I had been doing consistent work as a Termite for something like three years now. My Queen had said that his superiors would get irritated if he promoted me to Tier Three Termite too quickly, and anyways, there was a shitload of Back Files to go through.

Yes, I always had tons of work to do. That was fine. Most of it could be done /tellepathically, it didn’t need to be done by me personally.

Also, I handled my own finances. The Green and Gold, and Rantha Corp, were there to earn money so they could earn more money, at least for my share. They were also there to profit those working for them. While not concentrating all that raw money into my hands removed some flexibility, it meant I had a very loyal workforce who were slowly getting better equipped, and didn’t have to worry about the necessities of daily living. Better lives bred better people. The world didn’t have to be a shithole, but they had to work for it and protect it.

It meant a lot of working and protecting, and I wasn’t going to take that from them. Advice was cheap and easy. They vetted people, I added more Marks, and Rantha Corp grew...

-----------

“My Queen, you do such a good job at trying to solve problems that other people want to see abandoned,” I asked him directly. “Are you in danger?”

He looked at me with those eyes that just didn’t care, but most definitely weren’t stupid. “There are Back Files that are dangerously sensitive. I have been setting them aside. I am not attracting attention with the files I am assigning you, as most of them are active, but forgotten. It is the ones that are moved to inactive status that are the dangerous ones.” I nodded understanding at that. It meant someone above had exerted pressure and wanted them gone. “If you want to undertake an Inactive File, it will have to be under alternate financing methods, and I will either not report it Up, or report it through an alternate command hierarchy.”

His tone was absolutely non-committal, but that didn’t mean I lost his meaning. “Do you have an Umbran contact, or do you need one?” I inquired calmly.

“The Umbrans sit at the top of the government hierarchy. A command link bypassing intermediaries would allow immediate pursuit of Inactive Files.”

I frowned as I looked at the row of cabinets behind him. “Is that the only reserve of Inactives?” I inquired.

“No. There are some in cold storage.” Which meant REALLY forgotten. Who knew how many centuries or millennia they stretched back?

“I have a contact in the Dungeon. They might be interested in speaking with you about some of these sensitive files.”

“Always happy to obey the directives of the Order of the Fallen Moon.” His voice didn’t waver at all. My Queen was a total badass of unflappability. “Do you want your Tier Three qualifier mission.”

Tier Three meant outside the city walls. Very different environment from in here, especially given that the sands outside ate away a person’s skin and lungs. “Sure!” He waved it over to me, and it popped up on my Band.

While Thought-Sama 3 was eagerly reading the details of the mission, I inquired, “Oh, by the way, it’s time you were compensated for the time and effort you’ve put in to helping me. I have three choices I can give you.” His eyebrows didn’t even twitch as he looked at me. “Don’t even think it’s a bribe. You earned this, the amount of overtime alone you put in is, like, ugh.” I waved my hand. “That OT has allowed me to make a lot of money, so I’m compensating you for past time and effort. I know you well enough that it won’t affect what you do in the future, so just take it.

“First option. You’ve got a Mastersweiss Heavy Gyro there. It’s got high engineering and psi-Energized, but it’s not Enhanced. I can Enhance it for you.

“Number two, I can make you some Gyro ammo that hits like a truck for special occasions.

“Number three, I can make a clip for you that regenerates one gyro shell every six seconds until it is full.”

His eyes did focus ever so slightly. All of them were good options. He basically got any ammo he wanted free by requisition, but there was a difference between that and never running out in the field. A passive enhancement to his gun would also be nice, but...

“If you take the clip and pass your ammunition requisition to me, when it accumulates naturally, I’ll swap it for special loads or I’ll upgrade your sidearm. And no, the ammunition doesn’t survive outside the gun for more than a few seconds.”

It was monetizing one of his benefits, and while it was frowned upon, if he was actually shooting and keeping his gunmanship up, as was intended, there was nothing wrong with it.

“I’ll take the clip,” he stated calmly.

“I’ll have it ready for you in a couple of days. Give me your spare.” I held out my hand, and he drew his spare clip from the side of his belt and handed it to me. “Also, I have a secondary employment opportunity available for you,” I said, as my hair took the clip from my hand and stashed it in my Masspack. He didn’t blink at the show of hair-teke, having seen my hair moving around many times, and not caring regardless.

He just looked at me again. He knew that I was head of the Green and Gold, and running several businesses, and I still came back here to shoot dangerous things that crawled in the dark. The two things were definitely not non-exclusive.

“I have a lot of kids to teach and train, who could use the advice of someone with a lot of experience, especially field training. You need to find a road to Seven. If you’re willing to accept a Mark, I can give you a road to doing both... and I don’t offer this to just anybody.”

My Queen sat back from his desk, frowning slightly, the deepest expression I had ever seen from him. “Seven.” he asked, still with the monotone.

