Part 65: Turn 162

TURN 162


Our raid has put us deep behind Federation lines in the southeast. To the west of Sol is a fleet of 17 warships. North of us, at Quazulu, the Feds have an additional 6 Strike Cruisers and 2 Heavy Cruisers. We'll have to fight out way out, but Quazulu is suicide. We'll hit the Outpost northeast of us.


TURN 163. Cue the sigh of relief. The Feds didn't send any forces to defend this Outpost.


Klingons roar with pride to hear of another bunch of dead Humans. We may have only a small force at our disposal, but it's capable of putting us on the front page of Federation newspapers.


It's a good thing we didn't stay on Sol longer than one turn. The Federation sent their entire navy there to attack us. Now we should be able to easily escape by heading north.


TURN 164. Nice timing, Cardassians.


TURN 166. A Sheliak renaissance has resulted in 4 new Sheliak Raiders launched overnight. We will send our invasion force back to Sheliak as soon as possible. We may be able to make first contact with them now.


Our 3 Birds of Prey moved north and linked up with the fourth Bird we just built. We're through harassing the Humans. We must get to Shelia.


TURN 167. Perhaps our picnic on Sol has convinced President Picard to make amends with the Romulans.


We're still a few turns out from bringing our Birds of Prey to attack the Sheliak Raiders. We want to move more quickly than that. The Ferengi have apparently noticed the activity on Shelia and redeployed some of their warships in a provocative manner. If the Ferengi destroy the Raiders before we arrive, we may lose our chance to make first contact. We will send a Scout to Shelia immediately just in case.


TURN 168. Our Scout finally makes first contact with the Sheliak. As their profile indicates, diplomacy with them is indeed frustrating. But now at least it's possible.


An odd thing took place on Shelia, which is fast becoming the vortex of weirdness in this galaxy. It turns out the Ferengi did send a squad of ships to Shelia, and it apparently blew up the Raiders the same turn our Scout arrived there. But in spite of this, our Scout did not get a combat notification to deal with either the Ferengi or the Sheliak. Huh.


The important thing is we can go to war. Our empire's lawyer now knows the e-mail address of the Sheliak and sends in the declaration.


TURN 169. Whether Romulan or Cardassian spies are involved is irrelevant. We must continue to bolster our internal security.


Some of our warships arrive on Shelia. Luckily, the Ferengi went back to their side of the border. Their intentions are uncertain, but this sign of weakness emboldens us to go further and send our Troop Transports to Shelia.


TURN 170. The Federation is once again an affiliate of the Romulans, and they can at the very least send medium-range ships to attack our empire. Perhaps the Feds want to get revenge for all the Outposts we blew up.


We will accept the Romulans' demand for a small bribe. Our actions on Shelia will no doubt earn us enough ill will from the Ferengi.


The Romulan bribe will be paid for by the Federation, which offers us almost 5,000 credits to make peace.


The Ferengi have not interfered with us, yet. The Sheliak only have one Orbital Battery, so we can deal with it using only one of our Scouts. But the Sheliak have a large population, and our 4 Troop Transports may not be enough. I would prefer to have more, both to heighten our odds of success and to quickly build a Starbase there afterward. But these are the only Transport ships we have at the moment, and we must move quickly. The Transports will not launch their invasion yet. First we'll bomb the Sheliak to soften them up.


TURN 171. Klingons are happy to learn that for once, we are on the right side of a planetary bombardment. The Scout dies. Considering we have 3 Strike Cruisers and 4 Birds of Prey involved in the bombing, there actually weren't too many Sheliak killed in our attack.


Karma strikes us in the form of a comet, which nails our homeworld smack in the face. 65 million people are killed.


...But our scientist wasn't one of them. He reports a breakthrough in computer technology.


The Strike Cruiser II will be invented once we level-up in weapons tech. This is our favorite field to research. It will be our first level 8 tech, but we'll have a 125% bonus.


Given how few Sheliak were killed, we'll do another round of bombings before we send in the troops.


TURN 172. The Ferengi remain at bay. Only 8 million are killed during this assault. I can see the Birds of Prey not being built for this, but why are our Strike Cruisers so non-lethal?


On the plus side, we did blow up quite a few structures, so maybe that will help reduce their defenses. The troops will be sent in with our third bombardment.


TURN 173. Success! Our warriors make up for the poor performance of our ships, and 30 million Sheliak are put to the bat'leth. We have conquered a system that once belonged to a rival empire. The Sheliak are our fourth Minor Race, but they'll never be able to take the place of the Mintakans.

Morale will certainly be restored by our recent achievements. Adding the Shelia system to our empire should also put some good resources at our disposal. But the fact remains that we have essentially stolen a Ferengi system, albeit aided by the Sheliak legal madness. And it's a system directly on the border of the Ferengi empire. If anything is going to provoke them to anger, this is it.