2354: We've just colonized the garden world of Vox in the far north!
Two million Alkari soar through its beautiful skies, as our northern Soars head east, and our northern fleet accompanies our last remaining Nest toward Paranar, and millions of Alkari set out for Vox, hoping to take advantage of its fertile lands, shady bowers, and romantic vistas to hurry the growth of our population, thoroughly decimated as it was in the succession war.
2356: Yreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!! One year before our Nest is due to arrive at Paranar, the lizards show up with a monster fleet: Three Valkyrie cruisers, a Banshee destroyer, a brand-new Juggernaut cruiser, and a colony ship (naturally)! I bring the bad news to Yreet Kree myself, prepared to resign my commission as Royal Battle Officer in shame, but she meets my eye squarely, and asks, "What more could we have done? How many Albatross destroyers, with their miserable two lasers apiece would we have needed to hold that planet against four fully-stocked combat cruisers? What good would our laser fighters have done even if it were possible for them to arrive sooner than they did, and if we had more on hand - bearing in mind that, had we spent more time building fighters, our colonies would have been that much more delayed? What good would it have been to arrive two or three years sooner, when that death fleet would have already been en route? They would only have taken the world from us instead of building a colony of their own. I need your help more than ever, to help me fight the battles we can win! The Sakkra may lead us overwhelmingly in every demographic and military category, but we are the Alkari! With your help, we overcame the murderous tyrant who usurped the throne of Altair and sought to enslave our entire race. With your help, we will overcome the treacherous Sakkra, whose idea of pacifism is to send massive war fleets to every world they can see."
I raise my head and take heart, accepting my Kestrel's judgment; for we may yet - somehow - overcome the Sakkra menace, and though it was with more skilled warbirds alive and piloting our starfighters, we have overcome greater odds than these! Somehow, someday, we shall prevail! Hopefully!
2359: Our Penguin reaches Vega, shocked to find no Sakkra fleet in its way. No doubt one will arrive next year. Well, then the pilots of my Star Wing Clan aboard our southern Beaks will have a chance to prove their skill!
As we plant our flag in the permafrost deep below Vega's pure, driven snow, its mineral and energy wealth invisible beneath its icy surface, Yreet Kree stands tall upon her great throne perch, and proclaims to all her loving people that the hope of the Alkari shall never die! I join all the people of Altair in beating my wings toward the sky and singing with unfeigned hope and joy ... and only later, in confidential discussions with Kestrel, do I reveal that reliable intelligence, based on transport movement picked up by our hopelessly out-of-date sensor arrays, suggests that the lizards have at least sublight engines.
2361: After long frustration, our construction research finally completes, cutting factory construction costs by 10% across our empire - critically, including Vega! The only way our scientists can imagine to move forward is through Improved Industrial Tech 8, but at least they apologize earnestly.
2362: Yawwwwrk! For the fourth time in the barely more than two decades since we first saw their first ships, a lizard Colony Ship has taken a planet when we had a Nest or Penguin of my own on the way! There's no escort for the one down at Rotan, but it's been retrofitted with weapons, probably in mid-space, and though our Soar waited to retreat until we were sure it didn't have missiles ... it turned out, at the last moment, to have missiles after all! So I've lost Rotan, and this time I do mean I lost it! I could probably have saved it - at least for a while - first by sending the southern fleet there once Vega was colonized and no incoming fleets detected, then this year just by waiting to dodge those missiles a little more patiently. With a Penguin already built and on the way, I might even have held it long enough to claim it permanently. It's far, far too late now though ... and I don't know if it's possible to stop these Sakkra. Sauron is relaxed, but I would be too if I owned 14 stars already and was about to get a bunch more, and led the galaxy in every category that meant anything. The winds blowing in against us are starting to feel like a storm. Kestrel council patience though, and somehow leaves me feeling better - perhaps it's the name after all; it's hard not to smile when I'm told to have patience by someone I remember as a little girl, leaping and beating the air with her wings, the sooner to snatch a popsicle!
2364-5: We establish a small colony at Tyr, the inevitable occurs as the Sakkra snatch Incedius with a war fleet, and after close consultation with Kestrel, I decide there is no point in pretending we can hold any neutral worlds against the Sakkra fleets any longer, and work harder than ever for peace with our terrifyingly powerful neighbors.
In this, at least, I feel I'm earning the trust that that Kestrel has placed in me, as I manage to secure a non-agression pact while more than doubling our annual trade agreement to 125 BC. Some of our Beaks are due to violate the terms of the pact in four years, but emergency reserves are more valuable than our hopeless laser fighters at this point anyway, and the problem is solved by sending our only armed starships to the scrap heap. Meanwhile, with the new trade agreement, there's a need for more constant communication between our empires; not all the details need to be handled directly by Sauron and me. A lizard diplomat is sent to Altair, with very little authority but plenty of fancy-sounding titles, and Yreet Kree selects an ambassador to the Sakkra as well. The position is largely a sinecure, with no important duties, responsibilities, or power, but lots of fancy lizard parties to attend, so she chooses Yraw Freep of the Court Singer Clan, which is otherwise under-represented in her government since they seem to turn out nothing but sycophants, and did little or nothing to resist the usurper in his time. She feels this will soothe ruffled feathers and help present a united front among our clans without placing an incompetent bird in an important post. I've never had a head for politics, and she is the true heir and empress, so in spite of my misgivings, I don't try to disagree.
