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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Imperium 31 - The Wages of War

In the year 2401, the first wave of Mrrshan transports reached Rayden. Though outnumbered on the surface and wearing inferior armor, the Mrrshans advanced behind their deflector shields, blazing away with laser fire, and managed - barely - to take the world for RBO-31.

Crystous unsurprisingly responded by declaring war, but both sides were well aware that the war had already begun. Indeed, a Silicoid battle fleet was already en route to Rayden to intercept Mrrshan forces there. The main Mrrshan orbital fleet was still a few years away, and the feline forces already present - including virtually the entire fleet of Graaars - were forced to retreat when the rock fleet arrived, and wiped out the newly-Mrrshan colony from orbit. Millions of Mrrshans died in their transports - many under Silicoid guns, and the rest after their transport craft reached the planet, their life support systems exhuasted, and their Mrrshan cargo found no sustenance on the planet's glassy surface. In 2404, a Silicoid colony ship deglassed and rebuilt the colony, unloading two million rock people ... a little too soon. Their battle fleet managed to destroy only a little more than two thirds of the Mrrshan transports that arrived that year, and the remainder recaptured the colony with only a million losses on their side. The main Mrrshan fleet - including a dozen new Scratch gatling destroyers and a heavy-laser cruiser - would arrive in time to hold the colony - and as important as the world itself was the first fruit of its re-conquest.

The hastily-erected Silicoid space scanner on the planet's surface represented a huge step forward for Mrrshan espionage and intelligence services. No longer in the dark about the movements of enemy fleets, they could plan their own movements more precisely; between their starforce, planetary entrenchments, laser rifles, and personal deflector shielding, they were therefore able to wipe out the entire Silicoid reinforcement force as it arrived at the planet, with no losses of their own. The feline partisans had something to cheer about for the first time in many years, but it was a minor victory. Their economy was hopelessly backward, their research efforts had become almost non-existant, and in spite of Silicoid losses, the other pre-Orion races still were thriving. Even those that lacked vast empires and advanced scientific knowledge at least managed to get lucky, as when the Sakkra stumbled upon a mineral cache at one of their colonies.

The Darloks, of course, had no need of good fortune. While the Mrrshan space command fleet was tied up at Rayden, dealing with a major assault fleet with the help of a hurriedly-built missile base, and their Graaars were sent to accompany a flotilla of transports to ultra-rich Drakka, with orders to bomb the planet's bases away, the shifters were continuing their policy of industrial expansion across the galaxy, making maximum use of their superior environmental control techniques. By 2413, when they formed their twelfth and thirteenth colonies, it had become clear even to GNN's conservative reporters that they were running away with the galaxy.

The Mrrshan fleet meanwhile crawled across space at warp 1, reaching desperately for the Drakka star system around which RBO-31 had built all their hopes of military success. More than 270 Graaars arrived in the system, supported by the lone Mrrshan battle cruiser, all ten of their remaining gatling destroyers, and a small fleet of support fighters. The planet's missile bases and supporting fleet of missile boats (with too few heavy lasers mixed in to make a difference) opened fire, initially ignoring the Graaars, as RBO-31 was surprised but relieved to see. They eventually began targeting the Graaar fleet, but more than two thirds still survived to reach bombing range ... and yet failed to drop a single bomb on the planet's surface. RBO-31 shouted at the admiral of the fleet by holotransmitter, demanding an explanation. The Graaar pilots were mystified. "Must have been some mistake back at the drydock," one pilot suggested. "Don't know why we didn't notice until now."

The Mrrshans had somehow accidentally built almost three hundred bombers without a single bomb, bomb bay, or other weapon on board. Starship engineers had been clamoring about it for decades, but their complaints had been lost in the Mrrshan bureaucracy; no manager at any level had been prepared to admit the existence of such a fiasco even when the plans were in the blueprint stages, and squelched all rumors of the truth accordingly. So the Mrrshan people were left to scrap the remains of the Graaar fleet, recovering barely a sixth of the cost of construction and none of the massive maintenance that had been paid for the worthless ships for the past two decades ... to say nothing of the lives - well over a hundred million - that would perish in the now-hopeless invasion of Drakka. They died with no hope of success, to no purpose, with extensive labor left undone at home. The clerical error that left the bombs off the Graaar design and the short-sighted self-interest of middle and upper managers that failed to report it - together with RBO-31's refusal to listen to lowly engineers when management claimed all was well - had cost the Mrrshan people their last hope in the galaxy.

