Worked until 8PM today (yes, my schedule is crazy) and haven't been feeling well, so I only got to 2458. I'll get the last couple turns in, with the rest of the report, tomorrow, work and health permitting.
2455: Maniac glanced over his scanner readout: The composition of the incoming Sakkra fleet, including their new Valkyrie cruisers.
"The usual Junk," he said with a grin. "Let's go get 'em!"
His first officer quavered. "But what about those Valkyries? They're almost identical to the ship you were piloting last year!"
Maniac shrugged. "But now I've got the updated version! And more importantly, most of the few little differences are
extremely important. It's a repulsor cruiser mounting short-range weapons, right? That means it's weapons are only effective against ships that either can't hurt it anyway or have slower reactions than it. You know what single item has the biggest impact on ship reaction times? A battle scanner, like the one that gave us this report. Notice what piece of equipment the Valkyrie is missing that's present on every other repulsor ship in the battle? That's right! The thing doesn't even have a battle computer, while we went with the top of the line, in part for that very reason. Oh, and we're Alkari. We have faster reactions than everything in this galaxy by default. Under the circumstances, they needed to put heavy beams or missiles on that thing if they built it at all."
The first officer swallowed. "But the planet has no missile bases yet, and..."
"Relax." Maniac grinned. "We've got two repulsor cruisers of far superior designs to theirs, and over a hundred Merc fighters to punch past their beams. We're going to be fine."
The events proved his reasoning sound: Those Sakkra who survived the battle did so only by retreating. No Alkari ships were lost. Maniac's attention however turned at once to a far more dangerous battle being waged halfway across the galaxy.
More than 50 Alkari bombers and a handful of NPG fighters would be lost to the Klackons' stinger missiles and beam ships.
With the dangerous Klackons' bombers and irrelevant spore ships unable to contribute to the battle however, the Alkari soon took control of Drakka's orbital space ... just in time to protect the descending troop transports.
Their victory was decisive, and netted the last technological secrets the Klackons still from the avians: Tachyon Beam construction, and obsolete industrial waste reduction which allowed the Alkari to begin work on a design for Powered Armor (though in hindsight, Acting Head of Research Ref decided it would have been better to go for a less advanced, but quicker, Armored Exoskeleton project - he regarded Improved Industrial Techs 3 and 2, while attractive, unlikely to actually help the empire by the time they were achieved, and Tritanium Armor too time-consuming for a relatively small gain that would someday be obsolete) ... plus two techs the Klackons had apparently discovered that very year: Anti-matter torpedoes and Robotic Controls V. In place of his own robotics project, just handily completed for him, Ref selected one to develop a mark 8 battle computer, rather than the mark 7 version or class 6 ECM. Of course, he had made another decision two years before that might someday prove more important than any of these. For it was then that tech recovered from the Klackons had allowed him to complete his long-running project in planetology.
The single ship completed in 2454 had been a radiated colony base strapped to an impulse engine in a destroyer hull. It colonized the rich world of Regulus in 2455. And as Ref's next tech - seeing that the entire planetology tree, with Complete Terraforming already in hand, held only three more possibilities - he had selected a Universal Antidote, in lieu of obsolete terraforming or the very Bio Terminators about which Governor Raiddinn had warned the empire. If the antidote project was completed in time, even those terminators would be rather non-threatening.
Sadly, he reflected, progress was going to be slow. His nephew had cut tech funding to the bone again - though promised the change would be brief - while a few planets worked on robotic controls, transports were launched from more than half of the empire's worlds ... and the empire began another massive ship-building spree.
2456: Wing Commander Marshall frowned at his comm screen. He'd been trying to raise the emperor without success ever since his fleet took control of Gienah. He tried others around the empire, but none of them seemed to have heard from the emperor either - not even Special Agent McCaaaaaw, who was performing what Maniac considered unauthorized missions in Psilon space. "Eh," the agent reported, "the emperor told me to basically just do whatever I want, and I noticed we actually have better computer tech than the Psilons at this point, so I figured I'd help with our infrastructure a bit."
"Industrial tech 4 might not seem like that big an improvement until you remember we just got robotics 5 last year. This'll make for a 20% savings on a
lot of factories. I didn't see the point in framing anyone though. Klackons? Meklar? Whatever. I just escaped without leaving evidence of any kind."
Maniac frowned deeply. "I'm just glad you didn't get caught. Why are you even wasting time in that part of space?"
Mcaaaaaw just shrugged. "I've got plenty of agents in your sector already. You wouldn't be planning to head for Seidon any time soon, for instance, would you?"
The Wing Commander narrowed his eyes. "You know perfectly well it's my next target. We've lost over 50 bombers at each Klackon world we've taken so far, and that one has almost as many bases as two of them combined."
"Oh, good," Special Agent McCaaaaaw answered cheerfully. "Oh. And not anymore."
