by Ivan Kal
“What is it?” Iris asked.
“I was trying to see what those things were and a portion of my vision changed,” Anessa said.
“Ah, yes, the suit is intuitive. It realized that you were trying to see something either far away or very small and it zoomed in on it,” Iris said.
Anessa was impressed, and slowly started to see why Adrian thought that his armor was better than her Shur At. “And what are those?” Anessa asked, pointing at the small objects flying over Adrian’s head.
“They are small drones. They have cameras and can be used as scouting tools or as an aid in the event that my visual sensors are damaged, as they can stream their feeds directly to my HUD,” Adrian answered.
“That is…useful,” Anessa said. Suddenly she felt very glad and honored that Adrian had had one of these suits made for her.
“And that isn’t all,” Adrian said, and Anessa could detect a smile in his voice.
A moment later, a short blade extended from his right forearm, silver in color with a dark blue edge and looking very sharp. “This is a monomolecular blade,” Adrian said. “Its edge is one molecule thick, which means that it can basically cut through anything. And in case of the edge getting damaged, all you need to do is apply a charge and the molecules will rearrange and fix the damage.”
Anessa looked at the blade in fascination, then glanced at her own forearm. A moment later, she found a trigger with the word ‘blade’ attributed to it and she pressed it. Her own blade extended from her forearm and she studied it carefully.
“Then there is this,” Adrian said as he retracted the blade and showed her his other forearm. A moment later, three slots opened and three round black balls floated out as Anessa felt Adrian use the Sha. “They are enforced ri-steel-carbon polymer. I had them made as an alternative weapon,” Adrian said, and she saw him move the balls in a circle around him with them speeding up, and then shoot them off to the wall of the training room and targets placed there. All three balls hit the same target in quick succession with a loud boom, denting the steel targets. “As you can see, they require the Sha to be used, but these armors were intended only for Sha users.”
“That is ingenious,” Anessa said. Her people had been using Sha for a long time, and yet they had never devised such a simple way of using their power.
“And one last thing,” Adrian said, and he turned around to face the targets. Suddenly a part of the armor on his back extended over his shoulder and what was clearly a weapon of some kind swiveled forward. A moment later a blue light shone from the muzzle and small bolts of blue white energy started exiting the weapon in rapid succession, hitting the target and blowing small pieces of it. After about ten seconds, the weapon stopped firing, and Anessa looked at the hole it made in the target.
She turned to look at Adrian, who was now turned towards her. “This is the best gift anyone can get.”
Chapter Five
April; Year 58 of the Empire — Unknown system — Erasi super battleship
Hanaru, Weaver of the Erasi, stood on the bridge of his newest warship and watched the holo that showed a large swath of stars. He had been given an important mission by one of the Ancients, O’fa Garash. He had been given a large force, ten Erasi fleets of the newest generations that had just arrived from the core, in addition to a significant taskforce of the newest and most advanced stealth ships. All ship classes looked the same as the previous generations from the outside, but inside they had significant upgrades, the best technologies that Erasi currently possessed. The super battleship that now served as Hanaru’s flagship had an increase in firepower of around twenty percent, and an almost thirty percent increase in the shield strength, not to mention many software and structural improvements.
He had a force of twenty-one thousand warships, and another couple hundred support and scout ships. And he needed those numbers if he was to fulfill his mission: to cripple the Empire’s ability to aid the Shara Daim. To do that, he needed to first find out more about them, which meant scouting their territory. Which to date had delivered limited success, as the Empire was somehow able to see the Erasi stealth ships. Thankfully, the Ancient had given him a taskforce of the newest generations of stealth ships, ones that used a different kind of tech which his experts believe would not be detectable.
He had already sent them out to scout possible targets, and as their intel from before was limited, they had a lot of work to do. But their task was easier, as the Ancient had also provided a partial map of trans-lanes in the Empire’s territory. Hanaru hadn’t dared to ask the Ancient where he had procured that map, as he was unaware that any of their spy attempt against the Empire succeeded, but once he got his eyes on the map, his curiosity only increased, because the map was dated to more than ten thousand years before they had even encountered the Empire. Hanaru assumed that it was from the database of the Ancient’s people, from a time when before the Erasi was formed.
The map also had a lot of interesting tidbits attached to it. It appeared that the Ancient’s people had been looking for a world that could sustain them but also had a good strategic placement. Which meant that they were looking for a hub system, and if he was reading the data correctly, Hanaru was sure that they had considered the homeworld of the Human race as a possibility. There was also a mention of an asset left on the planet to observe the intelligent life occupying it and report back, but the reports had stopped coming after several hundred years. Hanaru looked but hadn’t seen any indication that someone had ever gone back for the asset, and as he checked the timeline, he realized that it had stopped transmitting about the same time that the Erasi were formed, so he assumed that it had simply been forgotten.
But the fact that there was an asset on the world where Humans originated was incredibly interesting, and raised several intriguing questions. Questions that Hanaru would’ve loved to find the answers for. But he had another mission now, one of far greater importance.
