“We understand. It is because of the insane orders of the Council that the people and the fleet finally found the will to break away from their rule.” Hishok Tansi said.
“You finally taking control over your own lives is good, but there is a lot of mistrust between my people and yours. In time we might be able to repair it, for now you are welcome aboard my ship.” With that Isani left the room leaving telling Liz to take care of their guests over his implant. He headed toward his quarters to talk to the Emperor.
Sanctuary
“So Nelus wants to talk?” Sumia asked. On the Emperor’s request she had been staying at her house on Sanctuary, in case that he needed to speak with her in person on matters concerning Nelus or the Sowir.
“It looks like it. As they say they had rebelled against the Council’s rule, and wish to open talks with us.” Tomas said.
“I can’t believe that they rebelled… The ruling Houses always had such an iron grip on Nelus.” Sumia commented.
“It has been a long time, and their society had stood still. No advances, no expansion, they were stagnating. Seeing our smaller fleet defeat such overwhelming Sowir fleet must have been the last drop.” Tomas said.
“Well, at least they had finally come to their senses. So what do I have to do with this?” Sumia asked.
Tomas smiled at her perceptiveness. “I want you to head the talks with them.”
“I knew that it was going to be something like that…” She said resigned.
“So you’ll do it?”
“Yes, I’ll go talk with them. But I will need a list of things that we want from the talk.” Sumia said.
“Already prepared.” Tomas said and handed her a small data chip.
Sumia shook her head. “Of course it is.”
Hishok Tansi sat in a spacious room provided to him aboard the Emprie ship with Sestar Nimuse and Massar Erani. It had been a few days since their arrival, and they had been on informed that an envoy from the Empire was on her way to Nelus in order to speak with them. But in the meantime the three had been allowed to look through some of the Empire’s databases, mainly their history as well as entertainment channels. But they were also allowed to view a small portion of their tech databases.
“How could we have allowed Tavaar and the rest of the council to blind us so much. To let us convince that the humans were so primitive when they first contacted us?” Hishok Tansi asked.
“Tavaar is a great speaker and manipulator, he can spin anything in his favor. And we trusted him blindly because we were afraid. Fear can make people do insane things. I too was content to keep my head down and accumulate wealth and power, it took me a long time to realize how wrong I was.” Nimuse said.
“I can understand how the council fooled the people, it is they who controlled the media and information. But the fleet was different. Our ships were close enough to take readings of the human ships when they first arrived, and we watched their records of battle for Nuva. And yet once Tavaar’s experts came out with their story we took it as truth, believing in it even though we should have known better.” Massar Erani added.
“Have you had the chance to look at their technology?” Hishok Tansi asked.
“Yes. If even half of it is true, they are leagues ahead of us now.” Erani answered.
“And their history… Their home world is destroyed, and thirty years ago they were just one colony! Now they have spread so much and so fast… It is mind boggling.” Tansi said.
“Did you come across the information on the connection between us and humans?” Nimuse asked, her face twitching for a moment.
“No, there is so much to read I didn’t have the chance…” Tansi said.
“You should look it up, apparently there is much more to Jusan’s defection to the Empire than it was apparent to us.” Nimuse said.
“I’ll look it up as soon as I get the chance.” He promised, then hesitated before continuing to speak. “But, do we even know what we want from these talks?”
“Establishing good and neighborly relations are our priority.” Eran said, “It will take time for us to repair the damage done by the council. We can worry later about what we want from the relationship.”
Tansi and Nimuse both agreed. The three of them spent the next hour fleshing out the details of what their approach would be, and then retired to their respective rooms to rest. All of them knew that the negotiations would be long and difficult.
Chapter Twenty Five
Ten days after the battle for Nelus – Sowir inner system Laraska
Fleet Commander Bethany Jones-Wright sat on the command center of her flagship leading the Second Fleet as they were taking control of the Laraska system. They had been fighting in the system for three days now. She got the report from the battle at Nelus, and she knew that Adrian managed to defeat a Sowir force almost six times larger than his own. But that he also suffered a lot of losses, she didn’t read too much of the report, focusing instead on her own battle.
She had already received word from the Third Fleet about their action in the Rasaka system. The information on the true Sowir and their apparent mind abilities was very interesting, but not really important to her efforts to take this system. Her army regiments were informed of it, and as she understood it, while the ability was amazing and they didn’t understand anything about it yet, it could be countered easily simply by one being forewarned. But it was the army that would deal with that when they start taking the shipyards and stations in the system, she needed to deal with the Sowir in space.
And while the system didn’t have many ships defending it, it was one of their major industrial systems. They had significant fixed defenses. She had managed to goad and then destroy sixty of one hundred and forty enemy ships in the system on the first day of fighting, then she focused on destroying their defense platforms from far out of their effective range by using her ships kinetic weapons.
That was one big advantage of mass movers, their range didn’t really have a limit. They would speed through space until they impact something. Which was great at destroying target that didn’t move, or at least moved on predictable fixed courses. By the end of the second day she had destroyed the last of the platforms, and now the rest of the Sowir ships were moving to engage hers in a pointless attack. She moved her one hundred Kraken class ships to intercept the remaining eighty Sowir ships.
Eighty Sowir ships moved in a tight concave lens formation, speeding towards the Empire dreadnoughts firing their missiles and lasers. The Empire’s ships moved slowly towards the Sowir and the incoming wave of missiles and laser fire. The Kraken class field defense was weaker than that of the Vanguard ships, but even so the Sowir laser fire was being dissipated completely before it could have a chance of touching the hull. As the missiles entered the range of the dreadnoughts point defenses they started to die. Within a minute all of the Sowir missiles were gone and the Empire ships changed to offense. They opened fire with their particle weapons blowing the smaller Sowir ships to bits.
Soon the last of the Sowir ships exploded, and were just minutes before stood eighty ships now only a slowly expanding field of debris was.
With the destruction of the last threat to her ships in the system, Bethany gave the go ahead to the army to begin the operations of taking control of the Sowir shipyards and stations. The ground would be more difficult, but after they take control of the space installations they will turn to it. For now she stood away from the planet, they didn’t know what numbers the Sowir – true Sowir had on the grounds, but they did have a significant number of their agents. The plan was to try and get the Sowir to surrender, but the offer wouldn’t be coming until the prisoners from the border system are transferred back to Sanctuary and interrogated. In the meantime Beth would have her hands full with securing the system.