Activity log and data core dump received; sorting ... analyzing ... error checking ... reviewing countervailing factors ... transmitting final analysis and report.
...
What a mess. Should have heeded that warning from DaveV-22.
Logs suggest a spike in research lab development across the Meklon and Primodius45 colonies beginning in 2315, peaking the following year, and collapsing to a fraction of the initial value, almost entirely at the secondary colony, by 2317. Notations suggesting a "craze" for terraforming research and technological "frenzy" are clearly corrupted and may suggest a still-compromised logging system: Though rebuilt from the ground up multiple times, it was still built by Meklar designed and built by Meklar whose virtual ancestry ultimately traced back to machines built by other life-forms. Perhaps we are none of us entirely free. Closer analysis suggests that the Meklar [redact]frenzy/craze for[/redact] emphasis on planetological research coincided with a small amount of additional factory construction, then ebbed after a single year, while propulsion science immediately replaced it as the primary [redact]obsession[/redact] focus of research efforts. Thereafter, industrialization resumed, especially at Meklon, while development and staffing of the newly-built laboratory facilities continued at a more-measured pace, at first almost exclusively at the P45 colony, but growing steadily as the horizons of the research projects expanded. This was a minor factor in the subsequent fall-off in factory construction; the major factors required further analysis.
Scouts and colony ships from other peoples repeatedly fled Meklar scouts above distant worlds on an annual basis, but the advent of an armed Hydra cruiser escorting a Sakkra colony ship to the fertile steppe world of Maalor Prime in 2320 could not have been a triggering factor in Meklon's suspension of infrastructure development because the change occurred prior to Meklar detection of the Sakkra fleet's approach. The Scout's activity log indicates a flight path that remained precarious close to the Hydra without ever quite entering heavy laser range, suggestive of an attempt to draw missile fire. As no launches are recorded, it may be inferred that the Hydra design likely carried no missile tubes, though no further information about its armament can be determined from the logs to which I have access.
Meanwhile the hiatus in industrial spending continued across Meklon IV, with all available resources committed instead to the construction of a new colony ship. On reviewing all available data, I have come to the tentative conclusion that the primary contributing factor to this change, and perhaps to the research [redact]frenzy[/redact]priorities of 2315 may have been the growing problem of overcrowding at both Meklon and P45, reducing population growth at both colonies slowly but substantially. Knowledge of the large jungle wolrd orbiting the star then known as Xengara would in this case have contributed powerfully to the appeal of colony ship construction, as the most-effective means of reducing overcrowding, while continuing research would help Meklar worlds bear a greater population burden individually.
By 2322, Meklar scientists were estimating a 30% chance of a breakthrough in the following year, before exceeding their own expectations by succeeding. Some doubt may be raised about the overcrowding hypothesis by the decision to forego research in further terraforming techniques in favor of environmental landing technology adequate for Meklar survival on worlds so hostile as to be effectively dead to most races in the galaxy, but considering the presence of unusually-large hostile planets at other star systems on all sides, I propose that this decision rather supports the hypothesis than challenges it. In any case, planetology research spending would not resume for at least a dozen years, so the question remains moot: At first, the terraforming process itself received priority while efforts continued to complete a new colony ship and to forward propulsion research - which, if successful, would open still more large, habitable worlds for active colonization. By 2325, all these efforts were well on their way, with Meklon IV's terraforming already complete.
With the colony ship nearly ready, Meklon took on more than half of the research load, giving P45 the chance to complete its terraforming. At the same time, scout ships moved across Meklar space toward Xengara and beyond, preparing to fan out and explore further when the new colony was complete. With all of these data pointing the same way, I imagined Meklon's next project would be the construction of yet another colony ship, this time for Firma, but either because that star held only a mid-sized desert world, because prior reports and sightings had emphasized different approach vectors for other peoples of the galaxy, because Meklon was still had so very few factories, or some combination of the three, work at last resumed instead on industrial infrastructure, perhaps in preparation to build more colony ships more quickly whenever deuterium fuel might be rendered stable enough to use without infiltrating the walls of its storage containers, turning them brittle, and escaping into space or - explosively - the ship's internal atmosphere. Indeed, scientists started reporting annual chances of success as early as 2328, while the colony ship was still half-way to the star that at the time was still named Xengara. The estimatedchances of a breakthrough by 2329 were exceptionally low, but they would climb steadily - without success - over the course of the subsequent years. The timing was known to be unpredictable however; the Meklar of the time looked forwar with much greater confidence to the new colony planned for 2330.
