Several months had gone by since the Akun Empire was assimilated into the Crystal Empire, or, My Empire, as I like to call it, hehe, about two and a half months have gone by. I'll catch you all up on what has happened the past months, first of all the Colonization Feet was indeed snagged at the expected coordinates, and then simply scooped into the Crystal City's cargo bay. The Colonization Fleet was three hundred thousand colony ships, each one four miles long, a mile and a half wide, and eight stories tall inside.

They had woken up from Cryostasis confused as to why they had arrived so early, and more surprised to find their Empire had been conquered, they didn't want to actually believe it at first, so I played the recording the former Emperor had made at my request, and when I sat on their throne and he bowed to me, they shut up quickly and got to work, however I could tell some had been upset. When I say get to work, I mean get to work moving into homes, and finding jobs under the occupations they had planned to work in while they set up the colony, which wouldn't be happening now. My Empire had more than enough room for the Six Billion Akun that had been in the colonization fleet, the entire population of the two planets now under my rule was 56 billion combined, the population evenly spread for the most part on the two planets, most Akun, about just over a quarter chunk being Letera.

I don't think I've mentioned what the Letera look like, have I? Well, now is a good a time as any I suppose. The Letera had been what the Akun call a Subject Species of the Akun Empire, the Letera, named after what the Akun named their star, from the planet Letera-2, they are biologically very close to the Akun, very close in body shape, their fingers are longer, thinner, still ending in sharp claws, their tails tend to be about the same size as the Akun, their scales being almost neon green in color, they don't have turreted eyes however, they have eyestalks much like that of a snail but far more advanced.

They got conquered before they even got out of their own stone age 25 thousand years ago, their stone spears and knives made not even a close match against the Akun's fully automatic rifles, so that conquest went with only the loss of 15 Akun soldiers, the Letera had their culture and language erased, their own history deleted from the books of history to be replaced with the 'proper' culture and way to do this, in the Akun's eyes, they are happy citizens of the empire, and taught from birth the moment they can learn to thank the Spirits of Emperors past that the Emperor of the time decided to spread his light and wisdom throughout their primitive species. I put a stop to the thanking the ones who took their planet and destroyed the local ecosystem with their own plants and animals, they, along with the Akun, would get an Empire Education, I wouldn't erase their culture, history, or even language, but they'd learn not to treat others like 'inferior' species.

Speaking of language, my changeling scientists found a rather clever way around that barrier! Changelings can implant memories into their victims brains to prevent reports to the royal guard, I just had them put their own knowledge of Equish and Reading it, into a memory crystal, and put into a focused beam device, which when used on an Akun's or Letera's head, would instantly implant the language into their brain, and the ability to read and write in it, abit this did cause a headache, but not nearly as bad as the one I got from the way I did it. The same went for the rest of the Empire with the Akun's language, which they just called 'the language of the Akun' for some stupid reason, the few 195 Ss’ket who had become citizens of my Empire had been shocked to find out how long the Akun had been around, and even moreso when they found out just how stagnant their technology had been for the past several hundreds of thousands of years. For those who don't remember, the Ss’ket are the species which make up the one other alien empire which I have allied with.

Now you might remember how the Akun bases that set themselves up in Equestria and the Griffon Empire had surrendered? Well seeing as the Akun are now, MY citizens, I simply told both rulers of their empires, that I needed the akun they had taken prisoner, back, and their technology, the Griffon Empire did so without complaint, as their Hightalon knew what my Empire could do if I wanted. Equestria however, wanted to keep some of the items like a few tanks and other items for study, I decided that was fine, what they wanted to study was mostly just the tanks, the akun automatic weapons, and a few of their more complex electronics such as long range radar, and their radio systems, I allowed that, it would be several years before they could even begin to copy the electronics, and another 30 I estimated before they could even come close to copying the tanks, even with magic. I also had the dead akun returned, and bodies sent back to their home world for proper cremation, as was the akun's way of being rid of bodies. I tried to ask how the families would react, however it seemed the Akun have no concept of family units, they don't even care for their hatchlings, they just lay their eggs, bury em, and fuck off. It's only after 3 years, Equis years, that their hatchlings needed to be taught anything, since they could defend themselves and hunt right after hatching, and instinctively avoided adults or anything larger than themselves for primal fear of being eaten.

