Imperium 27 - The End

After ridding the universe of the Alkari, the Meklar swept up the Darloks and all but a few of the Bulrathi. There were more efficient means of glassing the galaxy, but the Meklar were deeply reluctant to attack the Mrrshans. Even under RBO-27, some hope was held out that a permanent peace could be established with Miamar - their first interstellar contact and the first to agree to a non-aggression pact with them. She had broken the pact only once, centuries in the past, then soon agreed to re-establish it again, and in the past several decades had more than once proposed a full alliance between their peoples. It was Miamar who led the war that kept the expansionist Alkari in check even in the face of incredible odds - who had perpetuated the galactic situation that for centuries had allowed the Meklar to research in peace. If she did not desire to fight...

Sadly, she did. Misguided, cynical, and apparently not very smart, Miamar declared her ages-long peace with the Meklar people null and void just two years after they had exterminated her lifelong enemies. Obviously, she was not a friendly kitten!

The following year, the Bulrathi were no more, and the Mrrshans and Meklar were at war. Two years after that, the galactic war was effectively over.

The lone remaining Mrrshan world was a tiny colony just established by a desperation colony ship. The one and only Meklar world was...

Meklon the glorious.

Against a scattered Mrrshan fleet of scrabbled-together junk, the Meklar were fielding an invincible dreadnought and a dedicated doom fleet of planet destroyers.

None of the provisionally designed fightercraft had ever been built, and the latest - the DFM-074s - would only be built in the upcoming years to interdict yet more desperation colony missions. That game of whack-a-colship went on a bit too long, but in 2643, at last....

...the directives of RBO-27 were complete.

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Imperium 27 - The Way of Pieces

To all things good, an end must come - and to all things bad. The wars of the other races began to wear upon the Meklar people as alien leaders approached them to seek their participation in pointless struggles. Whether this was the trigger, a precursory effect, or pure coincidence cannot be known - but the all-wise designers of the Meklon Worldnet had planned long and deep, and the moment of ascension was at hand.

The discovery of hyper-efficient Anti-Matter engines in 2589 led the way to Thorium Fuel Cells - and soon enough, to a tidal change in Meklar consciousness. The Worldnet established new protocols under Relay Boot Order 27, and beginning around 2600, the behavior of the Meklar across the galaxy had transformed.

Beginning around 2600, spying efforts were stepped up from "virtually nonexistant" to "overpowering". Meklar agents concentrated primarily on weapons technologies, for miniaturization purposes more than any other reason. In 2607, when THR-999 technology came into play for unlimited starship range, Meklon was ready to build itself a fleet.

So long as warlike aliens existed in the galaxy, no matter how distracted with their mutual wars - especially as they began to come to the Meklar seeking aid - Meklon could never expect a future of true and eternal peace. The perfection of planetwide communion could never be fully realized while external forces tried to drag the species into war. And so the war was entered - on the Meklar people's terms. The Alkari were the greatest immediate threat - and so the initial targets were the Alkari.

A HEF-Graviton Beam Repulsor dreadnought handled the Alkari swarms while swift-moving bomber-destroyers mounting twin AMBs and a pair of "hold-out" Fusion Bombs apiece wrecked their planetary bases. The bomber fleet took losses - often even heavy losses - from the birds' Pulson missiles, but never too many to replace - and wherever it went, the OSG-074 owned deep space. Exactly twenty-five years after its most recent Alkari story, GNN posted a minor correction:

Certain leaders however were indeed preparing to merge with the Alkari - and with everything else that had passed forever from the galaxy.


