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The Kepler Empire was one of the closest habitable regions to the Galactic core on the south side of the Galactic Plane, leaving them one border largely free of threats, now that Comor had been brought on board, but they still faced great threats from their immediate neighbors, as well as threats from those further distant, who would cross the no man’s land of the galactic core to look for new planets and resources.

To their east sat the Eagle and Trifid Empires, both of them were human territories named after the ancient words for their Home region. Both had formed near a nebula, for the abundance of resources, while the Cygnus Empire was named after a black hole that marked the outward southern border of their territory.

To the Kepler Empire’s Northwest, at a bit of a distance, but still a significant threat because of the randomness of their violence was a sector of the Klem Territory. An Insectoid species, with a hive mentality, they were nonetheless just as powerful as a Mecha army and routinely stripped planets bare for their own use, then retreated to core hive worlds to feed their Queens and expansion efforts.

They had settled everywhere in the western region of the Galaxy, from close to the northwestern edge of Kepler, all the way out to the Outer Reaches of the galaxy. It wasn’t a unified empire, but rather pockets of the species occupied by independent Queens, but the threat they posed to the Galaxy couldn’t be ignored.

Southwest of the Kepler Empire, and sharing a border with the western edge of Cygnus, was the Tapani Alliance. Not generally considered a threat, thanks to their history of diplomacy, they still had a significant military presence.

The Narsians were rumored to have begun their existence in the far north of the Galaxy, and shouldn’t have been a threat, except for their wormhole technology that opened portals to habitable worlds for them to invade. They had been found in every empire and sector that Kepler had come in contact with, except for the Death Wind Sector, which claimed that the giants had never been brave enough to attack their beloved hive of villainy and Piracy.

Compared to most of the Galaxy, the regions around Kepler were rather sparsely populated, but also highly aggressive. While Kepler had thousands of planets under their jurisdictions, there were Alliances in the Galactic East and North that had dozens of similarly sized Empires in their ranks.

Central Command envied them sometimes, so safe and insulated from threats, with the Fornax, Klem, Narsians, and others not bothering them, and good relations among their neighbors. But a large portion of the military command maintained that it made them weak and that one day they would fall, either from within or from an external enemy tearing their alliance apart with little resistance, thanks to their centuries of peace and technological stagnation.

It was true that weapons of war were much more advanced in this region of the Galaxy, but that wasn’t always the deciding factor. For example, the Tion Fleet was known to build massive vessels renting from a hundred kilometers long to the size of a small moon, serving as wandering homes for their nomadic traders and intergalactic explorers. Once, long ago, their army was so mighty that none dared challenge them, and they ruled an entire quadrant of the galaxy by default. Then they started expanding out of this galaxy, and slowly their influence waned, until they only controlled a small region, but held an immense amount of respect.

When their world ships arrived in Kepler, they were greeted by every Planetary Ruler in the immediate vicinity, with full fanfare, despite the fact they were most often only there for a bit of trading and a vacation stop for their residents at a known safe haven.

The Kepler Empire’s greatest worries right now were the widespread uprisings among the Nobles who thought the Empire had served its purpose, and the Klem, who had become comfortable in their settlements to the northwest of Kepler and were therefore beginning to run low on resources.

When the Klem began to run low on resources, they would send waves of pods containing an attack force towards nearby systems, and the ones that survived would bring back what they could gather once the planet was fully conquered. Infested was the word that the humans all used for the Klem worlds, given their insectoid appearance, and the difficulty of removing them once they had settled in.

That was the largest reason that Kepler wanted to get stronger in a hurry. If their human and humanoid neighbors kept attacking them, they might not have the resources to defend themselves against the imminent threat of the Klem.

But simply building up the military wasn’t their only strategy. At the edge of the galaxy were a number of uninhabited regions that were known to have planets suitable to be terraformed. They were simply too far out, and of no interest to the nearest major forces, so they had never been developed. Central Command had been looking to them as a possible backup plan, settlements to be created in a peaceful region where they could retreat if things turned catastrophic for them at home.

It wasn’t a plan for the majority of the populace, but then most of them would be fine no matter what name was on their empire. The same couldn’t be said of the Military leaders and members of the Royal Family.

Uncle Lu’s timeline of six months was the minimum time that Central Command expected peace with Cygnus to last, as well as the minimum time before the Klem attacks were expected to begin on the furthest outlying planets in the Empire. Unfortunately for Uncle Lu, and the people of Comor, their system was one of the closest to the Klem, and unfortunately for Max and Nico, Kepler Terminus was between Comor and the Klem worlds, since it was a frontier planet at the very edge of the Empire.

So, the race was on to see whether they could reinforce the military and political situation enough to stabilize the Empire, or whether they would be facing attacks on every side again by the end of the year.