So do the Artemis fighters. The Guardian destroys some 325 while they dodge around its scatters, but the others close, and in two volleys, destroy it in turn. The OLander completes its mission, and Orion is ours.
In addition to death ray and various other junk weapons, a search of its ancient ruins reveals improved industrial technology two levels better than the best we were able to discover on our own, a real gem with more robotic controls yet to come in. With transports already clustered around Orion, ready to be redirected to it via our hyperspace communications (one of many discoveries we made that I deemed too inconsequential to bother mentioning - it came in eight years ago) with the launching planets already regrowing the populations they sent, and with massive resource spending, this beautiful world will soon be a fortress, turning out research in overwhelming quantities.
2465: The human gaeas of Stalaz and Morrig - the latter rightfully ours anyway - are conquered simultaneously.
2468: Two years ago, GNN reported a comet en route to our artifacts world of Ryoun. Fortunately, the bombers that had just rebased from liberating Morrig were in position to start bombing the comet almost immediately.
This year, the job is complete. Supported by a detachment of Artemis fighters sent in through our network of star gates, they reduced the comet to its component atoms, saving the colony.
2469: The bomber fleet that hit Stalaz would have come to help out with Ryoun, but it was farther off, and busy. Supporting an N-Star and transports, it helped to conquer the latest human gaia, in the Vega system.
2472: After two years of working on new factories for our newest robotic controls, we take Klystron from our blood enemy.
2473: Kailis is the latest human world to fall as we learn the secrets of advanced cloning and, for the first time in more than three quarters of a century, construct a new colony.
Imra had probably been an Alkari colony for more than a century and a half when the Sakkra bombed it out of existence, but both those races proved by their war that they are poor caretakers for the world, and so I declare it a Silicoid world, and so our newest colony is built there.
2474: The Alkari are not happy with our claim, and as I have no defensive fleet in orbit when their fleet arrives this year, I suppose they will send transports to take our colony.
Instead, they wipe it out from orbit, leaving the world naked yet again. There will be lots of eager colony ships heading down to look it over for other races, undoubtedly.
2482: The Alkari did manage to colonize Imra again, and though that world is rightfully mine now, I'm in no hurry to reclaim it, least of all from the poor, weak, xenophobic Alkari. In the meantime, I've been concentrating on research, and have finally achieved a breakthrough on Complete Terraforming technology. With room for 60 million more rock beings on each of my dozens of worlds, and the capacity to clone them easily, to say nothing of the hand phasors, personal barrier shield, and neutronium armor we finished in the last three years, taking the final human world will be almost too easy to be worthy of mention.
2494: Research is about to begin on advanced planetology tech, six years after we started on the industrial variety, after several years of unimportant research and spying. Now, with work also complete on class XV shields, scatter X missiles, and a sub space interdictor, our ever-growing stacks of bases will soon be impossible to breach, especially once we finish the project we started last year: Updating our factories to the most advanced robotic controls available in the galaxy.
2496: Vox is ours, moments after it becomes a Gaia.
Our blood enemy is no more. We have no rival worthy the name in the galaxy.
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Next: The Long "Peace"
