Warpath (Rise of the Empire Book 4) (26 page)

The Nelus fleet reached the effective range of the Nelus defense platforms. One of them even fired on the ships, but the fire ceased within minutes. An enormous amount of chatter was happening between the fleet, the stations, and military installations on the ground. The drone couldn’t get everything but apparently a coup was in progress. The military in concert with the Nelus people rose up against the Council. That was three days ago.

The fighting lasted for two days, but eventually the military and the people overthrew the Council. Another day passed before the people of Nelus sent a message to Isani’s ships. The drone that was close to their fleet and undetectable received the message and passed it on via FTL comms, ahead of the light speed signal that the message was sent in. Isani watched the message, and intrigued by it recorded one of his own. Then he used the drone to send the response back hours before Nelus expected it.

***

A day later Invictus with an escort of six ships met up with the diplomatic ship from Nelus halfway to the planet. He insisted that their team comes on the Invictus, which they surprisingly agreed to. Isani and his second - Sub Commander Liz Turner sat and waited in the meeting room as the security escorted them through the ship to him. A few minutes later the doors opened and three Nel walked in.

Isani recognized two of them. The one who appeared to be in the lead was Retsar Erani, or at least he was at the time Isani knew him, now his dress told him that he was promoted to Massar – the supreme commander of Nel fleets. The second person he recognized, was Sestar Nimuse of the House Jar Tel, who was now an old woman. The third was a younger man, who Isani didn’t recognize.

Restar – or rather Massar Erani spoke first.

“I didn’t know that Retsar Isani had a son.” He commented.

Isani smiled. “I didn’t.” He said. That confused the two who knew him previously and both of them studied him closely.

The first to respond was Nimuse. “Retsar Isani was in his fifties when Sowir attacked Nuva, he would be my age now. You are obviously in your thirties.”

“It’s just Isani, or Commander Isani now. And yes, you are correct I am eighty seven years old.” Isani said.

“That is impossible.” Erani said.

“The Empire possesses many advances not known to Nelus or the Sowir.” Isani said simply.

“So you have some kind of rejuvenation technology?” Nimuse asked yearningly.

Isani at her feeble form and decided to answer with the truth. “The Empire does have rejuvenation tech, which I have used, but we also possess the means to stop the aging process altogether. I will never lose my young appearance, nor will I physically age.”

“That is absurd! Immortality is a myth!” The third Nel said.

Isani turned to look at him and smiled. He knew that such open usage facial expressions was something that Nel that were not part of the Empire rarely saw outside of family units.

Ereni made a Nel gesture that indicated calmness and restraint to the young Nel. “We are not here to discuss technologies, and what is or is not possible Hishok Tansi.” Ereni said.

Upon hearing the young man’s tittle Isani was surprised. Hishok roughly translated to citizen in standard, and it referred to ordinary people who were not a part of an organized group.

Ereni turned back to Isani and made a gesture signaling apology, surprising Isani yet again. Nel, and especially Nel from Nelus were not known for being humble. Isani answered with the gesture meaning acceptance, and then gestured for them to continue.

Eren visibly relaxed and started speaking. “We would like to open diplomatic talks with the Empire, we are here now hoping to talk with the leader of this fleet.”

Isani frowned. “You’ve been talking to him.” He said.

The three suddenly looked flabbergasted. Isani looked at them as they exchanged looks and glanced at Liz at Isani’s side, who had kept silent. Then Isani realized what surprised them.

“You thought that the leader of this fleet needed to be human.” He stated. Seeing their chagrin, Isani pressed on. “Well, you are right. The commander of this fleet is a human, but he was injured during the fighting and I as his second have assumed command. But the Nel and humans are all members of the Empire and as such have equal rights.”

“We didn’t mean to imply anything, it is just that the last time that we had contact with you we dealt with a human.” Nimuse said.

