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Central Centauri Spaceport, 2481: We've returned this time in desperation more than in daring. Though the Meklar are at war with both remaining races, and there is no more hope of masquerading, I remembered how I had hidden among them for so long, first on Meklon itself, and then even aboard a tiny Scout above Maretta. I hoped that if we were careful to avoid notice, they might simply overlook us since our trade ship isn't armed and carries no technological secrets or significant-to-them biological distinctiveness that they haven't already acquired with the innumerable samples they've taken from each of our races. We represent neither a threat to the Meklar nor anything they wish to gain. I imagined we would have to slip in stealthily, but as we attempted to navigate through an asteroid field, a fighting wing of Black Ice fighters numerous enough to defeat any other race's entire remaining star fleet swept out around the field toward us, all around us ... and past us, scanning our ship to the marrow of our bones, with advanced computer technology that must have laughed at our smuggling electromagnetic echo techniques if the Meklar had any capacity for laughter, without diverting their course by a fraction of a radian. To RBO-23 we are, as I have always been, an irrelevancy. Destroying our little trade shuttle isn't worth the energy needed to power the megabolt beam. The Meklar had more pressing matters to attend to: The assimilation of Ursa and its 290 factories yielded no new technology for them, for they had already acquired everything the Bulrathi had to give. Yet they still managed to win a battle and add to their own the tremendous technological distinctiveness of yet another race.
Earlier this year, literally thousands of Black Ice megabolt fighters swarmed to the last star in the galaxy that the Meklar had not explored. They encountered the Guardian of Orion ... and it fell. They reverse-engineered its death ray, and from the ruins of the planet itself, acquired class XI deflector shields, a mark X ECM jammer, and all the data stores necessary to complete their star gate project at once. Work began on a sub space teleporter as well, but no other race will survive to see that research complete.
Iranha Orbit, 2482: Still no harassment from the endless Meklar fleets. We might go on like this indefinitely. Not so, I fear, for the Silicoids and Bulrathi. They huddle on irradiated Antares and remote Berel, hoping to be left alone, but are still too numerous, in their millions, for their hope to succeed.
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Hyades Colony, 2483: Berel has been assimilated. So pass the Bulrathi. Grraur is holding up well, at least. Perhaps he had so long to anticipate it that he was able to harden himself against the inevitable, but there may be more that I'll never learn. When we heard the news, Sasha went to touch his arm and offer what comfort her words could give, but he answered in the gentle voice only she invokes in him, "For your sake, and for mine, I grieve - but not for my people's. It is no accident that I chose to live, even though I had to skulk there as a smuggler and outlaw with neither name nor face, outside of Bulrathi space."
I cannot know what life was like among the Bulrathi - I never saw any alive but Grraur himself, leaving all our interactions with them to our captain - but I begin to wonder if the universal war against the ursine people that began a century and a half ago had better cause after all than one of Emperor Strader's fevered whims. What could the main part of the Bulrathi been that fearless, immovable Grraur should so melt for the least sign of true kindness from Sasha, and leave his people behind forever without regret?
I can't tell if it's related, but certainly it's strange - Hyades, the spored-out shell of a world the Bulrathi controlled for decades by dint of powerful ground troopers and superior fleet strength, is a full-fledged gaian environment, with no sign remaining of the centrury-old bio-wars. The Bulrathi had decades to do what the Meklar managed in a few short years. I wonder ... this planet is a comfortable place to live, but it's still an arid world, and ... perhaps ... perhaps we should move just once more. There is time: A Silicoid colony ship appears to have come into existence, as if by magic, already en route from Antares to Orion, having never appeared in orbit above Carnax's last star. It is due to arrive in two years ... and so are we, at another world entirely.
Solace Island, Maretta, 2476: We've been living here a year now, untroubled by the Meklar all around us. They pass us by with no more notice than they give the rocks and trees, even receiving news from around the galaxy - though the news will soon cease to have meaning. Word has come that Antares is no more, destroyed with both of its missile bases in a single volley of anti-matter bombs from over 500 of the new doom bombers. An image from the battle shows that the Meklar have enjoyed constructing superfluous ships in the meantime, including the giant Finality 5 with over 75 megabolt cannons fitted for high-energy focus, lacking only the mark X battle computer RBO-23 devised just last year, when the Finality was already en route through the stargate from Toranor to Centauri, while drawing-board sketches began for another improvement to Meklar robotic controls. "Overkill" doesn't even begin to gesture at the situation. Meanwhile, with Carnax and the entire colony at Antares blasted into its component subatomic particles by 1,659 anti-matter bombs falling simultaneously, it was no doubt a trivial matter for RBO-23's agents to persuade the Silicoids of Orion to overthrow their governor and every vestige of Carnax's rule there.
It doesn't matter. It won't save them. RBO-23 wanted so badly to assimilate the throne world of the ancients, it actually built a colony ship to claim the place itself. Only when it saw the Silicoid colony en route did it scrap its own in favor of the aforementioned Finality and grant the Silicoids an extra two years' grace. It wasn't going to forego its claim to the planet that held the greatest secrets of the galaxy just because the people there agreed to rebel at the last minute. It no doubt would have preferred to assimilate the Silicoids of Antares too, but never found a way for its nanites and slave circuitry to survive on a world with such intense radiation levels as that one. So, in the year 2486, my earliest fears have come to pass: We live in a Meklar galaxy.
(OOC Note: Okay, that last spy hit was not so much insult to injury ... as insult to
decapitation, but the spies were just sitting around with nothing to do, so...)
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Next: Conclusion
