“They are going to be flying into those waves like heading into a hurricane in the Warp, before they even reach the heliosphere. They might find it a place of idle interest, but they aren’t going to want to examine it up close. It also means the area is going to be positively roiling with Id Demons, and their fears related to the Warp are just going to get magnified. When they come out into realspace, their psensitives are basically going to blanch at the very idea of breaching the heliosphere.”

My smile said more fun was to come. Her eyes darted around, settled on the Grimshield. “The Citadel is psychically attuned to the horror wave by now...”

“Not as long as it is getting vivic pumped...”

“But we can turn off the vivus, and let the Curse take it back!” she snickered.

“With three full anti-matter cores in operation. Whatever might the Curse do to whatever sets foot on that Citadel with active power?” I asked the darkness between the stars.

“You’ll need to have cut-offs on the Cores, or the Ruk will never be able to get back in.” She was grinning ear to ear, however.

“It’s amazing what some high-end Nulls are good for,” I hinted broadly, and she had to laugh, too.

“What are the chances that the Ruk will send reinforcements, now that they’ve confirmed there is a Citadel here?” Cantor had to ask.

“Very high, but how fast is an issue, and how their enemies respond is another one. We don’t know their situation at home, but we can probably consider it under siege, with inferior replacements for any true Citadel they use. Anybody they dispatch will be tracked, and the Compact will take them into account, probably intercepting them on their course. After all, they already know the route, and only have to keep them out of Jam. Their cost to do so will be negligible.”

“So, coming, but useless.”

“Odds are there’s already interdiction forces on the way, and probably on any alternate routes they can discern. This is a numbers game, and the Compact has the numbers. The Citadels can’t outrun them below Jamming speed, and if they separate, they are basically handing multiple Citadels over to be annihilated piecemeal. They’ll have to move out as a fleet with their capital ships, and they’re just going to keep running into roadblocks as they do. The cost of a delaying action is infinitesimal compared to wiping a Citadel or two.”

“The Unforgotten should be able to calculate all those scenarios. If they can overcome their pride, they can request an alliance. If they cannot, they are going to die,” Cantor nodded slowly. “Both will be blows to the Ruk, but only one such can be healed. You cracked their souls to make them able to make the decision...”

“Even stone bends and flows with time,” I agreed. “Let’s just see if it flows fast enough...”

==========

“Incoming signal from the Ruk, Sensei!”

“Bring it up,” I waved at Lieutenant Corolos, daughter of a fisherman from Triklo II, a world that had vanished from the Empire four thousand years ago, and was plenty happy not to be involved in it now, given what they had learned of it. Pacifying it and getting rid of three major Churches to the Warp powers hadn’t been all that hard, and if that meant wiping the planet’s nobility with it, well, things had to be done.

The image of King Rittercrun and his Elder Tech-priest appeared before me, still in the Dark Matter Core where the device was.

“Engineer Sama,” he greeted me.

“King Under the Mountain Rittercrun,” I replied, with a nod. “Have you given consideration to my terms?”

“I have.” He gestured, data transferred, and I glanced at it with one portion of my mind.

“Agreed,” I said without preamble. “I can have the first sets delivered within the hour. Will that be all?”

“Do you sell military services, Engineer Sama?”

“Mercenary work?” Well, it wasn’t an Alliance, or a trade agreement, but it was something. “Interesting. Yes, we do, but as you might consider, the terms are going to be rather expensive on our side. Military assets are not cheap, especially if there are ship and crew losses.”

“The Ruk are more than able to compensate you for your losses.” He had absolute confidence in that.

I inclined my head slightly. “Of that, I have no question. Are you looking for armed services, or military goods?”

He narrowed his eyes, as the distinction was telling. “At this juncture, both.”

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“The Compact is coming for you, and your reinforcements will be Interdicted,” I said, clearing the air, and his beard fell, realizing that we weren’t stupid. “So, there will be losses, and there will be a threat premium with it. I am going to lose people, time, and money, which will hamper my own plans. The first and second you simply cannot replace with coin, so if at all possible, I will prefer to maximize the third.

“I do not say this lightly, Your Majesty, and it may be presumptive... but give me an idea of what you can afford now, today, and I will tell you exactly what you can get for it. If it exceeds the scope of what we can offer, I will also let you know. As for what you can promise in the future... we will see to that, in the future.”

Putting the money on the table implied a great deal of trust. I saw their eyes circling around the drones, the untouched remnants of the crew kneeling there.

He waved his gauntlet, and data transferred over.

Two thousand people /jumped on my Markspace download. Cries of delight, and some of consternation, reverberated through it.

