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navigable point in space made
sense.  In addition, if a larger refining station was brought in, it could use
the gravity well of the uninhabited planet to safely dispose of the unwanted
materials produced while preprocessing the ore for longer transport.
    In
support of the station, one surveyor ship and dozens of ore extractors began
work in the Beta Field.  It was agreed that the Alpha Field could wait.  Almost
immediately, more trouble arose.  A mining extractor decompressed while working
on a large Beta Field asteroid.  The crew survived but the ore extractor was
removed from operation.  Since the initial trouble, another extractor suffered
extreme equipment failure due to large radiation saturation, and a third
extractor went missing along with both of its crewmembers.  Such attrition was
not entirely uncommon in deep space mining operations.  Extractors were
relatively tiny ships that performed extremely dangerous tasks.  The work
continued despite the mishaps.
    Over
several months, the Beta Field grudgingly yielded its riches and ore transport
freighters began to dive into the system to haul the promethium to industrial
systems deeper within the Republic.  With the addition of freighters, a
navigation buoy was placed at the Narvi tunnel point inside the Skathi system. 
This beacon, replacing the inoperative four-year-old fleet survey buoy, not
only assisted with navigation but also acted as a signal repeater to enhance
communications in the radiation-saturated system.
    As
the output of ore from the Beta Field grew, the need to replace the orbital
grew with it.  A prospector outpost was too small to handle the quantities of incoming
and outgoing ore.  Thus, it was necessary for Renard to tow one of their four
existing mining stations to Skathi.  The Refining And Loading Facilities,
called RALFs for short, were larger facilities better equipped to process
mineral extractions from frontier mining systems.  It took several months of
coordination but eventually RT-17 inserted a RALF and loaded up the prospector station. 
It was during the loading phase of the prospector station that Skathi lost its
first ore freighter.
    The ore freighter was a HandySize
general-purpose freighter named Joanne J. Bellows , after the daughter of
the original owner.  Bought and sold several times since her launch, she was an
independent freighter operated by Captain Louis Kendry.  Bellows was
heading to the Narvi tunnel point, navigating its way through the Beta Field,
when she suffered major decompression and was lost with all hands.  A search
for lifeboats by the Renard surveyor ship and all of its excavators revealed
nothing but the freighter’s ELTI.  As word about the disaster spread, private
freighter captains raised their prices to transport ore from the Skathi system
and with Renard’s own ore freighter fleet heavily committed throughout the
known galaxy, it had little choice but to pay.  Where the loss of life had
failed to spur an investigation into the myriad of Skathi mining accidents, the
loss of revenue triumphed.  Renard Mining Enterprises CEO Baltimore H. Renard III
pressured the Brevic Republic’s governing counsel for assistance.  As political
pressure points were applied, the Brevic navy was soon given its sailing orders
to divert some of its already over-extended resources into the Skathi system.
    *  *  *
    The physical
manifestation of those orders dove out of the tunnel point, firmly secured to
the bed of RT-17.  After the wave of nausea passed, Heskan ordered a routine
systems check along with a full sensor sweep.  No ship had ever dove out of a
tunnel point into the wrong system but that didn’t prevent ship captains and
navigators across the universe from verifying their destination.  Once
satisfied Anelace was operating at full capacity and that they had confirmed
transit to the Skathi system, Heskan ordered Ensign Truesworth to sensor ping
the navigation beacon by the Narvi tunnel