By 2441, the insect fleet had left Lyae. I was prepared to deal with them there anyway (maybe even if I did make another piloting error) but it never came up. There were no space battles worth mentioning, so...
...the biggest disappointment of the year was falling just short of glassing Kholdan (which was already low on population due to my bombing and the transports they sent off to Lyae). Seeing that the Klackons wouldn't fall that year anyway, I ceased bombing at that point (though Ryoun and Kailis had already been destroyed), and with Lyae reinforced by the aforementioned Klackon transports (though some died on their way in) we killed "only" 36 million insects on the ground there and failed to take the world.
Not so at Dolz.
Our conquest of that world yielded Enhanced Eco Restoration and Battle Suits. And our Computer teams at Arietis reported that there was a chance of developing Robotic Controls 4 by the following year! I may have given up on peace - I might indeed have turned almost my entire economy into a gigantic war machine - but I never (quite!) stopped our all-important research projects!
This was especially important since certain sources of knowledge had just been cut off forever.
Bye-bye, Monkeys! Bye-bye Brains! It's been fun sharing the galaxy with you!
The last space battle in which non-Sakkra could hope to achieve anything was held in the skies of Kholdan in 2442. Our small squad of Newts and a few of our Basilisks were destroyed in the course of reducing all but one of the enemy fighters to atoms. The last Cutlass followed the larger ships of the enemy starfleet in their retreat. A dozen little Cutlasses and a large Knight did seem to think they could defeat my Gecko at Jinga (their attendant Pegasus spore ships retreated at once) but were torn to pieces in spite of their false convictions.
Shortly thereafter, we had a sentimental moment at Thrax:
You can see the beautiful vistas, the verdant flood plains across the bay from our lander, under scudding clouds, even as Corporal Sshowssoff plants our flag for the first time on its soil! Of course, this shot was taken after our colony ship's nanite swarm restored the planet; not long before, the surface had looked a little more ... glassy. Still, a sentimental moment: It was to be our final wartime colony.
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Next: Conclusion
