Once Chard was sure he had his people behind him, Targan policy was shoot first and ask any necessary questions afterward. The two ships in orbit around Targa were captured, the Menel killed, and the Kananites taken down to the planet. They were tortured into revealing the location of Kanan, then publicly executed, and that was just the beginning.

The Kananites hadn't faced anything like this crisis since the first contact with the Menel, two hundred years before the oldest living Kananite was born. They not only didn't have any real knowledge of war, they weren't even sure how to go about acquiring that knowledge.

Eventually they decided to negotiate with the underground opposition to Chard, while Menel spaceships kept watch on the Targan space program. Not a bad plan, in theory. In practice, it ran into a few unexpected difficulties.

The opposition to Chard hated him as much as ever, since every one of them had friends and relatives to avenge. Unfortunately they were scattered and not well-armed. They were also more than a bit skeptical of the generosity of the Kananites with their technology.

«At times we thought we were still talking to Chard's men,» Riyannah said wearily. «They wanted to know why-why-why we were giving them anything?»

«What did you tell them?»

«We said that with the knowledge we could give them, there would be no need to go out into space and loot other planets. They could do anything they needed with the resources of their own system.»

«Perhaps that's true-«began Blade, but Riyannah interrupted him.

«Perhaps? You know it's true! Just for a start, they could make enough antigravity generators to put in all their planes, and then-«

«Yes, I know,» said Blade patiently. «But are you sure they don't share Loyun Chard's dream of going out to the stars, even if they don't share his plans for what to do out there?»