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Zhardan Landing Field, 2439: Graur and I are doing our best to work with the Humans here. Strader himself is hopeless in his madness, but there's some chance that we can accomplish something more with his underlings, who surely know of his instability by now, and there are Bulrathi and Mrrshan ambassadors with whom we are meeting as well - whether through Mad Strader's force of personality or his deputies' sane action while he was in hyperspace, his wars with those two races at least have ended. In fact, of all aboard Graur's ship, only beautiful young Miristys has any cause to fear Human patrols - but Sasha has said so long as Miristys cannot safely leave the ship, she will remain behind with it, to offer company and solidarity if nothing else. With a grim look, she added that no one among her people would listen to her anyway. Graur was going to remain behind as well, for much the same reasons, but Sasha touched his paw, and asked him please to go and help me, for her sake, and he melted for her. Alone with him, away from the ship, not daring to ask outright about his feelings for her, I spoke what I felt for Sasha, and he made the briefest and gruffest of noises in reply. I thought that was all I would get out of him, but a moment later, he spoke, and his voice was unexpectedly soft. "Every time she has spoken to me, even just doing business, her voice and her words and her face have been kind." His look was distant and dreamy, and my heart went out to him. What must life have been like among the Bulrathi for so little to mean so much to him? I wonder still, but there was little time to speculate before we gathered our first intelligence reports from the Humans, and while Graur returned to the ship to make sure Sasha and Miristys were safe, I met the Mrrshan ambassador.
I made very little headway with the five-planet feline empire. Their ambassador was haughty and unimpressed with me, declaring the powerful and growing Meklar empire a more valuable choice of ally than a runaway who represented no one at all, especially with the obviously dangerous Psilons drawing nearer - Empress Yalara was not only at war with them, but aware that Dynalon would soon be claiming an as-yet-uninhabited world not far south of her core. She had moreover just agreed to a 135 BC trade package with the Meklar, and traded basic ecological restoration technology to them - filling a gaping hole in their technological capabilities - for anti-matter bomb technology. "Would someone who planned to turn on us give us such a powerful weapon with which to fight them?" she scoffed openly. Knowing the Meklar all too well, I urged her to consider the possibility that they would strike so swiftly from surprise as to make her ability to attack their worlds irrelevant, and moreover that such bombs would hardly be an upgrade for most purposes over death spores, but she dismissed me. "I would rather have the sure value of such devices to use against our Psilon and Bulrathi enemies - both powerful and near - than a third war against the other great power of the galaxy, led on by your pointless fear."
I would not be so concerned if the Mrrshans were the Meklars' only source of new technology; with RBO-23 at work on class six ECM since its capture of Sol, for lack of the creativity needed to progress in any other computer-based direction, I had even hoped for a while that their industrial base would be reasonably limited by their transport-bound population at least. But there were reportedly signs of electronic tampering last year at the Psilons' Celtsi research station, and ever since, the Meklar have been working factories more efficiently than ever, no doubt by addng Psilon mark 4 robotic controls to their own abilities. Still worse though was this year's events at Iranha, where the second Meklar wave arrived and assimilated that rich Silicoid world with all its factories, a mass driver design, outdated ECM, yet another incremental improvement to their robotic controls, and specs for a repulsor beam. RBO-23 is now developing new class 4 shields for its ships even as its existing ships - primarily destroyers mounting both fusion and anti-matter bombs, with ion fighters and dissipator cruisers for support - continue their deadly cruise through Silicoid space.