The first thing that he had ordered his stealth ships to attempt to find out was the location of the Empire’s principal system, the home of their government. The Empire had never told them, and the Weavers had never managed to find out, and while he doubted that the stealth ships could intercept any important communications, as advanced races usually used hyperspace communications or tight beam ones for any important and classified information, any populated system always had other means of communication that could be listened in on. And while such communications would rarely contain what he could use, they might get lucky.
Hanaru did not yet have a finalized plan on how he was going to execute his orders; for that, he needed more information. But he did have several ideas on how to make sure that the Empire pulled their support of the Shara Daim. The biggest problem he saw was that he didn’t actually know how big of a force the Empire had. The Ancient had a large fleet, one that Hanaru doubted could be defeated by even the alliance between the Empire and Shara Daim, but it could slow the conquest of the Shara Daim down. And that was what they were trying to prevent. The Empire’s technologies could prove extremely difficult to deal with, especially their intersystem FTL drives, which made their forces extremely hard to ambush and far more versatile. Even only several such fleets could be a nightmare to deal with.
And if the Empire had more such fleets to send to the Shara Daim’s aid, this campaign could drag out for far longer than the Erasi could allow it to. As Hanaru understood, the fleets that had arrived with O’fa Garash were taken from the rimward frontier, and he knew that they could not allow the war with the Shara Daim to drag on, or they risked their enemy on the rimward border detecting the weakness. The force that the Ancient took away from the border was small compared to the rest of fleets assigned there, but the war had been in a state of equilibrium for so long that many in the Erasi feared the enemy noticing that small weakness and exploiting it. On the other hand, the enemy hadn’t tested the border in well over three decades, and many had turned to the thinking that they had finally decid
ed that it wasn’t worth it for them to expand in the Erasi’s direction, and so they had allowed the force to be moved to the front against the Shara Daim. Hanaru understood why that was. The Shara Daim were a threat that would’ve eventually have attacked the Erasi, and allowing them to grow stronger and to make the first move was foolish.
Hanaru had several plans on how to make sure that the Empire was too busy to aid their new allies. One had been to split up his forces and hit several systems at once, forcing the Empire to chase after his forces. Although, as the information acquired by the new stealth ships came in, that plan was more and more unlikely. Firstly because for some reason the population centers of the Empire were spread out, with a lot of systems in between left empty. Their territory wasn’t nearly as densely populated as that of either the Erasi or the Shara Daim. And splitting up the fleet would be far less effective; with the speed of the Empire ships and the distances between their populated systems, his forces wouldn’t have been able to deal nearly as much damage as they would’ve been able against a more densely populated empire. And the Empire ships would’ve intercepted his ships before they even reached secondary targets, meaning at best they would’ve been able to hit only the primary targets. Then there was the second problem: every populated system was extremely well defended, far more than similarly sized systems in the Erasi, which meant that he would need to make the forces larger in order for them to succeed, and that would reduce the number of systems he could hit at the same time.
So he was starting to lean towards the other plan: attack a major system, one with high population and industry, preferably one that had most of their shipyards. After such a hit, he could scatter his fleets and use them as small insurgent-type forces, attacking targets of opportunities and forcing the Empire to deploy a large number of their ships for the purpose of hunting down his forces.
Hanaru mused about his plans, but ultimately decided that he need more information before deciding on a plan. In any case, he still had some time before the deadline that the Ancient gave him. Better that he waited and made sure that his attack would fulfill his mission than to attack early and fail.
Chapter Six
Shara Radum system
Adrian sat on the podium of a large cave with his legs crossed, or rather his avatar did. The ceiling of the cave was far above him, and several small tunnels led away from the central chamber he was in. The cave had no natural light source, but it was illuminated anyway; the large cave complex was, after all, inside his mind. It was a part of his mind, a library of sorts for all his memories. Each tunnel led to different places, where different parts of his memories were stored. Moments from his childhood that he had long forgotten, every word of books he had read long ago, details of encounters and conversations that had occurred decades ago. All those memories were there for him to access and refresh. The cave complex was only a ‘visual’ construct, something to help him organize his thoughts and defend them from outside influence. Adrian’s construct was a cave system buried deep inside of a mountain, the rocks of the mountain representing his defenses, while the vastness of the caves represented his power.
Adrian felt a presence at the edge of his telepathic shields, and he lowered his defense. A moment later, Lurker of the Depths, or rather his avatar, stood before Adrian dressed in the Sowir version of the Empire’s skinsuits. Adrian’s teacher was the one who had taught Adrian how to create this construct in order to better store and protect his memories. Making a mind construct was the greatest achievement a telepath could achieve, and only the most powerful Sowir were capable of it. It was the ultimate defense against other telepaths, a place where a telepath was the strongest. It was a place where telepaths stored their most important memories and the core of who they were, buried deep within, where an invader would have great difficulty reaching.