“As I said, we are all equal in the Empire. Your request for diplomatic talk is accepted. I invite you to stay aboard the Invictus until I inform the Emperor. I am sure that he would want to send an expert negotiation team to speak with you. But I warn you that he is not happy, the actions of your fleet had lost us many lives.” Isani said.

“We understand. It is because of the insane orders of the Council that the people and the fleet finally found the will to break away from their rule.” Hishok Tansi said.

“You finally taking control over your own lives is good, but there is a lot of mistrust between my people and yours. In time we might be able to repair it, for now you are welcome aboard my ship.” With that Isani left the room leaving telling Liz to take care of their guests over his implant. He headed toward his quarters to talk to the Emperor.

***

Sanctuary

“So Nelus wants to talk?” Sumia asked. On the Emperor’s request she had been staying at her house on Sanctuary, in case that he needed to speak with her in person on matters concerning Nelus or the Sowir.

“It looks like it. As they say they had rebelled against the Council’s rule, and wish to open talks with us.” Tomas said.

“I can’t believe that they rebelled… The ruling Houses always had such an iron grip on Nelus.” Sumia commented.

“It has been a long time, and their society had stood still. No advances, no expansion, they were stagnating. Seeing our smaller fleet defeat such overwhelming Sowir fleet must have been the last drop.” Tomas said.

“Well, at least they had finally come to their senses. So what do I have to do with this?” Sumia asked.

Tomas smiled at her perceptiveness. “I want you to head the talks with them.”

“I knew that it was going to be something like that…” She said resigned.

“So you’ll do it?”

“Yes, I’ll go talk with them. But I will need a list of things that we want from the talk.” Sumia said.

“Already prepared.” Tomas said and handed her a small data chip.

Sumia shook her head. “Of course it is.”

***

Hishok Tansi sat in a spacious room provided to him aboard the Emprie ship with Sestar Nimuse and Massar Erani. It had been a few days since their arrival, and they had been on informed that an envoy from the Empire was on her way to Nelus in order to speak with them. But in the meantime the three had been allowed to look through some of the Empire’s databases, mainly their history as well as entertainment channels. But they were also allowed to view a small portion of their tech databases.

“How could we have allowed Tavaar and the rest of the council to blind us so much. To let us convince that the humans were so primitive when they first contacted us?” Hishok Tansi asked.

“Tavaar is a great speaker and manipulator, he can spin anything in his favor. And we trusted him blindly because we were afraid. Fear can make people do insane things. I too was content to keep my head down and accumulate wealth and power, it took me a long time to realize how wrong I was.” Nimuse said.

“I can understand how the council fooled the people, it is they who controlled the media and information. But the fleet was different. Our ships were close enough to take readings of the human ships when they first arrived, and we watched their records of battle for Nuva. And yet once Tavaar’s experts came out with their story we took it as truth, believing in it even though we should have known better.” Massar Erani added.

“Have you had the chance to look at their technology?” Hishok Tansi asked.

“Yes. If even half of it is true, they are leagues ahead of us now.” Erani answered.

“And their history… Their home world is destroyed, and thirty years ago they were just one colony! Now they have spread so much and so fast… It is mind boggling.” Tansi said.

“Did you come across the information on the connection between us and humans?” Nimuse asked, her face twitching for a moment.

“No, there is so much to read I didn’t have the chance…” Tansi said.

“You should look it up, apparently there is much more to Jusan’s defection to the Empire than it was apparent to us.” Nimuse said.

“I’ll look it up as soon as I get the chance.” He promised, then hesitated before continuing to speak. “But, do we even know what we want from these talks?”

“Establishing good and neighborly relations are our priority.” Eran said, “It will take time for us to repair the damage done by the council. We can worry later about what we want from the relationship.”

Tansi and Nimuse both agreed. The three of them spent the next hour fleshing out the details of what their approach would be, and then retired to their respective rooms to rest. All of them knew that the negotiations would be long and difficult.

