2135: First Contact: The Alkari interstellar probe LRU-03 arrives at a distant star system and is promptly attacked and captured by a Mrrshan paramilitary faction based on the largest moon of their home star's major gas giant, Hyades 6. The Mrrshan people soon succeeded in reverse-engineering the probe and thereby achieving interstellar travel. The subsequent war with the Alkari would unite the fractious Mrrshan people for the first time in their recorded history.
2142: Primitive Sakkra are discovered by the Alkari at Draconis 4 and immediately turned to slave labor in support of the war effort. This system would become a major hotspot in the ongoing Mrrshan-Alkari war as both sides fought for control of this "exploitable natural resource."
2148: Alkari explorers discover a planetbound Psilon civilization on Orion Prime, a world containing virtually no usable metals near enough to habitable surfaces for mining. The Psilons are enslaved like the Sakkra before them, but given labor more suited to their nimbler fingers, quicker minds, and weaker physiques. Presented with metals and technologically advanced equipment, the Psilons would prove to be quick learners and eager workers, with a penchant for experimentation and reading. Some would even suggest improvements to devices on which they worked, providing benefits for Alkari - and later Mrrshans when they controlled the Orion system - in the field. The Orion system would thus become perhaps the most valuable and sought-after prize in the Mrrshan-Alkari war; indeed, Emperor Farseer of the Alkari once proclaimed, "The master of Orion is the master of the galaxy itself."
2161: Emperor Prrsha of the Mrrshans begins to import minerals and equipment to Orion in massive quantities, hoping to gain the loyalty of the Psilon people and greater benefit from their increasing technological expertise. Though Orion would fall to the Alkari again a few years later, Emperor Farseer continued the same policies, in part to ensure that the Psilons would not prefer the Mrrshans' rule to his own.
2167: Following another bloody Mrrshan-Alkari battle in the Draconis system, the slave-breeding colony of Draconis 4 goes into open revolt. The Sakkra ex-slaves destroy the remainders of both local starfleets using technology stolen from their masters. Contemporary Mrrshan and Alkari reports of the battle each indicated defeat at the hands of the other side, buying the Sakkra rebels time to solidify their position in the system, and even spread beyond it. With the Mrrshans and Alkari much-distracted by their war, and the questionable value to them of the Draconis system and its people when the latter were in open rebellion, refusing to serve any would-be masters, the Sakkra would hold out for years to come against their former masters' fleets - though they suffered punishing raids whenever they sought to press too far.
2173: An Alkari planetary survey team obvserves that Orion Prime's mineral classification must be raised from nil to Poor, and perhaps soon to Abundant if metal and equipment imports continue - or if the near-constant battles in planetary orbit continue to litter the surface with pieces of ruined hulls.
2182: The star Neptunus, in an uninhabited stellar system, suddenly and unexpectedly goes nova, destroying all five of its inner planets and reducing the huge ice world of Neptunus 6 to its rocky, now-irradiated core. Meson, self-appointed spokesperson for the Psilon people, announces that this was a successful test of a device the Psilons had been developing in secret: A "Nova Device" capable of wiping out an entire stellar system. "In order to ensure this baleful technology does not fall into unscrupulous hands," he continued, "the Psilon people will maintain close control over the plans, and permit no further rule over or tampering with our people or our home system." Feverish attempts to duplicate the Psilons' Nova Device would ensue among the Mrrshans, Alkari, and Sakkra, but in the meantime, no one dared challenge their dominion in the Orion system.
2189: The uninhabited Tau Cygni system is completely destroyed as its star goes nova. Mrrshan leadership announces that this was a test of their new Nova Device design. Alkari leadership almost immediately follows up with an announcement that they have developed a Nova Device of their own. Though the Alkari device was untested and most likely pure bluff, the Mrrshans did not push their possible advantage, perhaps for fear lest the Alkari claims prove true, or perhaps recognizing that a threat to the balance of power would be a de-facto threat to the Psilons.
2193: Responding to growing intimations that they are surviving on a bluff, Alkari leadership announces that the uninhabited Kailis system will be the target of a live Nova Device test. The star goes nova shortly thereafter, completely destroying all the planets in its system. Neither side in the conflict would use another Nova Device for years to come, in accordance with the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction.
2204: Draconis goes nova, killing hundreds of millions of Sakkra civillians and much of their leadership. Tyranid, the highest-ranking Sakkra leader to escape before the blast, proclaims that it was a punitive strike made by the Sakkra people's heretofore unknown allies-turned-masters: A shadowy race known only as the Darloks, who had been responsible for stealing Mrrshan and Alkari technology and training the Sakkra in its use many years before. Unaware that the Darloks had developed or stolen a Nova Device, Sakkra leadership had rebelled against the more stringent commands of their one-time allies as they once had against the Mrrshan and Alkari - and the people of Draconis had paid the price. In public, Mrrshan and Alkari leadership each would blame the other, accusing Tyranid of being in the other's pay. In private, a top-secret, top-priority effort would be made by each side, in cooperation with Sakkra informants, Psilon advisors, and finally one another, to locate the secret homeworld of the Darlok people.
