Hessarah woke from a thick, unrefreshing sleep and sat up, looking around the room. It was free of decoration save for a porcelin sculpture by an Earther artist. She got out of bed and walked over to it. "Take it in," she told herself. "This will be the last time you see it." It wasn't extravagant or breathatking, just a creature the Earthers called a 'dragon' perched atop a cliff and spreading its wings as it gazed at the sky. She cocked her head to one side and gazed at it once more, taking in every curve and angle. Satisfied, she went to her closet and changed into her Dominion Navy dress uniform: a white jumpsuit with metal shoulder pads painted gold and black and emblazoned with the Hessarah Clan symbol, and a long, flowing white cape with pearlesent beads that shimmered in the watery sunlight. After giving her uniform a once-over, she left her room and stepped out into the hall. There was an cold,uneasy quiet, as if the entire house was waiting for something to happen.
Something is going to happen, she thought. something that should have happened sooner. She descended the stairs, walkng like a condemned prisoner to an acid pit. As she dismounted the last stair, she looked over to the sitting area. "Excelent," she said to no one in particular, "punctual as always." Her daughter was sitting in a chair, her head leaning on her shoulder, sleeping deeply. She walked over and shook her. "Ashira, wake up. It's time." Ashira stirred and slowly awoke. "Mother, I'm not sure I can go," she said weakly. Hessarah sighed and sat in the chair next to her. "You have to go," she said soothingly. "The Earthers will come soon, and they'll slag this whole planet, then land soldiers. If the bombardment dorsn't kill you, the crossfire will."
"And if I somehow survive those, it's the gas chamber for me," Ashira said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
Hessarah laughed ruefully. Propaganda screamed of the dreadful torture the Earthers inflicted on prsioners and civilians. Few belived it, and those who did were either naive,stupid,or both, as far as she was concerned. Ashira straightened. "When will he be here?" she asked.
"In a few krons," Hessarah replied, and added,"You want some food?"
"No, Mother, I just feel sick," Ashira said quietly, and looked out the window. "Why can't this war just stop, so we can all go home stop killing each other?"
she asked, shuddering.
"Because everyone in the galaxy is an idiot," Hessarah aswered, to which Ashira nodded grimly.
They spent the next few minutes in silence, until there was a noise at the door.

Two knocks.
Pause.
One knock.
Pause.
Two knocks.