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Next: Conclusion

Imperium 31 - Darkness Falls

The same year that the Mrrshans finally learned to live on hostile worlds, the Alkari developed new technology of their own: Advanced fuel cells allowing at least six-parsec range. Contact was made immediately between RBO-31 and Emperor Redwing, ruthless dictator of the Alkari technocracy.

In a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable war between the Mrrshan and Alkari peoples, RBO-31 proposed a small trade agreement ... which Redwing inexplicably accepted. Perhaps in the end he was simply so ruthless in his exercise of power that even his racial hatred for felines could not prevent him from seizing an opportunity.

Still, the Darlok war raged on; a missile base on Esper fell to sabotage three years later, even as Neptunus was repelling a large Darlok fleet. Local investigations suggested Alkari saboteurs, but RBO-31 was not fooled by the true shapeshifting culprits. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the war with the Darloks could not be sustained, and so after repelling a smaller fleet at Neptunus the following year, RBO-31 was deeply relieved when Nazgur at last accepted a peace proposal. While the Darloks were on the line, the Mrrshans made another deal with them as well: The hand lasers that the shifters had used to such good effect against Mrrshan invaders were traded to the cats for gatling laser technology.

This period of peace was so productive that some among the Mrrshans, failing to understand the advantages of the other races, declared it a golden age: A new ECM Jammer was developed at the same time as Irridium fuel the next year, and RBO-31 celebrated by upgrading the Silicoid trade package to some 225 BC. Three years later, the hostile worlds of Stalaz and Maretta would finally be added to the Mrrshan empire, and the last surviving Mrrshan professor of field dynamics finished plans for a personal deflector shield just two years after that. Unfortunately, the underlying collapse of Mrrshan society was already nearly complete. The scientific projects still being pursued were hopelessly backward by galactic standards, and growing more so every year - each barely more advanced than those that came before. And recognizing this painful truth, RBO-31 was preparing desperate means of achieving power in the galaxy.

Accompanied by two dozen fighters, the Scritch destroyer, and no less than 265 Graaar 1.0 smallcraft intended to bomb Silicoid missile bases into oblivion, fifty million Neptunian cat warriors departed for the Rayden system. The upgraded trade agreement with the Silicoids suddenly looked extremely foolish indeed, and there was some question of whether the fleet could accomplish its ultimate goals, moving across the skies as it did at a mere warp 1, but RBO-31 considered a Silicoid war the only hope of the Mrrshan people.

Still more combat ships were built in lieu of research spending, as the cats managed to scout the Dunatis system in 2397 and brace themselves for war. Two years later, just before the next scheduled High Council meeting, the Mrrshans upgraded their Darlok trade package to 200 BC in light of improving relations, traded waste reduction technology to the Alkari for a new battle computer, and by enquiring about technology exchanges discovered that the Silicoids still lacked both hand lasers and personal deflector units. Morale was therefore high going into the High Council meeting ... which pitted Nazgur of the Darloks against Crystous of the 'Coids. Voting for Nazgur again as the obviously superior candidate, RBO-31 at once earned the Silicoids' ire.

Crystous made a furious appearance in the holochamber just as RBO-31 was reviewing just-received images of Vulcan IV, a large barren world near Rayden that held a Silicoid colony. If Crystous was not amused by RBO-31's voting however, it must have been downright mirthless when it checked its space scanners for Mrrshan interstellar activity.

With four waves of transports already en route to accompany the ships already arrived or just approaching, the Mrrshans were fully committed to an invasion of the Silicoids' artifacts colony. The transformation of the Mrrshan people from a curiosity-loving scientific society to a warmongering culture of violence was complete. Darkness had fallen over the Mrrshan empire.

