The first thing that he had ordered his stealth ships to attempt to find out was the location of the Empire’s principal system, the home of their government. The Empire had never told them, and the Weavers had never managed to find out, and while he doubted that the stealth ships could intercept any important communications, as advanced races usually used hyperspace communications or tight beam ones for any important and classified information, any populated system always had other means of communication that could be listened in on. And while such communications would rarely contain what he could use, they might get lucky.
Hanaru did not yet have a finalized plan on how he was going to execute his orders; for that, he needed more information. But he did have several ideas on how to make sure that the Empire pulled their support of the Shara Daim. The biggest problem he saw was that he didn’t actually know how big of a force the Empire had. The Ancient had a large fleet, one that Hanaru doubted could be defeated by even the alliance between the Empire and Shara Daim, but it could slow the conquest of the Shara Daim down. And that was what they were trying to prevent. The Empire’s technologies could prove extremely difficult to deal with, especially their intersystem FTL drives, which made their forces extremely hard to ambush and far more versatile. Even only several such fleets could be a nightmare to deal with.
And if the Empire had more such fleets to send to the Shara Daim’s aid, this campaign could drag out for far longer than the Erasi could allow it to. As Hanaru understood, the fleets that had arrived with O’fa Garash were taken from the rimward frontier, and he knew that they could not allow the war with the Shara Daim to drag on, or they risked their enemy on the rimward border detecting the weakness. The force that the Ancient took away from the border was small compared to the rest of fleets assigned there, but the war had been in a state of equilibrium for so long that many in the Erasi feared the enemy noticing that small weakness and exploiting it. On the other hand, the enemy hadn’t tested the border in well over three decades, and many had turned to the thinking that they had finally decided that it wasn’t worth it for them to expand in the Erasi’s direction, and so they had allowed the force to be moved to the front against the Shara Daim. Hanaru understood why that was. The Shara Daim were a threat that would’ve eventually have attacked the Erasi, and allowing them to grow stronger and to make the first move was foolish.
Hanaru had several plans on how to make sure that the Empire was too busy to aid their new allies. One had been to split up his forces and hit several systems at once, forcing the Empire to chase after his forces. Although, as the information acquired by the new stealth ships came in, that plan was more and more unlikely. Firstly because for some reason the population centers of the Empire were spread out, with a lot of systems in between left empty. Their territory wasn’t nearly as densely populated as that of either the Erasi or the Shara Daim. And splitting up the fleet would be far less effective; with the speed of the Empire ships and the distances between their populated systems, his forces wouldn’t have been able to deal nearly as much damage as they would’ve been able against a more densely populated empire. And the Empire ships would’ve intercepted his ships before they even reached secondary targets, meaning at best they would’ve been able to hit only the primary targets. Then there was the second problem: every populated system was extremely well defended, far more than similarly sized systems in the Erasi, which meant that he would need to make the forces larger in order for them to succeed, and that would reduce the number of systems he could hit at the same time.
So he was starting to lean towards the other plan: attack a major system, one with high population and industry, preferably one that had most of their shipyards. After such a hit, he could scatter his fleets and use them as small insurgent-type forces, attacking targets of opportunities and forcing the Empire to deploy a large number of their ships for the purpose of hunting down his forces.
Hanaru mused about his plans, but ultimately decided that he need more information before deciding on a plan. In any case, he still had some time before the deadline that the Ancient gave him. Better that he waited and made sure that his attack would fulfill his mission than to attack early and fail.
Chapter Six
Shara Radum system
Adrian sat on the podium of a large cave with his legs crossed, or rather his avatar did. The ceiling of the cave was far above him, and several small tunnels led away from the central chamber he was in. The cave had no natural light source, but it was illuminated anyway; the large cave complex was, after all, inside his mind. It was a part of his mind, a library of sorts for all his memories. Each tunnel led to different places, where different parts of his memories were stored. Moments from his childhood that he had long forgotten, every word of books he had read long ago, details of encounters and conversations that had occurred decades ago. All those memories were there for him to access and refresh. The cave complex was only a ‘visual’ construct, something to help him organize his thoughts and defend them from outside influence. Adrian’s construct was a cave system buried deep inside of a mountain, the rocks of the mountain representing his defenses, while the vastness of the caves represented his power.
Adrian felt a presence at the edge of his telepathic shields, and he lowered his defense. A moment later, Lurker of the Depths, or rather his avatar, stood before Adrian dressed in the Sowir version of the Empire’s skinsuits. Adrian’s teacher was the one who had taught Adrian how to create this construct in order to better store and protect his memories. Making a mind construct was the greatest achievement a telepath could achieve, and only the most powerful Sowir were capable of it. It was the ultimate defense against other telepaths, a place where a telepath was the strongest. It was a place where telepaths stored their most important memories and the core of who they were, buried deep within, where an invader would have great difficulty reaching.
It had taken Adrian decades to build his construct, but as his teacher had told him, it usually took far longer for others. But Adrian had an advantage—his mindspace. While similar, the two abilities were not the same thing. Adrian’s mindspace was unique; it allowed him to speed up his mind processing power far above what he was able to do while ‘awake,’ and that allowed him to alter his perception of time. He was still not able to make the time dilatation constant, but on average he could spend weeks in his mindspace while only an hour passed in real-time. His absolute control of his body had not only allowed him to improve his fighting skills far above anyone else, but had also given him time to study, to develop new techniques, to reflect on his actions and to plan for the future. Inside his mindspace, he had already been able to make smaller constructs, people made up from his memories, that he could train against or use as inspiration or a way to debate his own decisions and ‘converse’ with his subconscious mind.
Adrian’s avatar stood and faced Lurker of the Depths. “Teacher,” he sent. He didn’t really speak with telepathy. Inside this construct, they were so connected that they could understand each other even if Adrian spoke ‘vocally,’ but the Sowir had no vocal ability, so it seemed respectful that he used ‘telepathy.’
“It’s bigger than it was last time,” Lurker of the Depths commented, and Adrian felt/saw several distinct emotions and images flash before him. Now that they were inside Adrian’s construct, their minds were extremely close, and some of the Sowir way of communicating slipped through. Adrian felt awe, envy, and, underneath those emotions, a strong line of pride. It made Adrian feel good to know that his teacher was proud of his achievements, even though he was envious of what he had accomplished. Sowir didn’t really communicate with words, more like thoughts that were impressions of physical sensations and emotions coupled with images. But communicating through telepathy was different; each side interpreted the other’s means of communication as something that they understood.