Secunday, Sarnat 1st 067.M42

The double shifts keep grinding on. We were notified officially yesterday that there was an astropathic transmission sent out - not that we didn't know already. It's been the talk of the Office for over a week, and we'd started getting the data from trade offers and contract negotiations piling up even with the double shifts and all hands on deck. It's an utter deluge of data, and we're breaking ourselves just trying to keep up.

But we've also been told the survey results are finally finished. It's the largest single ore vein that's been found on this world, the quality is incredibly high and there are signs of plyatrum all the way along it. Nobody knows how this has been missed for so long, it's not like the mountain ranges haven't been scanned and probed repeatedly in the past. Looking at the survey data, if I had to hazard a guess, I think it's because the vein is quite deep and the only way to access it seems to be through a narrow valley in the deep ranges - or by blasting straight through the side of the mountain. But then I'm not a geologis. I'm just cobbling together a theory from the data that I'm processing, and that's a partial glimpse at best.

However it was missed and whyever it's suddenly come to light now, the Mechanicus, the Planetary Governor, the Administratum and the registered traders on this world are all commencing a meeting tomorrow to work out what they're planning to do. Permission to submit trade applications from off-world interests has been suspended for now, at least until the negotiations are completed.

Not that it stops them from sending the requests through. Which leaves them piling up in our work stack, because they all have to be transferred into the cogitators - every single one. From the numbers we're seeing, it seems that there must be at least three or four dozen merchant vessels in high orbit - with more reportedly coming in every day.

Keep your head down and type. It's all we can do. Tempers are still relatively even, but you can see the exhaustion mounting in faces. We're all sharing a single bank of ablutions on this floor. Both the commode and the showers are constantly running, and people are trying to utilise their breaks on alternate days just to get enough time to wash up in. We're all of us getting rather sick of the rations provided by the onsite canteen, but nobody dares leave the Office long enough to try and get food to bring in - that would eat into our precious sleep time.

At least the starch rations don't taste of much. Though I've discovered there's a clandestine trade in spices and sauces going on amongst the staff. Transcript-Adept Harkon is probably the most popular man on the floor right now. He's ex-PDF and when he brought his kit in to set up for the long haul, he brought in a whole sack full of condiment kits that he'd taken that were discarded by his squadmates from their ration packs. They were old, but salt and pepper don't go rancid, and hot sauce is surprisingly stable over a very long time. I know, I know. Technically his possession of them is theft from the Munitorum. They should have been consumed or discarded and destroyed. But I don't think there's a man or woman among us who'd turn him in for this. He's been a life saver in terms of making what food we have palatable.

I haven't spoken to Maddy yet about what happened Sextday night. Obviously we've seen each other on the floor. But I've not yet managed to find it in me to bring up the… what occurred between us. She hasn't come back to where I'm sleeping in the last couple of days either. Maybe she just needed comfort for that night, and once she got it she was done. I don't want to think that she's so mercenary though. She came and found me… She kissed me. She could have left before I woke up. She could have gone before she fell asleep. She could have done so many things. But she kissed me.

I want to try and catch her in a break, or find where she's sleeping and find a moment to talk to her. But I'm so exhausted at the end of the day, I can't even eat before I collapse into my sleeping sack. We're not always on the same breaks, and even when we are there's so many others standing around - I don't really want to bring it up with an audience there. I don't think she's trying to avoid me. She doesn't walk away when I approach, she doesn't exclude me from the conversation. She's as friendly as ever, she doesn't talk to me any differently than she normally does.

For now I guess I'll leave it. She knows where to find me if she wants to come and talk or if she wants to… if there's anything else that she wants to say. If she doesn't, then once work has died down again I guess that I'll try talking to her then.

Thought for the Day: Think of hardship not as torment, but as a trial with which we prove our worth.