RB0-36, Retired Meklar Emperor: Miamar thought she'd taught us a lesson when she glassed our first colony there: As far as she was concerned, that was her world! It was just up to us to prove she was mistaken.
ACP-30: Presumably mistaken about you dying as well as about Hyboria.
RBO-36: Also about preparing for war. Maybe Miamar had, but either she forgot to tell her military, or they just didn't know how to prepare for the force the Meklar had become in the meantime. By the time she issued that declaration of war, we had hand lasers, deuterium fuel cells, and robotic controls all in hand, with good progress on ion cannons, class 2 shields, and an improved space scanner. We had also added ... a few more worlds to the empire by then.
ACP-30: You hit the 8-planet benchmark two years before her war declaration then, thanks to Spica and finally Nordia.
RBO-36: But we were just getting started; we finally landed Dolz the year before she declared, and made contact with the Psilons, who had taken advantage of a Sakkra alliance and superior range to plant a colony over at Kulthos - the star we would later discover harbored ancient artifacts from before the age of Starnet. We opened up a 200 BC annual trade package right away, and exchanged information on the locations of our colonies. Those Psilons might have been scary ... if we weren't already scarier ourselves!
ACP-30: I see you highlighted the tundra world of Nyarl as well, where you would plant another colony, for your tenth star system overall, moments before Miamar's declaration of war.
RBO-36: That was it for peacetime colonies though - and the Mrrshan war wasn't the end. For one thing, Miamar had an ... unlikely ally. I didn't do a lot of fancy diplomacy during my rule, but I had to keep a record of one request I did make, just for posterity.
ACP-30: The Alkari refusing to break their alliance with the Mrrshans. Incredible. How long did that improbable alliance last?
RBO-36: I think there was a five-year period or something when it wasn't in effect, and maybe there were a couple others like it when I wasn't checking. Other than that, it pretty much lasted throughout my entire reign. So much for historical enemies!
ACP-30: But you were saying that was all for peacetime colonies?
RBO-36: Peacetime, yes. But the year after she declared, I launched preparations to claim an eleventh colony, during wartime!
ACP-30: And, obviously, via war. The popular sentiment at the time was that the war would be swift and easy - that you would prove your strength by taking Drakka from them, and then the Mrrshans would sue for peace and turn their attention elsewhere. Was that a sentiment you shared?
RBO-36: It was. We didn't have a really good way to attack Mrrshan missile bases, so when Miamar was stubborn, we just had to sit tight and defend the worlds we had. That was easy enough at first, with our fleet in place and a defensive base quickly assembled at Drakka with some help from our reserves, so we just had to concentrate on keeping it from ever getting hard. Our scientists soon came through with an improved space scanner for our colonies and an auto-repair system for our ships, and our spies came through even sooner with the plans for Alkari waste scrubbers, cutting our factory waste by a fifth.
ACP-30: Who did they frame for the break-in, then?
RBO-36: Nobody, actually. It was tempting to blame the Mrrshans and hopefully break up that alliance, but ultimately I decided we were better off just telling our spies to escape without leaving any trace at all. It would keep the Alkari from running too many security sweeps, and give us a better chance to do more espionage down the line. In the meantime though, it was time to carry the war to the Mrrshans again.
ACP-30: So you needed a ship to break down their bases. How did that work out?
RBO-36: Well, the trick was to come up with a really good name, to strike fear into the hearts of the Mrrshans. So I put the question to my advisors: What machine do felines fear more than any other?
ACP-30: Why, a Vacuum, of course! That was perfect!
RBO-36: Exactly - because frankly, that gigantic nuclear bomber really sucked. It was slow, with ancient weapons and miserable defenses against anything but the kind of first-generation junk it was carrying itself, and it didn't even mount the new auto-repair system. If the cats had better shielding, or better ECM, or better missiles, or more bases, or ... but they didn't. We built exactly one Vacuum, the same year we colonized Ukko - an ocean world in the nebula that we poached behind enemy lines, having discovered it some years before - and then we sent the fleet to Fierias.
ACP-30: Since they didn't bother defending with a fleet, I assume the laser fighters and armed scouts retreated right away, but why is the old Capacitor assaulting the planet?
RBO-36: Well, the Mrrshans had only two layers of shields, so its heavy lasers could actually do a little damage - and their nuclear missile arsenal just wasn't scary, so I figured it might as well. That was also the year we worked out how to make ion cannons, so we could build ships with real guns, and started work on the fusion bombs I figured we'd need if we had to attack anyone less backward than Miamar. Then it was just a matter of sending down the transports.
ACP-30: You only barely won the battle though - just three platoons to spare!
RBO-36: Well, we knew it would be close. That's why more than 70 more were en route, due to arrive by the following year. Anyway, it was nice to clean up all the few techs the Mrrshans were trying to hide from us when we grabbed the place's two hundred twenty factories. It meant we could reallocate our espionage budget elsewhere, and the spies who were still in Mrrshan space could just keep a low profile for a while.
ACP-30: That left the Mrrshans with just one world to their name.
RBO-36: Kakata, yeah, with about as much mineral wealth as your average bag of kitty litter. Their existing fleet - the part we hadn't destroyed yet - was about as much of a threat as the collection of twine and hairballs of which it was made, so we decided to leave the Mrrshans alone at that point, and go after something a little more ... threatening.
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NEXT: The Threat!
