RB0-36, Retired Meklar Emperor: I don't threaten people.
ACP-30: But they might have just turned around and even giv...
RBO-36: No, I know all that, but I don't do threats. End of story. Maybe there'd be something to gain; maybe another ruler would do it, and maybe he'd succeed. With me, it's a matter of principle. I don't issue threats ... and I don't take kindly to people who threaten me.
ACP-30: Well, Miamar wasn't a threat anymore once you'd taken her homeworld, that's for sure.
RBO-36: She did send me a very amusing message though, from her one little ultra-poor world.
ACP-30: Ha! Of course you accepted the offered peace in spite of her ongoing bluster, but you mentioned another target. One you found more ... threatening.
RBO-36: Well, all throughout the Mrrshan war, our agents had been criss-crossing space, looking for anything they could find to aid the war effort. We penetrated a lab in the Sakkra-controlled Imra system when our transports had just been launched for Fierias, and our spy came away with the technology we needed to survive on toxic worlds. Another agent just picked up some obsolete terraforming techniques from an Alkari lab on Ryoun the next year. Then the personal deflector shields that pushed us over the top in the ground battle for Fierias were based on plans we stole earlier the same year, from a secret Sakkra lab on Rha 2. We had come up with our own class 2 shield designs during the war, but hadn't bothered with any further shield research since then, knowing we could steal the stuff we wanted more easily anyway.
ACP-30: Impressive work, perhaps, but it seems to me you've been demonstrating that no one could pose a real threat to your empire at that point.
RBO-36: Well, that's the point. We had these obsolete ships flying around, armed to the exhaust fans with ancient weapons systems, and if we were ever going to use them for anything but scrap material, we needed another target with terrible shielding, little or no no ECM or armor, and practically no missilles to speak of - sort of like the Mrrshans, only bigger. And as it turns out, Miamar's wasn't the first private transmission I received in 2417.
ACP-30: "Soon you shall feel the wrath of the Sakkra empire," eh? You really don't tolerate threats, do you?
RBO-36: Well, I didn't want to make a liar of the old lizard. I had to make sure we really would be at war soon. And I only knew one way of doing that.
ACP-30: Remind me never to threaten you with anything, okay?
RBO-36: Oh, you haven't seen the best part. You see, the Sakkra had a bunch of cruisers flying around, and I doubted my old Capacitor could stand up to many of them at once - its technology was even more backward than theirs! So I decided to let Dolz build one more ship to join the battle, just for space superiority.
ACP-30: Ah, yes. The Tesla 3.0. There were ballads written about its indestructible hull and heavy ion batteries.
RBO-36: They must not have been very compelling ballads. The Tesla was still vulnerable to nukes and even lasers if they came in large enough numbers, and those batteries would still miss even the simplest Alkari fighters with about four shots in five. I'd have been much better off building a swarm of ion fighters, or even a handful of cruisers with scaled-down versions of the Tesla's weaponry. But yeah, it was more than enough to handle our Sakkra enemies. Against them, I barely even needed a fleet.
ACP-30: I see your spies weren't deterred by Guanar's threats any more than you were.
RBO-36: Actually, I did respond to his complaint here ... technically. He issued his threat over our espionage attempts ... so I switched over to sabotage. Be careful what you wish for, eh?
ACP-30: How long would it take him to rebuild those missile bases on his homeworld?
RBO-36: Oh, it wouldn't have really mattered, but I didn't give him a chance to rebuild the things. The real reason I ordered the sabotage was to get a scouting report of the world so I could coordinate my transports to arrive alongside my fleet. That, and there wasn't much point in stealing his technology when our troops were about to overrun his worlds and reverse-engineer everything from their labs and factories. Besides, it's not like we had any trouble keeping up in technology. We were just about to steal Irridium technology from the Alkari to extend our range, and complete our latest terraforming project, leading the way to atmospheric terraforming.
ACP-30: With all those hostile worlds in the empire back then, including the toxic worlds you were colonizing right around that time, I'm sure your new planetology project looked enticing.
RBO-36: It sure did. Not as enticing as Sakkra worlds though.
ACP-30: Wow ... those Hydra cruisers carried seven fusion bombs apiece?
RBO-36: And a couple of worthless nuclear missiles. We had to watch them closely on the strategic level, since they could do a lot of damage to our worlds if we let them get close. As long as we were the ones on the offensive though, they posed zero threat to our fleets. Our space superiority ships tore them apart along with the Spirit destroyers and single-laser colony ships. Meanwhile, the Vacuum cleaned up their bases, and our troops took the world from them. The whole thing ran like clockwork. And then, thanks to our saboteurs - who also scouted Imra for us in the meantime - we were able to repeat the whole process at Sssla a couple years later.
ACP-30: That looks pretty inevitable from here. But what about your tech plans? I noticed you didn't manage to pull anything out of Rha in spite of claiming more than a hundred and fifty factories.
RBO-36: Well, sometimes you run into bad luck, but the nice thing about luck? It changes. Between Sssla and Imra, among some 380 factories, we found the secrets of every remaining scrap of Sakkra technology. The highlights were a bio toxin antidote - the Psilons had death spores in play - and a slight improvement to our industrial technology. The lowlight, strictly because of timing, was a planetary shield which they hadn't researched until just before our attack: It meant our newly-captured colonies would take longer to build their first defensive bases. The rest was obsolete junk like gatling lasers, and the plans for a fusion bomb we had practically finished developing ourselves anyway. Our own research was a little more advanced by that time, obviously.
ACP-30: Mark 5 battle computers? What was everybody else using back then?
RBO-36: I guess some of them had Mark 2s? But hey, the Psilons had gotten as high as class 3 with their ECM! Speaking of whom. While our fleet and transports were rolling up the Sakkra, we were also scouting everything we could, and colonizing unclaimed worlds around the edges of the galaxy. When one of my warp-3 scouts reached Simius, saw a fleet and some missile bases, and immediately fled the system, Zygot over-reacted, predictably.
ACP-30: Uh-oh. Poor Psilons.
RBO-36: I know: You'd think they'd learn to stop threatening me! At least he made good on this one himself though. All he threatened me with was a bunch of war preparations - and seven years later, as prepared as he was going to get, he declared on me.
ACP-30: Didn't Miamar declare again in the meantime though?
RBO-36: Yeah, but I just ignored that. All that happened there was, a few of her obsolete fleets went on tours to a couple of my worlds, had a look at my defenses, and beat hasty retreats.
_______________
NEXT: Conclusion!
