by Ivan Kal
“That does sound strange, considering what we know.”
Nadia nodded. “And there is one more thing. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it, but it might.”
“What?”
“The person in charge of this team sent a video message to the system head, and he relayed that video to us. I had a chance to look at it, and as we had no info on what race the person was in our standard databases, we did a check against our other databases.”
Tomas nodded–the Empire’s Sentinels had a database of every race they had encountered or heard of. “And?”
“We got nothing in the Empire’s databases. We did, however, get a hit in the database of the People,” Nadia said, turning on a hologram on her wrist unit, showing him the data and then a separate image cut from the video showing the being.
Tomas’s mouth dropped open as he saw the image. There was no mistaking the species of the being in the video, and Tomas already knew which race it belonged to without looking at the other data. It was the same as the one from the People’s database, as Nadia had said. There was no mistaking the sleek four-legged form.
If Tomas had to describe the race he would’ve probably said that they looked like a cross between large wolves and winged horses: sleek and powerfully built and covered with strange feathers that almost seemed like fur. The being’s neck and head was framed by a mane made out of long red hair, and her body covered with red feathers tipped with blue, while its long snout was covered in blue feathers.
“The Partenai,” Tomas said. The first of the races that the People uplifted, and one of the three that turned against the People. For their crimes and betrayal, the People had cast them down, took from them all the technology that they had gifted them, and left them on a single world with no technology and no means to get back into space. The Partenai had been left to find their own way back into the galaxy. “They survived,” Tomas said. “You think that this has something to do with why they are here?”
Nadia nodded. “It’s possible. The Partenai are a race old enough to remember the People. If they saw what we looked like, they might recognize our origins.”
Tomas thought about it; this development had the potential to turn very badly. He did not know how much or even if the Partenai have any knowledge of the ancient past, but he did not know how they would react to the knowledge that Humans, Nel, and Shara Daim were descendants of the People. Would they wish to enact revenge on those that had once cast them down? Or was this something else?
Regardless, Tomas had no choice–the Josanti League was a major star-nation, he could not simply refuse their diplomatic team, especially not when they were not showing any hostile intent.
“Call Laura and have her find me a fleet to escort the Josanti through our territory,” Tomas said.
“Where do you want them?” Nadia asked.
“Here, in Sanctuary.”
Nadia’s eyes widened a bit at that, and Tomas understood her shock. Sanctuary had been closed to all outside of the Empire since the Erasi attack five centuries ago. But Tomas needed every advantage he could get. The Josanti were in a different league than the other star-nations they usually dealt with, and the Partenai were old, very old. He needed to keep them off balance, to impress them, to show them that the Empire was not just some rimward backwater–and showing them Sanctuary would make sure that they get the message.
“And I need something else,” Tomas said, thinking quickly. “Get a message to Nuva. I want Clan Leader Sumia here for when we meet them. And send another message to Shara Radum,” Tomas said. “I want the twins here as well.” With Anessa leading the Shara Daim forces against the Erasi, the twins were ruling their own empire.
Tomas saw Nadia nod. There was no real need for him to clarify who he meant–anyone in the Empire would know who he had meant. And if this had anything to do with the People, he wanted representation from all three descendant races. He and Sumia would represent Humanity and Nel, respectively, and the twins the Shara Daim.
He thought for a moment more, then spoke again. “And have Laura plan a route that would have the Josanti arrive in Sanctuary after the Clan Leader and the twins.”
“I’ll see to it.”
Chapter Four
Erasi front
Kar Daim Anessa of the Shara Daim sat in the command chair of the Sovereign-class Song of Retribution, and commanded the alliance’s fleets in the system. It was one of Erasi mining systems, which made for an interesting battlefield. The Erasi had cracked three of the planets and were mining the pieces. It was easier for them to extract the raw materials that way. Her forces had trouble getting to the Erasi warships defending the system, as they liked to hide in the clouds of the smaller chunks of the planets and ambush her forces whenever possible.
And that forced her to utilize her smaller ships to hunt them down, as her battleships and dreadnaughts were too large to move among the debris safely. She kept the Song of Retribution away from the fight for the most part, as the battlefield suited her other ships better. A Sovereign was a powerful weapon, but like all weapons, it was not suitable for every situation. The Erasi had developed strategies to deal with the Sovereigns. The strategies weren’t really all that effective, more annoying than anything else, but they were frustrating nonetheless. Any time the alliance brought in a Sovereign to an encounter, the Erasi would simply scatter their fleets and strike at other targets, and a Sovereign could not follow them all.
Anessa read through a report from a taskforce engaged in one of the debris fields that just informed her that the last of the Erasi ships had been destroyed. She smiled and started sending orders for the fleets from around the system to converge on the last Erasi base in the system, a large chunk of rock protected by a small flotilla and a lot of fixed defenses. With the destruction of the last Erasi ships elsewhere in the system she was now certain that she wouldn’t suffer an attack on her backline as they moved to siege the Erasi base.