I nodded slowly. “For what it is worth, you are a Five Scout, in the parlance of Paths. The only reason I can see that your advancement has stalled is simply because you don’t have the Stat line to satisfy the Advance. You have a relentless willpower to do your job that is everything that is required to advance to Seven. You’ve been accumulating the requisite Karma for a long time, but simply been unable to move forwards.

“If I Mark you, you will make Seven, without a doubt. You will be able to take your third Human evolution... and yes, I noticed you took your second, even if you did not. If you take your Third, you can become a Null Psion, lose your cybernetics, and your Road to Ten will be open.”

He took a long deep breath, but those disturbing tan eyes didn’t waver, and his face didn’t move. “Is there a price for this.”

“That you keep doing what you are doing. If that price is too high, you can strip the Mark.”

He grunted slightly. “Sounds too good to be true.”

“I have over fifteen thousand subordinates who will agree with you completely.”

He grunted again. “Tell me why you continue to do Termite work, if you have so many people working for you.”

“Reason One, Naming Karma.” I flicked Chalice out of my arm, where she was normally held in sanguinal body-phase. “Can only be gained by using the object in question in real conflict. In short, I need things to fight with her, I didn’t want to resort to the arena, which is totally nonproductive, and so being a Termite is the best productive option.

“Reason Two: The money my subordinates make is their money, the money I make is mine. I’m not greedy, and I work for my money, too.

“Reason Three: My ambitions extend far beyond this city, planet, and system. I need trustworthy subordinates to do that, and they have to be Sevens and higher. Such people, who are not complete assholes, are not easy to find. Having one slaving away doing the right thing in an unrewarding environment is like finding gold in a pile of shit.

“Or to put it another way... what do you think you’d be worth if you were a Seven? Or a Ten?”

He ran the calculations over in his head. Just being Seven was huge. Another seventy years of age, without needing incredibly pricey juvenat treatments he just couldn’t afford. Having a chance at being a Psion? That was incredible, even for him.

“This will not interfere with my duties.” was his only rebuttal.

“Well, to the extent that you might find yourself doing a lot more work with the Back Files, it might...”

“What do I need to do.”

“Where do you want the Mark?”

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Krempa Mining Corp was a subsidiary of the Krempa family, one of the Upspire noble families running some of the mines that extracted metals and alkalines from this world in great numbers, crushing the ore, sending it off to the Skraelings to be smelted down, and then sending it off to either production factories or shipped offworld as raw commodities.

Over the millennia, they’d dug out areas equal to entire nations, but the planet still hadn’t given up everything. The only reason operations hadn’t expanded was the cost of keeping Domes over the working area to keep out the killing alkaline winds, so only small areas could be excavated at one time. If not, the planet would have been strip-mined out ages ago.

Despite the horribly hostile environment, there were still things that could live here. Phrenic energy could make stuff incredibly resilient, and it didn’t take much Acid/Base resistance to be able to survive here. As a result, there were still plenty of creatures who lived on the planet, and all of them thought humans were incredibly sweet delicacies and water-bags.

Thousands of years of killing them had generally taught most of the species that we weren’t a race to be played around with or preyed on freely, as many a pulse laser to the face had informed them. Still, hunger is hunger, and so things bugged the miners. They could hire expensive mercenaries to take care of the problem, or, if it was just monsters, they could post a bounty and see if there was a Termite who would grab it.

A Sand Wurm had wandered into the mining zone and was picking off workers. This was bad because a) fewer workers meant lost production and b) the damn wurm ate their Amulets.

In a corrosive environment like this, all the equipment had to be at durasteel levels of corrosion resistance, making the initial investment to start mining incredibly high. In addition, all the workers had to have corrosion resistance, or they’d die within days. The sand would get in through just about any kind of protective garments, eat away the skin and meat, and down they’d go.

While an Acid Resistance 5 Amulet wasn’t a huge deal on a micro level, kind of like buying a worker a new car, on a macro level, it was just one more huge investment that had to be made in your workforce. The Amulets were actually considered more valuable than most of the workers from the view of the mining corp, which the Scythilan unions gladly exploited and were slowing production to a standstill until the problem was addressed. Lost workers, lost production time, lost Amulets... very annoying.

So, it was posted to the Termites first. After all, we were cheaper than the mercs, and often had more experience monster-hunting.

I left out the southern gate, which was force-sealed against the winds and sands, shocking the Juris squad on guard duty when I set off on foot.

My corrosion resistance was in the 50’s with my Vajra, and my Vajra also filtered out the dust and sand in the atmosphere. The raging difference in boiling heat during the day and dry ice condensing at night made no difference to me, nor the strange soup of the atmosphere. I took what I needed out of it as I ran overland, not taking the tubes or tunnels, heading to the mines a hundred miles away.