“I hope he was Dalmoti,” Senkovar admitted. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if to suppress his emotions. “I thought he was killed. Did he say why he left and came here?”
Serenity wished he could read emotions better than he could. He knew Senkovar felt something but he had no idea what. Was he one of the people who wanted Serenity’s line dead or was he unhappy about it?
Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out. He’d already said too much for stopping now to help. “He left a letter behind. It said to beware the family and something about being the heir; I assume that’s why he fled, someone wanted to take his place.”
Senkovar gave a slow nod. “Most likely Dalmoti. There was a plot to unseat him; I did not find out about it until he was already dead or fled. I was not paying the attention to the Clan that I should have. It is good to hear that he made a life for himself. It is less good to know that he fled rather than trusting me to handle it.”
Serenity didn’t know what to say to that. He’d never had to deal with Clan politics and he never wanted to.
“Since you are already a World Sovereign, I would like to see what would happen if you were introduced to Suratiz. Dalmoti was the last Heir Suratiz accepted, but he was never a World Speaker.” Senkovar’s smile was pleasant, but it worried Serenity. There was no doubt in Serenity’s mind that Senkovar was planning a future for Serenity already.
“I don’t want another world.” The words spilled out of Serenity’s mouth before he had a chance to come up with a more convincing version. “That is, I mean, four is enough. I can’t really manage what I have; I have World Managers for Lyka/Aeon and Tzintkra. I don’t even have that for Earth; I just left it alone other than a few decisions about how the Voice’s system was set up, and those were mostly to make it support whatever the local setup was.”
Senkovar shook his head. His smile dimmed a little but was still distinctly present. “It sounds like you’re doing better than many already. A ruler can’t do everything, so you always work through subordinates. As long as you make the big decisions, you’re doing your duty.” Senkovar paused for a moment, then added, “One of those decisions is what the big decisions are.”
“There are things I can’t easily affect since I decided not to try to control everything,” Serenity admitted. “That includes stopping several small wars; one’s been going on for years but the others are countries trying to take advantage of their soldiers’ new Paths.”
It hadn’t generally worked out very well for invaders. Yes, Pathed could cause a lot more damage, but while that boosted the power of weaker invading soldiers, it also applied to the civilians and a surprising number of them decided to stay and fight. Beyond that, it also applied to the defending soldiers. Battle on Earth was still being fought with weapons, because modern weaponry was far longer range and more powerful than any Tier Three could manage or defend against. Occupation, on the other hand, was far more difficult; it was like IEDs taken a step farther.
Serenity mostly ignored it. There was little he could do and even less that he thought he should do. He wasn’t interested in causing wide-scale death and anything short of that wouldn’t stop the fighting. No one would believe he could do it unless he demonstrated and he wasn’t about to do that.
Yes, he could cut off the ability of people in a country to use portals, but that wasn’t a solution either. On other planets it might be, but there were many ways to travel long distances on Earth and the people with power could easily use the others. It was the people without power who needed options. All he’d done with the portals was set up a way for certain organizations to quietly bypass some of the restrictions placed by the local governments; he hadn’t even told them about it, but he knew they’d figured it out quickly.
If it became a way to make things worse, he’d cut off the access, but so far as far as he knew it was only being used to move refugees out and food and medicine in. That could have its own side effects, but Serenity was willing to accept them. Any choice he made would have side effects.
“Integration was kind to your world if you have so few wars,” Senkovar observed. “You must have defeated the initial invasions to have a Planetary Sovereign, no matter your World’s favor, but everything you have said and what you showed us last night indicates very little damage from them in this area. Did the Voice send the invasions elsewhere or did you defeat the one here?”
It was a blatant probe for more information, but it was information Serenity didn’t mind providing. “There was one here. I was lucky enough to be the one to find it and find a solution, but it took a lot of effort and people to deal with it. It was Hegemon Worms; I don’t know if you know of them?”
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Admittedly, if he hadn’t found out that wasp venom worked, he’d probably have been able to deal with it himself after he killed the Hegemon and somehow took over its link to the other worms, but it would have been much harder.
Senkovar shook his head. “I can guess; colony species are some of the worst, especially if they have any ability to hide. That’s an unlucky thing to get near you.”