As her Sovereign entered skim, Anessa couldn’t help but feel satisfied. She had spent almost every moment of the last five hundred years of her life ruling the Shara Daim, sitting in the meetings, delegating between factions, unifying the Shara Daim after her violent takeover. It had taken her a while to solidify her rule, and more to even strengthen the Shara Daim and repair the damage that her predecessors did to the Shara Daim people. The Elders had in many ways broken the Shara Daim, had made them xenophobic and arrogant. And much of that still remained, even with all that Anessa had done to change things. She knew that change couldn’t come fast, nor be so drastic. But she had succeeded in most aspects of her plan.
Her children had a lot to do with that. Aside from Ryaana, who had decided to follow in her father’s steps–which Anessa still had trouble understanding, but she had come to terms with it. It was her other children that had done much to change the way the Shara Daim viewed other races. The Shara Daim people loved the twins–they were royalty, her heirs, but even more than that they were celebrities in their own right. They were loved and respected on their own merits. They walked among the people, the poor and the rich with equal ease, and Anessa had watched with pride as they interacted with their subjects.
When they spoke to them it was impossible not to be drawn in. They had taken their studies to heart, and were just as able to debate with the greatest of the Shara Daim’s philosophers, scientists, and commanders, and then were able to turn around and speak with the more common folk about the simplest of things. And never did they make the party they spoke with feel as if they were talking to someone greater or different than them, even though all it took was to look at their eyes.
It was obvious that they were not full Shara Daim, as their father’s eyes made their human side unmistakable. Yet none could look at them and see anything but royalty and Shara Daim. In many ways Anessa envied the twins that–she had never been able to accomplish as much. She was far better at gaining respect by instilling fear, by standing apart.
Vaana and
Kane were the future of the Shara Daim. It had taken her a while to see it, to truly understand that her firstborn daughter would never accept the Shara Daim fully. She was far too human for that. Anessa wasn’t really disappointed in Ryaana for making her own choice; in a way, she was proud. Yet even before Ryaana was born, Anessa had had a vision of a future where her firstborn took over and ruled the Shara Daim after her. It was the fact that that dream would never be realized that disappointed her. But she was also glad, for as she had accepted Ryaana’s decision, she had finally been able to see that the future of the Shara Daim were her other children.
While she had been focused on ruling and on trying to make Ryaana into something that she obviously was not, the twins had become something even more. They had risen to the top of the Dai Sha, commanding the best Legions of the Shara Daim. Not only had they earned the respect of the people, they had become great warriors in their own right. The choice to make them the next rulers of the Shara Daim seemed obvious once she truly allowed herself to look. After Anessa had removed the Elders and took the throne of the Shara Daim she had vowed both to herself and to the people that only the strongest would rule the Shara Daim, and Vaana and Kane had become the strongest, even though they were not typical examples of Shara Daim, a result of them being twins.
The Shara Daim, unlike the Humans and the Nel, never had twins–her children were the first. And some irregularities had shown themselves. Even when they had been children they had been far more connected, and strong in the Sha. They had often spoken almost as if they were of a same mind using two mouths to convey a thought, with one starting and the other finishing the sentence seamlessly. As well as a few other things, their telepathy was far more advanced than that of other people, although it seemed more focused on each other with them sharing much of their thoughts. In many ways they had inherited Anessa’s strength and their father’s skill, but they had also shown some unique and strange abilities.
They had learned to hide most of them, to appear more “normal” to others, but Anessa was their mother, and there was little that they could hide from her. The twins were so in sync with each other that she knew that she could never name just one of them her heir. The other would simply rule as well–they did everything together. And it was not like the Shara Daim had any established rules concerning succession and rule, as it was all as Anessa decreed. The only promise she had made to the Shara Daim people was that she would never again allow for the weak to rule, and her children were most certainly not weak.
Her announcement of the twins’ new status had been met with much support and approval. The people loved it, and with the twins stepping in to rule while Anessa was busy with the war, the state in the Shara Daim was actually even better than she had anticipated. She was almost jealous that the people loved them more than her, but she did understand. In a way this was the perfect opportunity for her to step down. With her no longer aging she had heard whispers, people asking if she planned on ruling the Shara Daim forever, the same way the Elders had. She hadn’t planned as much, of course, but people still wondered. And she had grown tired of ruling; she had neglected her true passions for far too long.
