Anessa still felt uncomfortable with watching someone else command her Legion and ship, but after many long talks, Adrian had convinced her that she as Kar Daim should assume command over all the Legions. And she could see the benefits of that, but it still felt foreign to her. She was using a command board based on the Empire’s technology to watch the battle, adapted to her people’s telepathic interfaces so that it could be used by the combination of telepathy and hand gestures. The Empire’s version was controlled by hand and their implants, and no matter how much Adrian tried to convince her that they were perfectly safe, she was not ready to put a device inside her head.
She watched several battles play out on the ‘c-board’ and sent additional orders where required. Meanwhile, Garaam, Anessa’s best friend and the new commander of the First Legion, battled a fleeing Erasi formation. Anessa watched as Garaam commanded the battle, and while she completely trusted her friend, a part of her that was still a Dai Sha wanted to take charge directly. But she resisted the urge, focusing instead on the battles in front of her raging across the entire system.
Anessa entered her quarters exhausted, immediately dropping to her bed. She felt someone get on the bed and looked at the wolion—Akash—who had jumped on the bed and laid at the foot of it, making himself comfortable. Anessa was still surprised at how much she had come to care for the beasts. The first time she had seen Adrian’s two wolions, they had been attacking her, defending Adrian. And Anessa was sure that she had hurt Akash during the fight, and yet somehow he had come to care for her as if she had been by his side as long as Adrian had.
And she knew that beyond any doubt, as the wolions had Sha abilities—they could project emotions. She didn’t know what the wolions saw in her, but she was glad for their affection. Her life had changed so much since that first encounter. She had taken the rule of Shara Daim by force, and she had started a… relationship with Adrian. Someone who was technically the same species as her, but not really. They were very different, and yet they understood each other. They had found comfort in each other’s presence that neither of them had felt before. But the main reason as to why she had made the decision to make him her Dal A’sha—her life partner—was because she needed to make sure that the alliance between the Empire and the Shara Daim succeeded.
Ever since she had become the Kar Daim, she’d known that they needed that alliance to fight off the Erasi. She had learned everything that the Elders had kept from their people, and she knew exactly how unprepared the Shara Daim were for a true war against someone who was technologically their equal. Her Legions had stopped and were now in the process of pushing back the Erasi invading force, but that initial force had never been her true concern. She’d always known that once the Legions gathered, they would be able to defeat them. Her worry had always been the prospect of an extended war. The Shara Daim industry couldn’t match that of the Erasi, who had more people, more worlds, and more resources, who had good relations with other races and benefited greatly from trade with them, while the Shara Daim were widely hated by their neighbors—which was their own fault—and had stagnated over the years under the Elders’ guidance. The Erasi would win any prolonged war, and her Legions didn’t have enough strength to push into the Erasi territory.
The Shara Daim needed an ally, and the Empire was probably the only race that was willing to deal with them. She needed to do everything in her power to make sure that that alliance succeeded, even if she had to bind her life to someone she despised. Fortunately, she didn’t despise Adrian. Well, she had in the beginning when he had taken her prisoner. But since then, she had come to respect him greatly, both him as a person and his skills, and over time that had turned into affection.
The alliance with the Empire had already benefited the Shara Daim greatly, as the Empire had shared some of its advanced technology and brought experts to teach her people on how to operate it. The original agreement was for the Empire to provide military assistance to push the Erasi out of Shara Daim territory, but when the Erasi had reached out to them to ‘negotiate,’ Adrian had asked her to change the agreement a little. The Emperor wanted to try and reach a peaceful solution, something that her people didn’t take well, but in return for the Shara Daim agreeing to try a diplomatic avenue, they had shared their inter-system FTL technology. They had also sent over a large fabricating ship to speed up the construction of the new Shara Daim shipyards that would utilize that technology.
Now, the situation was very different. Every Shara Daim shipyard was working at full power to build new Legions, and the fabricating shipyards were under construction, and with the trade with the Empire, the notion of a prolonged war was no longer as dire. Or it wasn’t until they’d learned of the force that the Erasi had assembled. Now she wasn’t sure that they could win, not without losing a lot of territory and Legions.
But for now, she had the upper hand. She closed her eyes and forced herself to rest. Tomorrow her Legions would leave the system to ambush several Erasi fleets, pushing their momentary advantage.
Chapter Twelve
September; Year 58 of the Empire — Unknown system — Erasi super battleship
Weaver Hanaru looked over the new information with interest. His new stealth ships had proven to be undetectable by whatever technology the Empire used to see their previous generation, and the scouts had sent back a lot of very interesting information. They had finally found the Empire’s more developed systems and a few possible targets. They had also found the Empire’s principal system—Sanctuary. On a whim, Hanaru had sent one of the scouts to a system he had seen on a map that he received from the Ancient, a system that was inside a nebula.
That system had been the most developed one they’d found to date, with several planets and dozens of planetoids, hundreds of stations, shipyards, mining stations, and tens of thousands of ships moving around. Immediately, it was apparent that it was their principal system, and the only reason they had found it was because they’d known that that system was there. The system had only one incoming trans-route, and a few outgoings, but Hanaru’s scouts couldn’t use trans-routes because using them was clearly detectable. Instead, they moved through hyperspace, and the only reason that they could reach Sanctuary was because they knew its exact location. His scouts had dropped out of hyperspace inside the nebula just enough to hide their entrance, but close enough to the clearing inside the nebula that they were safe from the system’s Oort cloud, which was hidden in the nebula.
Immediately, Hanaru saw the advantage of a hidden system. Unless one knew the exact location where they could drop out of hyperspace, they would’ve never found it, and Hanaru only knew because the Ancient’s people had passed through it and mapped it out. There was a note in the maps that said that the system was habitable and rich, but that they were unwilling to settle a system which wasn’t a hub. Every race preferred hub systems to those that had few trans-routes; they were tactical positions that provided a perfect launching pad for growth. The Empire seemed like it didn’t care for that.
Now Hanaru had a choice to make: to hit one of the other of their large systems, or to hit Sanctuary. This system did have the biggest shipyard that they had detected to date, and he didn’t have much time to search for others, and attacking it would send a right message. The plan was to cripple the Empire’s manufacturing ability while also forcing them to pull their forces back to defend their own territory, allowing the Ancient to deal only with the Shara Daim.