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In which Carol and ?friends? make decisions
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Carol has been working towards this moment for a very long time.

You don't rise to the level of Executive in Redjack without some combination of working extremely long hours, extreme competence, the backing of a patron, unusual clearsightedness, or a special advantage not otherwise specified.

Carol has all of these things.

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But when you've worked for everything, and you fought for all you have, nothing will satisfy you...

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Except everything.

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Today's instance of 'everything' is a relic.  One of the first Kelen immigrants had been a prodigious healer, and when she'd died, her surviving clan hadn't buried her.  They'd arranged a tomb using company mining gear.  Three of them had taken the fall for the others, but it's clear that this cavern wasn't excavated in a single night by a measly three people.

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Jera is one of the Keleni who plausibly has a claim on inheritance of the relic.  He's not exactly thrilled at the idea of graverobbing, but Carol had been extremely persuasive.  She always had been, really.  And he owed her a lot.  Keleni are a minority species, and in the Empire, any aliens are treated as second-class citizens at best.  She'd done a lot of improve his clan's fortunes.

And she'd made a good point, that it doesn't make sense to leave an extremely powerful focus for his healing abilities to sit moldering in a tomb somewhere.  Really, when she'd put it like that, what were the elders thinking?

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Tora is merely along to make sure that everything goes exactly as Carol had promised, zero desecration allowed.  And to guard one of his community.

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And true to her word, she's only here for the pendant.  It's - uncomfortable.  Her connection to Communion is hindered, here.  But Communion for her, is just a tool.  It's not her only tool.  Her Master had warned her about that.

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The chamber is spacious, dug out of the rock.  Patience is a desert planet, redolent with precious minerals valuable for starship and megastructure construction.  In some of the mines you can pick up nearly-pure samples of ore.

This cavern is extremely humble by comparison.  Many inhabitants of Patience can identify ores by sight, and this particular cave is nearly devoid of them.  Instead of mineral riches, it is covered in cultural ones.  Art of the little natural farming possible on Patience is shown.  Gheap are herded across the polished stone walls, along with scenes of harvesting edible cave-moss that locals turn into bread.  River and aquatic motifs abound as well, though Patience is a desert world with remarkably few rivers.

And the builders of the tomb saw fit to hollow out the center into a knee-deep pool.  A Westerly automated environmental management kit was built into a small altar in the far end of the pool.  And it has performed its duties of keeping the pool's artificial ecosystem running smoothly for the past twenty-eight years.  There are aesthetically-pleasing plants decorating the bottom of the pool, and they sway slightly in the 'tide' produced by the environmental manager.

On a normal world, this would be a slightly eccentric shrine.

On Patience, a world where water is the main cost of living, it's worth several years' of a laborer's income.

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It's so beautiful.  They put so much love into this little hidey-hole.

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This is what I fight to preserve.

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What a fucking waste.  How many hours of work went into the art that nobody enjoys?  How many liters of water are in there, wasted on planets?  How many families could that manager have fed, over the decades?

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