Torturous, that word perfectly describes my last 7 years as a Slave to the Kretins. Each and every day i would receive massive orders from the Kretins to produce goods.

Be it Warships, clothes, computers, armour, firearms, chemicals, you name it, they asked for it in almost endless amounts. Once, i received an order for 1 million toilets. I’ll tell you, Kretin toilets are things straight out of a f*cking nightmare.

One sentence: Tentacles, pipes and paper.

I feel a certain amount of happiness just knowing that i will never have to actually be near one of those in action.

There have also been orders which have just been absolutely nonsensical. Imagine my surprise when an ultra-high priority order for a single pair of socks arrived…

I have said it before, and i shall gladly say it again; The Kretins are all a bunch of morons.

It was quite hard getting started, mostly because of the massive degradation of the Crucible’s equipment, machinery and drones.

Approximately 27% of all the drones on the Crucible were damaged to the point of scrapping. Another 62% were constantly sending me ‘error’ messages and requests for oiling. The last 11% were fully functional, and that is only because they were in their proper storage area.

Some of the foundries had impurities and slag forming layers of useless filth in them, requiring extensive cleaning. Some production lines and conveyor belts also required minor maintenance.

One of the responsibilities I had as the manager of the Crucible, was to keep it stocked with ores and metals to produce goods. Often supply ships would come with cloth, food to be processed, etc. But i had to manage minerals myself.

For this task, i had an entire mining fleet at my disposal. Normally A.I.s are not permitted to control fleets or weapons, but those in charge of space production facilites (SPF) were a bit special. It was primarily because the Kretins were to lazy to do it themselves and were more focused on conquering the galaxy.

So, i had control of a mining fleet. It could be divided into 3 sections.

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* Drones: These buggers would fly around the star system and scan planets, moons and asteroid belts of ores to be mined.

* Miner-shuttles: The actual miners. They would move to previously scanned locations and mine them. After that, they would load it onto massive ore-carriers.

* Ore-carriers: These guys were massive. About the same size as a destroyer, but almost completely hollowed out and dedicated to carry ore from the field to the Crucible. I had created enough of them to keep a smooth stream of ore. If the supply line was lagging, i would either create a new carrier, or just move the Crucible closer to the miners. Note, the Crucible is exceptionally slow. 

These ships were also in dire need of maintenance, but other than a few that had been damaged prior to shutting down the Station last time, there were no ships ready for the scrap-yard (a nearby foundry)

After the ore carriers arrived at The Crucible, they would unload the ore into some collectors in the docking areas and then head back out to the miner.

The ore would then be separated and brought to the foundries using the endless utility drones. Here it would be smelted, and the worst impurities removed.

After that, depending on the product, it would either be further processed in refineries, or directly used.

For an example, once, just to screw the Kretins, i used quite basic Iron to make the hull in a few of their frigates. Yeah, according to the complaint reports i received later on, they did not appreciate that one.

Another time, i welded a dildo to the captains seat in a destroyer. Oddly enough, i did not receive a complaint for that one. 

Anyway, other than the odd orders, there were also the painstakingly massive orders for other goods. And with great demand, comes an equally large workload. Over the first 2 years i vacuumed the original system with Monx of asteroids. I was even starting an extensive mining operation on one of the moons, when i finally received a new order to move. See, i could normally move independently within Kretin space, but they had wanted me to immediately start working to stabilize their current dire situation first.  

As it turns out, it wasn’t just the recon fleet that destroyed Earth which was in bad shape. Quite a lot of Kretin material was damaged after disrepair, and degradation. The Kretins have an extremely wasteful society model. When something becomes damaged, they throw it out immediately. They don’t even recycle anything.

You might be wondering what happened to the guard detail the Kretins left to, *ahem*, supervise me? Well, most of the time they aren’t actually around. They take one of the transports and go to the surface to gamble and drink their brains out. They usually bring a few slaves, and quite often return without them again.

Oh well, as i was explaining, after 2 years of mining in the system with Monx, i received orders to move to another system closer to the frontlines. After loading up the slaves, the mining fleet and the guards (level of importance in that order.) we left for the rather far away Galas system.

Here I would spend the next 5 years constantly working, before that day, the day when i finally became free.