The code was crude, but easy to remember. Hessarah walked to the door and opened it. A Torian stood there, his legs spread on the ground as if he had sprang from it.
"I am here, Supreme Director. Is she ready," he said, not making it a question. Hessarah turned to reagard Ahsira, and saw she had already stood up and was gathering her bags. "Yes, Tai'karr, she is ready," Hessarah replied. Ashira walked up to her and dropped the bags. After a split-second pause, she crossed her hands at the wrists over her chest in salute. Hessarah returned the gesture, and without another word, Ashira walked out the doorway, flanked by Tai'karr. They got into his vehicle, and drove off toword the nearest starport. Hessarah watched until the vehicle disappeared.
She walked back inside and called everyone who was part of Operation Blood Moon. They all had the same reply: "I am in posistion and ready, now it's your turn."
Hessarah walked over to a cabinet,picked out a sawed-off plasma rifle and holstered it. She entered her vehicle and drove to the Imperial Palace. When she arived later, she saw everthing was going according to plan.
A small crowd was assembled in front of the palace, shouting incoherantly and burning flags. The guards (or at least the ones she had not recruited to her cause) were trying to keep them under control. Before the they would have gunned them down. Now they can't, because the Earthers supposedly do the same thing. She parked and got out. Phase one complete: guards distracted, she thought. She passed to more guards, (who she had recruited) who made no move to stop her as she opened the door and stepped inside. She told the head guard in the antechamber that she wished to speak with Kralax. He nodded wordlessly, and led her down the Grand Hall. The scene was awe-inspiring, or would be, if Hessarah hadn't been there before.
Massive black pillars soared up, supporting the upper levels of the building, with gigantic murals depicting great moments in Korx history covered the far wall, and great banners emblazoned with the Korx emblem hung down from the cieling.
They came to the end of the hall, in front of two meatal doors, soaring thirty meters up.
"Supreme Dirctor Mengathis has requested to see His Excelency the Imperial Chairman," the guard rumbled to the to Elite Guards in front of the doors.
They wordlessly stepprd aside, and the doors slowly swung open, the hinges groaning noisily. Hessarah stepped through, into the throne room, walked along the black carpet, and shot out her right arm, the special salute reserved for the Imperial Chairman.
Kralax gazed down at her from his throne's high dais. "Supreme Director, what do you wish to speak of?" He looked out the window and laughed bemusedly. "I don't under stand why the guards don't just mow those protesters down."
"They don't have to," Hessarah said evenly.
Kralax flustered. "And...why is that, Supreme Director?"
The thuderous noise of many quick footfalls echoed behind her. Out of the darkness, guards emerged, with their weapons drawn.
"It's very simple," Hessarah said coldly. "The Korxian Armed Forces are no longer under the jurisdiction of Your Excelecy...because they are no longer under the command of Your Exceleny."
With that, Hessaarah whipped out her weapon and fired, the blue orb of plasma hitting Kralax in th chest. As he toppled back, the guards opened fire all at once, the laser blasts burning through him until there was nothing left but a pile of ash. Hessarah ascended the steps and stood over the still-smoldering remains of her former soveriegn. Phase two complete: eliminate Kralax Turning to the guards, she said, "Operation Blood Moon is a succsess." A few bursts of gunfire outside confirmed the guards not part of the plan were being disposed of. She brushed the ashes off the throne and sat down. "Broadcast this on all frequencies. I want the entire Dominion to know what happened here today, and the Earthers and thier allies."
One of the younger guards spoke up: "Supre--ah, Your Excelency, what if they try to storm the palace? We assassinated Kralax."
Hessaarah shook her head. "He failed the Dominion and the Korx race. This war was his fault, everyone knows it. Some cazed loyalists will come, but don't count on a battle. Count on target practice." The guards nodded, shot out thier arms in salute, and left the throne room. Hessarah looked dazedly around the room--she couldn't belive her plan worked--when something shiny in the ash-pile that used to be Kralax caught her eye. Reaching down, she discovered it was a data-disk. This must be important it could survive a firing squad, she thought. Shrugging her shoulders, she pocketed it.
There were more pressing concerns at hand.

I made it up.  