2367: Vega's infrastructure is already complete! It goes right on developing industry for our other colonies!
2370: Our scientists develop wing-mounted lasers to improve our odds in surface combat, and with every possible option to advance, with the exception - to my disappointment looking forward, though it doesn't matter at present - of fusion bombs, I convince Yreet Kree to select Neutron Pellet Gun, which will give our future fighter ships some hope of accomplishing something, and hopefully open the path toward real missiles for our bases.
2371: Hyades is now the 8th Alkari world; the Lizards, by contrast, only have ... 15.
2372: We spot a non-Sakkra alien ship for the first time, as the Darloks - taking full advantage of their Sakkra alliance - scout Guradas with a single Bumblebee fighter.
2375: Our scientists finally finish sleep-walking their way to ECM 1 (OOC: At 27%, after crawling up through the percentages at one click of spending for just ages) and are apparently still sleep-walking, as the only thing they can think of to research is ECM Jammer Mark II.
2376: Yril Floop of the Court Singer Clan approaches me in secret, and points out that all our dealings with the Sakkra have gone through me. He says I'm in a perfect position to assume control of the Alkari and the galaxy myself if I only ... but I don't hear whatever else he has to say. Afterward, I don't even remember the fight - only the fury that built up inside me when I realized he was trying to convince me to betray Kestrel, Yreet Kree, the true heir to Altair and the galaxy! By the time the palace guards arrived and I came to myself, there was nothing left for them to do; scattered feathers were all that remained of Yril Floop. Further investigation reveals that he was an old agent of the usurper, bent on revenge, and I soon provide Kestrel with all the horrible details. If there are still traitorous agents among us, we must deal with them by any means at our command, track down everyone who ever had any connection to the usurper, roust them out, interrogate them ... but Kestrel calms me in her simple fashion. "Let them do what they can," she tells me. "There is little his agents can do among people who love me so dearly, and recognize the good of my rule. It is better that we allow a few traitors to work in secret than that we resort to such tactics as the usurper used himself." This is the reason that Yreet Kreeis the true heir and I am but her advisor: Even when faced with threats to her life and rule, Kestrel thinks first of her people, and remains calm and in command.
(OOC: What's going on here? Well, just before ending this turn, I thought, "You know, I should really just turn off events. The way this game is playing out, one bad event - say Altair, Vox, or Vega going radiated or poor or getting hit with a comet/nova/plague/rebellion, or for that matter, any rebellion at all, at any planet but Hyades - could erase my chances completely; getting the diplo event with the Sakkra would be better than any of these only because I would lose quickly instead of slowly. And even if a good event comes around, a win will feel less 'earned' in the end, and a loss will feel even worse than it otherwise would have." Those were my thoughts. But then I figured, "Nah; I decided at the beginning that I'd take my chances with the events, and I'll stick to it." And hit next turn.)
2377: Raaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwk!!!
It's just as I feared! A cell of the usurper's sleeper agents has survived undetected, and they've taken action to avenge the traitor I killed! Their sabotage just wiped out all the data on our Neutron Pellet Gun project, and our scientists have to start over from scratch! You can see now why it was vital that we defeat the tyrant who murdered Ryaaw Kree; apart from his draconian laws and horrifying policies, he and his agents were willing to destroy the hope of all the Alkari people just to weaken their perceived enemies - "enemies" who would have let them live unharassed in peace had they not murderously moved against us and sabotaged the Alkari empire as a whole! This could have been far, far worse - if they had managed to penetrate to our planetology labs, we might as well have handed the Sakkra the crown and scepter of the galaxy - but the news droid isn't kidding; with our critical starting investment lost, it will take years for us to recover as we work toward NPGs!
2379: Our new shields and stabilizer are finished, and we're ready to move on with Class III Deflector Shields and Dotomite Crystals because there are no other choices at all. The way things worked out with our Sakkra neighbors, this isn't the end of the world - maybe - as long as Dotomite suggests a way to devise an actual engine upgrade! With stabilizer in, I offer to exchange technology with Sauron, but he's not willing to offer anything that really tempts me.
2380: This is not to say he doesn't have anything to tempt me, as I finally get a spying report from agents in Sakkra space. It looks pretty ugly altogether, as well as confirming most of my fears from earlier years. Ugly - but not insurmountable. If we're careful, and we're lucky, we might yet surpass these lizards someday. Maybe! At the rate they're going right now, we'll need some luck just to avoid seeing them vote themselves in as emperor of the galaxy!
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Next: Soaring High ... and Crashing Down!