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Next: The Wages of War

Imperium 31 - Flickering

By the year 2360, the Mrrshans had begun to recognize their dire situation, though its solution eluded them still. The Silicoids' six star systems already outnumbered theirs, even including the hopeless Herculis system and ignoring the general backwardness of Mrrshan worlds.

Scientific endeavors were more heavily funded by a government increasingly terrified of its enemies' technological advantages, and the results seemed initially promising, with ecological improvements developed the very next year, followed by gatling laser designs two years later. While the effect was real, it was also small; mere government funding of top-level research couldn't combat the sheer cultural force of Mrrshan disinterest in the sciences and general apathy. Regardless of funding, the top-level scientists actually performing cutting-edge research kept dwindling in number as those who retired were replaced by fewer, less competent, or more image-obsessed Mrrshan people.

At the same time, the galaxy's other races were thriving. The Silicoids in particular received yet another boost in 2362 ... though the newsdroid needed a new events icon to describe it, as the rock people - while benefiting from the increased habitable area of their planet - could not have cared less about its actual fertility.

Darlok spies meanwhile continued to wreak havoc, destroying five factories at distant Paladia in 2365, and spotting an opportunity to strike when a cruiser and three of their colony ships took control of the ultra-poor Herculis system's orbital pathways. Recognizing the inevitable, the Mrrshans evacuated as many people as they could from Herculis toward nearby Neptunus. The Darloks, having recently developed duralloy armor for their troops, would inevitably take the hapless colony and its complete absence of mineral wealth. Traveling through the nebula, they did just that in 2371 ... incidentally wiping out years of progress in Mrrshan-Silicoid trade.

RBO-31 continued to do everything possible for a mere head of government, but still failed to recognize the true threat to the Mrrshan people: Their own culture of ignorance that continued to strangle them in their cat's-cradle. Even when new means of reducing industrial waste were discovered in 2373, the few materials physicists still capable of doing meaningful research in the empire had to set their sights on a minor improvement to industrial techniques rather than on duplicating Darlok duralloy armor simply because the project promised a swifter return - one they might at least accomplish before the last of them retired with no competent replacement.

In the short term, the Mrrshans were holding their own again: When a Viper cruiser and a vast cloud of Needle fighters arrived at the Esper system, its defending forces - including a brand-new Scritch gatling destroyer - were able to wipe out the cruiser, and force the fighters - incapable of penetrating the planet's Class II shielding with their lasers - to retreat.

The larger picture however was much bleaker. The latest non-Mrrshan colony built the following year left the galaxy so nearly full that the galactic leaders agreed to assemble by holosuite to seek a peaceful means of dividng the stars among them. The notion of uniting under a single government, as had the ancient people of Orion, passed unanimously, and a vote was held to decide which leader - of the two most popular races - should be elected High Master of the new republic-to-be. Nazgur controlled a third of the votes on his own, and it surprised no one that he also received votes from the Alkari, since his opponent was RBO-31, and Alkari hatred for felines of all kinds was legendary. Nevertheless, all the other pre-Orion races abstained, judging neither ruler yet fit to lead the entire galaxy. The meeting broke up with no conclusion reached ... but not before the Mrrshans themselves voted for Nazgur, in recognition of his civilization's obvious superiority.

Four years later, the Mrrshan's once-famous weapons engineers demonstrated the true state of the Mrrshan nation, completing work on their most potent weapons system yet - the Hyper-X rocket - only to embark on the simplest project before them, the soonest to complete, even though it was the only one that couldn't truly advance the state of Mrrshan knowledge.

Still worse was the plight of the Mrrshan planetologists who, just four years later, on developing controlled tundra environment technology, discovered the potential for several projects of enormous value, each of which would advance the Mrrshan state of the art tremendously. Instead of taking any of the three, they were forced to research death spores - a form of biowarfare that no Mrrshan would ever employ - simply to have an earlier opportunity to again claim they had accomplished something. In spite of the flicker of brightness shining from recent scientific development, darkness was about to fall on Mrrshan science.

