I've been destroying Human and Bulrathi attack fleets over many of my worlds without even really noticing them, ignoring Silicoid complaints about my power as I patiently save them from destruction, while most of my attention remains on my delightful new technologies. With personal absorption shields miniaturized to fit against the power cores of my soldier Klackons' neutronium exoskeletons, I consider means of creating a specialized shaped deflector field to make a ship appear virtually transparent - a Cloaking Device I will likely never use ... but would look really neat! And the moment I get my first prototype fusion beam working, I set out to miniaturize it into a Fusion Rifle, really just for kicks. My friends are less amusing, though. In spite of my perpetual urgings of peace, of insisting that the Silicoids must be considered as the beings the ancient Psilons helped to uplift into sentience, and not just as the bioweapons the ancient Humans created, Zygot will hear no persuasion. He has a fleet en route to Escalon, still the Silicoids' only world, and my only remaining option to save Sedimin and his people ...
...is to end my alliance with Zygot as I did with Monch not long ago. It is only with greatest regret that I take this step; the alliance that brought Nexus into existence so many centuries ago is very dear to my heart.
While chasing Psilon fleets from my worlds (and destroying them at Escalon and wherever else it's necessary) I finish work on my new robotic controls - proceeding to work on Battle Computer Mark XI technology - and my Klackon panacea, whose development also suggests possible means of learning Improved Terraforming +100! Better still, Lasitus still hasn't renewed his bioweapons projects, and appears to have awakened on the right side of his sleeping capsule for once, so I suggest that we make peace. Hilariously, he thinks he can make demands of me. More hilariously still...
...I accept them! This is a real kindness to the poor guy, since his only remaining planet happens to be barren, and all I get in exchange for my atmospheric terraforming is a peace treaty that he'd surely violate in a few years anyway if he could. Fortunately, I expect to remove him from power and set him up in a nice, comfortable rest home by the time the treaty can expire. Zygot is a different story; still fuming over the cancelation of our alliance and my insistence on saving the Silicoids, he appears to regard my peace with the Humans as the final straw. With a furious speech about "consorting with purveyors of plague and death, and with the plague spores themselves," he declares war on me. This leaves me pensive and unhappy, uncertain that I've done the right thing ... until I get word from Nexus that the Psilons themselves have been secretly working on a bioweapons program, attempting to learn from the records at Rha how they might design a plague of equal unstoppable horror for use against other species! I can hardly believe this is true ... but Nexus presents the evidence, and it seems unassailable. Zygot has declared war on me ... and now he will get his war! I may have a universal antidote, but it works only for my Klackons...
OOC Note: ...since our variant forbids gifts or tech trading, and you can bet nobody's going to steal it from me!...and he seems to be working toward plague technology against which no antidote could function!
Zygot has decided to try and fight his war, having declared it. This means sending fleets like this one to attack my nearby planets:
Naturally, those dedicated Fusion bombers don't get anywhere near their target before my scatter 7s tear them to pieces. Meanwhile, my own battle fleet arrives at Rha to confirm what Nexus told me. I have no fusion bombers, but one of my new Pulse Phasor cruisers - a Hornet 6.0, with Oracle Interface for added base-busting power, plus High Energy Focus and everything else you might expect - and representatives of both Soldier designs - are more than enough to handle the enemy's bases and "defending" bomber fleet.
My soldier Klackons arrive to storm the planet and investigate the Psilon labs in person; I barely outnumber the enemy, and of course the Psilons now know the terrain intimately, but my neutronium exoskeletons with built-in absorption shield generators and twin forearm-mounted plasma rifles are slightly more effective than the Psilons' zortium uniforms, deflector belts, and laser pistols.
You read correctly: That's a kill ratio of 57 to one.
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Next: Ascension
