Oh, stop marveling at my miraculous recovery. There was nothing to it. Someone asked if I felt ready to take my turn as acting head of the oligarchy, and all my symptoms vanished. If only you'd have done it sooner! And no cracks about psychosomatic illnesses! Or psycho-anything cracks for that matter! Or about malingering! Confound it, we have an empire to expand!
The first thing I notice is that we don't have enough colony ships. This is already on the way to being rectified, but only as of this year, so it was probably only done as a courtesy to save me the trouble of giving the order myself. On the plus side, we have several immature colonies for me to grow! All right! And one of them is the beautiful cloud jungle of Incedius, one of the rarest planet types known to astronomy! This is a great start! It's still just a start though: A quick review of our records shows that we had just half the votes in this year's council election! We need to expand more rapidly! And of course, at the moment, there's just one way to do that: Right through our remaining enemies!
2451: Our main attack fleet reaches Draconis. This is severe overkill, but it was right on the way to our next target. We take orbit and glass it with no losses.
2452: I seem to have accidentally sent some ships to Denubius, so I bomb it. I also sent a fleet to Obaca on purpose, so I bomb it. I also realize our Mentar Lander must have been sent elswhere accidentally, so I send a new one to take its place.
2453: Hum-de-dum, killing and chasing fleets, blowing up bases, all in a pleasant year's work. Oh - hi, Refrens! What's up? Battle Computer 3? Don't we already have something way better? Yeah, okay, I can see how that might be useful. In fact, why don't we get to work on Battle Computer Mark II, just in case? Thanks, Dr. eBook! Now, let's see; where was I? Oh, yes. (singing) Whistle while you work ... whistle while you work...
...Mentar's mine, Obaca's gone, and more apes bombed: I smirk! (/singing)
2454: Up at Draconis, another Human huge ship responds to our Navy in the usual way, with its tail between its legs. Then, with the foundation of Obaca, I get a very gratifying message from the GNN newsdroid:
Our expansion has hit eighteen systems, and it won't be long before we control the entire galaxy! Oh, he says it'll happen if we're not contained, but take my word for this one: There's no one and nothing out there that's going to contain our expansion! Not on my watch, at least!
2455: Hum - dee - doo ... chasing humans, finding ... whoa! An artifacts world in the west! How cool! That'd be a great colony - let's make it happen! Oh, and also:
We do a little bombing. Only Argus, Denubius, and Rigel are glassed though. Lasitus responds by begging for peace. I'm busy getting ready to make new colonies where his used to be, so I pretend not to hear him. And my favorite part: Kholdan is now a mature colony!
_______________
Next: MY Galaxy!