Deep Antares Orbit, 2445: After following another tortured route to reach Silicoid space without crossing over the battle lines between species, we have arrived only to find we come too late once more. We've just received word that the battle for Imra is over; the ancient artifact world has been assimilated by the Meklar like so many others. Though they won the battle by luck and only the barest of margins, many more transports are about to arrive, and the planet will be brimming with Meklar by next year, many of them - or many of their body parts - striking a sickening resemblence to Silicoids slain or crippled in the battle. The designs they picked up there for an energy pulsar and nine-parsec fuel cells based on Reajax II, on top of the Mark 6 battle computer they lifted during last year's conquest of Misha, mean the Silicoids' technological distinctiveness has been fully added to the Meklar's, even as RBO-23 goes to work on developing intergalactic star gates on its own. Carnax hoped that this would satisfy the Meklar, but should have known they are insatiable. Their response to its offer of peace was four words long: "No. That is all." When Strader made a similar request last year, he was simply told to go away. Of course, the crafty cyborgs know their virtual allies from their enemies. They gave a much more complete explanation when rejecting Durpp's offer to formalize their alliance two years back - claiming he had too many enemies for them to commit to fighting them all, though they promised to continue rolling back the likes of the Silicoids from his battle fronts - and when persuading Dynalon to break off his alliance with their Human enemies the same year.
Fortunately, we have had some limited success as well, even as we traveled here by our circuitous route: We negotiated peace between the Psilons and the Mrrshans, and on arrival here, managed to persuade Carnax to ally himself to Yalara as well. We need to unite the whole galaxy this way before it's too late, for the Meklar keep growing stronger; even now, they are monitoring Hyades, the shattered battleground world whose arid slopes had been rendered almost uninhabitable by various races' death spores over the years - a world Sasha and I visited long ago, when it was a thriving human colony. Ever since sneaking in to scout it ten years ago, shortly after its latest colony had been destroyed by a Psilon war fleet, the Meklar have been watching and waiting their chance to assimilate it, in case it falls into the hands of one of their declared enemies.
Mrrshan Imperial Supplication Chamber, Esper, 2450: Spy wars have been raging across the galaxy, even as the Meklar dismantle Silicoid assault and defense fleets. I fear Carnax is fighting a losing battle, and that we are doing the same. Yalara was so furious with it when I spoke to her that she wouldn't listen to a word I said in its defense - Carnax had apparently called her in a fury, accusing her of destroying four missile bases at Aurora, just as it did when it lost two at Centauri to sabotage three years ago. Miristys and I tried to make it understand then that it was done by Meklar agents, but it would not listen, then or now; all the evidence pointed to Mrrshan spies. Of course Yalara is steaming, as she claims - and I believe her - to have no spies active in Silicoid space at all, but she will not listen when I insist that Carnax doesn't deserve her anger - that it is merely a victim of the Meklar. It doesn't help that, two years ago, Carnax was boasting that he had the Meklar agents' number, citing their saboteurs' total failure at Cryslon. Too well, I knew they had not failed at all: Their real mission at each world - far more important than destroying missile bases ahead of their more-than-capable bombers - will have been to place a hidden landing beacon and allow transports to launch in coordination with the forward battle fleet, and in this, even at Cryslon, they succeeded. Rich Centauri was assimilated just last year, with invasion forces and war ships already moving on Cryslon. Following their 2448 peace treaty with Strader, whose Humans had little more technological or biological distinctiveness to contribute, and a trust-forming trade of their inertial stabilizer for massively outdated Human robotic controls, the Meklar were able to concentrate all their forces on the Silicoids - and on projects like RBO-23's 2449 vintage scatter pack rockets, to be followed up, to my relief, with a theoretical ion stream projector when they might have investigated Omega-V bombs instead. I couldn't dissuade Yalara from voting for RBO-23 in the election, but even had she voted for Dynalon, the Bulrathi abstention meant that the Meklar, just one vote short of a council veto, could not lose anyway ... and meanwhile, the Meklar agents are still at large across the galaxy....
