One year after the Council transmission from Orion, while Sakkra forces were defending Imra and preparing to invade the world of Iranha II, where they could expect as usual to be hopelessly outclassed by Klackon ground forces, Miamar set her Mrrshan Hegemony against the Sakkra in all-out war. Sadly for Miamar however, declaring war and prosecuting it are not always equally easy.
When the Meklar people conquered her Nordia colony, she found that none of her ships could reach Sakkra space any longer, nor could their fleets reach her worlds. She could only sit and stew and prosecute her other existing wars, while the Sakkra continued their energetic defense of stars like Anraq from the Klackons and sent more transports to their doom. Having failed to learn their lesson at Maalor, they refrained from bombing Iranha in much the same manner, still hoping to capture intact factories. Instead, as at Maalor, they only lost their efforts, as a missile base was built in time to render their efforts there hopeless. So, resigned, RBO-29 at last took Count Refsalot's advice and offered peace to Kikitik. The Klackon queen's eyes glowed blue with pleasure as she agreed - not only to peace, but to a trade package worth some 80 BC.
The Mrrshans continued to fight and claw their way back toward Sakkra space, always to lose once more any ground that they gained, re-establishing contact again only to lose it in 2409 and again in 2416. In the meantime, RBO-29 tried to follow Count Refsalot's peaceful policies, researching Terraforming +40 technology in 2410 and looking ahead toward the means of establishing breathable atmospheres even over hostile worlds. Two years later, the first Improved Space Scanner was installed at Hoard Sentry Station, and scientists started work on a project to double the 2300 efficiency ratings of their factories' robotic controls. Nearly every other technological field was ripe for completion as well when Narzina decided to follow Miamar's example...
...in every foolhardy detail. They declared war in 2420 only to lose the single world that gave them contact with the Sakkra two years afterward - even as Merculite Missiles, leading the way toward still more-advanced Stingers, finally gave Sakkra missile bases a reason to be built. What those bases could possibly do to help if the Klackons again declared war, of course, was better left unexplored. The insectoids not only possessed more advanced technology in every field than their Sakkra counterparts, not only had the largest population, the most worlds under their control, and by far the highest production figures in the galaxy, but had somehow developed the secrets of the dread Temporal Fugue! At the once-Darlok star of Galos, a Klackon battle fleet sat in orbit, demonstrating this terrifying ability: Slipping back and forth through time, they were able to appear in virtually infinite numbers by returning their future selves to the present indefinitely, even as time-limited scanners, observing more of them blink out in time-slips than had ever arrived in the system, broke down and reported them as negative entities!
The Sakkra had just developed Zortium armor and were seeking to improve their industrial technology, but it was hard to believe that armor of any kind could protect against such a deadly ploy as this. The Klackons didn't even need it to take control - the latest faction to do so - of the once-Mrrshan Nordia colony.
Still Sakkra science carried on, bringing home the secrets first of fusion drives and then of planetary shielding, just as another transmission filled the galaxy's spacewaves, right on schedule, from Orion. The High Council met once more, and once more decided nothing. And of course over the course of the next two years, the Mrrshans and Darloks, who had briefly retaken Nordia and Galos, saw their worlds turned to glass by monster Klackon fleets, and lost touch again with the Sakkra empire. In fact, it was in an attempt to slip in and try to hold Nordia for himself that RBO-29 discovered the nature of Mrrshan armament.
Bearing in mind that heavy blast cannons - to say nothing of stinger missiles and omega bombs - were capable of penetrating then-current Sakkra planetary shielding, observing that the latest Mrrshan fleet at Nordia did not include a colony ship, and that the fleet therefore couldn't - yet - be dispatched to his colonies, the dragon decided to count his blessings.
The year was then 2429, and ten years later, after discovering atmospheric terraforming technology, improvements to Sakkra robotic controls, and a more-efficient means of building factories, on Count Refsalot's advice, RBO-29 took advantage of another fleeting period of contact with the Mrrshans to sign an official peace. (Three years later, the fleeting period ended, as Nordia was conquered by the Klackons yet again.)
It would not be long before the Sakkra people saw starfleets that would prove more deadly still.
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Next: Butting Heads