"Facing thirteen fewer bases should improve your fighters' survival considerably, don't you think? They also seem to have followed my policy of just escaping unseen instead of framing anybody. I mean, at this point, who cares who the Klackons like or don't like - you know what I mean?"
Maniac thanked him, his mood much improved, then cut the transmission and tried the diplomatic corps at the homeworld. Surely they, at least, would know something! He reported to them that the transports had arrived safely and wiped out Gienah's defenses, claiming the world for the Alkari.
"We guessed that already," they told him. "QX-537 sent a calling card again to thank us for killing 'loathsome Klackons.' Too bad we can't find the emperor to let him know."
Slowly, Maniac shook his head. Had the emperor been abducted? The diplomats seemed unconcerned, but perhaps they were just in the habit of hiding their true emotions. Or perhaps they just supposed Emperor Steel was on a year-long bender someplace; with him, it was a distinct possibility. At least the shipyards were still functioning - well over 500 ships had been produced and were already on their way toward the front - but when he tried to reach them, all their supervisors would say was a variation on the theme: "He's fine; we're getting orders from him all the time. No time to talk; we're
really busy."
2457: Another Klackon world lit up the viewscreen of Maniac's Tempest. The newer repulsor cruisers had been scrapped for parts when more design space was "needed" and they were found to be out of position for supporting the rest of the fleet, with the (slightly) older Tempests in exactly the right spots. A new generation of StormWing repulsor cruisers was apparently being planned, but none had yet been assembled when the fleet reached Selia: The most heavily-defended alien world the Alkari had yet faced.
Several Sakkra worlds had held more missile bases, but their merculite missiles had been unable to keep pace with Alkari fighters, while Klackon stingers could outrun any ship in space, launched from bases with far superior armor and more than twice as many layers of shields.
The wing commander was unimpressed. His fleet of bombers - including dozens of the deadly new Pelicans - would lose some of their number, but the Klackon fleet was harmless, and the bases were soon destroyed. When the transports arrived and took the planet, the whole galaxy learned of it right away ... on the evening news.
The Alkari had crossed the planets threshold to galactic domination ... and they weren't done yet.
With the planet was finally secured, Marshall had a chance at last to review the reports that came in while he was in hyperspace. Mostly, they were reports of hapless alien attacks on well-defended Alkari colonies, but it appeared as well that Special Agent McCaaaaaw had abandoned his Psilon games for the moment ... and moved into Meklar space.
Class 7 battle computers would be a welcome addition to the promised StormWings, and would even help Alkari bases hit the agile Dagger bombers that remained by far the greatest threat the Klackons could field, but Maniac suspected that McCaaaaaw had selected it mainly just to further improve his hacking skills. Conspicuously absent was any report on the location of Emperor Steel ... though apparently his uncle had gone to the homeworld in search of him personally.
2458: "Where have you been?!" Ref's sheer exasperation nearly eclipsed his vast relief. "The entire empire's been looking for you, practically."
Emperor Steel tittered slightly, his face lit up with an expression of pure, beatific glee. "I've just been with my favorite uncle is all! I'm sure he would have told someone if I'd let him away for a moment." He giggled again, joyfully.
"Your favorite..." Ref groaned. "I've been out on our deep space research lab this whole time. You were nowhere nearby!"
The emperor giggled again. "I have a
new favorite uncle!"
"But..." Carefully, Ref tried to explain. "I'm your father's only brother - and no sisters for that matter - and your mom was an only child...."
Oblivious, Emperor Steel went on, "I
love my Uncle Al!"
And so, as the light dawned, Ref looked up at the sign for the galaxy's most-loved family-friendly shipyard and weapons emporium. "Design your own star cruisers and doom fighters!" read the sign. And for years on end, Emperor Steel had done exactly that.
The NPG and Merc fighters had all hit the scrap heap ... in favor of the emperor's
new designs. As Uncle Al himself had said, "Want a gift for the Wing Commander who has everything ... including hundreds of merculite fighters you're about to scrap? Try naming a
new fighter after
him ... and fitting it with
stinger missiles instead!" With T(hunder)-Bolt fighters taking the place of NPGs by fielding megabolts instead and Pelican bombers more than twice as powerful as the old F-bombs ... to say nothing of the state-of-the-art StormWing cruisers ... the Alkari domination of the spacelanes was complete. And yet....
"Ooooooh!" Emperor Steel cooed suddenly. "It looks like our scanners picked up Orion this year! I'll bet we can design a brand NEW fighter that can take THAT out too, with some of our new tech!"
There was indeed new tech to use: In addition to the Mark 7 computers stolen by McCaaaaaw the year before, Alkari forces had turned up Trilithium Crystals, permitting way more ship range than the Alkari would ever need, when the Klackon labs responsible for its research fell to them ... along with the rest of the artifacts world of Cygni!
Yet more fleets and transports still were on their way into Klackon space. The epic battle across two worlds - including Kholdan itself - that would define the entire Klackon war was about to begin.
The emperor was so busy designing new ships, he didn't even notice.
(To be concluded....)