Miliam and her companions spent the next several hours touring True Eden’s greatest monuments. There were far more to choose from than the population of the planet seemed to warrant, but the church had a history dating back over half a millennium, and they’d replicated old buildings in addition to constructing new ones. Many commemorated particularly significant martyrs or served as the sites for official holiday celebrations, while others were simply beautifully built edifices that had becomes iconic over the years on previous colonies.
During the trip to the Holy Sepulcher Miliam had taken note of a few of those locations and asked for a closer look during the follow-up tour. The Cenotaphs of the Martyrs was first on the list; unlike the memorials to particular martyrs, the Cenotaphs recorded the name of every person ever known to have died for the cause. They consisted of an extensive field of black stone obelisks with names carved into their surfaces in small text next to dates going back to the Witch Hunter Wars. She’d also taken an interest in the Sanctuary of Reconciliation, a carbon-copy of the first house of worship built to incorporate elements of architecture from all three of Isaiaism’s parent religions, as well as a handful of less significant memorials she’d thought looked pretty.
The tour wrapped up with a modest dinner courtesy of Brother Sal. Once the meal was concluded and the dishes were taken away, the crucial moment arrived- the one the Astrum Vitae had come here for.
“It’s been a pleasure hosting you today, sister. Will you be needing a place to stay the night, or will you be departing immediately?” Brother Sal asked, hands folded neatly in his lap and back ramrod straight. His posture during the entire dinner had been impeccable. Despite the hospitality shown so far, there was a clear implication in his tone- Miliam was still an outsider and would only be tolerated here for so long, regardless of how strong her faith was.
“I would be happy to depart and share my experiences here with my brothers and sisters back home, but I’m afraid I have to beg one more favor first. My ship is old, and we discovered an important part of the reactor had failed two jumps before getting here. We were able to cannibalize one of our lasers to make a temporary replacement, but it would be dangerous to do that all the way home,” Miliam explained, fingers crossed beneath the table. If Brother Sal suspected anything, though, it didn’t show on his face.
“Oh, how unfortunate. I’m in no position to make any promises, but I can pass the request up the chain. I do suspect it would be hard to provide a replacement for free, however- we get by here, but we’re far from wealthy,” Brother Sal replied. Miliam’s knee-jerk reaction was to think he was full of it, considering the opulence on display today, but she reminded herself that wealth wasn’t measured the same way today as it was in her time. Gold was just a mundane metal now. What mattered was the scale of their ability to produce magic tools and mana-infused alloys, the true bottleneck to all modern production.
“We didn’t anticipate the failure, so we didn’t bring any cargo valuable enough to exchange, but I’d be happy to offer the services of my ship,” Miliam offered, careful to phrase her proposal so that it was the ship that was the focus and not the crew. She wasn’t sure Brother Sal would have taken it in that way regardless, but it was better safe than sorry.
“I’ll have to ask someone if there’s anything we need done- please excuse me a moment while I contact Father Corgan,” Sal said as he stood, name-dropping someone Miliam assumed was his immediate superior before walking away. A short time later he returned with a smile. “It seems Father Corgan knows of a way you may be able to contribute. He’d like to speak with you as soon as possible.”
“I think now is good,” Miliam confirmed after glancing at Aoibhe and Abigail. They returned as a crew to Brother Sal’s car and he took them to a building that looked like a church on the outside but more resembled an office once they’d gone inside. As True Eden was a theocracy, government agencies were part of the church, so that probably meant Brother Sal was actually closer to a bureaucrat than a priest, functionally speaking. He led them to a mid-sized office and bid them inside.
“Father Corgan, I’ve brought our guests as requested. Will you be needing anything else?” Sal asked the man sitting inside at a desk. He was older than Sal by at least ten years, but was dressed in much the same fashion. Corgan’s face was severe, with lines etched in by too much frowning and a heavy brow that made his eyes appear sunken.
“Thank you, Sal, that will be all. You may return to your duties,” Father Corgan responded. Sal bowed and then left the room, wishing Miliam a good day on the way out.
“Many thanks for meeting with me, Father Corgan,” Miliam said, giving him a proper curtsy and bowing her head.
“Please, have a seat,” Corgan said to Miliam. There was only a single seat in front of the desk, which Miliam took once Corgan acknowledged her.
“Brother Sal suggested you may be able to provide me a means of serving the church?” Miliam asked politely, prompting a snort from the man across the desk.
“Of serving yourself, you mean. Your offer comes only because you need something,” Corgan said, raising a hand to preempt Miliam’s response. Although she’d kept her composure, her heart was racing. “I did not bring you here merely to admonish you. As it happens, I need something as well, and your ship may just be the solution.”
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It was obvious from the glint in Corgan’s eyes and the slight smirk on his face that he would gain something from solving this problem as well. In other words, he intended to use Miliam and her ship to his own ends. That was fine, though; Miliam was hardly innocent in that regard at the moment.
“See, I happen to know about a problem my superiors have been dealing with for some time now. A crew of miners that decided the going rates weren’t good enough for them and supplies were getting too expensive, so they started holding up other ships for their supplies instead.”
“That sounds like something the fleet should have been able to handle,” Miliam pointed out.
