So opened the year 2534, in which the Sakkra encountered a starship so devastatingly powerful that to have a hope of destroying even one, they would need to rebuild their entire fleet. Within moments of their arrival, the entire starfleet sent to meet it had been destroyed entirely.
Fortunately for RBO-29, the starship in question would not leave the planet it guarded, and was the only one of its type in existence, built not by Klackons but by the Ancients of the half-forgotten past. The fleet it destroyed was a single fighter-class starship with long-range tanks, whose loss the Sakkra barely noticed. As for the new Klackon design, the Avenger was certainly dangerous, particularly because of its proton torpedoes, impossible to dodge even for Sakkra fleets, but their fighters and bombers were up to the task of winning Maalor's orbit anyway - and so the troops rolled in.
The first wave of invaders failed: Though Klackon deflector shields were outmatched by the Sakkra absorption shielding, the bugs had traded in their tritanium exoskeletons for massive suits of neutronium powered armor fitted with jump jets for autonomous flight. Their fusion rifles still outclassed the best weaponry available to the Sakkra, though the new ion rifles helped somewhat, and tritanium armor was still a long way away for Sakkra science. It was therefore fortunate for RBO-29 that his spies managed to lift it the very next year, from the Alkari, setting his construction engineers' sights on powered armor to match the bugs'. Perhaps in response, Skylord dissolved their alliance - though he claimed it was because of a cry that rang out for new star systems - but RBO-29's concentration was elsewhere at first: In 2537, two years after the first, his second wave arrived at Maalor, outnumbering the defenders by more than four to one.
A double-strength planetary shield, the Proton Torpedoes that made the Avenger so dangerous, Class VII Deflectors, and some outdated but miniaturization-improving junk were lifted from the Maalor labs by reverse-engineering experts. The Sakkra had reached the point of galactic dominance, and nothing left in the galaxy could stop them.
Beta Ceti lost 22 bases in the Klackon attack the next year, but had 38 to spare as Sakkra spies struck in Alkari space once more and returned with Andrium armor. Alkari fleets in orbit over Sakkra stars, and then the transports that were sent as soon as the alliance was disolved, were wiped out as an afterthought while RBO-29 concentrated on Klackon worlds. Ukko fell in 2542, yielding the secrets of powered armor and armored exoskeletons at once, along with designs for the Zeon missiles into whose teeth the Sakkra bombers had flown since dodging was impossible. Proteus fell the following year, yielding class 6 robotic controls, warp dissipator blueprints, a mark 7 battle computer, and outmoded irridium fuel. By then, the final Sakkra war designs were ready to hit the field.
The Doom 4.0s were misnamed by some flunky whom RBO-29 devoured: They were of course warp 6 starships like the rest. The Finality bombers got their name because they carried Omega bombs, but of course the Spike 6.0s were still more deadly. The Firestorm 6 was to be the last word in space superiority since the galaxy at that point could hardly stand up to RBO-29 for long. Some 16 would be completed before the end.
The Sakkra cut a swath across the entire galaxy. Even a fleet of 32000+ Knight cruisers couldn't stop them. The Sakkra ships dodged five clouds of infinite Stinger missiles, and in spite of their uncountable tachyon beams, the Knights retreated before the Roars could demonstrate what an Ionic Stream Projector could do to them, given time, when shielded behind a repulsor beam. Class 100 Terraforming ensured the Sakkra could not be defeated in the upcoming galactic election, but RBO-29 was not content. Kikitik admitted, "We can no longer sustain this horrible war," and RBO-29 leered as he said, "I know," and grinned. Skylord announced that he would "cure the galaxy of the Sakkra madness" ... and the death fleets came for him. A Sakkra spy lifted outdated construction tech from the Klackons as a warm-up, then nabbed their state-of-the-art Mark VIII Battle Computer in 2548, shortly after his own techniques were improved by discoveries incidental to Sakkra computer scientists' new ECM Jammer - a mark 7.
More peace offers were rejected. More Spikes soared through the skies, taking the place of the ones that met Zeon missiles head-on and died. No longer bothering with conquest, the Sakkra fleet razed enemy colonies to the ground: Enemy votes lost were more important than Sakkra votes gained. Then, just as a redundant Hercular missile design was completed by Sakkra weapons engineers, right on schedule, in 2550, a galaxy-wide transmission poured out from the Orion system.
It called for no Council. Instead, the GNN droid reported the end of the Alkari people. The galaxy was reduced to a battle between the once-invincible Klackons and the Sakkra who had in turn become more invincible still.
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Next: Conclusion