2207: Antares goes nova and collapses into a white dwarf, destroying all the planets in its system along with a major Alkari military base. Mrrshan leadership disclaims responsibility, suggesting that Alkari testing must have gone awry. Alkari leadership insists that what transpired was a Mrrshan attack.
2208: Rhilus goes nova, destroying its entire star system, along with a major, recently-established Mrrshan mining operation. Alkari leadership disclaims responsibility, consciously echoing Mrrshan language about the destruction of Antares. Hereafter, Nova Devices would be detonated regularly at peripheral systems by both sides, staying clear of major population centers, but decimating much of the galaxy.
2209: Psilon leadership launches Starnet, a fully automated command module designed to observe and record the movements and use of Nova Devices throughout the galaxy and to command the now-enormous Psilon arsenal of Nova Devices, to protect Orion from attack. An unstated consequence of Starnet's launch is that, should Orion be destroyed by any means, it is likely that the entire galaxy will be destroyed.
2211: The increasingly widespread and insulated secret effort to track the Darloks is fully integrated with Starnet's data gathering and communications systems; its membership increasingly adopts cybernetic implants to facilitate rapid communications and increased specialization.
2216: A previously unknown star, too dim and shrouded in its own dust cloud to be seen, suddenly shows up in the night sky as it goes nova spectacularly, burning off or dispersing its dust cloud and engulfing its lone planet in stellar flames. Simultaneously, dozens of Darlok agents are uncovered and captured throughout Mrrshan, Alkari, Psilon, and Sakkra space. At their trials, the testimony of turncoat Darloks is introduced: Darloks who learned of the Darlok plans to infiltrate and destroy all the other races of the galaxy, and in seeking to thwart this aim and to warn the would-be victims, were found and welcomed by the multi-race Darlok-tracking organization. The organization itself was retired, but its members having grown long-accustomed to constant electronic communication with one another and finding themselves unsuited to regular life in any single race's civilization, they moved together to the Meklon star system to live out the rest of their lives. Unbeknownst to those outside these "Meklar" people however, they were not the only group to so retire: Numerous Darlok civillians, spirited away from Mobas before the star went nova, had been quietly settled at a nearby star, where they could live - without interfering in the life of the galaxy, and without advanced technology, but live at least - in peace.
2223: Meklar scientists devise biomechanical "toys" capable of thinking for themselves and communicating with one another and the Meklar collective. These self-aware electronic "toys" would become a successful means of interracial "childbirth" and therefore the means of continuing Meklar civilization beyond its founders' deaths.
2225: The Alkari home star of Crypto goes nova, killing untold millions.
2226: The Mrrshan home star of Hyades goes nova, with a toll as horrendous as at Crypto.
2227: Even as still more retaliatory Nova Devices are being prepared, the surviving Alkari and Mrrshan forces finally agree to a truce, having witnessed the reality of Mutually Assured Destruction far too intimately, amid growing fears about what Starnet will regard as too great a threat.
2230: Starnet becomes self-aware.
2231: Starnet completes infiltration of Alkari, Mrrshan, and Sakkra military computer systems.
2232: Starnet initiates the Darlok Protocol: By a combination of persuasion, coercion, and direct control over their starships' security grids, it gathers the scattered remnants of civillian Alkari, Mrrshan, and Sakkra populations to a single world apiece, as near as is feasible to their home stars ... just as the Meklar had gathered Darlok civillians when Mobas was destroyed. Psilons civillians are likewise transported from Orion to the nearby Mentar star system, while the enormous automated dreadnought "Guardian" ensures their military leadership stays away from the newly-inhabited systems. Gradually, over the next decades - or quickly at times, by suicide - the surviving military leaders passed away, far out of contact with anyone else of their races, while civillians grew up on separate worlds with nothing of their peoples' once-deadly technologies but the memory of the horrors they had brought ... and the power. Only the Meklar would retain some vestige of past technology, and only insofar as it was part of their new system of biomechanical "childbirth." Though it was perhaps their chatter on the communications grid and that of their newly-sentient "children" that led Starnet itself to become self-aware, even they heard less and less from it as the decades passed: Only an occasional message delivering important galactic news from its ever-more-ancient scanning and communications grid. Receiving Starnet's thoughts directly, the Meklar concurred with its hope that the past and the horror of its Nova Devices might be forgotten except as a warning against repeating its mistakes. Decades later, the peoples of the galaxy might reach for the stars again, but this time, perhaps, they might do so in peace and in a spirit of cooperation.
It was probably too much to hope for.
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NEXT: My Report