Chapter Twenty Five

Ten days after the battle for Nelus – Sowir inner system Laraska

Fleet Commander Bethany Jones-Wright sat on the command center of her flagship leading the Second Fleet as they were taking control of the Laraska system. They had been fighting in the system for three days now. She got the report from the battle at Nelus, and she knew that Adrian managed to defeat a Sowir force almost six times larger than his own. But that he also suffered a lot of losses, she didn’t read too much of the report, focusing instead on her own battle.

She had already received word from the Third Fleet about their action in the Rasaka system. The information on the true Sowir and their apparent mind abilities was very interesting, but not really important to her efforts to take this system. Her army regiments were informed of it, and as she understood it, while the ability was amazing and they didn’t understand anything about it yet, it could be countered easily simply by one being forewarned. But it was the army that would deal with that when they start taking the shipyards and stations in the system, she needed to deal with the Sowir in space.

And while the system didn’t have many ships defending it, it was one of their major industrial systems. They had significant fixed defenses. She had managed to goad and then destroy sixty of one hundred and forty enemy ships in the system on the first day of fighting, then she focused on destroying their defense platforms from far out of their effective range by using her ships kinetic weapons.

That was one big advantage of mass movers, their range didn’t really have a limit. They would speed through space until they impact something. Which was great at destroying target that didn’t move, or at least moved on predictable fixed courses. By the end of the second day she had destroyed the last of the platforms, and now the rest of the Sowir ships were moving to engage hers in a pointless attack. She moved her one hundred Kraken class ships to intercept the remaining eighty Sowir ships.

***

Eighty Sowir ships moved in a tight concave lens formation, speeding towards the Empire dreadnoughts firing their missiles and lasers. The Empire’s ships moved slowly towards the Sowir and the incoming wave of missiles and laser fire. The Kraken class field defense was weaker than that of the Vanguard ships, but even so the Sowir laser fire was being dissipated completely before it could have a chance of touching the hull. As the missiles entered the range of the dreadnoughts point defenses they started to die. Within a minute all of the Sowir missiles were gone and the Empire ships changed to offense. They opened fire with their particle weapons blowing the smaller Sowir ships to bits.

Soon the last of the Sowir ships exploded, and were just minutes before stood eighty ships now only a slowly expanding field of debris was.

***

With the destruction of the last threat to her ships in the system, Bethany gave the go ahead to the army to begin the operations of taking control of the Sowir shipyards and stations. The ground would be more difficult, but after they take control of the space installations they will turn to it. For now she stood away from the planet, they didn’t know what numbers the Sowir – true Sowir had on the grounds, but they did have a significant number of their agents. The plan was to try and get the Sowir to surrender, but the offer wouldn’t be coming until the prisoners from the border system are transferred back to Sanctuary and interrogated. In the meantime Beth would have her hands full with securing the system.

***

Four days later – Sowir shipyard

Platoon Leader Sahib Adin cursed himself for the hundredth time as he charged an enemy with his mono-blade. He stabbed the seven limbed alien through the top of its body hoping to impale its secondary brain and kill it instantly. They had found out early on that if the secondary brain still functioned the agents would keep fighting. As he pulled his blade back and threw the alien of himself he again cursed his luck. As soon as the Exploration Fleet finished with the Furvor his platoon was recalled and sent to the Second Fleet as the most experienced unit that the Empire had.

Which was true in a way, his platoon had fought the Sowir thirty years ago on Nuva, and then they fought the Furvor on Trivax. And because of that he was now moving through the Sowir shipyard hacking and slashing at countless waves of the enemy. They couldn’t use high powered weapons both for fear of puncturing the hull, and because the Emperor wanted as many Sowir facilities intact.

The Empire had far better building technology with their fabricators, but most of the Sowir shipyards had once belonged to the Consortium, and while they were not as good as the Empire’s they would still be an enormous asset in their expansion. The plan was for the Empire to absorb the Sowir territory. Which in itself will be a colossal undertaking that will last years, as the Sowir territory was almost double the size of the Empire.