Faith & Empire: Book One of The Holy Terran Empire

10. REPAIRS and RESEARCH

The freed hostages were tended to, interviewed and allowed to send messages to their home planets. The majority of them were citizens of the Union of Democratic Worlds. They were survivors of the plundered caravels out of Caraquador, pilgrims on their way to visit Earth. They told us they represented only half the prisoners taken from the caravels. The missing half, mostly children and young women, were distributed, they said, among some of the pirate governors throughout the sector.

Commodore Alba assured them that should any of their relatives and friends be found on those worlds, the Empire would see to reuniting them. And in the next few days, many did learn that their loved ones were safe in the custody of the Shimabara and La Vallette Battle Groups.

Besides the UDW pilgrims, a dozen Imperial citizens were found among the hostages as were forteen Federation citizens. There was even an extended family of eleven Kaninu, human-canine hybrids from Nike, the capital of the faraway Legion of Independent Planets.

As eager as everyone was to return to our respective homes, and as eager as we marines were to return to our Regiment's HQ on Saint Ambrose, we were all forced to spend another three months in the Muvurunian system affecting repairs on our ships.

Fortunately, the pirates had done no real damage to the place. To their credit, they did a good job of maintaining the bases in good working order. The various resources, tools and machine shops on the bases proved of inestimable help with the repairs. Our engineers were spared the necessity of calling in a service fleet for aid and materials.

During those three months we explored every planet in the system, paying particular attention to every inch of each installation. Through our investigations, it quickly became apparent that, having operated on the farthest-flung frontier of the Dominion, the Muvuru system had survived untouched by the Holy League's crusade and the subsequent catastrophic collapse that consumed the worlds of the old empire.

It seemed the Muvuru system had simply been abandoned during the war and all but forgotten.

More thorough scanning of Muvuru-3 revealed that there were indeed, tens of thousands of ore wyrms eating away at the planet's mantle. Their incessant burrowing was steadily compromising the integrity of the tectonic plates. Sunken plains like the one we landed on pock-marked much of the world, the result of mantle crumbling.

Our scientists estimated that a few more centuries of unabated wyrm drilling would cause a planet-altering cataclysm. Computer models predicted massive fissuring of the world's outer shell accompanied with increasing, ever more violent volcanic activity. Chunk after chunk of the planet would eventually begin flying off into space until the orbit became unstable and Muvuru-3 would either fall into the system's star or spin away into the depths of the plenum.

We further discovered that the pirates had done a good job of scouring the tunnels of the more valuable wyrm deposits. The bulk of the treasure had indeed been used to purchase all the hardware they used to murderous effect against us, but a considerable hoard remained unspent in deep-buried vaults on Muvuru 3's moon.

Besides the piles of beryllium, moissanite, vanadium, tistarite and other precious ores, the installations were loaded down with artifacts and various and sundry materials presumedly stolen from scores of worlds.

Above and beyond the careful upkeep of the pirates, the installations discovered across the Muvurunian system were a testament to the quality of old Dominion engineering. According to the prisoners, the bases were discovered fifty to seventy years ago, depending on who you asked. (None of the surviving pirates claimed to be there at the discovery, so we could not know for sure.) The aether generators on the various bases were still functioning nearly a thousand years after the mining operations ceased, producing just enough power to maintain environmental control and, on Muvuru-3, keep the the protective force bubble around the base on so as to spare it from the ravengings of Ore Wyrms.