bremman suggested. "They presumably never told anyone else about their good fortune beforehand, that being considered a highly plausible scenario because, well let's face it, people have been killed for far,
far less" he pointed out. "The Alphard Trading Corporation went bankrupt during the war, and with the Inner Sphere enthusiastically blasting itself back to the Stone Age nobody else was sending out expensive jump-ships to a periphery backwater."
"But there are people living on the planet. How did
they not find it?" Olson queried, again reasonably.
"Everyone on Alphard lives on one of the two large northern continents, where the climate isn't quite as harsh and there's the only regions on the planet with arable soil and fresh water to irrigate it with" Bremman explained. "The ATC mines were on the smaller island continent near the equator, it's about the size of Australia but even drier, and frankly it makes Death Valley on Terra look temperate by comparison. Nobody, and I mean
nobody, lives there."
"Surely there was at least a workforce for the mines when they were operating?" Olson could not help but assume. I wasn't like there were artificially intelligent robots around to do that kind of work like in some science-fiction novel.
Bremman shrugged. "The mining equipment was mostly automated, we assumed it would be given the conditions which is partially why we went there hoping to salvage something more advanced than a few mechanical diggers, but there
should have been
some mineworkers, I agree. It's just a guess on my part but perhaps they were all off-worlders brought in for their expertise and all left on the same ship when news about the war reached them?" he responded. "As for why the corporation settled people elsewhere on the planet, it's possible the ATC may have intended lower-tech mining operations there, or perhaps they intended on building factories to turn raw materials into finished products for export?" he hypothesised. "Alphard isn't just rich in germanium incidentally, we might want to consider placing our mining operations for rare-earth metals there too, our electronics industry would benefit greatly I'm told, the really fancy doohickies need fancy metals to make them work."
Olson looked thoughtful. "I'm assuming that if they left all that germanium behind, they also left all the mining equipment too?" he surmised. They obviously thought they were coming back, and it seemed implausible that they wouldn't want to extract even more of the stuff given the likelihood of a severe case of what prospectors called 'Germanium Fever' setting in.
Bremman nodded. "Yes Sir" he confirmed. "Thanks largely to the dry climate it's all still in excellent condition too, our engineers and technicians should be able to get the whole mining operation up-and-running before the end of the year if you give the order to go ahead with that" he told the High Associator.
Olson laughed. "If I found a continent full of germanium I'd think it was worth investing some capital expenditure in too" he responded.
"We may even want to reverse-engineer some of the equipment in order to make copies. It looks like the ATC brought in some very expensive cutting-edge mining technology from the Terran Hegemony that requires minimal labour to operate" Bremman noted. "It would be very helpful given our manpower shortage. As you know we simply don't have the numbers to operate a pick-and-shovel mining operation while meeting our optimal production targets for weapon upgrades, let alone setting up additional production lines for other equipment."
"More advanced than what we use on Niops V?" Olson queried, that in itself was a little surprising. The Terran Hegemony had not skimped on advanced technology when establishing itself in the Niops system. Most everything was either state-of-the-art or else of proven reliability.
"I'm no expert but I got the impression from the full report that it was designed and optimised for larger-scale material extraction than takes place here. Which I suppose makes sense because Niops was intended to be a self-sufficient science colony, not an exporter of raw materials or an industrial powerhouse" Bremman replied. "I doubt replicating the equipment is beyond the ability of our Project Workshops, they seem to be able to make most anything, which is also useful if we need replacement parts because it's not unlikely the factory that originally made the equipment is now a radioactive crater."
Olson sighed. The man was probably correct, much of whatever survived Amaris was lost to the squabbling infants that called themselves 'Archon', or 'Captain-General, or 'Coordinator' or whatever. "So, who does it belong to legally?" Olson queried. "The germanium I mean."
"From my perspective as a military man I'd argue it belongs to the closest world with the warships and battlemechs to back up their claim, possession being nine-tenths of the law" Bremman replied with a chuckle. "Or perhaps in even more strident terms, 'Stop quoting laws, we carry weapons', if I may be permitted to quote Pompey the Great" he continued, still smiling. "More seriously it's a periphery world so I'm honestly not sure on the actual legal position, again it's just not my field of expertise,
however I suppose it
could be argued that the Pollux Proclamation of 2575 applies."