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Next: Darkness Falls

Imperium 31 - Gathering Dusk

By 2332, thirty years after forming their Esper colony, the Mrrshan people still lacked a second colony ship, and had achieved no meaningful technological developments since the turn of the century. It was then that the Mrrshan people were humbled by their first encounter with a pre-Orion race: The Darlok shapeshifters already spanned four star systems before their new colony ship and armed Fighter escort claimed Colassa for their fifth and sent a formal message from their emperor to Mrrshan leader Rrraaaaor Brrrrrr O'Miaoooou the 31st, greeting the felines with a gesture of undisguised contempt.

In fact, emperor Nazgur of the Darloks held the whole galaxy in contempt: His people were the last descendants of Orion, and regarded all other races as filthy interlopers on his territory at best, and dangerously feral creatures, little removed from beasts, at worst. He was thoroughly unimpressed with RBO-31 and the Mrrshans, and their development of Hyper-V Rockets the following year did little to improve matters, though he would accept the designs three years later in exchange for new terraforming techniques. In the meantime, the Mrrshans had developed hydrogen fuel, and were building their first interstellar colony ship since 2300, but it was still three years from its destination in 2338, when a flurry of messages arrived from around the galaxy: From Quayal, the local scout craft reported another colony ship and fighter arriving to claim the system; from a white star just south of the eastward nebula, another scout reported a Guardian - as it happened, an artifact of the Darloks' long-lost ancestors - moments before its own destruction. And from seemingly everywhere, a holovid message from the GNN newsdroid, reporting the latest development in galactic power.

Quayal was the Darloks' sixth star system; no other race had stretched so far, and the Mrrshans had only two. As if to underscore their disdain for the Mrrshan people, the Darloks declared war just two years later, even as work on another colony ship at Fierias was finally complete.

With typical holovid heroics, instead of seeking slow, peaceful, defensive solutions, the Mrrshans sent a wave of transports to try to take Collassa by storm. When their unarmed colony ship was chased from Ukko the following year by yet another Darlok colony ship and fighter escort, the cats responded with another transport fleet for that world. Their engineers would improve Mrrshan industrial technology the very next year, but the advance was of minimal use: The Mrrshans were no longer thinking of such peaceful matters as industry.

Mrrshan troops arrived at Collassa in 2344, where they found themselves outnumbered almost two to one, and facing entrenched opponents armed with laser rifles more powerful than anything Mrrshan engineering had yet devised. Unsurprisingly, the cats were slaughtered. Their colleagues-in-arms did manage to capture Ukko the following year, outnumbering the opposition by more than three to one, but the victory was short-lived.

In 2349, even as Mrrshan colonists planted their flag at Neptunus - five years later than the Paladia desert colony, which had been the first new feline world in almost half a century - Darlok reinforcements re-took Ukko from the Mrrshans and began to dig in once more. By then, Mrrshan engineers had put together a deep space scanner and deflector shield improvements for their worlds and potential fleets, but neither could turn the tide of the losing battle with Nazgur's people. 'Lok Needle fighters clouded the skies of Collassa as they repelled an orbiting Mrrshan fleet, a pair of factories burned on Esper, obviously due to Darlok sabotage, though bumbling Mrrshan investigations never turned up definitive proof, and yet another wave of Mrrshan transports died in the fields of Collassa even after the Needles left the system - yet the Mrrshans still seemed oblivious to the insane costs of the war for their bleak and backward economy. It wasn't until 2358 that any truly hopeful signs appeared for the felines.

A small Darlok invasion fleet, including fighters and an armed colony ship, was completely destroyed by Esper's small force of defensive fighters, with no losses on the Mrrshan side, even as the ocean world of Rayden Prime was discovered at the heart of the galaxy: A treasure trove of artifacts from the pre-collapse Orion civilization. Silicoid and Darlok scouts had already rifled its most accessible treasures, but the secrets it could still reveal with time and effort would have been an irresistible temptation for the Mrrshans of the mid-23rd century. A hundred years later though, Mrrshan curiosity had atrophied, and there was hardly a murmur in response when the Silicoids claimed the planet with a large armed fleet just two years later.

