OPEN REGISTER

The planets have no names.

They have numbers. Naming a world is admitting somebody intends to stay, and every contract here has an end date. The major holders arrived first, took what paid, and left the entire plant standing, because dismantling it cost more than whatever was still inside.

Working conditions

Cold, high and dry.

Daylight is too white and too short. The dust is fine enough to get inside a sealed joint, and it accounts for half of all equipment failures.

Every operator complains about it. It is the one thing the five corporations agree on. At night, the glow of the rival reactor confirms the competition has not finished its shift.

There are no armies. There are contracts.

Small companies send crews of five to the same site, each working inside the skeleton of a plant a hundred times their size. The claim goes to whoever disables the rival core and keeps their own running.

Classification: Competing salvage
Local authority: Not recognised
Crews: Skilled workers on hazard contracts
Closure: Rival core disabled; withdrawal entered in the report

A refinery, not a fortress.

The core turns what comes out of the seam into sellable cargo, and it is the only thing on site that turns work into money. You did not build it: it was standing idle with the asset plate still on its flank, and the first thing your company did on buying the claim was switch it back on.

When the rival core stops, the claim changes hands. A siren sounds, the equipment is shut down in the prescribed order, and the crew goes back up.

A shift fits into three records.

There is no speech before the capsule and no ceremony after the siren. There is descent, work face, and withdrawal.

DESCENT
Eight minutes
The capsule crosses the atmosphere. Nobody speaks on the way down.
OPERATION
Work face
The crew sets up equipment, holds lanes, and answers whatever the competition sends.
WITHDRAWAL
Shift report
The record is written on the way up, before the next contract arrives.

The crew was withdrawn at 04:12. The core remains operational. The claim is still contested. Thank you for your attention to this report.

Operation record, end of shift

See who agreed to go down.

Each one with a trade, a price, and a reason to sign.

Open the personnel file

04-A · Fourteen months of waiting

The war did not start with a shot.

It started with a filing.

The first processing core destroyed by a rival crew was the one on claim 04-A. The holder filed a complaint, attached the record, and asked for damages. The answer took fourteen months and fitted into one paragraph: the forum does not reach the site.

Nothing was denied. Nothing was authorised. There was simply nowhere to try it. Arbitration only recognises what it can inspect, and the inspection line was left behind when the survey moved on.

All five read that paragraph the same way, in the same month. What had been competition for prospecting became competition for removal. Today, when a crew is ordered to bring down a rival core, the dispatch does not say so: it says the operation is authorised to open the Empty Ruling.

The forum does not reach the site.

Claims arbitration, response to case 04-A

The catalogue

Every world is a fight with a name.

The Register numbers them; the field nicknames them. The catalogue grows with every survey, and none of the claims below actually belongs to whoever bought it.

04-AHalda

An old Vantor mine, opened before the claims existed and nearly worked out today. The company defends it for a reason that is not profit.

This is where the Empty Ruling happened. Vantor spends more holding Halda than Halda earns, and nobody on the board can explain that in a report without sounding sentimental.

Honeycomb of galleries on several levels · Nickel at the end of the seam · Vantor against whoever shows up
12-Bthe Site

Cold, high and dry. The dust is fine enough to get inside a sealed joint and accounts for half of all equipment failures.

It is the busiest because it is the easiest. At night, all you see of the rival camp is the glow of its reactor.

Open plateau with outcrops · Iron and cobalt · All of them, all the time
19-Fthe Furnace

Volcanic and active. Hélion installed generators over the vents and sells the other four the power drawn from the ground they are all standing on.

If Vantor takes the Furnace, it stops paying the toll. It is the only seam whose ownership changes the entire economy of the Register.

Thermal vents that move between operations · Geothermal power and rare salts · Hélion defends, Vantor keeps coming back
07-CDry Coast

A dried ocean floor under a salt crust. Meridiano takes the base of its reagents from here, both the ones that heal and the ones that dissolve.

Meridiano buys protection from Kessler to mine the feedstock that treats the people Kessler wounded. They sign every cycle and neither one comments.

Open plain, very long sightlines · Salts and precursors · Meridiano against Kessler
23-KShatter

A world that broke and never finished falling. Low gravity, fragments in close orbit around each other.

The best material in the Register is exposed because the planet came apart. Nobody knows why, and three of the five have paid for surveys to find out.

Rock islands with gaps between them · Core metals · Everyone wants it, almost nobody can work it
08-ESwarf

Where dead extraction platforms are broken down. Two generations of equipment stacked up by people unwilling to pay the freight home.

This is where the five buy from each other without admitting it. A Hélion buyer and a Vantor buyer cross paths every week and nod.

Canyons of scrap metal · The equipment itself · Nobody claims it, everybody uses it
31-MQuarantine

A microbial mat that eats seals. Not a monster, just biology: it feeds on polymer and loves a joint.

The other four want to know what Meridiano takes out of there. It publishes that the material is treatment feedstock, which is true, and is not the answer.

Wet and organic; the suit fails before the operator · Biology · Meridiano, alone
15-Hthe Line

It sits exactly on the inspection line. Half the claim is reachable by arbitration; the other half is not.

The best place in the Register to talk, and the only one where killing somebody gets you sued. Truces are signed here and broken across the street.

The map is literally divided · The position, not the ore · All of them, with lawyers
27-PSilence

Permanent interference. Radio does not work, telemetry does not get out, and no crew knows where the other one is.

The only claim whose report arrives incomplete. Holders find out what happened when the crew comes back up. If it comes back up.

Fog of information by nature, not by rule · Common iron · Órfico works there like it is home
11-Gthe Dam

Liquid under the crust, held in by a pressure that extraction throws off balance.

Whoever controls the Dam controls the water the whole Register drinks. None of the five has raised the subject publicly, which says everything.

The map changes during the operation · Volatiles and water · Hélion against Vantor
02-Dthe Annex

The one site that is not a Major's leftover: it belongs to the survey, which came before them. No refinery, no rail — offices, a laboratory and an archive, and it was never worked.

The first-wave records list seams nobody has found again. Half the Open Register is guesswork; the Annex has the real list.

Pre-built structure, corridors and rooms · Archives and ore · Órfico against the other four
33-Rthe Yard

Good ore, tolerable weather, no dramatic hook. It is the claim that makes payroll while the others make history.

The dullest world in the Register is the one that kills the most, because it is where everybody goes. Its tragedy is statistical.

Gentle hills, nothing surprises · Copper and aluminium · Fiercely contested for being predictable
36-Tthe Last Entry

The most recent entry in the catalogue, and the question it raises is an uncomfortable one: why did the Majors never come here?

It is the only world with no leftovers. Whoever goes down will find no refinery to switch on and no convoy running: they will have to build, and no company our size remembers how.

To be determined · Unknown · Nobody yet