[capnq]

From Chancellor Naiduin's personal journal, dated 2413.3:

I long ago reached the conclusion that the entire Xi-Chung race is insane. I can find no other explanation for their actions. What rational species would deliberately annihilate its own people rather than let them live under another race's rule? The massacre at Curyok VIII was the rationale I gave for our subsequent sterilization of the entire Curyok system. Recent reconnaissance indicates that the Xi-Chung have resettled two of the worlds, with a colony ship en route to a third.

Our two species have been at war now for almost ten years; today I read the after action report of the largest battle to date. Rather than attack our two underdefended colonies in Olontra, all of the Xi-Chung ships in the system combined into a single fleet and headed for the warp point to Carcaroli. Admiral Taaguur ordered every ship that was capable of an intercept to a rendevous point, then attacked the ten enemy light cruisers with a combined force of 19 ships: one of the new Abisko battlecruisers; six Drobak cruisers; an Enkoping and six Djusholm light cruisers; two of the obsolete Degerfors frigates; the badly damaged Flekkefjord light carrier, with 14 fighters left, less than half of its normal complement; a Mandal minelayer; and the original Regna class repair tender, still in service after all these years, and overdue for another retrofit.

The engagement began with the two fleets approaching each other in good formation, but once they got within each others' point defense umbrellas, the battle degenerated into chaos reminiscent of a podball scrimmage. When the Last plasma charge dispersed, the Xi-Chung had been annihilated, at a cost of one Drobak and the Enkoping destroyed, plus the other five cruisers and the Flekkefjord crippled, with no fighters surviving. Once the Regna gets an engine functioning on the most battered cruiser, the Degerfors will escort the damaged ships to Olontra IV, where I've ordered construction of a new shipyard to assist in the repairs. The remaining undamaged combat ships have been joined by the newest Trellenborg troop transport and an Ikaalinen colony ship, to make another attempt at wresting Curyok from the Xi-Chung.

[My Tictsin have passed the declining Sergetti to pull within 75K of the 1st place Xi-Chung, who've dropped to 411.8K after losing nearly a third of their total fleet in this battle.]

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft