You heard him correctly! My attacks proved the honor in my words of peace!
To be perfectly fair to Bullux though, I did kill more Humans than Bulrathi that year.
The next time we bombed Misha and Ursa, we did more damage to Ursa (bombers had finally arrived there, and most of those at Misha had left to hit the Humans elsewhere), so Bullux called us butchers and asked how he could believe us "when you call yourselves friends." The poor teddy was obviously confused. I saw that I'd need to do something drastic to make him realize we were at war, and prepared to do so. Meanwhile, Morfane had seen what was going on in the rest of the galaxy, and begged us for peace. I reminded it that it's the one who started the dogpile on us in the first place, and suggested that it take a nice, cool, refreshing jump in the nearest lake.
In 2429, after 124 Bombards wiped out Human defenses at Stalaz without incident or loss, followed by a few more bombing runs and our conquest of Misha with just three casualties, GNN reported that we nearly controlled a majority of the galaxy. Things were coming along pretty well, though monstrously slowed by our miserable warp speeds.
I knew we would have little trouble eliminating the Klackons in time for the next High Council meeting while incidentally acquiring enough votes to guarantee my election. Thereafter, without the infernal bugs spreading their doctrine of madness and murder throughout the galaxy, under my firm hand, all the races could cooperate in our pursuit of knowledge, in harmony. So I believed.
Don't you hate it when you forget about the Bulrathi?
Bullux warned us that very year that we would soon pay dearly for repeatedly bombing his homeworld. I laughed aloud; we'd repeatedly bombed his homeworld, he'd been able to do nothing about it, and he expected us to pay? Ha! Ha ha! Ha-ha ha-ha ha-ha-ha! There was just the little matter of two huge Grizzlies about to arrive at Maretta.
Now, I knew my lone Gecko could defeat them both in ship-to-ship combat, and the planet would be able to help out too with a trio of Merculite bases. What I may have slightly forgotten was the reason two Huge ships couldn't stand up to a single Gecko in the first place. We destroyed one before either could ever reach the planet, and the Gecko was completely safe ... but the other did reach the planet, and dropped its entire massive payload of Death Spores. We killed it just as it was trying to depart, but by then...
You could kind of say that was payback for my trick at Yarrow, when I got them to do this intentionally. Or you could say it was a massive war crime for which all the Bulrathi people would pay with their lives. Yeah, I'm going with number two on this one. They were my friends, and they betrayed me, and they attacked me, and they completely destroyed two of my colonies with illegal bioweapons! (Admittedly, the first was because I wanted them to and the second was because I was careless and not really paying attention. But still!) Even the Klackons weren't as vile. The Bulrathi would be the first to go.
2431-Present: The Last Years
After that, things started looking up, which wouldn't be hard to do considering how they looked for our Marettans. First, my spies cheered me up a bit by stealing Inertial Stabilizer from the monkeys. Then I had a chance to take out my agressions on Stalaz. And on Ursa. The latter finally (finally!) prompted Bullux to make our war official. I should point out that my still-lasting peace with the Psilons meant that I technically had never yet been at war with all five other races at once. I decided that was a good (or at least a moderately amusing) policy, and resolved to keep it up through the rest of my reign. Technically.
A moment later, the Darloks came calling, and made the mistake of complimenting me for beating up on the bears. I remembered just then that I hadn't done much to the Shifters since they started the whole mess in 2394, and resolved to change that as soon as possible! Even so, I almost forgot about them again immediately, practically falling out of my chair when I got another "Good work, sir!" from Alexander, whose southern worlds I'd been bombing steadily for the past several years! Annnnnd Xantak joined the fun! My, the Bulrathi were unpopular little creatures. Kinda seems like it might have been a bad move for them to turn on their only friends, then. (Or, let's put it another way: I was simply the last to find out how horrible the ursines really were!)
36 of our Bombards took out Quayal's missile base at the cost of a few of their number, and retreated from the fleet in orbit, in 2431. This was more or less typical of the small fleet actions ocurring in Human space that year since I hadn't been paying much attention in recent years, and was sending fleets out almost at random. Thanks to the galvanizing attack on Maretta however, I was starting to pay attention again! In any case, the real battle line was at Stalaz, which I bombed one last time just before the troops arrived and added it to my imperial collection. Ursa of course was also bombed, leading the Humans and Bugs to compliment me once more on my bear-killing techniques, even as I continued to destroy their ships and/or colonies. They ain't seen nothing yet. (Actually, I maybe wasn't paying that much attention though, as I kept building tactically slow Bombards instead of designing something with Inertial Stabilizers on it....)
In 2432, in spite of the fleet in orbit, I burned 115 of 121 Bombards in exchange for all but one of Sol's missile bases (the last six bombers, out of ammunition, had to retreat). The bases at the Argus colony went down next under the guns and bombs of my main bug-squashing fleet. Then I let Bullux know what I thought of his antics at Yarrow and Maretta.
Do you think I made my point? I do hope Bullux wasn't in his palace when his homeworld turned to glass. I really wanted him to see the rest of his civilization burning too!
Argus, of course, did not get bombed. We took it by force on the ground, and collected obsolete Improved Industrial Tech 8, and then ... I'm not sure what was next; it was something I'd never seen or heard of before. Surely, surely, it couldn't be...
An engine? Sublight Drives?! If I didn't have the photographic evidence, I still wouldn't believe it, we went so long with warp-1 transports in my reign. Yet there the tech was hiding, on Ultra-Poor Argus, along with Robotic Controls 3, which I suddenly realized was valuable as well, since I din't actually have RC4 yet, having slowed our research to a crawl in favor of shipbuilding.
Our lone remaining DiNewt 2.0 (yes, we only had one of them just then) was scrapped in favor of a superior version: The Newt 3.0 had a pair of NPGs like its predecessor, plus Duralloy Armor, but also sported Sub-Light Engines, Inertial Stabilizers, and the best maneuverability class available in the galaxy.
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Next: New toys in action!
