Admiral Lev Stromo, a line officer who served as the EDF political liaison, smiled with pride, as if he were personally responsible for the success. “We now have the ability to create suns wherever we wish.”

“How often will we do this, Mr. Chairman?” asked the languid envoy from Relleker, a pleasant planet that had begun to show promise as a resort world, given its comfortable climate and numerous hot springs. The man had black hair oiled into showy curls against his head.

“That will be up to us,” Basil said. “Most important is the knowledge that we can. We may even have impressed the Mage-Imperator.”

“Who can tell when Ildirans are impressed? We still know so little about them,” said the Dremen envoy, a milk-pale man whose dim and cloudy world had left him unaccustomed to the sunlight of Earth. “What if they take the demonstration as a threat?”

“We’ve stated no aggressive intentions whatsoever,” Basil said, “but the Klikiss Torch is like a big ‘Beware of Dog’ sign in our yard. Let them draw their own conclusions.”

Admiral Stromo added some new business to the discussion. “We’ve received a field report from my superior, General Lanyan, informing us that the criminal pirate Rand Sorengaard has been neutralized near the Yreka system. He and all his Roamer corsairs were captured and executed.”

The redheaded Yreka representative sitting next to Stromo sighed in relief. “Now we can get back to normal trade relations,” she said. “I’ll instruct the grand governor to end rationing and enforce price controls to avoid economic chaos.”

“There’s bad news for every good news,” Basil said. He liked to keep his meetings balanced so they didn’t degenerate into a succession of complaints or rousing self-congratulations. “Despite my best efforts, I have made no progress with the Theron rulers. They are maddeningly aloof and don’t care a whit for the needs of interstellar commerce and government. We’ll have to make do with however many green priests they send us at their whim.”

The oblivious Theron leaders had no comprehension of the size of the galaxy. A normal electromagnetic transmission—radio waves traveling at the speed of light—took decades, sometimes even a century, to go from place to place. It was an intolerable hindrance to running large-scale military operations, providing planetary defenses, or even engaging in regular commerce.

With an Ildiran stardrive, ships could travel several times faster than light. Many of them served as couriers, delivering news and important diplomatic communiqués, but even using the fastest vessels such messages required days or weeks to arrive at their destination.

A green priest’s telink, though, was instantaneous, regardless of the distance, so long as a worldtree and a priest were at each station. Such communication was not a luxury—not a frivolous convenience—but an absolute necessity in order for the Hansa to keep growing and thriving.

Unfortunately, green priests were people, not machines, and using telink required their cooperation. The Hansa could not force their hand, and the Therons certainly weren’t volunteering.