The UE - Kyreikon war would wage for another three decades. But it would be a surprisingly civil war, with the Kyreikon Empire often deciding to cede ground, just to show its strength at the other borders it had.

Peace negotiations would be difficult. The UE had clear goals in mind, but, at the time the negotiations began and an armistice would be declared, the Empire was not broken. Battered? Yes. But nowhere near broken.

While there was little hope for eventual victory inside the Kyreikon High Command, each and every little victory offered an inkling of hope. Of course, it was useless hope, the UE was just to big to massive, and to difficult to attack for it to be defeated, but it was there. And there was always the possibility of a change in regime, one that did not want to wage this war.

That would never happen.

And by the end of those three decades, a new generation had grown up in a state of constant war. They had seen the beginning, and, more importantly, they had been influenced by the subtile propaganda of the UE government their entire time in school. While the older generation might not be willing to continue this war, seeing it as a useless waste of resources, that younger generation was willing to do it.

To break the back of that will, you would need to do something that affected the UE at a massive scale. Near total military casualties might do it, but maybe not. Because even if those losses would be catastrophic by any stretch of imagination, they would merely be a drop in the bucket for the massive hegemon that was the United Earths. Yes, it would be bad, but to few would be affected for it to be truly relevant. It might seem absurd, we speak here about over 19 billion men and women, after all, but 19 billion was something the even the far smaller Kyreikon Empire would be capable of absorbing without too much an issue. It would be bad for a time, such a loss is not easy to accept, but 19 billion are a bit more than a tenth of a percent of the population of the Kyreikon Empire, at least their population at the start of the war.

No one wants to say that something like that is good, for it is not. But it would not be an unrecoverable happening either. And the UE is significantly larger than the Kyreikon Empire.

Such a loss would slow down offensive actions for a very long time, however.

As well as having massive implications for the future agressiveness of the military, of course. Well, depending a bit on how the loss happened.

The most likely thing to stop the UE was something happening inside of it that made it impossible for them to expend the resources necessary for the war. Just one slight issue with that, the current budget of the military was literally a rounding error.

In the budget of the second smallest department.

The moment that becomes an issue is the moment the UE is in deep trouble and no one is caring about the Kyreikon Empire at that point anymore.

So, the biggest issue with getting peace were the somewhat unrealistic goals of the UE and the fact that both sides did not talk to each other. In fact, most communication between the two sides either happened through the exchange of weapon fire, not particularly helpful for diplomacy, or through smugglers that opened communication channels between the occupied worlds and the Kyreikon Empire proper.

This lack of official and semi-official communication channels, for the UE authorities purposefully did not know about that exchange made the transmission of the offer of negotiation a challenge. Mostly because no-one was listening to the attempts of the Kyreikon Empire, which felt more and more desperate because of the other threats it was facing.

It solved the issue by going through the smugglers, using them to organise a petition campaign, literally asking to contact the Kyreikon Empire at a certain place with a certain protocol.

Because there was no reason not to do so, and very little possible harm, the UEN agreed to attempt that. Keeping the occupied population under control was seen as a fairly important task and the less violence necessary for it, the better. And if the price for that was sending an unmanned courier boat to a Kyreikon world and using it to call something, well, that was not a big price to pay, was it?

Surprising the UEN, the Kyreikon Empire actually answered, with the goal of getting an armistice which would then hopefully end with a peace treaty.

Now, an armistice was good for both sides, but it was especially good for the UE, which had planned for over a decade by now to completely restructure its navy. Something like that was difficult while the fighting happened, as well as somewhat stupid, especially considering that the navy actually worked, but it was still seen as something that should happen. Thanks to the guaranteed 3 years of peace, that was the perfect opportunity to do it.

Well, if the UE accepted the offer that was. And, after less than a day of consideration in the parliament, the UE did indeed accept.

Now the arduous task of actually negotiating could begin. The UE had expected to only be capable of negotiating with the Kyreikon Empire after they had cornered its government, and thus their positions were, while merciful for such a situation, unreasonably hard for the current one, because they had taken only 1896 worlds, equaling to a mere 13% of the entire Kyreikon Empire.

Now, another big issue was the inability to enact large scale changes to those demands. It had taken a massive political effort to agree to any demands, and an equally massive effort would be needed to change them. Thanks to some interesting formulations there was a bit of wiggle room, but not much on the really problematic points.

Like the fact that the UE demanded that the entire military would be dissolved and their equipment destroyed. A rebuilding of the military was allowed, but only after 150 years, while the Kyreikon Empire got protectorate status.

Well, the option to join the UE in 500 years after signing the peace treaty, assuming some predetermined factors were met, was certainly helpful, but not all that relevant. There was, after all, no great movement inside the Kyreikon Empire attempting to join the UE.

The negotiations were hard, but that the Kyreikon empires government was only touched a little bit helped. Its education system was, however massively affected, although that mostly happened in the form of development help. Which the Kyreikon government would accept by signing the peace treaty.

But in the end, the thing that allowed the Kyreikon Empire to save face and accept the peace treaty was the fact that Protectorates had the option to gain development aid, if they wanted. How much was decided by the UE, although it tended to be very generous. In this particular case, minimum allowances of aid were written down, and having the mighty UE industrial machine helping defend the borders would make those other threats far less threatening. It would take time to exchange all units, and, in fact, the last Kyreikon naval vessel would leave service 70 years after the treaty was signed, but in the end, the Kyreikon Empire was safe and agreed to dissolve slavery, which it had slowly done over the last 30 years or so, because it did not want to see what the UE could do if it decided burning worlds was ok, to disband all armed forces for a period of 150 years, of which in the end only 80 years would see the Kyreikon’s completely without a military, as well as massive shifts in its education. The emperor of Kyreikon was smart, realising that the UE education would make his absolutistic rule impossible and also codified a government change into the treaty, protecting his position as someone still powerful and relevant, although that would slowly drift to a purely cerimonial position. The Kyreikon Empire would accept the name of Kyreikon Federation and transform into a parliamentary monarchy with an exceptionally strong monarch.

The UE was happy about the peace. But it swore to itself that it would never be in danger of a surprise attack again. And it would defend its protectorates, which it wished would join the United Earths, who might need a name change in 500 years, and transform into a multicultural beacon of freedom and democracy.