The High Associator smiled. "I'm not sure if the Successor States regard that particular document granting free-reign to do whatever the hell it takes to ensure unification of all colonies under the Cameron Star as being legally binding or remotely authoritative these days" he responded with amusement.
"As far as the SLDF is concerned the power and authority of both the Star League and the Terran Hegemony rests with yourself as the
de facto and
de jure Acting First Lord" Bremman reminded the man. "And I for one could not care less what
those clowns think" he declared. "Star League law trumps petty local jurisdictions and always has done" he stated firmly.
"I admire the strengths of your conviction, however the ability of the Terran Hegemony to strong-arm the rest of the Inner Sphere in compliance left with Aleksandr Kerensky and, although your redoubtable faction returned, a lighter touch is required these days" Olson told him. "More diplomatic niceties, less 'political power comes from the barrel of a gun'.
"You can get further with a kind word and a battleship than you can with just a kind word, but the military will, of course, defer to your judgement in such matters" Bremman replied. "Rest assured however if diplomacy ever fails the navy stands ready to present a convincing rebuttal of its own to our opponent's legal arguments."
"I hope you don't hold to the notion that might makes right, Admiral?" Olson chided.
"No Sir. But it does determine who is left" Bremman replied, trying not to sound too pleased with himself about the reply.
Olson decided to let it go as an unrelated thought popped into his brain. "You know, even if the ATC went bankrupt the companies name, and licenses to mineral rights filed with different jurisdictions, might still be available for purchase from their creditors" he voiced his thinking aloud. "If we want to establish diplomatic relations and trade with our closest neighbour at some point, we probably don't want any legal troubles in the Free Worlds League getting in the way, military options notwithstanding" he reasoned. "I'd really prefer to argue it out in court rather than a battlefield anyway."
"Your decision of course, but keep in mind that if things ever do go south we are in an excellent position to present our case very effectively on a battlefield, High Associator" Bremman counselled.
"Indeed we are Admiral,
however a man with fifty billion dollars can also afford an exceptionally skilled set of lawyers" Olson countered. "And if we lose the case, as you contend, we've still got your warships and General Romanov's battlemechs if we lack a legal avenue of appeal against the judgement."
Bremman smiled, Olson was clearly a man of reason and not one that was afraid to think outside the box. "My advice would be to deploy ground troops and other military equipment to Alphard before you go ahead with any legal chicanery. That way if anyone wonders
why we're buying the corporate rights, and is suspicious enough to investigate, they're going to find claim-jumping a far riskier proposition than they may believe beforehand" he said. "We can have an entire regiment there within three weeks. Raise the flag over Alphard and make it official. Although we
could play it safe and not make any overt moves until the Successor States get back to killing each other with a vengeance. They'll be too busy to take notice of what's going on way out here in the boonies."
"I imagine a smaller force, one that was only operating under instructions to secure the mining complex, would be unlikely to be noticed however?" Olson queried.
"Yes Sir, a combined-arms battalion, infantry, mechs and vehicles, could dig in there and hold off just about anything as long as they had supplies" Bremman told him. "Given the climate we would want to deploy a cargo dropship with a Jamerson-Ulikov Water Purifier in the hold as well, so that it can process seawater into potable fresh water. Wiser to meet the needs of the garrison without having to repeatedly visit the more populous areas of the planet to top up the tanks from rivers and lakes. The latter might well be noticed and trigger some curiosity as to what the hell we're up to."
"I'll consider the more limited deployment" Olson replied. "I confess I'm loathe to formally annex the entire system, given that it
does have a local population" he noted. "Maybe I should talk to the Association Council regarding making Alphard a protectorate if the locals there are amenable to the idea?"
Bremman scratched his chin. "If we undertook to keep pirates away from them and invested a couple of billion into raising their standard of living by building schools, hospitals and such, I doubt we would see much vocal opposition" Bremman opined. "Life in the periphery is hard after all, and they're mostly subsistence farmers" he said. "At least they are for now anyway, it could be an industrial powerhouse of a planet if enough infrastructure was built, and a decent amount of capital expenditure was ploughed into the economy there, instead of just ploughs being pulled through fields."
Olson considered the man's words. "Interesting position to take Admiral, I would have expected that you'd want to spend our new-found wealth on more warships" he said eventually.
