“And this Kar Daim now wishes to start peaceful relations with us?” Adrian asked.
“Yes. The Kar Daim wishes for you to send a team of envoys that can make agreements on the behalf of your Emperor. If your response is affirmative, my ship is to escort the envoys to Shara Radum to speak with the Kar Daim. Only two military escorts aside from a ship carrying the envoys will be permitted in our territory,” Va Dan Reisi said.
“I will need to consult with my Emperor first, but I believe that those terms will be acceptable. Meanwhile, we will provide you quarters here on our base,” Adrian said, he debated pushing for more information on this Kar Daim, but he felt the Shara Daim’s reluctance and unease when he spoke of him or her, and Adrian didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize this chance. Adrian stood, with the rest following. With his imp, he called an adept from outside the room and gave them instructions. An adept entered. “Adept Sunai here will escort you to your quarters,” Adrian said, gesturing at the Nel woman. The Shara Daim inclined their heads and followed the adept out, Song of Silence trailing silently in their wake.
Adrian remained inside with Gotu.
“You think that they had the time to organize and remove their Elders from power?” Gotu asked.
“Hmm… We don’t know how their society works. Not really. Everything we know comes from the Erasi, and the little Anessa spoke of,” Adrian answered.
“It could be a trap,” Gotu cautioned. “Only three ships in the heart of their territory.”
“I don’t see what it would accomplish. They can’t plan on getting our technology; they must know that we would destroy our own ships before we allow them to take them. That is assuming they manage to catch us.”
“They could be trying to kill you. You did destroy one of their Legions,” Gotu said.
“That is true, and I did tell Anessa that I can make agreements on the behalf of the Emperor. Any attempt at diplomacy would mean me… But I doubt it. It’s too much trouble just to kill me, and they would destroy any chances they have of having peace. And the Emperor would not allow my death to go unavenged; we would attack, and with them already fighting the Erasi, we could do a lot of damage,” Adrian said.
“True, but you can’t always apply logic to other races. Not everyone thinks like you do; to them it might be a matter of honor. They might not even have any choice but to attempt to kill you,” Gotu said.
Adrian remained silent. Would Anessa counsel their leaders to do that? Would she even want to kill him? He knew that there was something between them, a mutual respect, attraction, but was it enough for him to be able to trust that the Shara Daim leaders really wanted to talk? It didn’t matter in the end. He would go. Tomas would agree because he didn’t want a war, and this was an opportunity they couldn’t pass.
“I need to speak with Tomas, it’s his decision,” Adrian said, and left the room, going to his own quarters to make the call in private.
Adrian sat in his private office reading a book as he waited for a response from Tomas. Even with the relays, there was some lag and they couldn’t speak in real-time. The lag between Sanctuary and Sol was around twenty minutes in one direction now, with relays between the two systems placed at every fifty lightyears along the way.
Finally, his comm chirped, announcing that the lag of forty minutes for his message to reach Tomas and his response to come back had ended. Adrian continued reading, as it would probably be some time before Tomas sent the response back. He would take time to listen to Adrian’s message and then formulate an answer. Adrian had sent him a written report along with the video message. Another hour later, his comm chirped with the sound of an incoming message, and Adrian accepted.
A hologram of Tomas appeared in front of him and started speaking.
“Adrian, I guess that your gamble paid off in the end. Of course we will accept the Shara Daim’s offer and send an envoy. Your request that it be you is, of course, granted. You may choose your escorts from the fleets in Sol; I already informed Laura and she agreed. As for what we are prepared to grant, that will depend on what they want. They are in a state of war with the Erasi, and while the Erasi have tried to infiltrate and manipulate us, we would rather not do anything that could be construed as us entering in this conflict. That being said, we have a lot of evidence to support that Erasi are not really good long-term ally material, but neither are the Shara Daim. It will be up to you in the end; I trust your judgment. I’m sending you everything that our analysts have on the Shara Daim and Erasi conflict, as well as what the most likely outcome of it will be. Good luck,” Tomas’s hologram said, and then it disappeared, the message ending.
Adrian’s imp had already downloaded the data Tomas sent from Olympus Mons servers, and he settled in to read it over. He would need to know as much as possible if he was going to deal with this Kar Daim.
Adrian sat on board the Veritas as it skimmed towards the outgoing trans-station flanked by two battleships, the Inglorious and the Fortunate. Johanna had refused to let him go with only cruisers, even though he had argued that there was no need for her to send him with battleships, as he didn’t want to take so much firepower away from the fleets. But in the end, she had won, not wanting to send him to ‘hostile’ territory with anything less.
The Shara Daim envoy stood to Adrian’s side. He had managed to convince Va Dan Reisi that the trip to Shara Daim homeworld would go much faster if his ship was in the hangar of the Veritas and they skimmed across the systems they passed through. The trip to the Shara Daim border system of Var Dara would take about three to four months for a Shara Daim ship, and another eight months to Shara Radum. The Empire’s ships could get there in less than four months. The fastest route utilized both trans-lanes and a couple of hyperspace routes, but with the skimming, his ships could move across entire systems almost immediately, which cut into the travel time considerably. And as it turned out, the Empire had slightly faster hyper-drives.
Veritas and its escorts dropped from their skim right on top of the trans-station, and then they entered into trans-space on their way to Shara Radum.
Tarabat
Hanaru, Weaver of the Erasi, looked over the latest report from the ambassador to the Empire. A Shara Daim courier ship had arrived and a few days later left with three Empire ships, presumably on their way to Shara Daim. The only explanation was that they were envoys, and the Erasi could not allow for any kind of dialogue to take place, or even worse, the creation of an alliance. Especially now when they were at a critical point in their invasion. It would be another sixteen months before the second wave arrived. They couldn’t afford the Empire complicating things; they needed to hold on to the key systems in the Shara Daim territory and prepare for the arrival of other fleets.
His suspicions about the Empire and the Shara Daim grew daily, especially since they had learned about the change in Shara Daim leadership. Dai Sha Anessa had killed the Elders and taken over the rule of the Shara Daim. The same Dai Sha that had been a prisoner of the Empire, and then later attacked the system where, after they were defeated, she was allowed to leave. It made no sense, unless somehow the Empire had put the Dai Sha in position to take the power, but there didn’t seem to be any evidence of them meddling.
Changing a government of an empire was something the Erasi would do, but this seemed too fast. The Empire had just recently moved into the area; there was no way for them to have had the time to orchestrate a change in Shara Daim leadership. Unless everything that the Erasi believed about them was a clever lie. Already they had seen too much that didn’t make sense—false information, deceptive strength… Who knew what else that Hanaru believed about them wasn’t true.