It’s easy to forget about Kalkite in Andor Season 2 between all of the protests and shootouts between the Empire and Ghorman resistance fighters. But this mineral is precisely the reason the Empire has been oppressing the Ghorman people throughout the second season of Andor, and this state secret has had far-reaching consequences. The first episode of the season reveals much of why Kalkite is so important to Emperor Palpatine, though it’s not surprisingly coded in some vague language.
What is Ghorman Kalkite and why does The Empire want it?
Kalkite is a mineral that’s unique to the Ghorman planet, and it is heavily suggested that it’s a necessary component in the construction of The Death Star, though The Empire disguises this fact.
As explained by the members of the secret council headed by Director Orson Callen Krennic in The Maltheen Divide, Ghorman has a rare deposit of Kalkite that Krennic says is more unique than its spiders that weave the planet’s famous woven fabric. Specifically, it has “deep substrate foliated Kalkite,” which is effectively striped Kalkite that is underground. This mineral is vital in coating reactor lenses. Krennic doesn’t say what these lenses are for apart from the Emperor’s so-called “energy initiative,” but given that he’s the Director of the Imperial Military Department of Advanced Weapons Research, which is partially responsible for the construction of The Death Star, it’s not too difficult to see where this is headed.
Though Andor doesn’t say this explicitly, Krennic leads a program called Project Celestial Power, the “energy initiative” that’s supposedly meant to provide sustainable, limitless energy for the Empire, but is actually meant to be for the formation of the planet-destroying superweapon. He is also one of the leaders, along with Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, of Project Stardust, otherwise known as the Death Star project or Ultimate Weapon project.
The details of why Kalkite is so chemically valuable are not disclosed, but it’s so important that Krennic’s division has spent years trying to create alternate versions of Kalkite, be it synthetic Kalkite or Kalkite substitutes. The Empire had thought there may be some Kalkite alternative that it could produce within two years since the secret meeting in Episode 1, but as Major Partagaz tells Dedra Meero at the beginning of Episode 7, none were found. This is despite Krennic’s lab in Eadu working overtime all year. “Bad luck, Ghorman,” Partagaz says plainly.
As to why the Empire didn’t simply ask the Ghorman people to mine the Kalkite and trade for the mineral, it is revealed that the amount of the mineral it would need to extract, for The Death Star, would likely destabilize the planet’s core. It would effectively be gouge mining, something that we’ve already heard happened with Cassian’s homeworld of Kenari, whose natural resources and mineral deposits were stripped by various large-scale operations. The stress on the planet’s core would potentially cause total collapse, destroying nine cities on Ghorman.
The thought of relocating the roughly 800,000 Ghormans to another planet, perhaps by staging or manufacturing a natural disaster, was floated by a member on the council, but some found the models to be too unpredictable. The Ghorman people already have an inherent disdain for the Empire due to the Ghorman Massacre, and they would likely not leave their homeland lightly.
Unfortunately, the Ghorman Front resistance discovered the real reason for the oppression of their people too late, as reports came in about Imperial mining equipment being deployed throughout the planet just a day before the mass protest in Episode 8. When Syril finally learns the truth of his operations in Ghorman, his belief in the Imperial security state is shattered, which contributes to his untimely fate.