The arid world at Seidon was not the one they had planned for. When a Psilon colony ship arrived there with nine Comet fighter escorts, it was plain the Meklar Scout in the system would be forced to retreat, but it made an effort to probe the enemy fleet just in case, allowing the Psilon Comets to get as close as heavy-beam range on the incredibly remote chance they might be carrying - and somehow have space for - a pair of nuclear missiles apiece, but after confirming as expected that no such thing was true, and resuming the obvious assumption that they must be armed with basic laser beams, the Scout departed with its new information about the latest Psilon colony. Other Scouts - Sakkra and Silicoid ones - were being tracked on scanners as they approached, but not interdicted as it became clear they were bound for Moro with its small dead world far from their space: Meklar attention was focused elsewhere, on a red star much closer to Meklon and P45 than Seidon, as the latest Meklar colony ship reached its destination.
In keeping with the tradition established at Primodius45 by SpaceOWL-1011 and the naming conventions long since adopted and reclaimed from a history of oppression at the hands of other peoples, the colony was named for its most-pervasive danger to machine-beings with an appropriate numerical suffix attached: Built in the vast rainforests of the world once called Xengara Prime, it became Humidity090.
Some of the best supporting evidence for the overcrowding hypothesis comes from the immediate aftermath of the new colony's formation: As might have been expected, many volunteers were ready to visit the new, wild frontier of the lush Humidity090 jungles in spite of their namesake climatic conditions, but the actual numbers were far out of proportion with the needs of a new colony's humble beginnings.
Nearly half the population of each existing Meklar world - a total of 57 million, more than two thirds of them from Meklon - departed immediately, of course leaving no factories idle even on Meklon itself thanks to the natural facility with factory control systems across all of Meklar history. Had Humidity090 been under imminent threat or its immediate development otherwise regarded as vital to Meklar interests in the galaxy, it would have been possible to send still more colonists to support it and even to raise resources for emergency reserve spending with no cost to the new world itself. Instead, surely not by coincidence, the number of Meklar who went was just enough that - once terraforming at the new colony could complete at least - each of the three worlds in Meklar space would host populations of nearly-identical fractions of each one's theoretical capacity, minimizing crowding across all three worlds and enabling the highest possible rate of population growth that the Meklar could then achieve.
The Meklar scout fleet was set in motion again as well, as soon as the range from the new colony to surrounding stars was known definitely, hurrying across space both to scout new worlds brought into range by the new fuel bases and to position themselves for possible future explorations with the hoped-for advent of stable deuterium storage technology, where a breakthrough was predicted soon, with 25% odds of being achieved within the year.
What none of the Meklar could have known at the time was that Humidity090 would indeed be a front-line world shortly, though not one known or believed to be under imminent attack - thanks to its successful and timely colonization. Just three years after the colony was founded, not long after the discovery of another dead world orbiting the blue giant Beta Ceti, a Bulrathi colony fleet dropped out of hyperspace at Firma, where three Meklar Scouts had been stationed in anticipation of further exploration with deuterium fuel. The single colony ship was still apparently unarmed, but when the Scouts attempted to close with both Bulrathi Hunter-class destroyer escorts and learn if they carried missiles, the Hunters fired on them with heavy lasers instead, destroying one of the Scouts before the others could retreat. Nor was the Bulrathi conquest of Firma an isolated incident: It soon became apparent that they had been rapidly expanding their territory throughout their still-young interstellar history.
It took the Meklar people thirty years to claim their third star system. It took the Bulrathi thirty
three ... to claim their
sixth, at the only world where the Meklar could have built a fourth without technological advances with which they still were struggling to come to grips. A complete analysis of their expansion behavior also suggests, as I have hinted already, that if the Humidity090 colony had been delayed by more than a few years, it is very likely that another Bulrathi colony fleet, armed escort included, would have claimed that star system - one way or another - too: Once they controlled Firma, it was easily within their range, and the ease with which they distribute colony ships across the galaxy indicates a high probability that by this point in galactic history, they would have one ready to depart for any habitable world that came within their reach at the earliest conceivable opportunity.
As it was, by the time they claimed Firma, the Meklar were already well-established at Humidity090, with transports from P45 already hard at work and more than twice as many due to arrive from Meklon within a year. The Bulrathi however had fully established control over their entire corner of the galaxy: Their early success is readily explained by the ease with which they sneezed out colony ships wherever they happened to need them and the cluster of habitable worlds, most of them uncontested, in their near vicinity. Their homeworld in the Ursa system put them within easy reach of Nitzer and Proxima - the aptly-named nearest star to what would have been Meklar space had the machine people been capable of generating colony ships by basically just wanting them, the way the Bulrathi did - which in turn made a double bridge to Omicron, while Dunatis and Firma both appear to have come within their range once they researched basic propulsion technology - with which they appear to have had much better luck than the Meklar would experience during the full period recorded in the log.
