Jayne Rising

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They say that the smell of honest labour is supposed to be refreshing. Assuming that they were right, then judging by the smell this labour was anything but. Samuel Wentworth was a composed and cultured individual, and therefore managed not to betray any expression about the odor.

Oh, but how it cost him.

Wentworth had most of his life by the credo of 'If you want something done properly, do it yourself.' The past year had seen that credo become a mania. Traumatic experiences tended to do things like that to a person. It was why he, an Ariel native and the CEO of a burgeoning high-tech contracting company was out here on a god-forsaken Rim rock like Higgins' moon in the first place. Ceramic composites already had important everyday uses, but Wentworth's company was on the verge of developping a new one that could render modern armours obselete. Of course, certain special ingredients were required, which Higgin's vaunted mud might well supply.

Again, leading him to the stench.

"We've recently had to expand our operations here by almost double, to meet growing demand, so I'm sorry about the disorganization." his guide explained. "But you can see that we handle practically everything in-house here, from the cultivation to the bricking."

Wentworth nodded thoughtfully, everything was mostly as he had been led to believe, if more chaotic. That chaos could easily be explained by a dramatic increase in the scope of the business.

"A lot of these workers seem to be watching their fellows mostly instead of working themselves." he pointed out.

Was that a shadow of a grimace flitting briefly over his guide's face? Wentworth couldn't be sure, but it was probably a sore point.

"Yes, to meet such an increase we had to import another thousand workers, indentured of course. It's the most cost efficient, but there is a bit of a learning curve involved."

The guide's tone gave it away, there was definitely something about that he disagreed with.

Probably the concept