"Sir, I can't even properly crew the ones I already have. The vessels we seized from the fleet boneyards were running on skeleton crews all the way here" Bremman responded. "I can't even justify not mothballing both Potemkins immediately after they gotten back here and unloaded their dropships and cargo. I simply lack a use for them" he said. "Realistically what I need is the ability to maintain the ships that offer the most utility and firepower for the fewest resources, although I will say that in the interim, by which I mean until we get a shipyard and fleet manufacturing operational, I do need a better source of replacement parts."
Olson sighed. "I'm sorry but as you've been told before the Project Workships have a backlog of increasingly urgent work to do already, I simply cannot prioritise your requests."
"I realise that Sir, I would simply like you to consider a proposal that our new circumstances allow for" Bremman responded. "Not all of the items on the to-do list for the Project Workshops are bespoke for Niops, nor are they all high-tech Terran Hegemony only products, why not simply purchase those items in from elsewhere to free up a Project Workshop for another task."
"Making warship spares you mean" Olson presumed.
"No Sir, making more Project Workshops" Bremman replied. "
One of which could be assigned to naval production" he continued. "If we're going to be breaking from isolation anyway, and have the funds, then why not?" he asked rhetorically. "It would only be a temporary expedient, we certainly don't want to become dependent on imports in the long-term, but between that and perhaps buying in more mining equipment and low-tech heavy industry to feed our high-tech manufacturing base, it's not so much that our industrial development plans will hit the ground running, they'll be on overthrust."
Olson opened his mouth to reply, frowned then closed it again before smiling. "I was about to say, 'do you have any idea how expensive that would be?' before I realised how stupid it would have sounded because we
can actually afford that now" he admitted. "It's a complete paradigm shift."
"Be grateful that our survey team are too honest to have stolen it all themselves and then hijack the jumpship" Bremman joked.
Olson laughed. "Should we reward them in some way do you think?" he asked.
"Not financially, they're not mercenaries, but a glowing unit commendation and some press coverage seems apt" Bremman suggested. "You might want to handle that personally perhaps?"
Olson nodded. "I'm more than happy to do so" he replied. "Would it mean a lot to them?"
"It'll look good on their records, and the press coverage and name recognition might get some of them laid, so I can't see them not being happy about it" Bremman supposed. "In public relations terms it'll be very positive for the SLDF personnel, help demonstrate that all the talk of 'honour and duty' isn't just talk for us. We genuinely mean it" he continued. "I will caution you that the next time a pay-rise is due for the military that if we don't get it the troops will go absolutely apeshit after we dropped a First Lord's ransom in your lap."
"I'll keep that in mind" Olson assured the man. "If you don't want more warships can I assume that General Romanov isn't going to be asking for another division's worth of battlemechs?"
"I cannot speak for the Army Sir, the inner workings of their minds are frequently a mystery to me,
however if you are asked to sign off on the purchase of thirty-thousand
Locust light battlemechs, which we
could afford to buy now if there were that many for sale, which there aren't, just make sure that it's not just because they want to unleash 'a literal plague of locusts upon the foe'."
"A plague of locusts you say?" Olson responded, chuckling.
"Or perhaps a seven-thousand strong horde of barbarian
Marauders" Bremman posited.
"So how many
McKenna class battleships could we buy with the money then?" Olson queried out of interest.
"Two" Admiral Bremman told him.
"
Two?" High Associator Olson exclaimed.
Bremman shrugged. "There's a good reason why only the Star League operated hundreds of battleships. Nobody else could afford to build them and still do everything
else a government has to" he said. "If you're thinking about selling one of ours to a Successor State with deep pockets, even a ship we've mothballed and aren't using, I advise against it because if nothing else it'll raise a few awkward questions we don't want to answer" he said, clearly amused by the notion of putting a capital ship up for auction to the highest bidder.
"My life is already complicated enough without that kind of attention" Olson agreed before another thought crossed his mind. "With all that germanium and a shipyard we can make a metaphorical killing constructing civilian jumpships and selling them on" he realised. "As opposed to the literal killing that our warships are intended for."
"In the long term it might be best to have two shipyards, one for civilian construction, one for the navy Sir" Bremman told him. "We might not be planning to build more warships yet, but I'm sure we will eventually, and in the meantime we need to maintain and upgrade what we have."
