“Yes, I finally had the time to spare and learn more.” Adrian said.
“That’s good, one should never stop learning.” Tomas said distracted. Adrian looked closely at Tomas, and then he noticed that Sora had raised her head from the floor where she had been napping, and that she was looking at Tomas. Adrian too studied Tomas. Sora had felt something which meant that he could too. The wolions were highly intelligent, and empathic. Adrian had realized it a long time ago, when he caught Akash and Sora using their ability on him. And over the past thirty years the two animals spent almost all of their time with him, over time the two wolions learned to project the feelings of others to Adrian, letting him feel them for himself. It was one thing that Adrian never told to anyone, except Iris. It was his secret weapon. And now Sora was projecting Tomas’ emotions to him.
Tomas was feeling trepidation, but there was also an undertone of fear, nervousness, and hesitation.
“Why did you really want to speak with me?” Adrian asked.
Tomas got up and walked to the window, looking out at the city. After a minute he turned to Adrian and spoke.
“The Sowir are on the move.” He said.
Immediately Adrian stood, “They broke the pact?”
Tomas shook his head sadly, “No. But they have a staging point in a system on their border, close to Nelus, and are gathering forces there. We believe they plan to finally finish them off.”
Adrian’s brow furrowed with concern, “But how do we know – Oh… We broke the pact didn’t we? We have assets inside their territory.”
“Yes. We had to make sure that they weren’t going to break their word. I know that it sounds hypocritical, but we had no choice. We only sent unmanned stealth drones to monitor their systems.”
“Did they find out?” Adrian asked.
“We have no reason to believe that they have, we had the drones moving through their territory for more than a decade. No, it’s likely that they just decided to take care of Nelus.”
Adrian narrowed his eyes. “There is more isn’t there?”
“The force that they gathered is big Adrian, a thousand warships with more arriving every day. Plus the support ships.” Tomas said slowly.
“A thousand?” Adrian said shocked, the Empire had nine hundred warships in its Fleets, not counting the support ships, with them the number was more like a thousand and two hundred. And also not counting the Clan guard’s, but even with them the number wasn’t much bigger. But a lot of that number would need to be set aside for defense, the Empire would never be able to attack with such large number.
“And we know they have more. These ships are coming from the heart of their territory, the ships they have guarding our border are still there.” Tomas said, “We believe that this force was gathered specifically to finish off Nelus.”
“And Nelus? How many ships do they have to defend themselves with?”
“Eight hundred and fifty warships, but four hundred of those are retrofitted merchant ships or their new cruiser class. Which according to everything we managed to learn about it is far inferior to their other ships. Its poorly made, the council cut corners everywhere it could.”
“I assume that this information comes from Clan Dai Ven and Clan Leader Jusan?” Adrian asked.
“Yes, there are a few people on Nelus that he kept in contact with, covertly of course.”
“Do they know about Sowir?”
“Jusan relayed a message to his contacts, whether they will believe it or not is another thing. But there is nothing we can do about them, we need to decide what to do about the Sowir.” Tomas said.
“Why didn’t you bring this up during the council meeting?”
“Because there wasn’t the need yet, it will take Sowir months if not years to conquer Nelus system, not counting the months it will take them to get there. And the Clans have very little to offer, the Clan guard was never intended to protect the Empire, that’s what the fleet is there for.”
“What does Laura think?” Adrian asked. His adoptive mother Laura Reiss was in charge of the Empire’s space fleet.
“Both Laura and the Hand suggest preemptive strike.” Tomas said.
“Really? Our ships are better, but do we even know how many ships Sowir have?”
“An estimate only. The preliminary plans are not for us attacking them head on, we would use our advantage over them, the trans-lanes, to attack their less defended systems cutting their numbers, and shipbuilding capability down.”
“Sounds like you already have a plan. If you didn’t tell the other Clan Leaders, why are you telling me?” Adrian asked.
Tomas looked Adrian in the eye. “I need to know the status of your fleet.”
“You know that already, we are sending the Warpath guard reports monthly to Sanctuary Fleet Headquarters.” Adrian said.
“What I meant to ask is: What is the status of your other fleet.” Tomas said, looking at Adrian gravely.
“So you know about that?”
“There is little that the Hand of the Empire keeps from me.” Tomas simply said.
“Well, I didn’t really think they wouldn’t tell you in any case.” Adrian smiled. “So why do you ask?”
“There is another version of the plan, one that involves Nelus. But we are not sure that we can do it with our numbers. If your fleet is everything I heard it is, perhaps we could do it.”
Adrian sighed and shook his head. “The ships aren’t ready yet… Probably won’t be for years. We are still developing technologies for them.”
“I was under the impression that they were operational?” Tomas asked.
Adrian grimaced. “They are technically… most of them can move, but there is still a lot of work to be done. These ships are still being built, and we are using methods vastly different than the Fleet. They are modular, with the capability to be upgraded as we wish easily. And we laid ground work in them for technologies that we simply don’t have or haven’t perfected yet. And even what we put in them now is just so that we can run tests. Hell, two of the ships don’t even have their hulls completed.”
“How long would it take to make the fleet battle worthy?” Tomas asked.
Adrian didn’t respond immediately, the fleet had been his baby almost since the founding of Warpath. He has been working on it for the past twenty years, more even if he counted the designs and planning. “Two years, one at the minimum.” Adrian said, “But before I even consider committing the fleet I need to know your plan. My fleet isn’t like the others Tomas, it is… Specialized.”
“Of course, let me tell you what we have come up with, and you can then tell me what you think…” Tomas said. They spent the next hour talking, and then Adrian went to his home on Sanctuary, he would need to rest for tomorrow.
Chapter Three
Hyeon Seo-yun, Sanctuary’s Minister of Science walked through the Emperor’s palace after another hard day’s work. She was exhausted, she spent half of the day on the southern continent because they had a problem in one of their field research stations, and she needed to be there in person. And the other half of the day she spent in her lab in Olympus City, working on the same project she did for the past thirty years. The alien sphere, or as it turned out, not so alien. The sphere that the Nel Councilmember Jusan – now Clan Leader of the Clan Dai Ven – brought with him when he ‘defected’ to the Empire was in fact a highly sophisticated data container left on the Nel home planet by both the Nel and human ancestor, Axull Darr.
It came as a bit of a shock when they found out that the human and Nel races were in fact engineered. It wasn’t like they were made as a completely new life form, Axull Darr used most of his genetics – that of the race that simply called itself the People – to make them, in a way they were his children. And he did it in such a way that even with all of their technology they hadn’t realized it until they knew where to look. Presumably Axull Darr found suitable planets that already had life, and altered the organisms on them, imprinting the DNA of what would later become the human and Nel race, so that it would take hundreds of thousands if not even millions of years until they became what Axull Darr imagined.