The Silicoid war was still raging ... if raging is the word I mean. The rocks sent another armed colony ship to Talas, which the new-built defensive base repelled easily, and Klackon agents at Phantos came home with plans for a deep space scanner far inferior to the insect version. Earwigi did fly to the Silicoid star of Antares, but retreated as soon as he arrived - he'd only gone to scan the enemy fleet. Peaceful projects were speeding along though; just three years after the last GNN report, Dustmit's arrival at icy Iranha, far off to Kholdan's northeast, triggered yet another message for all the galaxy to see.
If any bandit leaders really meant to merge with the peaceful Klackon people though, they had a funny way of showing it. The Meklar, having finally achieved the technology needed to reach the Stalaz colony, were sending all four of their armed colony ships ... along with a major escort: Their entire 11-cruiser fleet.
The Klackons had weapons of their own by that time, but most were far away, on the Silicoid front.
Cicado's new battleship made short work of the defenses at Phantos, the Silicoids' ultra-rich colony. Armed with banks of heavy ion cannons and some of the most accurate targeting systems then extant in the galaxy, it could still handle Silicoid fleets and bases alike in 2394. It would be obsolete within three years however: A Klackon agent observing war preparations in the Altair system managed to pick up plans for an inertial stabilizer device that would be installed on all future Klackon starships. By the following year, when the Meklar fleet arrived at Stalaz, Cicado had arrived aboard his battleship, as had Dustmit, and with six missile bases to assist them, they had no trouble defending the planet. The next Meklar fleet to arrive, in the year 2400, was shrugged off without any help from a fleet, just before the development of scatter pack rockets rendered its security complete. The Klackons held more than half the votes at that year's galactic council, and on seeing all this, the INT-986 wisely offered Refakira peace.
Two years later, Klackon combat technology underwent another series of breakthroughs.
Silicoid plans for a fusion bomb were lifted by insect agents even as scientists managed another leap forward in industrial technology - and therefore starship miniaturization - and completed a working prototype of a warp-4 Fusion Drive. Two years later, after Refakira agreed to Tachaon's proposal for an increased trade agreement, another agent reported on the details of Ngxskgkgrkhgg's oldest, most thoroughly obsolete Silicoid terraforming technology.
Meanwhile, Refakira finally managed to convince Skylord that it was in both their interests to initiate trade. That conviction lasted all of three years.
While trade continued, before Skylord declared war, another bored Klackon agent reported from Psilon Maretta on a thoroughly obsolete Mark II battle computer. The joke was only emphasized when a Klackon scientist - whose appointment followed immediately after the agent's - unveiled plans for a Mark V. With the latest deflector shields ready the following year, just in time for a GNN special report that placed the Klackons first in the galaxy in advanced technology, even ahead of the Psilons - and the poor Alkari last, lagging behind the Silicoids - and a brand-new warp-4 dreadnought completed just for Fleads, it might be observed that Skylord exhibited singularly poor timing. Of course, space bandits have never been known for their intelligence.
Over the next few years, Klackon agents continued their plodding work: One lifted death spore plans from Mentar with a shudder; the plans were buried forever once the weapons' terrible effects were learned. Then, in 2409, just as Beemont formed a colony at Whynil - the last habitable star system still unclaimed in the galaxy, in its farthest northeastern reaches - another agent acquired long-obsolete hydrogen fuel cells from the Meklar. Of course, that was the year after the machine people declared another Klackon war.
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Next: The End of Peace
