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"Thanks." Medart watched him leave, then asked the ship for a basic magic text. If he was going to have to confront hostile Sandemans again, he wanted every bit of knowledge and skill he could manage. He was perhaps a third of the way through the tape when the ship informed him the Emperor was calling.
I personally think they were absolute, unmitigated idiots for thinking they could create and then control a race of the most deadly warriors in the known universes but from my own experiences with Sandemans, I can't help but be grateful to them at the same time." "Grateful to whom?" Ryan asked as he entered the room. "The Shapers, if I interpret what I heard correctly."
"Do you claim life-debt now?" "No." Medart grinned. "I would if I thought it were necessary, but the Sandemans I know would be curious enough to invite me to their ships, or to Sandeman itself, to talk about it." "You wish to surrender?" "Not hardly but I will, if that's what it takes to get a chance to talk to you." "I will have to consult the Warleader on that, Prince.
And even then, we keep it to the absolute minimum; people have to know that when one of us makes a definite statement, it's binding." Interesting, Tarlac thought, that the beings humans thought of as merciless killers considered the Sandemans ferocious.
That was standard in every Empire he'd visited or heard of, but since neither had applied to this one, it'd seemed best to ask rather than assume. "Record everything I say about Sandemans, then, and pass it along to IntelDiv for summary and conversion to a teaching tape. They should include a caveat that this information comes from Alpha Prime and may or may not apply to the Zeta Prime Sandemans."
Not that he'd given Last Gift to a Vader warrior, or that Sandemans were actually part of the Empire he came from even though that was something chiefs couldn't either deny fully or reveal but that he had gotten the saber honestly, and his motives for claiming what he did were equally honest.
It took Ryan six days to finalize arrangements for the duel, including what Clan Miklos needed to broadcast it to Sandemans and Empire alike; Medart spent the time resting as well as he could, nibbling on the food either Kelly or Haley kept him supplied with, and talking to the two of them.
"Five were there, yes but the other four were part of Medart's solution, to give the Sandemans an honorable reason to stop fighting rather than be annihilated. Much of this episode is either public record or not difficult to discover, though parts are still obscure.
Ten minutes later Medart and Chavvorth were sitting in the senior officers' lounge, drinking coffee and chovas. Medart had adjusted to the idea of magic far more easily than to the idea of Sandemans as enemies; magic was, for all practical purposes, something new, which made it easy to accept.
He'd been brought up Omnist, so there were quite a number of them, and he added a pair the Sandemans in Alpha Prime said should be favorably inclined to him: the two warriors he'd given Last Gift to, Leigh DarVader and Keith DarLewies. It didn't seem to help.
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