In spite of the rock peoples' innate mistrust for creatures of flesh and blood, their obsession with industry - perhaps in emulation of the Darloks whose ancestors ruled Orion - and their possession of the Rayden star system, RBO-31's first act upon achieving contact with Silicoid Emperor Crystous was to initiate the largest possible trade package, good for some 75 BC annually.

In the meantime, signs of Mrrshan frailty abounded: The Alkari stars of Altair and Morrig just beyond the Orion Nebula, holding terran planets with multiple missile bases and powerful defensive fleets, had been reached by long-range scouts, suggesting just how backward the Mrrshan empire was becoming. The latest feline colony was at the ultra-poor jungle world of Herculis II, which would never pay back the cost of its colony ship for the Mrrshans. And to make matters worse, a clerical error in 2356 had temporarily cut off all science funding. Demands for their paychecks were lost in the bureaucracy, as the heads of Mrrshan government had long since ceased to pay much attention to its scientists and engineers, and science teams were reduced to foraging for food that year, and forced to burn important notes for heat over the winter. The resulting setbacks in every field of research left the Mrrshan people more vulnerable than ever.

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Next: Flickering

Imperium 31 - The Black Box

There was a time in the ancient past when Mrrshan curiosity was legendary. By the middle of the 23rd century after the Fall of Orion, the world of Fierias was one of the greatest centers of science and learning in the galaxy, as the feline people strove to learn ever more about their world and their galaxy to satisfy their ever-growing scientific curiosity. In that time, the once-backward Mrrshan people came so close to catching up with the five pre-Orion races that they were actually able to complete an interstellar colony ship by the year 2300. Had you asked the average Mrrshan on the street in that fateful year, they would hardly have believed that they were beginning a new dark age in their history.

By the time construction began of the first Prrsham Interstellar Drive, in 2272, Mrrshan culture was already undergoing a massive sea change: Scientific development was still valued for the technological advantages it provided, but the process of discovery no longer interested a majority of the feline people, and the curiosity that fueled it seemed to be in abeyance. With the rise of holoprojector technology in the mid-late 23rd century, fully-engrossing passive entertainment increasingly took the place of other forms of play among Mrrshan children, and as holovid actors and actresses and the visually-appealing classes of people they most represented took the place of great feline scientists as feline role models, the number of scientists per capita steadily decreased. Children in school regularly called those who excelled in mathematics and the sciences by derogatory names, and intelligence and education translated increasingly to lower social standing, first in the schoolyards and then throughout Fierias generally. Holovids sometimes attempted to portray scientific genius in a positive light, but the narratives inevitably centered around such things as could be conveniently displayed on a holoscreen, and the scientists portrayed were in reality magicians, politicians, or action stars with the name of science tacked onto them.

By the year 2300, the first-ever Mrrshan Colony Ship was finally built, carrying some two million kittens, along with a pair of Scout ships belatedly added to the construction queues at the pleas of the last old-guard scientists, to begin the slow process of interstellar exploration. Mrrshan population growth was still lagging far behind the latest terraforming project that had expanded the planet's habitable surface to support up to a hundred million full-grown Mrrshans, and their factory counts had not yet begun to catch up to such population growth as had occurred, least of all with the recent development of Improved Robotic Controls II, which effectively halved the direct Mrrshan supervision required at each automated factory. But in spite of these new opportunities for growth, the once-famous Mrrshan curiosity was increasingly confined to space exploration. A fleet of newer, more streamlined scout ships was already under construction, but government spending on actual scientific progress had ceased entirely. It would begin again eight years later, but the deeper impacts of post-holovid Mrrshan cultural traditions were being felt already. Gone were the scientists of old who sought eagerly to advance knowledge for its own sake, and the engineers whose dearest wish was to advance the state of the art. The modern Mrrshan scientist was a plodding child of holovision, seeking always the shiny new technological bauble that could be most quickly and easily acquired: As nearly as possible within the span of a thirty-minute episode, minus commercials. Gone was the eagerness for discovery among the Mrrshan populace. Science and its fruits were regarded, at best, as the means of acquiring flashy new toys. Money went in at one end, and new technology came out at the other, but the process itself, for politicians and children, parents and educators alike, had become a black box.

The dark age of the Mrrshans had begun.

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Next: Gathering Dusk