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As the wars dragged on, the Mrrshans - oversupplied with outdated warships as usual, falling further and further behind even the other warring races in technology - began to lose ground, dropping in and out of contact with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
