And Adrian was not above lying to get his way. Either the Dai Sha would realize her mistake and the Empire and Shara Daim would start a conversation. Or she would never see her people again.
“You were not born with the Sha?” she asked, surprised.
“No, I received it fifteen years ago, and my body was artificially enhanced in order for me to be able to use them effectively,” Adrian answered.
Her face twisted into something between being disgusted and impressed.
Adrian leaned towards her. “Now, will you tell me why you attacked me?”
“Your people were supposed to be slaves. I believed you an escaped slave of the Ra’a’zani,” she said hesitantly.
“That still doesn’t explain why you attacked me.”
“You are weak; you allowed yourselves to become slaves. You deserve no recognition from the true heirs,” she said.
Adrian thought about her words. It sounded like their belief system revolved around strength. That did fit into what he had already found out from the Erasi net.
“I am weak?” Adrian asked, and then motioned to her current condition.
That brought a spark of anger to her eyes. “There were more of you,” she said, and glanced at Akash and Sora, who were standing behind him.
“But still, I doubt that you can categorize us as weak.”
“No,” she said, but he could see her fighting with herself.
“Alright, we need to change gears. I don’t plan on keeping you here forever. I only took you because I wanted to know why you attacked me, and what information you wanted to claim from me. I never planned on keeping you a prisoner. Tell me, and I will release you. There is no need for the first contact between our people to go like this.”
She studied him, and he saw her thinking. Then, after a minute or two, she spoke, “I wanted to know the location of your homeworld.”
“Why? Didn’t you already know that from the Ra’a’zani?”
“The clans I destroyed had no such information, nor did they have human slaves. We only recovered information that you existed. My task was to locate the remaining Ra’a’zani clans and find the human slaves.”
“And our homeworld? Why do you need to know that?”
“The Elders of Shara Daim have charged me with finding your homeworld and your device left by Axull Darr.”
Adrian frowned. “Why would you need that? All the devices are the same.”
She remained silent. Adrian tried to think why they would need it. To keep it out of Ra’a’zani hands was a likely answer. But the Ra’a’zani couldn’t hear its beacon, even if they did have telepathy. And it was unlikely that they would find it by accident like the Nel had. And then it hit him. All the information about the Shara Daim in the Erasi net, everything that he had learned about them—they had been in space for a long time, and their technology was on the level of the Erasi, even that of the Empire.
“You lost yours, didn’t you?” Adrian asked.
She didn’t respond, but he could see the truth in her eyes.
“You wanted ours. You didn’t care that we were slaves to the Ra’a’zani. I thought you might have wanted to help us. But no, you made it clear when we first met that you don’t care about us, and again just now, when you said that we were weak. You truly believe that those weaker than you are insignificant,” Adrian said, disappointed.
She remained quiet. Adrian shook his head, then turned and left her there. She would stay his prisoner a little bit longer. He had a lot of things to think about, and a soon-to-be pissed-off Emperor to explain himself to.
Chapter Forty-One
October – Sanctuary
Tomas stood in a meeting room surrounded by his advisors. Laura and Jack sat on his left, with Sumia, Seo-yun, and Nadia on his right. All of them had just watched the holo message from Adrian; he had already seen it last night. He still couldn’t decide how he felt about it.
“Shara Daim…” Nadia said. “Adrian has probably put us on a course that will lead to war with them.”
Jack shook his head. “If what Adrian has found out is true, they will be coming for the sphere still on Earth. This would have happened even if he hadn’t taken one of theirs. They call themselves the true heirs, which should tell you everything that you need to know about them. They wouldn’t have cared that Earth was no longer enslaved by the Ra’a’zani.”
“You think that they would have attacked rather than negotiated?” Laura asked.
“She told Adrian that we were weak for allowing the Ra’a’zani to conquer us. By their belief, that makes us unworthy. You have seen the data Adrian sent from the Erasi net. They roll over anyone that they consider weak. They are bigoted and intolerant towards those not of their own kind,” Jack answered.
Sumia looked at him, seeming unconvinced. “We are very close to being their kind; we are all descendants of the People.”
“And yet the first thing this ‘Dai Sha’ did was try and kidnap Adrian, take him, and get information about Earth from him. That should tell you how much they respect us being descendants of the People,” Jack said. “If she had encountered anyone other than Adrian and his Sentinel, we wouldn’t have known anything about the Shara Daim until their ships showed up in Sol going straight for Earth.”
“I would like to see them try and find the sphere in that firestorm.” Laura snorted. “I doubt that they could even get down to the ground.”
Tomas scratched his chin. “There is no point in debating whether it was the right call or not. I put Adrian in charge of the Sentinel program because I trust his instincts. If he believes that this was the best course of action, then that is the end of discussion. Now based on his recommendations and information, we need to make a plan.”
“I’m sending two more fleets to Sol,” Laura said. “We don’t really need them in other sectors for now, and the remaining fleets can cover theirs for a time.”
“You are preparing us for war,” Seo-yun said. “Why just not return the prisoner to the Shara Daim and try to get them to talk?”
“You, better than anyone, should know how much power the knowledge in the sphere holds,” Jack answered. “I doubt that they will settle for anything other than us giving them the sphere. And what do you think they will do with it after?”
Seo-yun remained quiet, not having anything to say to that.
“Adrian has a plan,” Tomas said, “one that includes the prisoner, and I think that it is worth a try. In the meantime, we need to prepare for war. One other problem is the Erasi. They have an agenda, and we need to find out what it is.”
A few days later, Tomas entered another meeting room. This one was filled with very different people. On one side of the room stood three Guxcacul, representatives of their council. On the other stood three representatives of the Nelus government. Tomas stopped in front of them.
“Thank you for coming,” he said.
“Your invitation was compelling,” Sisstra, Elder of the Guxcacul, said through her translator.
“Yes, we were… intrigued,” Sestar Nimuse of the Nelus government said.
“I hope that you had the chance to read through my proposal,” Tomas said.
“We did. It is… interesting,” Sisstra said.