Part 89: Turn 398
TURN 398
The survivors of the Battle of Romulus decloak and prepare for an impending assault. Our Transports will arrive at Romulus shortly.
TURN 399. Our home system, Qo'nos, has another negative climate shift, turning another planet barren. That's three negative shifts. Qo'nos used to hold 375 million; now it can hold only 310 million.
Our Transports have arrived and our invasion force organizes itself to kamikaze the Batteries and take the Romulans' home system.
TURN 400. We expected no further resistance, but the Romulans surprise us.
Our enemy in this battle is an unarmed Colony Ship. Well, a Romulan Colony Ship helped wipe out a big chunk of our fleet last time, so who knows what the crafty Romulans have up their sleeves?
Apparently nothing.
Our troops march on Romulus, casually kill 57 million people using bat'leths, and take the system. Chancellor Martok sends a message to Romulan Senator Vreenak, who is now in custody. "This time we actually did plan to invade you," Martok laughs.
We stole their most important system and their ancestral home, but the Romulans steal 120 credits from us.
As one would expect, Romulus is a very advanced system. We will build a shipyard to extend our range, and then we will put it under martial law to prevent any rebellion.
TURN 401. Our ships move next door to attack a small colony with a lot of Batteries.
TURN 402. The strange, gaseous entity that appeared in the galaxy has decided to attack our Starbase at Shelia. Does this 'Calamarian' think it can accomplish what a hundred Ferengi ships could not?
It's a rare sight, but the intergalactic traveler is actually attacking a system that has a Starbase.
The Calamarian behaves like a Minor Race ship would, firing orange phasers. And it explodes like a ship, too.
Another Romulan colony bites the dust. It seems they were only able to power 2 of their 6 Orbital Batteries, anyway.
TURN 403. The fleet moves next door and prepares to attack a much healthier system, Ingraham B. The infernal Colony Ship from the original Battle of Romulus recently terraformed many of these planets, and the Romulans wasted no time in breeding themselves to capacity.
TURN 404. But their large population only meant more soldiers to kill. The Klingons disembark from Transports and breeze right through their defenses.
We have almost reached the 300-turn anniversary of the extinction of the Mintakans. A single Klingon Colony Ship arrives and allows colonists to settle the system. Some proposed that we leave the system as it is, a monument to the brave Mintakans. But it is Cardassia Prime that will forever be in a state of desolation. Mintaka will represent life, not death. It is what they would have wanted.
The Romulan empire is down to only one system. Now we are in a good position to bargain with them. We don't offer them anything, but Martok recalls all of the times he had to deal with Romulan demands.
TURN 405. We move our fleet to the remaining Romulan system, where a Troop Transport and a Scout await their deaths.
The Transport bites it easily, of course, seeing as how the area is filled with our Scouts and Birds of Prey.
But despite being fired upon, the Romulan Scout makes a miraculous escape and slips off into warp!
Chancellor Martok receives word of a galactic surrender. He looks at the message, puzzled. "Do we have all the systems yet?" he asks the nearest aide. When he is answered in the negative, he responds, "Then...the war continues, does it not?"
Our spy in the Federation meets a glorious death as he sacrifices himself to destroy a Fed Scout. He did so by stabbing the ship's warp core with a bat'leth.
The colonization of Mintaka comes as a relief to our empire's citizens, who are feeling a bit claustrophobic, squeezed as they are into 75% of the galaxy.
But Mintaka will be no ordinary colony. Everyone who lives there will be forced under penalty of death to abide by the code of the Mintakan. They must live each day as a tribute to the bravery and sacrifice of the system's original inhabitants.