Serenity shrugged. “Perhaps it was lucky, perhaps it was unlucky. The lucky thing was that it was found as quickly as it was. There were a few others that were equally hard to find, but most were pretty obvious once we found the portal, and there were a few groups that came up with things that could find portals. I don’t think we’d have closed them all before the Tutorials ended if we didn’t have that advantage.”
It was also lucky that the portal for the giant telepathic slime monster opened in a lightly inhabited area. Even with that benefit, it killed a large number of people. Serenity suspected that was either the choice of the people who sent it, attempting to hide it until it grew enough to have a larger impact, or the Voice trying to minimize the impact on people who had no chance against it. It might even be both. Either way, he wasn’t certain it was really luck.
Senkovar blinked. He didn’t move for a long moment. “You closed them all before the Tutorials ended?”
Serenity nodded. He wouldn’t have been comfortable investigating the kidnappings that led to Zon and Asihanya and the discovery of Legion if the portals were still open; each portal had the potential to kill a lot of people, especially if they had allowed something like the Hegemon Worms through. Most were straightforward, but Serenity knew that wasn’t the only portal that required a significant eradication effort. It was just the only one where he’d been a major part of the effort.
Senkovar shook his head, clearly amazed. “The Voice clearly underestimated you. It’s supposed to be a little below a planet’s capacity to handle, if the planet works together, but very few places can close their portals in the two or three months of even a long Tutorial.”
Serenity shook his head with a grin. The World Shaman seemed to know more about Tutorials than any non-instructor Serenity had yet met, which meant he’d understand how impressive success was against the challenge they’d faced. “The Tutorial took a bit over seven months. Earth has a very high population. We weren’t done in two or three. There were five hundred and twelve invasion portals on the planet, it took time.”
“Seven months for over five hundred portals? Even with the population needed to get that, it’s impressive. Usually the …” Senkovar paused for a moment. “Heh. It’s the travel, isn’t it? You were able to send your strongest people to close portals that normally would have been barely contained. That would speed things up a lot, and with the sheer length of the Tutorial, yes, I can see how it could happen. It’s still impressive and it means that the reason the Voice allows invasion portals worked for once.”
That was an odd way to phrase it. “Allows invasion portals? It sells them and sets how many there are. Most worlds are at least partly conquered.”
Senkovar nodded. “Yes, it controls them. A thousand years ago or so, worlds were conquered shortly after they were integrated. That was a time of great growth for many of the larger factions and is really what gave the Empire its start. The Voice added a period of protection, but all that did was delay the conquest. It made it more costly but it didn’t stop the large empires from flooding the new worlds with strong troops. The current mixed system is only a couple hundred years old, where the Voice allows a threatening, but possible to overcome, set of invasion portals at the beginning to force the inhabitants to prepare for the inevitable conflict to find their place. It wants the planet’s population to grow and succeed, but it can’t protect them forever.”
Serenity considered Senkovar’s response and decided this would be a good time to push a little. “You know a lot about the Voice and integration.”
Senkovar shrugged. “I’ve been around a long time.”
It was clearly an evasion. Serenity considered that for a moment. There were two possible explanations; either he believed Senkovar and he knew things because he’d looked into them over a long time period or Senkovar was connected to them. That could be negatively; he might have looked into it when his people were locked out of early invasions.
That didn’t match his words. Senkovar’s words sounded like they were talking about the Voice’s goals and he spoke as if he agreed with it. That sounded like he had a connection to the Voice. The only organizations that Serenity knew of with a connection to the Voice were Order’s Guild and Order’s Council.
Order’s Council also had a connection to A’Atla that went back to before the first time Earth’s core was damaged. That wasn’t enough to make him trust them; indeed, Serenity suspected that there was a connection between Order’s Council and the damage to Earth’s core.
Either way, Senkovar should recognize the sigil of a Hand. Whether or not that would be enough to get him to open up, Serenity didn’t know, but it seemed like the best chance he had. Even if Senkovar was actually an agent of the Empire and despised the Voice, it might work, though the odds were a lot worse. Just as importantly, his status as a Hand wasn’t a secret Serenity minded revealing; it was less important than his position as Earth’s Sovereign, which could cause issues if it became generally known on Earth.
Serenity pulled one the token Tirmanak gave him to prove his position out of his Rift. It still wasn’t the near-instantaneous retrieval he wanted, but it was getting closer. Serenity revealed it to Senkovar. “Care to try again?”