Now, some may be wondering why I had the Akun starships land rather than toss em back into their home system, it was rather simple, they belonged to me now and I was going to make use of them. It was rather easy to begin upgrading them to Empire standards, they had done the hard work by building the starships themselves. I just had to replace a few things, rip out the cryopods, add some more things, and they could be pressed into service. The first step was replacing their primitive rocket boosters and replacing them with antigravity engines, ripping out their old fusion reactors and replacing them with Empire ones, which had been more efficient to begin with, along with arcane reactors, artificial gravity generators, replace their nuclear cannons with three 20 millimeter railguns in a gatling configuration, one gatling railgun to replace each atomic cannon.

Then replacing their missiles with standard hypersonic missiles. Then came to upgrading their computer systems, I didn't do much beyond compartmentalization of the databanks and power systems, then a simple upgrade and they had holographic computers with touchscreen capabilities, cooling and heating system to regulate the temperature within the starship, upgraded plumbing system, and then FTL drives installed. The machines from the Madre had been studied, and replicated a month ago, and now each starship was being outfitted with several, the 'coins' you'd use for the sierra madre vending machines, however, did not, I had the machines designed to have the coins internally, thousands of em. These starships had both arcane and Cold Fusion reactors, because they had been designed with a new prototype energy shield configuration, my Empire didn't use the smooth shields the zetans did, despite the fact our shield tech was based on theirs, it was an upgraded version, the shields rather than being flat and smooth with rounded curves around the starships, had a hexagon shape which would round the entire starship, this increased its ability to absorb blasts of energy three times than standard Zetan shields, the difference between the shields on something like the Crystal City, and the new modified starships, was that they could sandwich shields in layers, a layer of the normal ones, then ones powered by the arcane generators, which tinged them purple, then another layer of the normal ones, three times the protection already given.

This along with the fact they had been built into the wall, meant no longer would starships need to carry fresh food, or even water, they did still carry water but they could make more easily, I will explain how these machines work, the Sierra Madre Vending machines, within the very core of the vending machines was a self-contained matter transformation device, it can create any item programmed into the machine, provided it could get a scanned sample of the item or items in question so it would know how to reproduce it, and the main use for starships would be food, water, and medical supplies, the metal coins that the machine internally had ready to use when needed, are not some form of nanotech feedstock, but simple alloys of common and fissionable elements, which can be easily manufactured out of common junk. This meant they are efficient little things, these machines used fusion to transform matter, and could create anything I authorized to be programmed into them, from food, chems and potions, even booze. The mains things allowed had been meals, both ones you'd eat in the Empire, and ones the Akun had been used to, medical supplies such as chems and potions, water, various juices and drinks from both Akun, and Equis, and a selection of random booze from vodka, to whisky and wine.

Each akun starship that was finished being modified quickly found a its old crew, plus some Empire crew added as well, even the Colonization Fleet starships had been modified into military starships as well, being larger they held more weapons after being modified and armed for service. Those starships had been meant to hold twenty thousand colonists in cryostasis, as such they mostly had cryopods in them, I had those removed, and a good chunk of the space they had left behind after being removed, for reactors, new rooms, places for crew to sleep, a mess hall, and the basics any starship with living crew needs. These had several zetan deathrays, which could only be operated unless in an emergency, by the androids manning the two front facing deathrays. The automatic 20 millimeter railgun AA defenses that bad been installed are completely independent of the firing controls of the akun's systems, they are just meant to defend the starship from incoming small craft or missiles and could react faster than someone in the bridge might be able to authorize them to fire.

