...0101000001110010011011110110001101100
1010110010101100100001011100010000000100
0000100100101100111011011100110111101110
0100110010100100000011100110110010101110
1000110001001100001011000110110101101110
0110010111000100000001000000101000001110
0100110111101100011011001010110010101100
10000101110...
Full-throated celebrations are rocking Celtsi almost as loudly as the anti-matter bombs did moments ago. We've won the battle for Celtsi! The Meklar can be defeated! Their transports will be shredded by our 22 surviving Hercular bases and our still-undamaged defensive fleet! Amidst the cheering, Dy rlas races up to us, and shouts over the din, "I need your help! We've done what we can here; it's time to prepare the Bulrathi!" So amid a festival atmosphere, Graur sets course for the galactic north. We blast off from the world we helped to save, and roar away, setting coordinates for the jump to hyperspace, planning one daring stop at Iranha to give Prrlan a chance to conduct another espionage mission, and just before our warp engines cut in, we receive word from all across the Psilon empire on the results of the Meklar blitz.
I can hardly believe what I'm seeing. Ryoun ... Laan ... Drakka ... Mentar itself! Kakata ... Omicron....
Their defenses are all destroyed, to the last missile base, in spite of their shielding, in spite of their Herculars, in spite of defensive fleets now retreating or destroyed! Many of the bomber fleets had fighter support, unlike those here at Celtsi, and ... and ... we've lost control every world's orbit but Gorra's and Celtsi's. Even the revenge attacks by Psilon fleets already over Meklar worlds were turned aside: The fleet at Morrig was forced to retreat, with significant casualties. The missile boats at Collassa inflicted no damage at all, and were destroyed utterly. Even in the full-scale assault on Hyboria, with 21 Star Blade megabolt cruisers and hundreds of support ships, though it destroys all 160+ of the enemy fighters and one of the planet's missile bases, all the cruisers are lost, and the missile boats forced to retreat! And the ground invasions ... the merciless trooper drones bent on assimilating Psilon civillians, with zortium battle suits and personal deflectors to absorb Psilon rifle fire, with deadly fusion rifles to blast through even Psilon personal absorbtion shields and shred their duralloy combat armor ... the invaders have already arrived. They came in swarms, to overwhelm any possible defenses, to take no chances at their centerpiece worlds, with 300 million storming Mentar alone. The battles ... the war...
...all is lost. Most crippling of all, a total of 402 factories between Draconis and Omicron, the last two Psilon worlds the Meklar captured this year, yielded no technological secrets to the Meklar people. Unless we lucked out on worse than three-in-ten-thousand odds, that can only mean one thing: There was nothing left to capture. The Meklar had already taken it all.
Class 5 and class 7 deflectors. Impulse Drives. High energy focus. Graviton beam. Megabolt cannon. Particle beam. Trilithium crystals. Mark 7 battle computers. Terraforming technology four times as effective as what the Meklar themselves first devised. Hercular missiles. Complete ecological restoration techniques. Tachyon beams. Advanced soil enrichment. Everything. Fifteen different advanced technologies, assimilated in a single year along with eight different star systems across the galaxy, and apart from outdated waste reduction techniques, every one of them could be of use to the Meklar war machine. The war, just begun, is over. The galaxy is doomed.
Last year ... and this:
As they did to Meklon, so they have done to the galaxy. Only two stars remain in Psilon control, and the Meklar will now be using the Psilons' own technology against them, designing ships specifically to overcome the known Psilon fleets. As we depart into hyperspace, Dy rlas hangs his head and says, "There was no hope really. A century and a half of mismanagement can't be corrected with a single tactical maneuver. We lost our focus, forgot our purpose, prosecuted pointless wars with helpless enemies-of-the-moment, ignoring the threat of the Meklar even when they exterminated two other races from the galaxy, and nearly did the same to the Silicoids. Our cause was hopeless from the beginning."
Sasha, Prrlan, and I, knowing well how he must be feeling, try to offer what comfort we can, but I am reminded of my own words not very many years ago. What Graur must be going through must be at least as agonizing, knowing his people, unknowing, must be next - or Miristys, who for ages now has felt the agony that will carry Dy rlas through hyperspace: Knowing his race is doomed to die, and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
(OOC Note: I've done it, finally: No matter what happens in the interturn, next year's election will give me an opportunity to accept a conquest victory, with a better score than I could have had by taking a cheesy 2343 diplomatic win! Uhhh ... yeah, sorry, Nicalseref of Acer. Sorry Sasha and Prrlan. Sorry, everybody. I'll stop cheering about the imminent and/or realized doom of your races now, okay?)
_______________
Next: The Choice of the Meklar
