Adrian left the flagship alone. He could’ve destroyed it easily enough, but he knew that the O’fa, as the commander of the Erasi ships, had to be on board that ship. And there were the levy ships that were technically part of the Erasi, although their numbers had been cut down by Anessa’s defenses. The Erasi had sent them into battles where they needed more numbers and not necessarily more firepower, and because only a small percentage of them were actually technologically on par with the Erasi ships of the line, they had taken heavy losses. He debated destroying their ships as well, but then decided that it would be better for them to get away and spread word of what happened.
Every Erasi ship was now retreating and trying to escape. Adrian noticed a few back elements of the Erasi, several thousand ships, had actually gotten pretty far while he had been destroying those that had stayed. He pointed the Enduring above their formations and skimmed there in an instant. In less than a minute, he had destroyed all of them. He turned the ship back, and skimmed to another group that had also gotten pretty far, and after dealing with them, he turned back to the Erasi flagship. There were no more Erasi ships of the line in the system; he had wiped them all out. The levy ships were running away, but he would be able to catch them. For now, he needed them to carry a message for him.
The Erasi flagship, on the other hand, would not leave this system. Again he skimmed, putting the Enduring above the Erasi flagship, which just stood there without attempting to fire. It struck him how big it had seemed from Gallant, and how small it looked from the Enduring. He opened a channel to the Erasi ship, the Enduring generating a hologram of Adrian under his guidance.
A moment later, Adrian could see the Erasi O’fa in his mind, and the O’fa could see him.
“You,” the O’fa said with contempt.
“Me,” Adrian said calmly. “I just wanted to know why.”
“Why what?”
“Why so much death and destruction? We could have prospered together, in friendship, in peace. And you threw everything just because you were worried that we could become a threat in the future?”
The O’fa snorted in amusement. “Thriving in peace is not possible. Eventually, one side will always turn on the other. It is inevitable; the only way to survive is by conquering and making sure that your ‘friends’ never grow enough to be a threat to you.”
“You really believe that?” Adrian asked.
“Yes, there is no other way. My people believed differently once, long ago, but we know now that strength is the only thing that can keep you safe.”
“The Erasi will need to change that stance, if they want to survive,” Adrian said. “If I let you go, would you convince the rest of the Erasi to abide by my terms and have peace?”
“No,” the O’fa said, showing his teeth. “That ship of yours tells me exactly how big of a threat you are to us. The others will see it as well; they might agree to whatever you demand, but they will always be searching for a way to surpass you.”
“You could’ve lied to save yourself,” Adrian commented.
“There is no point now, you were never going to let me go,” the O’fa said.
“No, I was not,” Adrian said. He closed the channel, and then fired a beam that engulfed and destroyed the Erasi warship.
Adrian recorded another message and sent it to every levy ship that was running; they were going to deliver his message. Then he started skimming across the system, destroying every Erasi defense platform at the trans-points before he finally let go of the Enduring’s control systems and returned to his body.
Interlude V
A long time ago
“I can’t believe that the council wants to try again,” Waiss said to Axull Darr as the two of them and Ullax walked through the corridors of the council building on Aus Alar, the homeworld of the People.
“We made mistakes last time. This time, we will not involve ourselves so closely,” Axull said.
“The races that we uplifted turned against us, Axull,” Ullax said.
“They were children, they weren’t mature enough to handle what we had given them. This time, it will be different,” Axull responded.
“I’m more worried about the other part of their plan,” Waiss said.
“I agree that it might be too intrusive, but it has a large chance for success because of it,” Axull said.
“They want us to put life on the same path as us; we would be overwriting anything that their natural evolution would come up with,” Ullax added.
“I agree that it seems too intrusive, but we won’t be copying our genetic code, we would just put parameters into the code of emerging primitive life that evolution will follow. We know that our forms are adaptable and suitable for everything that an advanced lifeform needs,” Axull said.
“No matter how much room we allow them for mutations and natural evolution, they will have features similar to ours,” Ullax argued.
“I think,” Waiss interjected, “that is the point. They think that life similar to us might also be more accepting of us.”
“And yet they still want us to continue with alterations of more advanced lifeforms,” Axull said.
“So when we are finished, half of the galaxy will look like us, and the other half will be unique,” Waiss said. “I wonder what they will think when they figure out how unlikely it is for two races to evolve in similar ways, let alone more than that,” Waiss laughed.
“It will also take far longer for those lifeforms that we alter in stage one to reach intelligence than it will take life that was already stage two when we alter them,” Ullax said.
“It will be a good opportunity to study different evolutions,” Axull said. “We will be able to see how their environments shape their technology.”
“And if this experiment turns out like our last one?” Waiss asked.
“We will not be guiding them directly this time, we won’t share our technology with them. They won’t be able to harm us this time,” Axull said.
No one spoke after Axull. All three were thinking back on the three races that they had uplifted. They had given them technology, taught them how to use it, guided them to the stars. And for that, their wards had turned against them. Their punishment had been severe; all of their technology had been destroyed, and all of their people taken back to their homeworlds and left there.
Axull knew that the years after their punishment had been hard for the three races; the People had been monitoring their progress. One of the races had tried to appeal to the People, for generations, until so much time had passed that they had even forgotten most everything about the People and the time they had spent in space. The only thing that remained were legends about a time when they had been great, but had committed a horrible crime and were cast down. Their society had turned to worship what they perceived as a force of power in the universe, the People. Their progress had been almost nonexistent. Another had turned to anger, had warred against each other. They had splintered into many factions, each blaming the others for going with the plan to turn against the People. They had been fighting for so long that they had even forgotten the reason for their fighting, but they had started technological progress. The last race, the Alphas, the first to be uplifted, had turned to a different path. They had accepted their guilt, and were pushing themselves to reach space again in order to make amends. Already they had been sending primitive communications into space, asking for forgiveness and a chance to make things right. The People had ignored them and gave no sign that they had received their communications.