Although the negotiations had lasted nearly two months, the outcome left Sajanus, the Fourth Company Captain of the XVI Legion, the Shadowmoon Wolves, of the Terra Empire Expeditionary Fleet's Second Fleet, deeply unhappy. He had been sent to Canopy Star in secret.
The negotiations he held at the mining base with the generals of the Plue Hero Federation, the commander of the Star Sector's Chief Executive's Guard, and Darius—the mining base's and Canopy Star's de facto ruler—had made no progress whatsoever from beginning to end.
Just as at the start, the other side had never explicitly refused them. But they had just as little explicitly agreed to any of their terms or concessions!
Every time Sajanus felt desperate and prepared to declare the negotiations completely broken off and leave without hesitation, the other side would deftly give a little ground at just the right moment, pretending to concede on some key point. Hope would rise in him again and again, and he would grit his teeth and carry on with the negotiations.
But the result...
Almost every time the negotiations reached the substantive matters, the other side would come up with some precondition they could not agree to or would never accept, plunging the negotiations back into deadlock.
And so!
After being put at their mercy, toyed with, and forced to overturn one hard-won set of terms or treaty after another, Sajanus finally understood completely: it wasn't that he hadn't tried hard enough. The other side simply had no sincerity at all!
They probably hadn't wanted to negotiate with them from the start. They had only received him and kept him talking for nearly two months to deliberately stall for time or probe for information.
To be fair, Sajanus and the dozen or so elite Astartes under his command had