The First Reckoning continued. Not all went well for the United Earths Navy, however, like at Sheranor, where the attacking fleet was forced to retreat thanks to a quick gathering of multiple defense fleets, leaving their original planets vulnerable. Still, Sheranor would be conquered with the last battle of the campaign.

Or Tziortu, where the UE should suffer its greatest defeat of that campaign, loosing five battleships and all escorts. Only thanks to a miniature gate in a different universe should the UE figure out what happened. It was a fairly simple mistake, and a lot of bad luck.

The campaign was already waging for 4 days at that point, and the commander of Tziortu’s garrison knew what was coming. He did not have many resources, but he did place a minefield directly in the path of the most likely vector the attacking fleet would take. Through sheer bad luck and happenstance, it would just so happen that the UE fleet decided to fall out of hyper directly inside that minefield. Thanks to some bad luck with the initial hits, as well as multiple, panic-fuelled, decisions, which were sub-optimal to say the least, the UEN force was annihilated, although not without savaging the local defense forces. Thanks to the early date of the offensive, there were not enough forces available for a second try, which meant that that world stayed in Kyreikon hands, and would continue to stay in them for the next two years until a second UE fleet came by.

Tziortu’s popultion was actually happy at that point to be annexed, because they were slowly running out of specialised replacement parts for their agricultural machines, thanks to them being completely encircled by the UE through the First Reckoning offensive.

This would be the most extreme example of a world left behind the UE’s lines, although two more of the originally planned 60 worlds would not be conquered. Admittedly, both of those other worlds were at the new border between the expanding UE and the Kyreikon Empire.

A lecture about the final stages and the implications of the First Reckoning campaign, as well as the happenings around it.:

…While it was true that the offensive did not succeed in its goals, and suffered multiple clear defeats, one of them the devastating loss at Tziortu, it was still widely successful and panicked the Kyreikon Empires leadership. While not a huge loss on absolute terms, considering that the Kyreikon Empire had over 14 thousand worlds, nor in relative terms, considering that most of the conquered worlds were fairly poor, the offensive showed a fairly competent navy, capable of operating away from its supply lines. The Kyreikon Empire was already suspecting that their initial estimates of the UE’s strength, that being that the UE is somewhat equal to the Kyreikon Empire but missing both experience and a cultural ability to wage war, were already being considered obsolete. This was the final nail in the coffin for those grasping at straws that the UE would only try to build a small warning zone around itself.

The Kyreikon Empire was still thinking that it could win a war against the UE. But not without drastically weakening its borders toward other enemies, which would be far less humane to the Kyreikon citizens trapped on newly conquered worlds than the UE. They were not all that aware of how exactly the UE treated the conquered population on Andraskon, but there was a small flow of information smuggling going on, mainly entertainment from the wider Kyreikon Empire going to the citizens of Andraskon, who in exchange gave some of the media they were allowed to access.

Considering that that media was carefully curated, well it was not the best source of information, but it was the best the Kyreikon empire had access to. And the reports about the treatment of the newly acquired citizens of the UE of Kyreikon descent were far easier tp confirm, considering that the majority of the population on Andraskon, as well as likely the military high command, although that was never confirmed, were aware of the going ons, an had some idea of how to communicate to the smugglers.

Which could lead to some odd messages being passed along, for example, when a small child followed a manual of how to contact the smugglers and then proceeded to send literally anything he could get his hands on over the connection. In such gems like his schoolwork and a foot of him having acquired some weird face paint in the colours of the UE, there was also a lot of actually useable intelligence. To this day there are some that think that this one incident brought more and, especially important, better information than all other communiques combined.

While the Kyreikon Empire was panicking, although breathing a sign of relief, thanks to the UE not being genocidal maniacs, the UE had its own issues as well.

The campaign had been launched far to early, which was part of the reason why not all goals could be reached. The other part was that the designated target was incredibly ambitious and relied on nearly everything going right. The UE had no reserve to solve issues should anything go wrong, or rather, no reserve besides a large number of sub-light ships, stationed around various earths.

While the forces allocated to each earth were generally sufficient, a determined offensive could have retaken the lost territory, and, with a bit of bad luck on the side of the UE, even destroyed a significant chunk of the UE’s faster than light assets. The only two worlds in the Terra universe that were somewhat safe from such an attempt were Terra proper as well as Andraskon, thanks to it having now truly massive fortifications, simply because someone was of the opinion that the UE cannot afford to loose this symbol. The first world taken, which was not an earth, a sign of a new era. Not necessarily of expansion, but a new era of possibilities.

The taking of 57 more worlds also acerbated the issue of the what to do with those. There where multiple options, but they all depended on one question the UE did not really want to answer. What is the war goal?

The UE simply wanted to take revenge, but that would be going against its mandate. Simply annexing those worlds would be possible, the Kyreikon population was tiny compared to the immense size of the UE, but it would still mean a lot of trouble for a long time. Especially considering how far the Kyreikon worlds were form the usual logistic centres of the UE.

But the longer those worlds would be in legal limbo, the worse the situation would be.

Annexation had another big issue. It would set a precedent for annexing the worlds of others, something the Protectorates, as well as the advocacy groups in their favour did not want.

…

In the end the UE decided to make a client empire out of the Kyreikon worlds, held in trust for the Kyreikon government after the war. It was declared that their would be a change of government, but the form that would take would not be solved for years...