Warpath (Rise of the Empire Book 4) (10 page)

“Great!” Daria exclaimed. “Thank you Fleets Master. You will not regret this.” Daria said and she and her team quickly exited the meeting room.

Laura turned her eyes back to the schematics. “I sure hope not.”

Chapter Eight

July; Year 30 – Unknown system

Johanna Stern sat in the command center of the Monarch and watched as her crew worked. They have arrived in the system where one of her scout ships encountered a debris field. She had brought the entire fleet to check the field more thoroughly. She didn’t dare send just a few ships, if the debris field was really a result of a battle she didn’t want to put her people in a position where they might be forced to fight against unknown forces alone. There was safety in numbers.

“Preliminary scans confirm that a battle took place here, Fleet Commander.” Turiel’s voice said from Johanna’s side where a holographic image of a young human male stood.

“Do we know anything else?” Johanna asked.

“The scans indicate that most of the damage is from laser and particle weapons – low power compared to the Empire’s current technology. The residual energy signatures of the drives suggest two different types of ships.” Turiel said.

Johanna didn’t respond, already her mind was working at light speeds. The area they were in was some sixty light years spinward from the Empire’s border, but it was also only twenty five light years from the direct route back to Earth. If there were intelligent races close to that route, the Emperor would need to move up his plans and start colonizing in this direction soon. Before another intelligent race claims the area. She would need to start exploring the neighboring systems, and as this system had only one trans-station, the one they used to get here, it meant that they would need to use hyperspace travel which was much slower. Johanna sighed, it looked like she would be stuck in this system for at least a few months. She turned to her second in command, Force Leader Andros Venter.

“We need to check the neighboring systems, set up teams of two ships each. The Monarch and the Salahuddin will stay here with the support ships, the rest are on scouting duty.” Johanna said.

“Right away boss.” Andros said.

***

Trivax system – 50 light years away

A flash of light announced a new arrival into the system. A small oval shaped object exited the hyperspace and appeared at the edge of the hyperspace barrier of the Trivax system. As per its programing it immediately started taking scans of the system. A couple of hours later it realized that the system was inhabited, there were signs of a space faring civilization on two of the seven planets. As per its protocols it recorded everything it saw. Then after its programing was satisfied it turned towards its home and engaged its hyper drives, and a moment later it was gone.

Eighteen hours later, a monitoring drone came from behind the sun of the system. It was constantly watching over Trivax system, and it scanned the area where the unannounced visitor entered the system. But it found nothing, the unannounced visitor was long gone.

***

December; Year 30

Five months later and Johanna’s fleet was no closer to the answer to the origin of the debris field than they were when they found it. The scouting parties they had sent had arrived and taken account of the neighboring systems, and they found nothing that suggests an intelligent race living nearby. Granted, they had only checked the system within twenty light years radius. The limitations of their hyperspace drive didn’t allow for any further scouting, unless she wanted to spend a lot more time in this area or they started exploring the trans-lanes in the neighboring systems, and Johanna wasn’t about to split her fleet that much nor keep it tied up checking every system. The results from the test on the debris found that the ships were built out of ceramic based alloys similar to those that the Consortium used before the war with the Sowir, and nothing they found suggested that whoever fought here posed any threat to the Empire.

The problem was that if she left now she wouldn’t get the answer to the puzzle, at least not anytime soon. Not until the Empire expanded this far. Johanna rubbed her temples for a few seconds and then turned and looked at her holo. It would take at least another two months for her ships to return, unless they tried to find a trans-lane route back, but Johanna was unwilling to risk them getting even further away through an unknown lane when the rest of the fleet was already scattered and unable to respond to any call for aid fast enough. She manipulated her holo and sent out the return orders to her ships via their FTL comms. Perhaps something will happen in this system to shed some light on things while she waited.

Chapter Nine

January; Year 31 – Sanctuary

Tomas Klein walked into the meeting room, his gaze going over the people already sitting there. All clan leaders were there with their second’s in command, as well as Seo-yun, Laura, and Jack Gin the Army Master, and the representative from the Hand of the Empire. Tomas walked to the head of the table and sat down.