It had taken Adrian decades to build his construct, but as his teacher had told him, it usually took far longer for others. But Adrian had an advantage—his mindspace. While similar, the two abilities were not the same thing. Adrian’s mindspace was unique; it allowed him to speed up his mind processing power far above what he was able to do while ‘awake,’ and that allowed him to alter his perception of time. He was still not able to make the time dilatation constant, but on average he could spend weeks in his mindspace while only an hour passed in real-time. His absolute control of his body had not only allowed him to improve his fighting skills far above anyone else, but had also given him time to study, to develop new techniques, to reflect on his actions and to plan for the future. Inside his mindspace, he had already been able to make smaller constructs, people made up from his memories, that he could train against or use as inspiration or a way to debate his own decisions and ‘converse’ with his subconscious mind.
Adrian’s avatar stood and faced Lurker of the Depths. “Teacher,” he sent. He didn’t really speak with telepathy. Inside this construct, they were so connected that they could understand each other even if Adrian spoke ‘vocally,’ but the Sowir had no vocal ability, so it seemed respectful that he used ‘telepathy.’
“It’s bigger than it was last time,” Lurker of the Depths commented, and Adrian felt/saw several distinct emotions and images flash before him. Now that they were inside Adrian’s construct, their minds were extremely close, and some of the Sowir way of communicating slipped through. Adrian felt awe, envy, and, underneath those emotions, a strong line of pride. It made Adrian feel good to know that his teacher was proud of his achievements, even though he was envious of what he had accomplished. Sowir didn’t really communicate with words, more like thoughts that were impressions of physical sensations and emotions coupled with images. But communicating through telepathy was different; each side interpreted the other’s means of communication as something that they understood.
“I’ve had time to work on it,” Adrian answered. His construct was modeled on that of his teacher. The Sowir had evolved as an aquatic species, living beneath the ocean floor in submerged cave like cities. They had eventually evolved the ability to survive on the ground, but the ocean was their true home. Lurker of the Depths’ construct was a cave similar to Adrian’s, only his was submerged in water.
“It is impressive work,” Lurker of the Depths sent, and an image of a vast underwater cavern filled Adrian’s mind—a memory from his teacher. Lurker of the Depths looked around at the smooth gray rock walls with great interest. Most of the room was empty; this was his central chamber where he was strongest inside his mind. The rest of the rooms that were at the ends of the many tunnels had furniture. Most had a holotable and shelves with datachips—a visual representation of his memories. With a thought, he could close every tunnel and keep his memories safe. But the main chamber was empty; it had nothing that an invading telepath could use against him.
“Although, I do see a couple of weaknesses,” Lurker of the Depths added while pointing to the side.
Adrian frowned and looked in the direction that he was pointing. To him, the walls looked like smooth, strong rock—and then he noticed a minuscule defect in his defenses. He focused and reinforced the ‘walls.’
Then, Adrian felt amusement from his teacher. “Don’t worry. These defenses are far above what anyone of your age could’ve accomplished. Above what even the more powerful Sowir could accomplish. Only the most powerful telepaths would’ve even noticed those weaknesses, and few of them would be powerful enough to take advantage of them.”
“You noticed,” Adrian said gloomily.
“I did, but I am far older than you, Adrian. I had time to perfect my skills.”
Adrian grunted unhappily. He knew that he was already extremely powerful, stronger than any other telepath he had encountered, even every Sowir other than perhaps Lurker of the Depths. Although Adrian was stronger in terms of raw power, his teacher was far better in skill.
“Your defenses are good, Adrian; there is nothing else that I can teach you,” Lurker of the Depths sent.
“Thank you
, Teacher.”
“No, I am no longer your teacher,” Lurker of the Depths sent, along with images of them standing side by side as equals.
Adrian smiled. “Thank you, Tea—Lurker of the Depths.”
“Now, tell me how you have been doing? I can feel that you are not balanced; there are things bothering you.”
Adrian sighed. He stood from the center of the room and moved them out of his construct. Suddenly they were back in the ‘real’ world, sitting on the floor of the small room on their new base designed for telepathy training. “Anessa is moving to the front. She believes that her people need to see her lead from the front, that that would reaffirm her rule.”
“And what do you think?” Lurker of the Depths asked.
“I agree with her to a point. That action will show her people that she is prepared to fight for them, that even with all the changes she has been forcing, she is still a warrior. But I cannot have our fleets aid her beyond simple scouting. I know that the Erasi have no desire to deal with us fairly, but many deal with them without being their members. If we join in the Shara Daim attack while they are attempting to reach a diplomatic solution with us, we will be perceived as untrustworthy,” Adrian sent, allowing some of his troubled emotions to pass through. “That would jeopardize all of our future dealings with the races in this sector, perhaps even beyond if the word spreads. All of our conflicts until now have been because we had no choice, but we’ve always tried to speak with our opponents first. We can’t refuse now when one of them seemingly wants to speak with us. If the Empire is going to achieve its goals, we need to be known to be trustworthy, ready to deal fairly with all.”
“I understand the Emperor’s thoughts in this, but both of you must know that that will be used as a weakness by others. The Erasi are just the first that are going to take advantage of your honor,” Lurker of the Depths sent.