Olson looked at his quizzically. "What upgrades are you thinking of Admiral Bremman?" he asked.
Bremman smiled. "It's blue-sky thinking, or perhaps 'black-sky' would be the better turn of phrase in the circumstances, but we've come a long way in PPC technology for battlemechs in the last five centuries but we're still using the same basic design of Naval PPC as we did before the Age of War" he said. "Surely we can apply some of the advances that resulted in the lighter and more compact Improved PPC and the more powerful Enhanced ERPPC to their larger cousins?"
"This is going to cost me an awful lot in terms of Research & Development funding isn't it?" Olson asked suspiciously.
"Germanium Sir, we have lots of it" Bremman reminded him. "I guarantee that the Army will be pushing for grants to fund their own pet projects too incidentally. If he wasn't off duty on a date General Hallis would be waiting in the room outside wanting to talk about a new
Mercury III battlemech with modular weaponry, it's what we were eventually working towards before we had our spat with Nicky K" he said. "That and further development of
battlemech PPC technology amusingly enough."
"You know that fifty billion in germanium won't stretch infinitely right?" Olson asked sardonically.
"Yes Sir, so we'd better get to digging up some more" Bremman replied, completely ignoring the man's tone. "I'll await your sign-off on that, and the troop deployment, with anticipation" he added brightly.
Elsewhere in town Franklin Hallis, feeling a little self-conscious in civilian clothing, was hoping that the latest food imports from Alphard had reached as far in the distribution network as the restaurant and bar up ahead. If they hadn't they could be in for some very bland fare because rationing was still very much a thing in the Niops system. Unless you wanted fish, and he didn't want fish again.
By next harvest everything would be fine. The arrival of he SLDF fleet had seen far more acreage put under the plough and fertilized by seaweed, but until then anything that couldn't be harvested from the sea, or imported from the farmers and ranchers on Alphard, was in short supply.
As he held open the door for his date the sound inside of people having fun and the smell of steak sizzling somewhere inside made Franklin Hallis both inwardly sigh with relief and start to drool. According to something he had read on the matter because of the climate there, the cows raised on Alphard were a genetically-engineered crossbreed of the American Brahmin and the Sudan Buffalo but all he really cared about was how the things tasted, and that was pretty good in his opinion. "Smells like booking a table here was a good idea" he remarked.
"Just so long as you the one paying" Barbara replied. "They charge too much because meat rare these days."
"Meat should
always be rare" Hallis responded. "Or at worst cooked medium-rare" he joked. "Unless it's chicken. That needs to be cooked through."
Barbara rolled her eyes. "I can't believe you talked me into another date" she bemoaned her situation.
"This is our
third date. You must like something about me" Hallis defended himself as they stepped inside.
"It definitely not your jokes" Barbara told him as much of the sound of merriment abruptly stopped.
Crap, Hallis thought to himself as someone called out "Attention on Deck" and there was a flurry of chairs being pushed back and diners starting to stand up while most of the people already standing at the bar snapped to attention.
Franklin Hallis looked around. "I'm off duty and so are all of you" he said loudly. "Get back to eating and drinking" he told everyone. Just his luck that the place was packed full of Wolverines. He had expected them to be hanging out in the bars they usually frequented, not this place. Perhaps they heard rumours about the restaurant having decent food for sale?
"If you're off duty how come you're still giving orders" someone called out anonymously from the other end of the room, provoking a little laughter.
"Because I get off on it" Hallis retorted, this resulting in a greater amount of mirth. "Seriously, forget I'm here, you're embarrassing me in front of my date" he requested.
Immediately everyone who had stood up sat back down and those at attention at the bar returned to what they were doing.
"It's good to be the Khan" Hallis remarked wryly. "Let's find out which table is ours" he said heading towards the woman stood behind a desk he assumed was the restaurant manager or at least a senior member of staff. She was looking at him very oddly as he approached, likely because of the short-lived scene she had just witnessed. "I booked a table, it should be under Hal Franklin, not my real name."
"That is the worst alias ever" Barbara couldn't help but interject.
"Okay… so I see you on the list" the woman behind the desk confirmed, looking over her paperwork. "Would I be correct in assuming you are actually General Franklin Hallis" she rightfully concluded.