Palace Grounds, Ursa, 2456: The Meklar now control Hyboria's skies, and lost only a single ship, thanks to a tactical adaptation they recently made, and I wonder again if we've acted too slowly. At least we're still acting at all! Our most daring or desperate move to date paid off, as we slipped into the Meklar Centauri system in the guise of a Mrrshan trader, and convinced the port authorities that Graur was in fact a Bulrathi merchant on the run. I wouldn't have dared the attempt myself, but our captain seems able to do anything if Sasha only says she believes in him. Not long after he spoke with a Psilon diplomat at Centauri, Dynalon even went so far as to threaten retaliation if RBO-23 continued its reckless expansion. Graur said he'd done nothing the rest of us could not have done, but I believe there's more to him - a kind of gravity and personal power. Sasha would have none of it either. She thanked him, placed a hand on his arm, and gave him a smile that I could see sinking deep into every muscle of his body, softening his heart as it relaxed his whole massive form. We must live for such beautiful moments, however brief, for I fear there will be few to come. That was also the year that Meklar forces assimilated Cryslon, and though 104 brave Silicoid regiments at Aurora, in spite of the Meklars' superior armor - they'd rolled out Zortium in 2453 with another small improvement to their industrail construction techniques in their plans for future technology - managed to kill 124 Meklar over the course of two years, the planet was assimilated last year, along with the Silicoids' merculite missile and mark-eight battle computer technologies. Even now, we're getting reports as well that Meklar agents lifted improved deflector shields from Mentar itself as RBO-23 devised a class-six jammer, and that it is now planning to double the power of its planetary shields and improve its robotic controls by yet another little increment - the first opportunity it's had to do so without assimilating knowledge from another species. There would be little hope for the galaxy had Graur not worked another miracle last year, speaking to his own emperor Durpp in their guttural language. When he returned, his shrugged his huge shoulders, and said, "I'm just a concerned citizen, and a smuggler at that, but I had all the intelligence you three have gathered for me."
Miristys trilled; I beamed; Sasha embraced him. He looked surprised, then softly, deeply happy, and gently stroked her hair, almost as she might have petted a beloved kitten. He opened his mouth to speak again, but Sasha said, "I knew you could do it," and apart from a single, happy sigh, that silenced him. Durpp had broken his non-aggression pact with RBO-23.
Entering hyperspace, 2458: For all the diplomatic progress we've made, our words are just too slow! Even as Dunatis fell last year, Hyboria found transports descending upon it, and its assimilation this year by the Meklar collective gives RBO-23 control over 18 star systems! Yet that's not the worst of the news: While the southern Meklar fleet dismantles the Silicoids, another is gathering in the galactic center, and we may already be too late to issue a warning to its victims! Unidentified agents destroyed a missile base at Mrrshan Esper just last year, and an investigation revealed evidence which, if placed around the sabotage site, would have implicated the Bulrathi, apparently abandoned at the last moment for unknown reasons. If only it had also revealed the transport beacon that was surely concealed on the surface at the same time! News that Silicoids had taken out a few factories on Primodius did nothing to comfort me, especially as a Meklar tactical fleet took the skies of Zhardan - the last Human colony - earlier this year! When Durpp publicly called out Yalara for the theft of battle suit designs from a lab on Hyades - the spored-out world right on the Meklar front - it only sealed my certainty. Graur warned Durpp to be on his guard, to expect Meklar in battle suits on his doorstep at any moment, and that the Mrrshans would not represent a threat to him, but we had time for nothing else; we have to warn Yalara, or her empire may fall without a fight! The only possible strategic use the poor world of Zhardan could have for the Meklar is as a staging base to launch invasions of the Mrrshans! Just before entering hyperspace, we received still more chilling news: First, a Psilon invasion apparently reached Hyboria just days after the Meklars' ... but failed to overcome the already-entrenched machine forces, meaning Psilon troops were assimilated by the Meklar there too! Worse yet though was an agreement reached in the wake of that battle between Dynalon and RBO-23. In spite of the threat Dynalon offered at the beginning of the decade, the two are now allies in name. I fear this spells the doom of the galaxy.
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Next: Conquest