“Thank you all for coming. I have called you here to inform you of certain developments.” Tomas said. He looked around the table for a moment and then spoke again. “The Sowir Dominion has been on the move, they have started amassing a fleet of warships and support ships numbering around fourteen hundred at the moment, in a system close to Nelus. Their most probable target is Nelus, and by our projections they will start the attack sometime in the next year. As for our response, we have restarted our fleet shipyards, as many of you have no doubt noticed, and we will have increased the number of hulls by at least thirty percent by the end of the this year.”

“Will we be taking any other action?” Clan Leader Barbara Brown of the Terran Clan asked.

“We have a plan in place for a preemptive attack on the Dominion. The moment the Sowir are done with Nelus they will turn to us. All of their previous actions suggest that. Attacking before they are ready will give us an edge.” Tomas answered. He looked around the table to catch the reaction of the Clan Leaders, none seemed to be opposed to the plan.

“And what about Nelus? Will we help them?” Clan Leader Sumia asked.

“We are working on a plan to aid Nelus, at this point it is very fluid depending on various factors. We have already used our channels to Nelus to inform them of the danger.” Tomas said nodding in the direction of Clan Leader Jusan. “Hopefully they will start preparing defenses.”

“And what about the Dominion? What will our ultimate goal be?” Clan Leader Annbjörg Johansson of Clan Gudólfr asked.

“The Sowir are a threat, not only to us but every other sentient race they come across. Worse still, they have proven that they are capable of genocide. The most of the Consortium races are now gone, the Pouute are most definitely extinct, as far as we know so are the Mtural and the Guxcacul, save for the few that survived on Nuva and now live in the Empire. But they are too few for the survival of their races, the Mtural have refused our offer that we try and create the immortality treatments for them and with their reproduction method it is impossible for us to create anything similar to our progeny centers. The Guxcacul are a long lived race but there are no female’s among the survivors. For all intents and purposes the Sowir had completely wiped out three sentient races, and killed most of the fourth.” Tomas said glancing at Sumia, he saw sadness on her face. “Nel have been reduced to a fraction of what they were.” Tomas shook his head. “Sowir are a blight, and I will offer no mercy to them. We will not conquer them, we will destroy them.”

“So we kill them all? Commit genocide ourselves?” Annbjörg asked.

“Before I answer that question there is one more thing that I need to share with you concerning the Sowir. I and a few of the others had been aware of this matter for some time.” Tomas paused, he gathered his thoughts and then continued. “The Sowir are not really Sowir, at least who we believe Sowir to be are not actually them.”

His words were met with confused looks from most of the room, save Adrian, Laura, and Seo-yun. The three Nel Clan Leaders were the ones most confused.

“What do you mean?” Clan Leader Sumia asked. Tomas gestured to Seo-yun and she stood up and started to speak.

“Thirty years ago after the Sowir attack on Nuva, we recovered corpses of those that our forces killed. We brought them back to Sanctuary and did extensive testing on them. What we found out was… Interesting to say the least.” Seo-yun said.

“What did you find?” Clan Leader Jusan asked.

“The “Sowir” brain isn’t capable of higher intelligence, they are on the level of a very intelligent animal, but an animal nevertheless.” Seo-yun said.

“That’s impossible!” Sumia said, “They have a civilization, they build cities, command ships they…”

Seo-yun raised her hand. “I know, but think about it. Have you ever heard or seen a Nel speaking with a Sowir one on one? Other than through a comm system from a ship?” Seo-yun asked.

Sumia was startled. “They don’t communicate in the same manner as we do, they need machines, computers to translate whatever their language is, to something we can understand. That equipment is too big to fit on a person…”

“Perhaps you are correct, but I bet that no one has ever seen a Sowir actually use a device to speak with another being, I bet you that there was always a distance between the speakers.”

“But still, they can’t be animals. Animals cannot use technology.” Sumia retorted.