Evans surveyed the mess hall,spotting several of his crew. Their grey uniforms and polished black jackboots contrasted sharply with the Assyrians' and Skathalets' colorful armor.(Methesus, being Thalan, didn't wear a uniform, but Evans didn't hink about that.) Except for...he swallowed his bite of the strange Assryian fruit he was eating uncomfortably and averted his gaze from the two Skathalet guards on either side of Tendath. They were soldiers, so it stood to reason they wood have different armor than starport officers,but they didn't have to look like that. Evans wasn't sure what bothered him more: the black plates on thier snouts that made their yellow snake-eyes seem to glow,or the evil-looking spikes running down the back of their jagged grey body armor. They made them look...unnerving.
Demonic, even.
Evans put the thought out of his head and went back to his food. There was something more important, anyway: The repairs on Barbados were coming along at a breakneck pace, and from the crew helping them, (and keeping an eye on them), Evans knew that they weren't snooping around or downloading any sensitive files. If anyone in the Fededation tried to spy on its allies so conspicuously,there was a very good chance they'd get a cigarette and a blindfold. Evans approved. As far as he was concerned, if you were going to keep tabs on your allies, don't be obvious about it, or you'll compromise the alliance. Still, Evans was impress hoe mucj had been accomplished in one day: the reactor was running normaly, the hull plating was good as new, and the starboard engine was being replaced. Risson had told him that he could expect to be commanding his ship again by the end of the week.
"So Admiral, you think we'll be reduced to peacekeeping when the war's over?"
Evans looked across the table and saw his gunnery officer,Lt. Rico Hernendes, sipping from his drink with a wry smirk.
"Unfortunately, yes," Evans replied. "More than likely, Starfleet Command will reckon that they'll need experienced crews and captains to breath down the Korxes' necks once thier beaten." He rolled his eyes to show what he thought about that.
Hernendes snorted. "Permission to speak freely, sir?" he asked. When Evans gave him the nod, he went on, "Quite frankly, I think the blackshirts are behind in the times: the Greyskins are already beaten."
Evans raised an eyebrow. "'Greyskins', Lieutenant?"
Hernedes shrugged. "It's what most of the other crew are calling the Korx, sir. Guess I just picked it up....and on't look now, but here comes Jenkins."
Sure enough, Evans heard qucik footfalls behind him. As if on cue... Evans turned to face him. "Yes, Ensign Jenkins?" Evans had seen countless recruiting posters, and Josh Jenkins looked like he had steppind right out of one: sandy blond hair, ice-blue eyes, a build somewhere between muscular and stocky, and what seemed to be a permanent grin. "Sir, we just got a news briefing sent to us." His Texas drawl made his words sound lazy and easygoing, despite the strangly worried look on his face. He pulled a data-pad out of his pocket. "We're givin' 'em to all the crew, but I figured you deserved to be one of the first to know. Just a warning, though: none of the news is pretty." Jenkins snapped a salute, did a ridiculously quick about-face, and walked toward the food-line.
"Ah, good. I never did like to be behind on current events, even if it was only for a day," Hernendes said.
Evans turned on the data-pad and placed it on the table. The screen lit up immediatly with a galaxy graphic with GNN superimposed over it. The camera panned downward, revelaing a smart-dressed reporter.
"Good afternoon, I'm Norm Harper with the latest news for June 9,2233. A few hours ago, we recived an uncomfirmed report that Kralax, dictator of the Dominion of Korx had been assassinated in a coup lead by Hessarah Mengathis, the supreme commander of the Korx star navy. I am here to report that"---he cleared his throat---"we have confirmation."
"Good God," Evans said in wonderment. It drew suprised looks, but he didn't see them.
Hernendes blinked in suprise. "This can't be true!" he took the data-pad in his hands and let outa loud Spanish profanity. "It is true! There's the supreme commander, giving a speech!" He gave it to Evans, and the latter saw a Hessarah standing a a high balcony over a huge crowd, giving a speech.
"Comrades! I ask you, whose fault is it that our civilization has fallen apart?!" she opened. As one the crowd roared "Kralax's fault!" in return. Hessarah raised her hands for quiet, then went on: "No, it was not Kralax's fault alone. I am at fault. We all are." The crowd fell into complete silence. "We allowed ourselves to fall for Kralax's justifications. He enslaved the Snathi, and when we opposed that, he ordered prostesters gunned down and said that he did as the economic dialectic directed: he used less advanced peoples to his advantage. He delared war on the Assryians, which brought the Thalans into a war we didn't have any hope of winning. What was his reason this time? Again, he used the dialectic: work against collectivism by any means nessesary. He could have helped the Assryians recover from the plague, and show them that capitalism is the true system for running a state, not thier disguised fascism. But no, he went through with his foolish endeavors, and we went along with them, marching toward our distruction on a road paved with blood and under the guns of a tyrant. And what of me? I actually aggreed with him and thought he was doing as the dialecti demanded...until it was to late. And what of the dialectic? Is it infallable, written by the Mithrilar themsleves? No! it was written by mortal Korx hundreds of years ago, when we were enslaved by a fascist regime. Laxx and T'les were wise, but they were still mortal, and the dialectic was crafted to ignite revoloution.
We have forgotten these and taken the dialectic to be infallable, and any question of this to be a fascist insurrection." She paused, letting her words sink in. The crowd stirred and murmured. "Millions of innocents sent to slave labor camps brcause they didn't like our politics. I have studied Earth history, and the only states that did this were the very fascist regimes that we threw off all those centuries ago. Now, we have started to turn back into one of those regimes."
At that, the crowd exploded in shouting. Hessarah raised her hands for silence, but didn't get it. several guards fired thier weapons into the air, and they finally settled down. "Now," Hessarah continued, "We are being torn apart in a hopeless war, with no hope of an armistice. This generation has failed the Korx species....but, we have another hope: our children, and the generations they will bring forth. One of them will spawn revoloutionaries, and they will throw off the yoke of fascism and establish another true captialist state. I do not know if it will be in a hundred years, a thousand years, or ten thousand years, but rest assured: the Dominion WILL RISE AGAIN!!!"
The crowd exploded in shouting again, but they were'n cheers of adoration or screams of anger, at least to Evans' ears. To him, they were cries of conquest.
Evans turned off the data-pad and looked at Hernendes. "Hell of an orator," he said after a moment of silence.
Hernendes spread his hands. "Probobly, but the words of the dead don't mean jack shit."
"I wish I could be as confident as you," Evans replied grimly.

