“Lotta different types of mining out there. This is open-pit. Each ring that spirals down strips off another layer of lucole. The pit widens until the top ring has no more lucole, then we expand the bottom ones until it’s all cleared out. Only a few spots on Apollyon have the crystal, and we’ve got five fully excavated mines. This is the sixth. We’re currently looking to see if there are any more spots ready for mining.”

And if there weren’t? SpaceTech had a massive stockpile, but if the crystal on the moon was finite, then what were they going to do when it ran out?

No wonder they wanted the Aunare’s tech so badly. They needed something more sustainable, especially if they ended up burning through a lot of lucole in war.

Focus. I had to focus. That wasn’t my problem. At least not right now. “How wide is the mine?” There wasn’t anything I could see from the image to help me understand the scale of the mine. It could be five meters wide or five hundred, and I wouldn’t know.

“About three hundred seventy kilometers.”

“Kilometers.” That was massive. “How big are the others?”

“They average nearly seven hundred kilometers and about that deep all told.”

“Shit.” Mining out seven hundred kilometers of crystals seemed like a lot, maybe even more than what the bays could hold. “I’ve been working in Bay One, and it’s at capacity. When I got here, most of the other bays were at capacity, too. It seems like SpaceTech should have enough lucole by now. Does SpaceTech even really need to be mining anymore?”

“What’s enough?” He shrugged. “There’s plenty, but SpaceTech plans to mine this moon until they’ve got every last crumb of lucole. We store most of it here on the base because they can’t use up all this. Not in a couple centuries, even accounting for growth.” He paused and stared off at nothing. For a second, I thought he was waiting for any questions from me, but he just kept staring.

A second later, he swiped a finger through the air and kept right on going like nothing had happened.

“Twenty years ago, bots did this job, but it was too costly to keep replacing those that got blown up. So SpaceTech found volunteers.”

“Wait. I thought that it took something special from me—or any human—to get the lucole.”

“Eh. It’s all iffy ethics. A bot can do this, but humans are cheaper.” He shrugged that off like it was nothing.

“Iffy ethics is right.” I couldn’t keep the disgust from my voice. “But maybe I’m bitter because I’ve already been risking my life doing a job a bot could do.”