The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2 novel Chapter 129

Part 19

“But you have never fought in the void. Your efforts to do so have only begun. Your gods are powerful, but few, and beyond them you will be able to bring relatively little capability to bear in the void when the battle with these demons begins.

“I suggest that those of you who are prepared to fight in the void at that time be maintained as close defense about your world, while fighting the demons beyond your world’s moons be left to my people.”

“Ah.” Six nodded. He set his utensils aside and paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, then met the eyes of Second Brighter Orange. “First, I must say I’m humbled by what we’ve learned. The breadth of your history, the nobility and incredible dedication of your quest, the amazing knowledge you’ve given us, all are humbling, and somewhat disturbing. Learning the true scale of the conflict makes me feel very small, and knowing that all the immense volume you’ve explored is just a tiny, tiny part of this galaxy… It’s truly humbling.

“For me, the most disturbing knowledge you’ve given us is knowing that most stars are not a source of any kind of magic, and that most worlds have no magic at all; no energy that can be shaped or directed by a mortal body’s energy field or by a conscious mind. To know that in most places we would be almost powerless, and that our star may even be unique in supplying the kinds of power we use. Perhaps, only here are we formidable; we being the mortal magic users of Kellaran.

“But this fact, combined with the fact that your people only developed magic quite late in your development, explains why you do things the way you do. To us, it seems strange that your gods seem to be the only ones among you to use magic directly; and your mortals only seem to use magic to provide power to machines and devices. But it makes sense, since you would have almost no magic available to you at all in the deep void between stars, so you need machines you can power with other, non-magical energies, when necessary.

“And compared to us, it seems your methods are obsessed with energy efficiency. You fly around using these ‘orbital mechanics’, balanced between gravity and thrust and momentum, instead of just Moving or Translocating to where you want to go. You reach incredibly fast speeds, but it takes you a very long time to speed up or slow down or turn, because you aren’t pushing your vessels through the void with very much energy compared to the weight of what you’re moving. And you have to move a lot of weight, because your big vessels are full of a liquid that’s mostly water. You protect yourselves in the void with suits and machines and armor, because they use so much less energy than maintaining magical Shields.

“Now, when we Kellarani finally travel through the deepest void between stars, we’ll probably have to use your methods.

“I… Understand.” Second Brighter Orange acknowledged. “We did not realize the full extent of your capabilities. The void warfare techniques you just described were not included in your presentation.”

“I’m sorry.” Six nodded. “The presentation only shows what the mortals of Kellaran as a whole have done and are doing to prepare for warfare with the demons, through The Just Alliance. It doesn’t show what the gods are planning to do. Also, the building of void warfare vessels and the training of their crews that I spoke of are not being done by The Just Alliance; they’re being done by the nations of Serminak and Hilia. It’s basically stuff that the nine of us here are doing as family projects, through the nations and wealth we control. I’m sure many other nations have their own plans for void warfare that we haven’t learned of yet, simply because those plans aren’t complete or finalized enough for public presentation. We haven’t had very long to work on this, but I’m sure the other nations are producing results, just as we are. But like them, our plans are still in the early stages. Only four Hilian void vessels have been completed, and there is still a great deal of testing and final development to be done.

“If our presentation gave you a deeper understanding of us and the way we conduct warfare, then it served its purpose. And after all, what we’ll be doing in void warfare is the same as what we did in the last war, really. The primary weapons were Translocation, massive Linking of all our fighters, and concentration of power from the many to the most capable. That’s what we’ll be doing in the void, the only difference being that we’ll be doing it in vessels. We have spells that allow us to survive and work and fight in the void without suits or machines or vessels, but it’s not worth it to do that constantly, even for us.

“Now we’re working on the beginnings of coordinating our efforts. As I said, we can assist your people with Translocation and Movement of your attack vessels and suit fighters. We’d also like to work with you on increasing your people’s ability at concentrating your power. We’d like to see if we can teach you our newer methods of spell-casting, including spells to draw power from others, automated spells, and self-powered spells. As I said, I understand why you use magic through machines as you do, but we assume that our star provides you with ample raw magic power of the kind your people use. So as long as you’re here, you might as well take full advantage of it, though that may imply some fairly drastic changes to your methods.