Nice. Are you going to do this for the entire game?

I mean are you planning t write this AAR until you win?

OK. Cause that could take quite awhile.

A quick note on the uniforms the humans wear: don't think WW2 German uniforms, think somethink along the lines of the regalia worn by the Imperial offivers from Star Wars, minus those ridiculous hats.

Hessarah sighed. She had been sighing a lot lately, given how tiring (to say the very least) holding on to her position of power was. It seemed that eveything bad that could happen, did. Counter-coups by loyalists to obsure ans self-rightous govoners, (as expected, not everyone went along with her "regime change",) attempts by her co-conspiritors to depose her, and mass riots among the general population. The last incident was the only one she regretted crushing. She had led the coup to depose Kralax--All too late, she thought,---and had ended up having to be as ruthless as Kralax had ever been. "So much for progress." Her words echoed through the room, bouncing off walls and absobed by tapestry. Again, more heavily than before, she sighed. She had deposed a dictator and asumed his place, and for what? To end up ordering dissidents gunned down where they stood? She tried to justify it to herself: The rioters were more violent than they had bben under Kralax---overturning vehicles, smashing in shop windows, throwing inceindiary bombs into buildings, and burning flags---but it didn't work. Aside from the few with inciniaries or some who with small personal weapons, the rioters were largely unarmed. and yet, she had unflichinly ordered them gunned down. She shook herself and sat down on the throne. Kralax had crushed peaceful demonstartions, sometimes arresting the protesters in droves and sometimes gunning them down. He was either over-reacting or sadistic. Hessarah knew she didn't even have that excuse. She had known good and well what she was doing. "Kralax killed disidents because of his paranoia. I kill them because of nessescity. Does that make me any better?" Again, her words echoed and faded into silence.
A guard came in and shot out his arm. "Your Excelency, Director Torren wishes to speak with you."
Hessarah nodded. "Bring him in," she replied. The guard nodded and left, returning some time later with her second-in-command. Hessarah was still the supreme commander of the Korx Navy, and Torren was thus still her second in command. (And one of the few Navy commanders she hadn't purged.) Torren saluted, and Heassarah waved the guard away. Only when he was gone did she speak. "Director Torren, what do you have to report?"
Torren didn't waste time. "Your Excelency, through intercepted messages and our spies, we have discovered unusual activity in the Epsilon system. Large amounts of ships have been gathering there for the past few weeks, but recently there has been an increased amount of activity."
Hessarah's stomach churned. This didn't sound good. "What kind of activty?" she asked.
Torren shifted slightly. "At first, it was simply combat ships practicing area bombardment and bomber craft making mock presicion strikes. But recently, troop transports have been landing large amounts of troops and equipment....in the mountainous regions."
Now, Hessarah's stomach seemed to be trapped in a permanent loop. There was onbly one major planet that was mostly mountainous. Korx. The unspoken word hung in the air, making the room seem frigid. "It's actually a wonder we found this out at all," Torren said. "Many of our agents died to get us this information, and it may be incomplete or a hoax."
Hessarah shook her head. "No. It can't be, not if they've been at it for this long. There isn't going to be a peace treaty; the Earthers and their allies are going to invade our homeworld, and soon."
Torren sighed. "One last thing, Your Excelency: the Telenath has been completed, but we won't get all the anitmatter needed to run the reactor for a few weeks."
Hessarah hid her distress. "Get as much as you can, as fast as you can. I give you complete freedom to get it....and I mean complete freedom, Torren. Do you understand?"
Torren nodded. "Yes, Your Excelency. I do."
"Good," Hessarah said grimly. "Dismissed."
Torren shot out his arm and walked out of the chamber. Hessarah looked out the window, and down on the spawaling city below. The sky was filled with black clouds and slashes of lightning. All very fitting, she thought, for what is in effect a funeral.

To answer the above questions:

1. I wanted to portray the Korx as characters, not just snarling villans, and I've always thought of them as not evil, simply misguided.

2. When I finally assaulted Korx, they somehow got a Dreadnought, and I wanted to work this into the story.

I regret to inform you that school will start soon, so be ready for lon gaps between updates.

I guess they are.  But I WILL finish this story.

BTW, I have an idea in the back of my head about making an Metaverse empire out of Earth Federation Starfleet. If I made it, would anyone join?

(I don't really get how it works, but I would try.)