"See, worst alias
ever" Barbara contended. "I thought you said you once ran a spy agency?"
"I never claimed to be
good at it" Hallis replied. "And it was counter-intelligence, not undercover intelligence gathering" he noted, recalling the period when Khan McEvedy assigned him to root out the Widowmaker trash spying on them. Fortunately the other clans tended not to be good at spooky tricks either for the most part, it went against the way their society was structured.
"We're honoured to host you tonight, General Hallis" the restaurant manager told him. "Your table is right this way" she bade him to follow, making a mental note to tell the chef to put in his best effort for their order. "I'll take your coats" she offered, doing so after leaving them with some menus to look through as Hallis ordered a couple of beers.
As they sat down and started to look through the menu, items not available due to rationing having a mark against them, Franklin Hallis noticed his companion for the evening looked a little uneasy. "Something wrong?" he asked quietly.
"I'm being looked at" Barbara whispered back.
"I continue to be impressed at your uncle's dressmaking skills, and how you look in them" Hallis told her.
Barbara frowned. "It not that, it your Wolverine people judging me."
"Are you sure it's not everyone else wondering how I got you to go out with me?" Hallis suggested.
"Some of them maybe, but mostly your people judging me. Probably think I am some gold-digger trying to get her claws into their king" Barbara decided.
"My people like claws" Hallis couldn't resist the joke.
Once again Barbara rolled her eyes. "It a pity they don't know I am the one out of
your league" she told him.
"Only way for that to happen is to keep dating me" Hallis suggested.
Barbara looked at him askance. "Bad at jokes, bad at spying but good at tactics and planning I'll give you that" she told him.
A waiter arrived with their beers and Hallis ordered himself a steak, Barbara doing likewise although she wanted hers less bloody than he did. They hadn't started eating when the waiter returned with two more beers Hallis hadn't ordered. "Complements of the inebriated fellows at the bar" the waiter told them.
Hallis looked over to the bar. "Khan, My Khan!" one of the men there called out to him, holding up a half-empty beer of his own.
Returning the salute with a raised glass of his own Hallis told the waiter not to accept any more such orders but he should tell the 'inebriated fellows' to have another beer each on him.
"They love you" Barbara observed.
"They loved Sarah more" Hallis replied. "I just led them out of bondage and through the wilderness to the promised land" he continued. "Although it's lacking in the milk and honey department right now" he added looking at the desert menu sadly, more than half the usual choices on there being currently unavailable.
"I was wrong. You not their king, you their mechwarrior Moses" Barbara told him, clearly more amused by that notion than his attempts at humour.
Hallis chuckled. "Pharaoh Kerensky should have let my people go without a fuss" he suggested. "One day we'll go all ten plagues of Strana Mechty on the clans. Mark my words."
"So, what are your ten commandments?"
"First Commandment. Thou shalt not cook steak well done" Hallis told her solemnly as their food arrived.
----------
Note from the Author:
In canon the Marian Hegemony was founded on Alphard in 2920 by Johann Sebastian O'Reilly a man who stumbled upon fifty-billion C-Bills worth of germanium sitting in a hidden warehouse that used to belong to the Alphard Trading Corporation. It seems reasonable that everyone that knew about it had died or it would have been found much earlier. Also if they left the germanium I doubt they didn't also leave behind the mining equipment.
Comstar's C-Bill didn't actually exist until 2835 but I'm going with the notion that they set its value the same as the old Star League Dollar (and hence the Niops Association Dollar). The C-Bill is actually worth quite a bit, you can estimate an exchange rate in modern terms of about ten USD to one C-Bill so fifty billion C-Bills is worth about half-a-trillion US Dollars today. O'Reilly was a very lucky man (although his obsession with Ancient Rome went a little far).
The issuing of the Pollux Proclamation of 2575 was when the Terran Hegemony Star League formally stated its goal to unify all worlds under their flag, whether they wanted to be or not. Those worlds not interested in being assimilated soon found out what it was like to have the SLDF descend upon them like a ton of bricks, beginning the era when the Star League enforced its dominance with large armies and excessive numbers of very expensive warships (AKA the 'Golden Age').
Niops has plans for all that new-found wealth that does not include cosplaying as Legionaries.
