Kona City, Area 2-C, Kona, Drengia, Sector 1-2, 8 Jan 2227.
Lord Kona hated doing speeches. He really preferred to just go out and give orders to kill everyone in the audience. That was much simpler. However he had to give a speech to the new citizens of Kona to make sure that they didn’t rebel. Which would of course be very fun but costly. He shook himself. Was he thinking like a Korx?
The two civilizations had never met face to face, but it was gleaned from their long range radio transmissions that the Korx only cared about money. This was deemed heresy, but the Korx were willing to join the Drengin and their allies and they were a vital addition due to their funds and help in the original invention of the Hyperdrive.
Finally he walked out on to the stage. He began his speech:
“It is time to expand our mighty nation. No longer will out forces have to travel through Stargates, and wormholes to engage the enemy. We will go fourth, colonizing new planets and bringing war directly to our opposition!
This is the first of many new worlds the great Drengin Empire will inhabit… weather peacefully of by brute strength. This will be our golden age!”
The cheer is defining. All of the listeners are awestruck, except for one.

Won't anyone respond?    

Sorry dude, yeah I'm reading this one. Please continue.

Thanks guys.  

Ka’tek Space Mine, Drengia Asteroid Field 1, Drengia, Sector 1-2, 8 Feb 2227

Orthis was restless. He had been made a slave several months ago on Drengia. He had been on a public transport when a group of government slavers burst on and took everyone captive. The transportation is free with the understanding that that could happen while you are on it. He has been put into a slave pit, but had quickly been transferred to a training program hat involved intense mining in the caves on Drengi. Then he and several thousand others had been put on a space ship and sent off to who knows where. They were given gear and were told that they would be assigned to the new Ka’tek mining station and their job was to use sonic drillers to turn the asteroid into dust for transfer to the smelting facilities. Sound easy enough? It wasn’t.

For one thing the mining base had been built on the surface with safety features, but underground there had been little or no construction. If you dug in the wrong place you could hit a gas pocket which would immediately explode, or you could dig to deep and end up outside. And there’s no oxygen. They were all issued oxygen tanks, but they were far from airtight. There was a life expectancy of two weeks in those mines. He had now been there one and was thinking that the officials were lying about that and it was really about two days.

He was right now in a mining shaft with a guard in his super high tech oxygen mask telling then to work harder while their leaked out minutes of their life while they worked. Their shift ended in 18 days. He only had 15 days left in his tank. The O2 tanks were refilled at the end of every shift. If you ran out of air even a minute before the end of the shift you suffocated. He was contemplating bribing the guard to give him the extra eight minutes when there was a commotion down the hallway. There was a breach of the outer crust and everyone was being sucked out.

Orthis’s training kicked in and he grabbed a ledge and tried to hold on. But it wasn’t enough. Everyone in the hallway was sucked out into space. Orthis saw the rest of the asteroid field spread out around him. He had exactly 15 days to get to one of the bases or he would become a permanent resident.

ISN Academy Testing Facility, Area 3-C, Kona, Drengia, Sector 1-2, 22 Feb 2227.

The examiner walked in and started his speech. It sounded dull and rehearsed: “You are applying to join the most powerful force in the universe. You will battle bravely to destroy Lord Kona’s enemies and conquer new worlds for the Drengin Empire. One of the many things you will learn is that you shall never be forgiving to ones enemies. To test you to find the best of the best you will sit an exam together. This will test your knowledge of military strategy.”

The test was rather dull. It had a large section on multiple-choice where all the “right” answers would get you killed if you tried to use them in a real battle. Then there was a written section where it asked you to describe Lord Kona in the best way possible, and talk about how much you loved the Drengin Empire. Sarbok felt confident in his grade, and that he understood the strategies that would actually win a battle.

The tests were graded by computers, so the results were ready in a few moments after the test ended. The examiner took out a piece of paper and read “scoring first with 97% is Sarbok, 2nd with 94% is Korkrin, 3rd with… the rest didn’t matter to Sarbok. He has made it into the ISN Academy. By the time that he finished the first battleships should be ready, and he would be able to help the Empire to realize that they needed to change their ways.


Near Ka’tek Space Mine, Drengia Asteroid Field 1, Drengia, Sector 1-2, 22 Feb 2227.

The air was getting thin in Orthis’s space suit. He had been floating around out here for weeks now. There was a micro rations stick in his suit which he had been issued before his shift had started. It had kept him alive for the past several weeks while he tried to get near enough to an asteroid that he could push off towards a mining base. The problem was that the asteroids are too far apart to actually get near enough to push off.

Then suddenly something caught his eye. It was a flash of red. Could it be a mining base? His heart raced. He couldn’t get there though. There were no asteroids to push off of. That was when his O2 tank burst.

It sent him shooting way off course. He tried to adjust by sealing that tank off but the one opposite it just went off. Then he realized what he could do. He started to adjust his course by shutting off different tanks to go in that direction. He had four tanks arranged like a square, so the maneuvering part wasn’t too difficult. The one problem was that once he ran out of “fuel” he would suffocate. His O2 levels were already half of what they were before the tank burst.

He rounded the asteroid on which he has seen the shimmer of red. It was a mining base all right. The only problem was that there was no way in. There was nothing for it. Either he would suffocate out here or he would be killed for damages done to the dome. He chose the latter. He dove straight towards the dome. The guards inside were laughing at first to see the suffocating slaveling outside the mining base. Then their expressions changed to fear when they realized what he was trying to do. They quickly ran towards the exits and began to seal off the doors. He crashed through the glass dome and as the atmosphere began to rush out he angled toward the last closing door. The door was closing too quickly. He wasn’t going to make it. He shouldered off his Oxygen tank and used the existing push to get though the doors without a centimeter to spare. Panting he thought to himself: that would look great in a movie.

Imperial Palace, Drengi, Area 7-B, Drengia, Sector 1-2, 1 Apr 2227.

The conference was just starting when Lord Kona sat down. It would be interesting. Torture and conquering were his two favorite topics and they were talking about the latter. For the past five weeks scientists around the empire had been working on putting together plans that would allow them to eventually fight wars in space. The head researcher began to talk:

There is an art to conquering inferior races. One dose not merely defeat the enemy, one must crush him utterly. Interstellar Conquest lays the path to the conquest of the universe. With it we can militarize space and eventually look at weapons systems, defenses, conquest of worlds, and beyond…

Despite the good start, the conference really only started people on the issue and made production slightly more effective. By the end Lord Kona had to call a break because he was getting bored and watch the Kona Katnikts (his favorite team) play Unconventional Death (who can kill their slaveling the fastest using an everyday device like a data card).

The only good thing to be said about it was that it played a key role in building the base for further research. This boosted Lord Kona’s spirits as he watched his team lose by 7 seconds.