“One moment, we are parsing this,” I replied, and they waited in stony silence.

There were accessing trade boards on both sides of the galaxy, matching up prices and demands with our own requirements. This wasn’t bulk, cheap E-elements... this was good, rare stuff with values that were making some of our engineers giddy.

“The breadth and value of this is certainly impressive, Elders,” I complimented them. “However, fourteen of the items you have for sale have no discernible value to us, and are basically curiosities. Are they something you traded away in the past to other species?” I asked forthrightly.

“We do not know how much trade you do with other races, and if you did, they have excellent trade value,” the techpriest spoke up gravely. He sent over a complementary record, and I scanned through it, raising an eyebrow as I did.

Excellent trade value was an understatement, even if these trade records were literally thousands of years ago. They included elvar factions who now had to be the drow.

The Ruk had helped build Gloomheart! What the drow would do if they found out we had these Darkness and Shadow Elements would be quite impressive... but on the other hand, what we could do with them... IF...

“Are you willing to share the subspatial construction technology to use the Gloom Elements?” I asked directly, and their beards almost writhed in surprise. “I have a presence on the Underweb I would like to expand without the drow being aware. Without the technology, they can only be traded to the drow... and I’d rather throw them into the sun first.”

They were impressed with that statement. “We do not have access to the Gloom,” King Rittercrun said.

“And if you did?” I parried calmly, and both their eyes narrowed.

“Much of the technology has magitech foundations.”

“It may not surprise you that much of the Gloom is maintained by psitech nowadays, and our ability to convert the functionality of it might surprise you.”

-‘Might?’- Ronnie /snickered, salivating over that list of stuff.

“You are speaking of building a secret attachment to the Underweb of the Elvar, and negotiating passage rights?” the tech-priest asked shrewdly.

“We have Gate technology.” Their beards went monocolor in absolute shock. “However, galactic-level Gating is very power-intensive, and thus slow. Two Gates operating in Gloom, not so much; one incoming, one outgoing. However, we do not have a place to put them that would not be instantly spotted and seized by the drow.

“If you are capable of helping build such a place, those Elements have value. Without it, they are fusion-fodder.”

It wasn’t like the technology was secret, the elvar and drow already had it... and pulling one over on the pointy-eared gits, piggybacking on their efforts, would appeal to anyone.

“That... is entirely negotiable,” the Ruk king agreed.

“I notice that four other Elements are specifically trade items for the elvar, and judging by past quantities in your records, I would hazard they are key elements for building Starhomes. The exchanges in return... to be quite frank, would you prefer a renewal of brokered trade for those E-Elements, or simply a one-off profit on our part?”

It went without saying that they hadn’t traded with the Elvar in millennia, or they wouldn’t even have these on the table. I could imagine there was some bad blood after their fall, the rise of the crowing Elvar, and then the plummeting ruin of the elvar race. It was like finally succeeding the Ruk as the pre-eminent race in the galaxy was the signal for the Elvar to go all to shit.

However, the benefits of long-term trade far outweighed a one-off. The Ruk were masters of producing Earth, Mass, Gravity, and similar E-elements, with a lesser ability with Fire-sorts. The elvar definitely had an edge with Light, Air, Clouds, Water, Illusion, and related effects. They could make the heavier Elements, but not efficiently. The amount of Void Osmium the Ruk had here was equal to ten years of our trading with the Elvar, and it didn’t seem to be valued too highly.

“A trade agreement?” King and priest looked at one another. That would involve further contact, of course...

But getting access to higher quantities of certain Elements would totally be worth it. Even Ruk technology needed to dip outside their specialty here and there, and given the scales they worked with, those amounts weren’t small.

“The E-elements you received in trade from them are definitely specialized and of little use to us,” I commented. “I won’t trade for them without knowing you would want them.”

Their beards flickered. “If you can acquire them, we will trade for them!” the Ruk king promised.

I nodded. “I am afraid we have no trade agreements with these other five species, and indeed I have no idea of how to contact them. They may even be extinct, for all I know. Given the reputation of humans, trade may be problematic, if even possible. If you like, I can initiate contact protocols on your behalf to set up a trade, but otherwise these E-elements are of no value to us with our current understanding of technology.” Smoke, Salt, Thunder, Decay, and Dream were extremely esoteric in normal circumstances, but our demand was easily met with current supplies, given their niche uses.

“That would require navigational data...” Information also had value.

“Yes. As an aside, your knowledge of the phlogiston rivers would be of immense benefit to us, and given the Great Rift that has cut the galaxy apart, our current and expanding knowledge of the phlos would also be open to you.”

“You... travel by the Roots of the Galaxy?” the elder gasped in shock.