“Yeah, if we had any ships with translocation drives,” Corgan replied sourly. “But we don’t. So by the time anyone can respond to a distress call, they’ve already disappeared into the gas giant’s rings. We’ve got no idea where they’re hiding. No search has managed to turn them up once they go to ground, and we can’t afford to leave True Eden undefended for too long because mirazar privateers have been raiding us for years now.”
“The mirazar? Why would they do that?” Miliam asked, not having expected that name to resurface here. She remembered Captain Ardyanto’s warning. But Corgan had specifically used the word privateer, not pirate, so that would seem to indicate it was government sponsored. That placed the mirazar navy, or at least their raiders, much further afield than they’d thought.
“Idiots are convinced all the independent colonies out here are just some thinly-veiled cover for Gaian Collective expansionism. They’re not looking to kill everyone, but they’d love it if we all packed up and went somewhere else.” Father Corgan shook his head in disgust. “Every few months they drop by and blow up a few orbital refineries or take some potshots at our ground based industry. Won’t listen when we tell them we hate the GC more than they do. It’s not like we can choose where God’s holy world is any more than we can up and move the planet.”
“Why…don’t they want everyone dead?” Miliam wondered, figuring the mirazar likely possessed a fleet easily capable of demolishing the one in orbit. Expelling or destroying the True Edenites should have been easy.
“Well, for one, they’re not fucking carillions,” the bureaucratic priest cursed, shocking Miliam with the sudden vulgarity. Clearly the man was not the most pious, at least in that regard. “For another, we might not like the Gaians, but the mirazar know full well they’d retaliate for the destruction of a human colony, just to make a point.
“But back on topic, that mining ship? They’ve scared most ships away by now, and we’re fairly sure the rest mining the rings are collaborators. That means they have no choice but to go further afield to hit new targets. They slingshot around the gas giant and coast towards their targets, then use their wave drive to get back before the response force reaches them. I don’t think anyone up top has put two and two together yet, but that means there’s a window where your ship could get between them and their hidey-hole. And since I was the first to propose it and refer you to the fleet, I get credit for the solution.”
Corgan gave a nasty smile as he revealed his true motivations. It made Miliam’s skin crawl, but at least it was a motivation she could understand. His career must have stalled and this was the perfect opportunity to add to his list of achievements.
“And…if we do that, you’ll get us the reactor component we need?” Miliam asked carefully, wanting confirmation before she agreed to anything. She hadn’t forgotten about the contract she’d signed with Abigail for the sale of her tome either; if she’d needed one for that, it would probably be best to demand one here as well.
“You’ll have to work that out with the navy, but I don’t see why not. Those guys have been making the fleet look bad for way too long. Can’t imagine there’s much they wouldn’t do to bring them in,” Corgan said. Internally, Miliam clicked her tongue. Dealing with the military would be a lot scarier than making an agreement with a mildly corrupt middle-manager. She could already feel herself developing ulcers at the thought.
“Either way…Aoibhe, can we manage a jump right now?” Miliam asked, turning to her pilot. Aoibhe put a hand to her chin as she thought it over.
“We drained our capacitors getting her, but…aye, it should be doable. An in-system jump isn’t nearly as power hungry, we just don’t usually do it because of the danger of there being another ship close to the destination- we already risk it once on the way into the system, no sense doing it again,” Aoibhe explained.
“And- what about the mining ship? How much of a threat do you think they’d be?” Miliam followed up.
“Eh, not much. At most they should have some mining lasers and those aren’t much stronger than point defense lasers. They’re probably only a threat to each other because their barriers are fine-tuned for impacts, not directed energy, and civilian sublight ships usually don’t have configurable barriers,” the pilot responded, shrugging a single shoulder.
Miliam had to admit she liked the sound of that…assuming it held true. But Aoibhe was the closest thing she had to a subject matter expert right now. She’d have to get a second opinion from Tessa before agreeing to anything, of course.
“In that case, I’ll at least consider it- but I’m not making any promises until I hear the plan from someone in the fleet,” Miliam said, hedging her agreement with a conditional just in case Tessa had a different opinion. Corgan just smiled.
“Good, good. I’ll have Brother Sal take you back to your ship- I have little doubt that someone will be contacting you shortly.”
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Codex: Mining
With easy access to the wave drive, mining has largely transitioned to focusing on asteroids and moons over terrestrial resources. Any location within a single star system can be reached within just a few hours, which combined with environmental concerns makes it much more preferable to obtain resources off-world, which is both safer and better for the environment. Asteroid mining is also cheaper because a fleet of mining vessels is mobile and can be reused on any asteroid, whereas a surface mine is in investment in infrastructure that is largely useless once the mine is exhausted.
Transmuting common minerals into rarer elements is still an extra step that consumes both time and energy, though, so some mining is still done on-world in order to obtain harder-to-find minerals like rhodium which are only marginally more common in asteroids than on planets. Others like iridium are more rare on-world than off, which has caused their value to plummet with the advent of asteroid mining. Common elements like copper, lead, and iron are almost never mined on inhabited worlds; even if asteroid sources were exhausted it is far more preferable to mine them from planets incapable of sustaining life.