The capital planet of the UGN was wide open. Its fleets had been destroyed, its planets taken, its government and military beaten to a humiliating degree. There was not a single hope left for those on that miserable ecumenopolis, only the absolute certainty that they would be wiped from existence in the same way that their other worlds had been.

No one was sure whether the Arcadian menace would commence a sustained orbital bombardment, invade the planet itself or simply do as they did to the homeworld of the former AHU and drop a great many nuke-filled asteroids on their heads. What they were sure of, was that the extinction of their races was at hand. They were likely the last of their kind, and even if they were spared, they would be doomed to slavery or worse.

So, as the Arcadian armada cast massive shadows over the planet-spanning super city, the populace accepted their fate and made peace with their own inevitable demise.

Then the unthinkable, a miracle of immeasurable proportions, happened.

The Arcadian Galactic Commonwealth, the menace that was to be the Angelus Holy Union’s second coming, demanded an unconditional White Peace. Every planet they had taken, save the ones that had been in open revolt before the war had begun, would be returned as is. The borders would return to what they were before the Arcadians attempted to assassinate the current General Secretary and neither side would gain or lose even a single micrometer of territory.

The terms were ludicrously in the UGN’s favor; no price needed to be paid, no reparations or concessions needed to be given, no captives were to be taken and every Prisoner of War would be returned if they wanted to go back. No one could guess what was going on in the heads of the evil Arcadian leadership, but soon enough conspiracy theories started to pop up.

Perhaps there were hidden clauses? Perhaps there was a different, true price to be paid for peace and the terms that the masses saw was just a fake? Maybe the UGN had been in the pocket of the AGC from the beginning and this war was done to cripple their puppet for some reason? Maybe the war had cost the AGC far more than what was thought?

No one aside from the leadership of the AGC, OCS and UGN seemed to know the reason for the generous peace terms, and the OCS and UGN only knew it because they had been told the reason why when the terms were given.

The truth was that Arcadia had no need or want for the systems it had taken from the UGN. It did not want to deal with occupying so many worlds, even though it probably could do so if it wanted to. It had everything it needed, and the war itself fulfilled its enigmatic and unstated goals, just not in the way they had intended. Despite acting in a way that had initially upset Arcadia’s plans for the UGN and OCS, the war had done exactly what their initial scheme had been designed for.

Whatever this scheme was, it made the leadership of the UGN and OCS very uncomfortable to know that their attack had both foiled said plan and helped it along. They were now more certain than ever before that Arcadia was the embodiment of evil. After all, it was giving them back dead, ruined systems devoid of life and resources, right?

Still, the peace they were offered was far better than anything they expected, and they accepted the terms they were given. As soon as the signing ceremony was finished, Arcadia’s armadas packed up and headed straight for their own borders with all due speed.

The UGN and OCS were without space transports, let alone warships. Every craft that was in space had been reengineered to serve the war effort, and therefore had been reduced to scattered debris by the AGC onslaught. They were alone in the ashes of a dying nation, the only planet still left standing in the wake of the unstoppable evil that had ravaged and humiliated them.

They-

They were not alone! One system and then another and then more could suddenly be heard over what once had been completely silent interstellar comms systems! Dozens and then hundreds of systems announced that their occupiers were leaving, claiming that peace had been forged and their presence was no longer needed. The stunned silence from the capital world of the UGN soon fell away as joy and celebration instead took hold.

The UGN would survive! They were not doomed to extinction! There was HOPE!

Days later and the jubilation began to fade away, replaced by the sense of confusion at the survival of their kin. Wasn’t the AGC systematically exterminating and razing every race it came across? Wasn’t he AGC strip-mining everything in the systems it occupied, leaving nothing left? It did not make sense; why were there still UGN worlds and citizens out there if the AGC had destroyed them all?

It took over a month of hard work and struggle for a single ship to be launched. Its skeleton crew was given a mission of utmost importance; find out if the AGC had indeed been razing worlds and eradicating the populace. This ship was not under the control of the UGN or OCS, as the people needed to know the truth and were beginning to suspect that they had been fed lies.

The ship made the jump and the masses held their collective breath. This one ship would decide the future of the UGN. It would determine if they were alone and doomed or if they had indeed been fed lies about the destruction caused by the AGC.

The ship exited hyperspace and made its way to the planet it had been sent to. The planet was another UGN Core World and was the closest system to the UGN Capital System. Everyone, including the UGN and OCS leadership waited for the verdict. The planet and its populace were…

Still there!

A lucky find, but not proof that the AGC had not done terrible things to other worlds. The ship made jump after jump, and system after system seemed mostly intact. After covering the Core Worlds, the ship jumped to the periphery and checked if the first systems to fall were razed.

They were not.

System after System was fine and dandy. All save for a few that made a border between the Core Worlds and the Middle Systems. Dozens of planets had been reduced to irradiated hellscapes by what were determined to be ancient fusion missiles. Proof of the evil Arcadians being evil? No, it was determined that the nukes had been launched from the planets that they had hit. The Arcadians did not destroy theses worlds, it was instead a deliberate act of self-destruction.

The question was; who could have activated the nukes and who even knew they existed? The unbiased third party doing the investigation was hot on the tail of who condemned these worlds and their people to oblivion, and after several weeks of digging they found the culprit.

Needless to say, the UGN and OCS now had a lot of egg on their face.

As the UGN began to tear itself apart in riots and outrage, Arkhan watched the chaos unfold from the safety of his homeworld. With a sinister smile filled to the brim with schadenfreude on his face, he muttered something that was quickly becoming the catchphrase for the Arcadian Intelligence Corps.

“All according to keikaku.”