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Next: The End

Imperium 27 - The Way of Peace

With the Alkari running away with the galaxy, there would be no question of their losing an election, least of all since we had committed to always abstaining from the silly votes - votes on who should rule over the distant planets of the galaxy, as though one could truly rule over more than one. And there would be no danger of the Alkari ever winning the election. Before long, the entire galaxy - apart of course from the humble, peaceful, contemplative Meklar themselves - was locked in self-perpetuating war with them. From time to time, one race or another would establish peace, only to be brought back into the war yet again by one of the endlessly shifting alliances between the three Non-Meklar races outside the Alkari Hegemony. The Meklar did nothing to encourage war; they simply watched it happen from the sidelines, trading technology when we saw fit and serving as the peaceful neutral territory where all peoples could meet: In time, Meklon would establish 200 BC of fully-mature trade agreements with each of the Mrrshans, Alkari, and Bulrathi - and small agreements with the Darloks together with quick tech exchanges as temporary possession of hot potato "spud" systems in the Darloks' Alkari wars slipped them in and out of Meklon's communications range. For its part, Meklon's energy was mostly poured into computer and planetology technologies, for more IRC- and TER- project sets, to allow their production base to keep pace with their growing technology, but Propulsion never trailed far behind, and would in time become the primary focus of Meklar study. Even in the face of worthless-to-them RAD-800 and ATM-734 technologies, the Meklar pressed on, and were rewarded with ADV-5011 and highly advanced TER-class technolgies.

Too interested in their own technological advancement to really bother spying on their backward rivals, the Meklar never made any enemies, and even when one race or another - the Mrrshans in 2446 were the first - elected to cancel a NAP with the Meklar people, no enemy ships ever approached Meklon; they were always too busy with their hot wars, while their Meklar trade, increasingly profitable for both sides, kept all of them happy, and the pacts were soon restored again.

Meklar intelligence agencies had issued blanket orders to look out for opportunities to learn alien technologies, but no one followed through; few Meklar wished to leave the perfection of their world, and the intelligence agencies never really received enough funding to actually hire any agents in the first place. Their blanket orders were given to empty space. The Meklar had no military to maintain - just a tiny fleet of periodically-updated scout ships, and it was not until the 2500s, when they started research on PLS-010 planetary shield technology - as weapons and shields continued to receive attention from such marginal scientists as the world could conveniently spare - that Meklon even bothered building a missile base for defense. Farseer kept coming up for election every 25 years - up against Durrp or Miamar, depending on local fashions - and every 25 years, another election was inconclusive. The galactic wars over endlessly-bombed out worlds continued. On our single planet, never ambitious for more, we Meklar continued learning. Such was the state of the galaxy in 2525.

As the wars dragged on, the Mrrshans - oversupplied with outdated warships as usual, falling further and further behind even the other warring races in technology - began to lose ground, dropping in and out of contact with the Meklar people for a time, much in the fashion of the Darloks. By that time, their 200 BC of annual trade was hardly missed, and the Meklar just opened small trade agreements when the Mrrshans reappeared periodically - they seemed always to start at zero net profit or loss, and generally stayed there - but the Non-Aggression Pact the two races had re-established some years before remained in effect through all the ups and downs of communication difficulties: Difficulties caused by the destruction of yet more pointless reach colonies for a race that was not content with its single world.

Some said that the non-Meklar peoples made war strictly for their amusement; the Meklar amused themselves in other ways entirely, for instance by researching Intergalactic Star Gates - which would have literally zero value for them, as they were not foolish enough to believe even these could bring distant stars into the true union that a single planet could reach - as an option superior to further pre-Thorium range technology. This would lead to the one source of Meklar embarassment in their people's history: They needed something to do with their worthless star gates, and the other races were just so gullible, it was impossible to resist temptation. A single year after a rare actually-existant Meklar spy stumbled upon an outdated (by Meklar standards!) Bulrathi ECM Jammer by accident...

...Meklar diplomats cashed in their star gates with those same Bulrathi. The need for an Omega-V bomb was remote, and Meklar agents could have stolen them or used other options entirely, but the Meklar just couldn't pass up the joke of trading star gates in such a tiny galaxy.

Throughout the space age, the Meklar had trailed the other races in production, population, and - by a warlike fool's definition - total power in the galaxy. Yet throughout the space age, the Meklar had led the galaxy in technological development. And by 2570, the Meklar were even becoming competitive in other categories.

In spite of GNN's misinformation about the Alkari - it warned in 2581 that they were poised to take over the galaxy, and claimed five years later that leaders - all of whom were either at war with them or Meklar content with their single world - were preparing to merge with the flighty birdies - it was becoming increasingly obvious that the Meklar were the true leaders of the galaxy. Beginning with Miamar in 2572, it became fashionable among alien rulers to pledge the Meklar people their undying loyalty. Of course what the leaders really meant was that they wanted the cybernauts' help in destroying their enemies, and so they were always refused. The Meklar were allies to none, though they treated gladly with all ... for a time.


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Next: The Way of Pieces

Imperium 27 - There Can Be Only One

The Meklon Worldnet hummed to life with the perfection of unity: An entire world, an entire species, in cybernetic communion. They were a single whole - a single perfect unit. Nothing could superior; other species developing on distant stars could only hope to match...

...

Well, so what? Three star systems? Ha! They aren't united by a worldnet in even one of them! They'll face insurmountable problems with interstellar communications, splinter, and collapse under the weight of their own infighting. No need to worry about those Bulrathi. Back to perfection - the perfect contemplation of the terraforming techniques and reduced waste technologies that the Worldnet has been developing for just about a decade and a half with all the energy not bent on factories.


2326

The beauty of Project RIW-080 spreads before the Meklar people, like TER-010 just a few years back. The Scout whose tenuous connection to the Worldnet has been our only extraplanetary presence since its twin was destroyed by a giant space whatsit two decades ago continues to send back signals weakly. The few insane among us who would attempt to disconnect from Worldnet have long been a concern, and a solution at last presents itself along with RIW-080. Those who inexplicably wish to be separate from our perfection are meklarely (of course not "humanely;" what would that word even mean?) granted the separation of space; we shall build new scouting star ships for them. Imagine that! New ships! Haha - what fools to want to travel beyond Meklon the Glorious! Better to stay in our perfect world and start computer and propulsion research next year!


2332

Ah - our fifth and sixth LCS-011 scout ships! With the old-fashioned Scouts were scrapped last year, we now have the galaxy's most perfect starforce! No reason to build any more for about 45 years!


2371

An inferior species arrives on the scene of the galaxy:

Miamar's fuzzy Mrrshans, with three aggressive, technology-loving worlds ... which remain technologically inferior to the people of Meklon, who do nothing in their wisdom but sustain their beautiful oneness, contemplate their perfect nav...y, and engage in scientific studies. With two levels of terraforming, finished factory projects IIT-008 and IRC-003, hydrogen fuel and nuclear engines, and new force fields about to complete, the Meklar have little to fear from any planet - or any set of three.


2384

Miamar may say she owns four worlds now and has for several years, but what does it mean for one being to own what she cannot ever touch? We have no fear of her with our HPR-005 rocket defenses or the Dotomite crystals that last year allowed our communications drones to reach Farseer of the Alkari. He too owns four worlds, if "owning" in that context has any meaning. No doubt they will battle over worlds too far away for them to comprehend the distances; we intend to research in peace. Our goods are much desired, with 100 BC of trade beginning with the winged Alkari on top of the 25 with Miamar we finally established ten years since. There shall be more in the future - far more, indeed! But the best news is this: Our most important early project, EER-541, is finally complete!

Behold the wonder that is Worldnet technology!


2407

The moment has come for the Worldnet's most important diplomatic action in the lifetime of the galaxy. The Alkari have spread like pigeons in a city, reaching the six-world benchmark sometime last decade and now triggering an election for High Master of the New Republic-to-be!

The Meklar abstain from the voting; that's totally unimportant, actually. No, the key to our defeat of the galaxy's unenlightened beings is the exchange we just held with the imperfect but nevertheless very useful Mrrshan people. Our trade agreement was already raised almost twenty years since, to match what we held with the Alkari, and relations have grown so strong that Miamar has just agreed to our proposal of mutual non-aggression. The most satisfying news of all though is that our predictions were sound: She is at war with the mighty Alkari people, wasting her energy and theirs in fruitless wars over distant worlds while we pursue knowledge unhindered on our own. So, to aid her in colonizing stars before the Alkari, and to ensure the battle between them is not too lopsided in spite of the birds' numerical advantages, we have provided her with the secrets of our DCR-007 long-range technology. Of course, we did not wish her to feel beholden to us - that would hardly be honorable - though with the help of these fuel crystals, she will not only have access to far-flung Alkari targets, but be able to send diplomatic shuttles to the Bulrathi and persuade them to join in her war. No, we arranged a "trade" for them - one that we found highly amusing.

Yes, please, Miamar. We are very eager to learn the secrets of your Range 5 technology. We're so eager that we'll give you our Range 7 for it, okay?

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Next: The Way of Peace