Ivan Kal - Out of the Ashes

“Uh… Adrian what are you talking about?” Iris asked.

“ I felt their emotions, just for an instant. ” Adrian said.

“If you say so.” Iris said, he could hear the skepticism in her voice. But he knew what he felt.

“You influenced my emotions.” Adrian said slowly, looking at the two. “That is not acceptable, you will not do it again. I know now what it feels like.” The two bowed their heads down in shame. “I would ask you to undo whatever you did to me, but I can’t afford to deal with it now. Hell, I don’t even know if you can do it.” Sora raised her head and Adrian felt a pressure behind his eyes, immediately all the pain he felt just a short while ago as he watched Bethany’s message came back to the surface. And then a moment later he felt the now familiar pressure again, and just as the pain came, it went away. Buried deep down, not gone, just muffled.

Adrian felt a tear roll down his cheek, “Well…” He said hoarsely, “I guess that answers that.”

“I saw it Adrian, there were two spikes. It looks like you are right.” Iris said in disbelief.

“Yeah. It looks like I am.” Adrian responded, he cleared his throat. “Now, we need to have a little talk about the usage of your ability.” Adrian said in a serious voice looking at two shamefaced wolions.

Two weeks later Adrian sat and waited in the conference room on board the Leviathan for the two commanders from the Home Fleet, the ship commanders of his fleet were all already there. On his left sat Paul, Ship Master of the Leviathan, across from him was Force Leader Nenad Krylov commander of the battleship Protector. Beside him sat Force Leader Altsoba Smith of the battleship Battle Song, followed by the commanders of the rest of the Frist Fleet. An ping on Adrian’s implant informed him that the last party of the meeting had arrived, and moments later the doors opened and they walked in.

Bethany Jones Fleet Commander of the Home Fleet walked in followed by Force Leader Nair Hakeem of the Salahuddin. Seeing Beth in person threatened to bring the hurt back up, but Adrian was now ready for it and whatever Sora did held. Bethany let her hair grow even longer, and it was now tied in a bun at the back of her head.

“Force Leader Hakeem and Fleet Commander Jones reporting as ordered.” Bethany said in a neutral tone, saluting with her fist to the chest. In practice Olympus Fleet personnel rarely displayed such conduct, which told Adrian a lot about what Bethany thought concerning her being promoted and then ordered to follow his orders.

“At ease Fleet Commander, Force Leader. Take your seats and we can begin.” Adrian said, he kept his face blank and his tone commanding. He switched into what Iris called his battle persona. Cold, calculated, and ruthless. He hated that description for it.

Bethany and Nair took their seats beside Paul, and Adrian turned on the holo on the conference table. Immediately a star-map sprung into existence. It showed the Sanctuary system as a green dot at the center, with the area around it, Nuva was a blue dot some short distance away. A bit to the side of Nuva was Nelus, a black dot, And then a series of systems represented by red dots with their surroundings shaded in a lighter red.

“This is the representation of the Sanctuary’s neighborhood. As you can see the only things between us and the Sowir territory are Nuva and Nelus system. The red signifies Sowir Dominion, the former territory of the Consortium. The truth is that we don’t know for sure if that is the extent of their territory. As we all know they have been sighted outside of this area.” Adrian said, pointing to the red shaded portion of the map. And they all knew what happened to the Voyager, it was destroyed in a system at least twenty light years away from what they considered Sowir Territory.

“With the failure at getting an alliance with Nelus, we are left with only one option. Deal with Sowir by ourselves.” Adrian looked around the room, he saw a few nod gravely while others seemed apprehensive. He continued, “We can’t fight them on equal footing, at least not in the near future. They have far too much resources and people to throw at us. And once they realize that we have only one system with not even ten million people, all they have to do is overwhelm us with numbers.”

“How are we going to deal with them then?” Nair Hakeem asked.

“We, ladies and gentlemen are going to bluff.” Adrian said.

“What do you mean bluff?” Bethany asked.

Adrian smiled, “Our orders are to take this combined fleet to Sowir Dominion.” Adrian said and accessed the holo’s controls over his imp, he highlighted a red system just inside Sowir territory. “This is the Tarsas system. It holds a water world that was once a Pouute shipbuilding world. Its purpose was to construct merchant vessels but has been repurposed by the Sowir. This system is our destination.”

“We are attacking the system?” Krylov asked.

“No.” Adrian said immediately, “As I said we are going to bluff. We are there to threaten the Sowir.” Adrian paused, looking around the room, “The reasons for this are simple. First, since the battle of Nuva our ships have been exploring the trans-lanes around Sanctuary and Nuva. And a route has been discovered that leads to Tarsas. The ship that explored that trans-lane managed to leave the system unnoticed, but not before they got a detailed look at the system. The Sowir military presence is small,a few cruiser class ships. Second, is because their ship that escaped the battle for Nuva went there. That means that they already know what happened at Nuva. Their society is united, every system they own is ruled by an Overseer, and each is the voice of the Dominion. Meaning that each system can negotiate on the behalf of the whole.”

“Well, that seems unrealistic…” Altsoba said.

“Even while a part of the Consortium, Sowir were mysterious. Most attributed it to them being so different. The other races of the Consortium were different true, but they at least had things in common. The Sowir don’t communicate vocally, they have no sight and their society was a complete enigma. They are truly alien.”

“I can understand that at least.” Altsoba said, “So, we are going to go and threaten them into what? If they are as alien as you say will threatening even work?”

“Our analysts have been going over everything we have on Sowir, all the information dating back to before the forming of the Consortium. They believe that it could work. It is still a gamble, but we might not have another choice. Our plan is to get an agreement of non-aggression between us.” Adrian said.

“And you think that threatening is the way to get that?” Bethany asked.

“Sowir don’t understand negotiations, they understand force. When they first met the Consortium, they immediately attacked, any attempt at communicating with them was met with silence, much like our own experiences with them. But as soon as the Consortium showed force, they folded, they stopped their attacks and started a course that would give them the advantage. Most of our analysts agree, they will do the same thing with us. If we show them force, give them even one reason to believe that we will willingly go to war with them, they will pull back.” Adrian said.

“You believe that they would let us be?” Paul asked.

Adrian shook his head, “Of course not. They will do everything in their power to learn more about us, while amassing the force big enough to take us.”

“What is the purpose then? If they won’t honor the agreement.” Bethany asked.

“Because we need time to grow. The time they spend trying to find out more things about us, is the time we can spend building ships and growing our population. Remember, they might have all but won the war against the Consortium, but there are still pockets that they haven’t conquered, Nelus for one. And since Nelus is still standing, we can conclude that Sowir are busy elsewhere. They must be smart enough to realize that starting a war with another race – one they know nothing about except that they defeated their task force – is a bad idea.” Adrian said and studied the room. They were silent, looking at the star map hologram.