Imperium 26 - Seeking Closure

The rulers of the galaxy's non-Alkari people did everything in their power to overcome the growing dominance of RBO-26. It wasn't long before every one had declared war on RBO-26. The last two declarations came just one year apart, and were so nearly identical in their wording that an Alkari political commentator mocked them with an image that survives to this day:

The galaxy-vs-Alkari war took its predictable course, as reported by GNN in a long-preserved recording from 2484:

Before long, the Alkari had dismantled their foes' military forces, and indeed their entire empires. Their bombers swept through space, covered by swarms of fighters, and even the Silicoids' repulsor beams could not stop them; the bombers nimbly avoided the repulsor ships, and the fighter pilots reacted so swiftly that the repulsor cruisers stood no chance: The Alkari pilots took them out with reactive fire while the larger ships' repulsors were temporarily deactivated so as to allow them to close and fire on the fighters, before the Silicoid ships could get a shot in with their repulsor beams or any other weapons. Images and other records of these battles are among the most numerous artifacts of the Alkari era, mostly preserved among the asteroids of various once-Silicoid star systems. All offer the same message: Though they lost a number of fighters with every combat mission, the Alkari war fleets, taken together, were invincible in battle.

Yet in spite of fielding hundreds and hundreds of fighters and bombers equally capable of flying around missile volleys and simply evading the missiles that reached them, the Alkari would not finish their enemies. Though they smashed every other military force in the galaxy as women and children fled before them to ever more distant refuges, the Alkari did not pursue them to their final hiding places, but waited patiently for the vote that woud crown their RBO-26 High Master of the Galaxy. When the other emperors, battered and beaten, finally came begging for peace, RBO-26 granted it unconditionally. He even accepted a Non-Aggression Pact offered by Granid in what must have been abject fear, according to fragments like this image from a GovernmentWatch report tablet.

The wars were over at long last, and only the Darloks had been lost - but the galaxy belonged to the Alkari people.

RBO-26 prepared for his coronation, never dreaming of the tragedy that would follow.

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Next: Tragedy Strikes