In addition to better luck, of course, the Bulrathi had needed to emphasize propulsion technology, much as the Meklar did, but the tendencies of their emperor, affectionately known to his people as "The Big Durpp," as recorded in the log, were always to aggressively pursue new technology. With the border between their peoples established for the time being - albeit by force of arms - until such time as planetological breakthroughs might make other inroads possible, and with the outcome highly favorable to the Bulrathi, Durpp made facial expressions traditionally indicative of pleasure upon being asked if trade ships might carry on the next set of interactions between the two peoples instead of war fleets. He accepted the proposal for a minimal trade agreement at least, and though no promises were made beyond that, no further attempts at combat occurred between them at least within the limited remaining time covered in the logs to which I have access.
Nevertheless, even those two remaining years were by no means free from conflict: Upon arrival in the Rigel system, another Meklar Scout was chased away by a pair of Psilon destroyers whose name appears to have been lost from the logs, but which likewise fired no missiles but attempted to close with the Scout while warming up weapons batteries presumed to be energy beams. They appeared to be acting in what they regarded as the defense of a planet in the system they had colonized some years since, inhabited by almost 40 million Psilon and industrialized to the tune of some 53 megafactories. There was at least no military presence in orbit at Zoctan however: The nearest to Bulrathi space of the two blue stars that flank yellow Rigel. There, another Scout found only a barren world capable of supporting fewer people than lived on Rigel already - even if means could be found of living there at all.
As yet, the Meklar people had made no attempt to find such means, though it was nominally their next intended project in the field of planetology. This may well have been an error, but they were having enough trouble scraping together funding for their slow-burning propulsion project already, with repeated failures to complete it in spite of growing odds of success over several years. Efforts at Meklon had for a few years being turned instead to colony ship construction, anticipating the research project's successful resolution and preparing to take advantage of it, while Humidity090 worked to bring its steamy jungles up to Meklar standards of terraforming. By 2335, though all kept getting closer, none of these projects would be complete.
That was also the year when disaster may have struck for the Meklar people: At the green star of Centauri, out beyond the Endorian Nebula, the Silicoids arrived with a colony fleet. In addition to two colony cruisers and their usual escort of 11,101* Scouts, they sent a single Fighter, forcing the Meklar Scout to retreat, and allowing them to take over the Arid planet in the system.
* - In binary.
Had that been all, it would be little cause for concern: Centauri was far enough away that any attempt to claim it would always have been a reach for the Meklar people. But the range required to reach Centauri from Silicoid space would be enough from Centauri itself to get to Romulus as well, and perhaps even Endoria itself: The twin yellow stars in the Endorian nebula on which the Meklar were counting to bring their planet count above a meager three. Even if they did not take Endoria straight away, the Silicoids would certainly be able to reach it from Romulus - and they already had the extra colony ship and lone Fighter they needed in place to take one or the other by force while generating another colony ship as easily as the Bulrathi.
As the GNN infobot warned, the Meklar fleet at the time - consisting as it did of just ten or eleven Scouts - was the weakest in the galaxy, while the Silicoids' was the very strongest ... though that may have been an overestimate on the strength of their colony ships and 358,214,562* Scouts.
* - Estimated.
The Sakkra holding down second place were known to be a real threat with their Hydra cruisers, the Psilons and Bulrathi who followed them with their beamer destroyers, and the Klackons ... presumably existed somewhere as well.
If the Meklar could not claim at least Primodius, their deuterium gambit would represent a catastrophic failure, as they reached the year 2335 with barely more than 150 factories (mostly on Meklon at least) across all their worlds combined, with Humidity set to add just one more while completing its terraforming and adding a little bit of extra research, and neither other world set to add any more by 2336 unless a change occurs that's not recorded in the log dump I received. Their population figures are at least respectable and still growing fairly quickly, and Meklon should complete a colony ship within two years if all goes well, but whether it can go anywhere will depend on propulsion research, and in light of the Silicoid threat, the colony design being contemplated has been armed - though only with a single laser - while in order for the Meklar to gain and hold the worlds they need, they might need to build other armed starships as well.
As of the end of the logs I received, the fate of the galaxy appeared to hang in the balance - or the fate of the Meklar at least. Between factories, new colonies, and research, especially into planetology, the needs of the Meklar people are immense, and their resources all too limited. Yet we are speaking of the Meklar. They can do more with less, perhaps, than any other people ofthe galaxy.
They may need every scrap of that ability.
We need to somehow get at least one or two more worlds, or even with our racial bonus we are not going to be able to match the other races in production.
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