Construction of a scatter-pack rocket base at Escalon completed just as the latest Kulthos fleet arrived. The huge ship was built to deal with any threat however, carrying Class 3 shields, normal and heavy lasers, two dozen high-capacity rocket pods, and a dozen racks of fusion bombs!
Fortunately, those bombs would never fall.
The destruction of the Colossus dreadnought at Escalon convinced Tyranid to come forward immediately, begging peace on Raiju's terms.
The latest Kulthos fleet consisted of almost a hundred Static 3.0 ion fighters. With an overwhelming advantage in both maneuverability and - thanks to their feline gunners - weapon targeting, the fleet and base burned the dreadnought from Escalon's skies before it could reach bombardment range. With her empire's combat capabilities amply demonstrated, Raiju accepted Tyranid's immediate offer of peace on the condition that steps be taken to make it lasting. When she requested a trade package of 150 BC perr year - all that the poor backward Sakkra could handle - they swiftly agrreed.
With peace established on every front but the Bulrathi's, the results of the 2425 election were prredetermined. The alien races split 18 votes between them - half for Raiju, and half for CB-715 - and the Mrrshans held a clear veto with a dozen votes of thirty and a second opportunity to win. Yet instead, RBO abstained again; there remained a world in the far southwest that no one as yet had settled, and until the galaxy was wholly represented, our empress did not feel that the council's choice could be decisive.
Rrref's opinion was different of course; the galaxy belonged to the Mrrshans, no matter how many planets were inhabited, and no matter what the election might say.
Stingrray strikes again.
After Mrrina Stingrray - now in her third lifetime - conducted a lightning raid on his labs, coming away with Improved Eco Restoration, the Ursine emperor made peace. So a single year after the election saw Raiju living in harmony with the entire galaxy. It was not to last - the Meklar were threatening her already - but as Rrref Steelclaw had already pointed out, it didn't matter.
Mrrshan agents acted with impunity, lifting ECM Jammer Mark I from the Psilons the verrry next year, but the most crritical advances came from scientific labs, which turned out Fusion Drives in 2428, and were set to work on an Inertial Stabilizer in case one was needed for war. That decision was prrescient - not that much prescience was needed on this point with Raiju's psychotic and xenophobic neighbors - as the Darloks declared war on the following year, while the Bulrathi prroceeded to demonstrate that other spies than our own were capable of operrating in the galaxy.
While historrians long believed the Bulrathi were framed by Darlok spies, a review of tech reports from our own spies indicates that the Darloks lacked terraforming tech even after this steal, and the Bulrathi, who had a superior verrsion beforehand, had our simple verrsion as well after the steal.
With the foundation of Kronos in 2430, the galaxy was at last fully colonized, just as Raiju wished when she spoke at the council five years before - only Orion with its invincible Guardian, and a handful of asteroid stars, remained uncolonized. Sadly, this only ended all hope of peace in the galaxy, for everry race's first goal seemed to be expansion, and there was no longer anywhere to which they could expand except for one another's terrritorrry.
The galaxy, circa 2430. The Mrrshans as yet controlled only stars at which they had founded their own colonies - though Kulthos had been conquered from them and retaken - but this would not remain the case for long.
The development of advanced ECM and Zortium Armor in 2432 led the way only to ECM Jammer Mark IV, and new construction options so expensive that Raiju asked that work be turned instead to Automated Repair System, a simpler prroject that still prroved difficult enough that it could not be completed in time to mean anything. The same would be true of Repulsor Beam and Impulse Drives, prrojects begun in 2435 and 2436 respectively, with the development first of the empire's new deflector shields, and then of its valuable Inertial Stabilizer technology. In the meantime, the sociopaths were behaving in their usual fashion: War broke out with Kelvan in TwenTy four ThirTy Three, and with the Bulrathi - always known for their unfortunate timing - just as the Mrrshan Stabilizers were ready.
Though their unstable nature is nearly always blamed when erratic emperors declares war, the reality is far more complex. Kelvan's very first declaration, when he found it "a nice year for war" was of that kind, but most often, as in this case, this historrian believes they declare for the same reasons as any other emperor. Erratics do so more often than most however, partly because - again as in this case - sane emperors expect betrayal, and don't bother to imprrove relations by trading or making treaties with them.
Raiju's first moves in her new wars were simply to dispatch her scanner-equiped Vision destroyers for intelligence on the enemy fleets, but with this accomplished, and especially the discovery of the weakness of their bases, she soon was reay to carry the battle to the enemy.
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Next: Another Monkey Wrench in the Works