“Again, you are correct. So let me explain. During our testing we found that the bodies have another additional brain, at first it made sense that they had two. One that was capable of higher thinking and the other used for more primitive thoughts, basic instincts. But the more we looked at the second brain the more confused we became. The brain was filled with things that we later identified as some kind of receivers, and all of its connections to the primitive brain lead to the motor functions. There were other mysteries as well, we couldn’t figure out how they communicated. And then we started testing their genetic code in full.” Seo-yun paused for a moment, looking at the people around the table.

“We discovered that their second brain was actually engineered and added to them. Over time we even discovered that the second brain was used as a way of controlling the primitive brain and it was made to receive instructions. The higher brain takes complete control over the being, through it, it is capable of executing complex tasks. Whether they are receiving the control signals by technological means or something else we are not sure. But what we are completely certain of is that the beings we believed to be Sowir are in fact nothing more than tools –unwilling agents if you will. Without guidance from the higher brain they will revert back to being simple animals.” Seo-yun said.

“How can that be? Wouldn’t we notice something?” Jusan asked softly.

“Your knowledge of genetics wasn’t nowhere near ours now, and even if it was I doubt that anyone would have looked for something like this. And whoever is in charge is very smart, they kept themselves hidden for centuries.” Seo-yun said.

Then Jack Gin nodded to himself and spoke. “Well… Now Nuva makes much more sense.”

“What do you mean?” Sumia asked.

“I have reviewed the reports and viewed the vids of our people fighting the Sowir on Nuva, and there had always been something strange about their behavior. If they were guided by something or someone, then their actions make much more sense. The force sent down to Nuva was treated as if it was completely expendable, they were just trying to kill as many as they could. And they weren’t acting as trained soldiers, more like a pack that was let loose.” Jack said.

Laura then got a thoughtful expression, “We never did find many bodies from the wreckages, and they always had redundancies that made sure their ships self-destructed. When we disabled a ship it was filled with traps and self-destruct triggers. And there was rarely anything we could recover from that.”

“Do we know anything about who it is that controls them?” Sumia asked.

“No, other than that they appear to be able to control them from the distance, at least from a couple of light minutes away.” Seo-yun said.

Glancing at Seo-yun, Tomas saw that she was finished so he spoke. “I plan on taking or destroying every piece of infrastructure that the Sowir have, and to cut off the connection they have with their agents. We will not compromise with them, they don’t deserve mercy. If they surrender, we will quarantine them on a single world with only their most basic needs seen to, otherwise we will destroy them all.”

***

A few hours later once most of the Clan Leaders had left, Tomas sat down with the people responsible for outlining their plans for the offensive against the Sowir. Adrian and his second in command Isani sat on the left side of the table with Laura, and on the right were Jack, Seo-yun and an Agent of the Hand. While not actively included in the planning, Hand of the Empire always had people present.

“Are we really sure about this?” Laura said, “We are talking about breaking our word, going to war, and killing a lot of people from a race that we currently have a treaty with.” She said uncertainly.

Tomas had struggled with the same for some time. He knew that he couldn’t allow Sowir to remain anywhere close to the Empire, they were too much of a threat. But still he held values and ideals he learned on Earth as a child close to his heart. He turned to Laura to try and answer when her adoptive son Adrian spoke.

“I, like all of you here was born on Earth, and I too was brought up to believe in things that people of Earth held paramount at the time. Be kind, do not steal, do not kill, keep your word, and everything will turn out well, you will be rewarded. But the truth is that life is not black and white, there is no good and evil. Only point of view and shades of gray. What we humans and Nel consider good might differ from what Sowir consider good, if they even have those concepts. I have devoted a lot of time thinking about these things, pondering the various beliefs that humans hold paramount as proof of the civilized. And I had spent a lot of time studying history. I have realized that we are not as civilized as we like to think, we have used the values of good to do terrible things, allowed evil to go unpunished in the name of justice and forgiveness.” He paused and took a deep breath, then looked around the room.