Imperium 31 - Conclusion

One year after the failed attack on Drakka, still cursing the Mrrshans' fate, RBO-31 received a priority message from Redwing of the Alkari ... requesting a trade upgrade to 125 BC. In spite of the hopeless fiasco that the Silicoid war had become, the Mrrshans' peaceful initiatives were still successful, hinting at the success they might have had if they had somehow held on to their once-famous scientific curiosity. RBO-31 took the opportunity to increase trade with the Alkari still more - up to 250 BC per year - and to make a move that observers would have thought impossible before the coldly practical Redwing and feebly backward RBO-31 met.

With a non-aggression pact in place with the Alkari and Rayden adequately defended by bases and the remnants of the Mrrshan fighter fleet, RBO-31's forces continued their desperate, now-doomed bid to return the felines to relevance in the galaxy. Recognizing its danger, in 2422, Crystous begged RBO-31 for peace, even going so far as to offer 500 BC, but the Mrrshan ruler knew that no peace was possible between them: Transports were already en route to the relatively young Dunatis and Vulcan colonies. The people of Dunatis had managed to assemble a missile base, but it had killed less than a fifth of the first wave the year before, and in spite of the Silicoids' new high-powered ion rifles, the Mrrshan survivors had wiped out over 98% of the planet's rocky population. The year after Crystous made his plea, the second wave arrived, just as the last of over 200 new bombers - this time equipped with actual bombs - were completed and dispatched toward Drakka with yet another transport fleet. The missile base took out less than forty percent of the second, smaller Mrrshan wave, and the planet fell so quickly, the Silicoids didn't even have time to destroy the blueprints for their duralloy armor defenses.

Two years later, the Drakka assault fleet was still en route. Yet another attack on Rayden was repelled, though the Silicoid missile-dreadnought escaped after destroying one of the planetary bases - another had been destroyed by saboteurs in the same year that Dunatis fell - and two of the defensive fighter ships, with no other major damage.

And the High Council met for the third time, to choose a single ruler for the galaxy.

Following the all-out Mrrshan assault, the Silicoids were no longer numerous enough to accept a council nomination. Instead, Nazgur was opposed by RBO-31. Especially with the Mrrshans engaged in a horrible, desperate war, no one could doubt which of the two was the lawful ruler of the galaxy. Nazgur controlled enough votes to hold a council veto on his own, and thanks to a network of wars and alliances, nearly everyone else voted for him; only the Psilons, with only two votes to their names, abstained. The Mrrshans voted for their own leader in protest, but it was a meaningless gesture. Nazgur, heir to Orion in the name of his own ancestors, was made ruler of the galaxy.

Should the Mrrshans have fought on instead of accepting exile for their leader and life in the New Republic, ruled in peace by Nazgur I after his triumphant return to Orion? Could they have won the war? Perhaps, some would say. But they could never have done so without the loss of billions of Mrrshan lives across the galaxy, to say nothing of the extermination of five pre-Orion races, in their tens of billions. For a Mrrshan people with a rich scientific tradition and robust economy, even this might have been possible ... but as it stood, there was no possible opportunity. Mrrshan scientists had no hope of keeping pace with the rest of the galaxy, and the New Republic would have the combined technologies of all its members, presenting a defense insurmountable for then-current Mrrshan technology.

Hyper-X rockets guided by Mark V computers from behind Class-IV shielding and ECM Mark III would shred Mrrshan transports and fleets still armored in papier-mache and crawling toward their targets with the most ancient of interstellar engine technology, even before planetary shields went up everywhere, and even if the enemy never built a ship with a repulsor beam. On planetary surfaces, the Mrrshans would be up against battle suits and ion rifles with no improvement to their own combat technology in sight. When invading, they would have to anticipate losses worse than two to one. And the gap would only get wider, rapidly and inevitably. Already a generation behind in computer technology, Mrrshan spies would be hopelessly outclassed indefinitely. For this backward, holovid-addicted Mrrshan people, the only hope of victory lay in defeat. As part of the New Republic, at least they could be part of the glorious future of the galaxy.

.....

...until the next Fall of Orion.

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