Well, that's a wrap, folks. It was an exciting season, it was a good season, it was a promising season, it was a disappointing season. We won 13 games, we beat Michigan (badly), we won the conference, we made the playoffs, we played tough and lost in heartbreaking fashion to a very good Clemson team. I have hang ups over how it ended, and I think equal blame goes to the players and coaches as does to the referees (that game shouldn't have been close enough for ref bullshit to matter), but in the end, this was unquestionably a successful season. 

So here we are at the end of it, time for one last edition of Admiral Dae. 

Stardate 122919.102

Is it worse to come to the very pinnacle of achievement only to falter than it is to fail at the outset? By all rights, by any reasonable measure, we should have achieved a victory, a crushing victory over the forces of the Klem-Zone Imperium. Instead, we now return to our home system, depleted and dispirited but still intact. The campaign for galactic domination is over, and we must content ourselves to suffer the reign of whichever power wins the ultimate struggle for the center of power. 

At the beginning of the battle, we met equally matched, our capital ship numbers almost identical. So too were we matched evenly in other areas, such as numbers and quality of starfighters. The difference in these early goings was our aggressiveness--we struck first and hard, deleting several of their strongest ships, including the flagship Hiigans, with our opening foray. The Klem-Zone Imperium, accustomed to dominating lesser opponents, were completely unprepared for the ferocity and precision of our assault. 

But even in these glorious opening passages of the battle, cracks began to form in our strategy and our execution. Although we struck major blows to the enemy's formations, they managed to preserve the bulk of their forces each time through clever and efficacious use of screening tactics, cloaks, and deflector arrays. 

The turning point in the battle came when our central communications ship, the InfoFreighter the Wayd, collided with the Klem-Zone flagship Lwrnz. Not only did we lose the Wayd and all aboard, we also lost our central means of coordination. From the brink of defeat, the Imperium forces struck back. Hard. In rapid order not only did they repel our now disorganized assault, they also launched forays of their own, deleting several of our key ships and turning our forces inward, forcing us to retreat and reorganize around a new communications ship, the Reep. 

Commodores Feedlz and Doobins both led their taskforces with incredible resolve, skill, and daring, but against so determined and formidable an enemy, we could not hope to win the fight effectively blinded. 

Feeldz' final sortie ended in futility--his capital ship destroyed at the cost of most of his crew and officers. Thankfully we were able to recover the commodore himself, thankfully we were able to sound the retreat and escape into slipspace. Thankfully the Imperium did not pursue--I think they are more concerned by what awaits them at the Galactic Core, the terrifying Armada of the Wii-Sana and their commander Admiral Burreaux. I don't know what will happen when the Klem-Zone and the the Wii-Sana meet, and frankly it is beyond my concerns now. For now, all we can do is regroup and shore up our defenses, for while this campaign is over, there will always be war upon the horizon. 

In defeat or in victory, all glory to the Bukki Star Empire!

Signing off for now, 

Admiral Dae Riyan, Supreme Commander of the Bukki Star Empire

And below is a brief preview of what's to come next season, when I begin the chronicles of the rough and tumble Buckeye Boys and their notorious ringleader, Ryan O'Day. This is just a taste of what the series is going to look/sound like: 

THE DETECTIVE'S MEMOIR

The Brains of the Outfit: Or "I Heard You Collect Buckeyes"

 Yeah, it was bad again. I knew it would be bad, because fuck me, right? Here I was thinking I'd be taking in a ball game on my day off, red hot with mustard in one hand, a cold can of schlitz in the other, but no. Those goddamn Buckeye boys just had to beat old Jimmy Harbowicz with a pool cue. 

I say "beat," but I think there's a better word for what a hamburger grinder does to hamburger meat. I guess "pulverize" is the word I'm looking for. There wasn't much left of Harbowicz after the number that Zachy the Hair and Junior did on him. Maybe I'm getting older, or maybe I never noticed how grim and bloody the world was before, but I swear it's getting worse every day. These Buckeye boys, they got no respect for the law, no respect for public sanitation! Who do they think has to scrape a corpse off a public thoroughfare? Some working stiff like me, that's who. 

I've had it. I've had all I can take of this bloody mess they're making of these streets I grew up on. It all goes back to the Big Man himself, Mister Buckeye Necklace, Mister-Look-At-Me-And-My-Big-Clinking-Brass-Balls Ryan O'Day. Take him down and whole house of cards will collapse on top of all his little rats. 

I'll build my case, work slow and quiet. They're not going to see it coming until the district attorney is handing out the search warrants and the indictments. 

That will show those animals; remind them there's consequences for every action.