Now, the Akun had been adapting to the new way of things, not very quickly, this species was slow as fuck, but, it was better than nothing, given 175 years, I'm sure they would be used to this, seeing as they live 400 years, which is two hundred of their own. The Letera had lifespans of about 275 years, Equis years. Now, the animals on the Akun's two worlds, surprisingly enough no mammals existed, all reptile like, they had weird little fat round lizard creatures which shared the same turreted eyes they had, with stumpy legs, despite this these creatures are rather agile, they are kept as pets and called Akakos, they made a rather adorable little 'beep!' noise. These little things could defend themselves as well, they are about the size of a cat and are actually able to defend against things like dogs, and normal cats sand no chance, their little claws and very sharp teeth, along with their thick scales made a great defense against anything that tried to make them a snack, Akakos had taken well to canned dog food when a few Empire citizens wanted one as a pet.

Despite this, the Akakos are not completely safe, the Akun also keep the Akakos natural predator as pets as well, Qaviks, the natural predator of the Akako's, they are agile, sleek, and fast, their snouts being long and pointed with long tails they can use to whip animals that get too close they make a strange series of hisses, clicking noises, and chirps, these creatures are about the size of a German Shepard, for reference to their size, they are used to help herd Thalaill, much like how some species of dogs are used to help herd sheep.

The Imperial Palace, had been turned into a museum, I left several Akun Conquest Fleet starships as is, and had once placed in my Empires Museum Of Technology on display, you would be able to walk around inside it, and gave seven unaltered starships to the Abyssinian Empire, with instructions on how to use them, the only modifications I actually did, was replace the computers with the ones the cats used, so they could read what was on screen, and replace the atomic cannons with tubes to fire their arcane warhead missiles from, the rest stayed the same, Queen Carnelia had been very happy at that, they had repainted them and had their own Empires symbol put on em, which if ya didn't remember, was the swastika. Now the Abyssians are the only nation on this planet besides my own Empire, which could get into space in any reasonable manner.

--------------------------------------------------------Unclaimed Home-----------------------------------

Michael looked over at Franklin while keeping his hand made shotgun close. "When will those little fuckers be arriving?"

Franklin looked up from the box of dark chocolate candy bars he had been packing. "Fuck if I know homie, jus keep an eye out and don't blast em if they do show up, thats not good for profits if you kill all your customers."

Michael nodded, and double checked his makeshift shotgun, it was just a simple short pipe with a shotgun shell inserted into the back, and a crude hinge mechanism and trigger to fire, but it was certainly more deadly than the civilian weapons allowed here. 15 Minutes later a knock came at the door, Michael opened it slowly, and looked down before he grinned to see the ugly little lizard had showed up like he said he would. "Come on in." Michael stepped back and allowed the lizard to skitter inside before closing the door and locking it with a click.

The lizard's turreted eyes looked every which way before settling on the box Franklin had been packing with Dark Chocolate. "You have what I requested?"

Franklin nodded and tossed a bar of the candy to the lizard, who caught it with his clawed hand. "You damn right we do lil homie, you can taste it for yourself."

The lizard peeled the wrapper off the almost black chocolate bar, and took a bite, before he froze up for a few seconds, then he jammed the rest of the bar into his mouth and quickly swallowed it. "By The Emperor these things make me feel so good inside! As agreed, I will transfer the credits to your own accounts, four thousand each." The lizard pulled out a tablet, something it wasn't used to but found handy for these deals, and typed some information into it and a minute later, the credits had been transferred. "Now please give me the rest."

Franklin wheeled the box of chocolate over, it being a wooden, cooled box with wheels on the bottom, he waved as the lizard skittered out wheeling the box with him. "Damn if those little bastards don't creep me the fuck out man, but who'd have thought dark fuckin chocolate of all things was like cocaine for a man?"

Michael laughed. "Who gives a fuck? So long as no one finds out about our little operation here, we're gonna be raking in dough! And if we do get caught, you and I both know what needs to be done."

Franklin nodded. "Course Michael, I ain't stupid." Franklin looked to the makeshift explosives which he had set up around the small building, if that day came, well, he didn't want to think about that.

Author's Notes:

hoi, I hope ya'll enjoyed dis short chapter, lemme know what ya thought in the comments, it was gonna be longer, but I'm too tired to continue, so I decided I'd end it here