Only when there was something to discuss could it be called a negotiation.
If you did not have even the slightest bargaining chip in your hands,
then it was called a targeted purge.
These pirate bands, who had thought they could negotiate with the Tau, watched helplessly as a brilliant red light flashed through the dark cosmos. Then, like divine punishment, it descended upon them with the force of thunder.
How could pirates like them ever have encountered a regular military?
Especially a regular military that did not bother wasting a single word on you.
A regular military that shot you first, then only negotiated if anyone was still alive afterward was even rarer.
The Tau were willing to negotiate with them, willing to ransom back their people through peaceful trade. That was the Tau.
But Gamma World would not.
So, these pirates had thought they could negotiate with the incoming fleet and squeeze some benefits out of the Tau Empire's home worlds. Instead, they could only watch helplessly as the enemy warships unreasonably fired a lance strike down upon their heads. More precisely, they were not even the target. They were merely the people standing on top of the target to watch the show.
The target protected by the force-field shields behind them was what the lance strike had truly been aimed at.
"By the Four Gods, what did we do to deserve this?"
The price of a single lance shot was worth more than the entire net worth of all the pirates combined. Using a lance on them was not even worth the ammunition. Which wealthy legion had so much money it had nowhere else to spend it, coming here to use them as training targets?
With equipment like that, could they not go fight the Imperium of