Anessa was a warrior at heart. She needed conflict, not a chair and meetings. The war was the perfect opportunity to give the twins a trial run. She had given them full control while she was away, and if they did well, she would step down once the war drew to an end. It was time for her to join her mate and seek their true passions. She and Adrian had never been suited for leadership–they suffered through it because it gave them the opportunity to do what they wanted, but now the rule was more of a burden. Already she could see him drawing back; he had taken a step back in the war, content to let Anessa lead most of their forces. This didn’t bother her in the least, as she loved war and conflict, and she had a debt to repay to the Erasi. But Adrian cared only for pushing himself forward, and for the Enlightened. Not because he cared particularly that they posed the threat to their peoples, she knew, but because they were a challenge he could pit himself against. A challenge she planned on helping him win.
But first she needed to win this war–then they could worry about the Enlightened and how they were to defeat them.
Her interface updated as the Song of Retribution dropped out of the skim above the Erasi forces, and a few moments later the rest of her forces started appearing surrounding the Erasi.
The Erasi defense platforms opened fire almost immediately, firing their own skim missiles at her ships. Anessa grimaced as she ordered her bigger ships forward to the front of her forces to soak up the fire. She would more than love to just hammer the Erasi from the end of the system with her own skim missiles, but the Erasi countermeasures made that tactic only a waste of missiles, as the base possessed a Erasi device capable of disrupting the skim fields, forcing her missiles into normal, slower-than-light travel. That meant that they needed to get closer.
She ordered the Empire forces in her command to fire their kinetic weapons at the stationary targets, taking out their defenses.
Soon enough the battle heated up, as missiles started exploding against her ships shields, and slabs of metal traveling at four-fifths the speed of light slammed into the Erasi turrets and missile launchers. The defensive platforms were a bit harder to hit, as they had limited maneuvering capabilities, but the Empire’s kinetic weapons had evolved as well. They had a very small maneuvering capability of their own, enough to adjust their trajectories slightly. This proved enough for Anessa’s needs. Many Erasi platforms exploded in the first barrage, enough that there were openings in their defenses.
Almost immediately she sent out orders for assault vessels to land troops on the base. They didn’t need it, but a base and a processing plant in such a prominent and rich mining system would be a boon. The remaining Erasi ships attempted to rush in and destroy her assault vessels, but Anessa ordered her Sovereign forward. The Song of Retribution’s MD and anti-matter cannons swiveled and fired, blowing apart any ship that came close enough to fire on her ships.
Both her and Adrian had decided to use the Sovereigns sparingly, both in order to get more experience for their other ships, as well as to hide the full capabilities of the Sovereign warships. The Erasi were yet to bring their new Devastator-class warships to the field, and while the alliance knew some of their capabilities, they did not know all, and neither Anessa nor Adrian wanted to give the Erasi an edge. Because while a single Devastator might not pose much threat to a Sovereign, the Erasi had more of them, and they were powerful and massive ships.
Soon enough the Erasi ships realized that they would not get the chance they were looking for, and they retreated back behind their defenses, which were themselves quickly disappearing. In truth there was little for her to do other than watch and adjust some orders. Her sub-commanders were capable and the battle was straightforward. But she dutifully observed nonetheless, and provided her insight and orders when needed.
Three hours later, her troops reported that they had secured the base, and she moved her ships over it to protect it in case that any of the remaining Erasi ships decided on a suicide run.
An hour later, the last of the Erasi platforms exploded, and the last remaining Erasi ships surrendered.
It was rare for the Erasi to surrender, but it had started to happen more often as the war progressed and the alliance reached closer to the Erasi core. Quickly, she gave orders for the ships to be boarded and secured, as well as sent word to the alliance staging point for a prison ship to be sent for the Erasi crews as well as for defense platforms and another fleet to keep the system. It would take them a day or two to get here, so she sent out ships on patrol, as well as placed her fleets around the system to protect it in case that the Erasi tried to take back the system before then.
After that was done, Anessa disengaged the command system and stood up, going back to her quarters for some much needed sleep. After the system was secured she would take her forces to another staging point, where th
ey would assemble for an assault against a system that would give them trans-lane access to the Erasi core systems. That was when this war would truly escalate.
She doubted that she would get much sleep afterward.
Interlude I
Union of Species – Fifteen thousand years ago
Vorash of the Loraru walked into a full session of the Union Senate. Representatives of every race that made up the Union were here: at the high table sat the representatives of the six founding races, and just below them was the table with the eighteen member races that held the low seats. The rest of the races were arranged across from them in a semicircular fashion.
Vorash hurried toward the high table. The room was in an uproar, everyone speaking at once, attempting to have their voice heard.
“We lost contact with another planet! What is the Senate doing? We still don’t know what is happening!” one of the representatives yelled out.
Vorash reached the high table and made his way toward one end.
“Calm, calm!” a voice from the high table yelled out–a representative of the Unuura, the founders of the Union. “Our exploratory fleet is bound to send word any day now. We will know what the problem is.”
Finally, Vorash reached the representative of his race–the Loraru.
“Brother,” Vorash whispered as he leaned down.
“Vor,” Garash spoke, visibly relieved. “Please tell me that you have good news.”
