“I don’t think so,” Bulco said, examining his hands as he clenched and unclenched his fists. “According to that freaky alien merchant, Trinium is a common alloy in Tec-based technology. I examined the information we had on it while I was working on the ammo. It has a very intricate structure, beyond Earth’s abilities to produce. Its component elements are common, but they aren’t always found next to each other. Looks like the aliens found a spot, right here, and decided to start a little mining operation on the side.”

“I’ll check the excavator’s log,” Lana said. “It should have more information.”

She went back to the folded machine and accessed the light console. She frowned as tidbits of information ran over the console. “It says here it was deployed two months ago with the objective to mine valuable minerals.” Her fingers fluttered over the console. “That’s interesting. Looks like the owner returned several times to pick up the collected resources, the last time was five days ago.”

Bulco and Lana exchanged worried frowns.

Lana continued tapping the console. “There’s also a partial mapping of the moon specifying high concentrations of minerals. Looks like this machine is capable of not only extracting various ores but also of forging them into specific alloys. There’s also a summary of everything it produced: Eighty-six tons of Trinium, thirty-one Balatium, and two hundred kilos of … oh my.”

“What is it?” Nori asked.

“Mithril,” the woman replied in wonder. “Looks like Tolkien was onto something. Think he was an alien?”

“I doubt it. It’s probably just a translation of the alien language. I’m guessing this stuff has properties like the ones described in our fantasy literature.”

“Which are?” Bulco asked.

“Light and strong.”

“It also says here it only reached fifty-three percent capacity,” Lana said as she poured over the monitor. “The excavator needs four more days to fill the containers.”

“We don’t have that time,” Nori said. “We’ll take the containers as they are now. Eighty-six tons of Trinium translates into a whole lot of ammo.”

“We couldn’t make it keep working anyway,” Lana said. “Says here it requires a Machinator or an equivalent Path to operate. But … err ... aren’t we worried the aliens who put it here will be angry we took it?”

“You heard Alzigo,” Nori said. “Humans have a claim on the moon which makes whoever landed here a trespasser. So we’re free to confiscate everything’s here.”

“They might see it differently,” Lana said,

“Then they’re welcome to come look for us,” the large Engineer said with a heavy scowl. “The guys who put it here had something to do with the Calamity and that puts them on my payback list. If the little green men have a problem with what we did …” He cracked his fingers menacingly.