“Proximity denotes association. Why else would the mouth be located so close to the brain, if not designed to speak one’s mind?”
- Xed, Ixthian political activist (199 PA)
Bannon 3 was a desert planet, only barely habitable and far from welcoming. A weary, bloated red star served as system primary. It threw barely enough visible light on the sandy little planet to illuminate it, but more than enough infrared to turn Bannon 3 into a furnace. Located inconveniently on an otherwise uninhabited edge of the CWA space and a source of almost no valuable natural resources, the Bannon system was ignored for decades.
In 132 MA, an enterprising Lyran by the name of Channik Grale purchased all land, mineral and mining rights to the planet for only four and a half million cenmarks from the CWA trade bureau. Channik was galactically mocked for spending his inheritance on Bannon 3. The only thing worth mining on the little dust ball seemed to be hafnium, but all substantial deposits were located deep in the bedrock. Hafnium was not precious or rare, found on several hundred other planets, several of which had been colonized years before. It certainly didn’t seem worth the effort to mine Bannon 3 for such an inexpensive and relatively common element.
The laughter continued for about seven years as Channik purchased cheap mining equipment and set up a camp in the northern hemisphere. As expected, the machinery broke down so frequently that Channik had to hire a non-stop flow of parts and engineers to fly out to Bannon.
Laughter became whispers as miners and engineers flocked to Bannon 3. There was plenty of work and Channik paid. He did not pay well, but it was work for those who could not find it elsewhere. Instead of waiting for the frequent orders for new parts, Starwind Fabrications set up a small factory on Channik’s planet to cut down on shipping costs. The new factory brought in jobs and all manner of beings that needed work. Workers brought families, who required food and clothes.
Before two decades had passed, the single mining camp on Bannon 3 had grown into a full-fledged city. Satellite towns grew up almost overnight as the city expanded. By the time Channik’s fur was turning gray, the entire northern hemisphere of his planet was settled and thriving. His people were poor and often desperate, but the same could be said of Prianus and the lower levels of Axis. And those were founding worlds!
Opponents to Channik’s success nicknamed his planet Stray, joking that it seemed to attract the stray dogs of the galaxy. The name stuck. It was said that Channik died laughing as he counted his fortune at a venerable Lyran age of eighty-two, never having successfully mined a single ounce of hafnium.
