Coloquially called “Cats” by humans, due to their feline features, the kilrathi are not really cats, and they walk upright like humans; but they are a race that evolved from pack-hunting animals –on the planet Kilrah, about 600 light-years from Sol, pretty much straight towards the galactic core. Their “hands” have four phalanges each, and consequently their numbering system is octal. As carnivores, they have a taste for blood: Probably their most expensive drink is made of fresh blood from an animal they used to hunt but which, by the 2600's is nearly extinct. The expression “thicker blood” can mean both: “in better health”, or “of better breeding”. Blood-lines are important to them, and their society is split into multiple clans. The most ancient eight of those clans are known as The Eight Noble Clans, which historically compete for control of the Empire.
Kilrathi society is patriarchal, but only kilrathi females can become pristesses in the Cult of Sivar, which gives them enormous political clout. The rebellion of Ghora Khar was led by pristesses, resulting in that kilrathi world joining the side of the Terran Confederation.
The Kilrathi had gone through seven Dynastic Wars before becoming a space-faring race. In the last civil war, the Kiranka clan defeated the Ki'ra clan; and the Ki'ra might perhaps have taken control back from the Kiranka, except for a change of focus brought about by the arrival of the Utara.
The Utara were a very peaceful and technologically advanced race, and they shared with the kilrathi their jump drive technology, which allowed the kilrathi to travel among the stars. The kilrathi used this knowledge to build a large fleet with which they conquered and anihilated the Utara. Most kilrathis find this episode of their history very funny. To them, the Utara were stupid, and stupidity is a weakness, and weakness is dishonorable.
After the Utara, the kilrathi continued to expand and enslave or anihilate every race they met.
Except, that is, for the Mantu; which almost anihilated the kilrathi; but before doing so they disappeared as mysteriously as they appeared. The kilrathi fear the return of the Mantu more than anything else. Nothing much is known about the mantu, except that their ships were hard to see, and hard to target.
The last race they conquered, before meeting the Terran Confederation, was the Varni; –a technologically advanced reptilian-like race. They only occupied ten planets in all, and in spite of the Kilrathi's totally unexpected, surprise attack, the Varni managed to put up a serious resistance. The kilrathi Emperor himself walks with a prosthetic leg, as a souvenir of that war. Some Varni managed to escape into Terran Confederation territory, and that's when humans first heard about the kilrathi.
Officially, first contact was made in 2629 by a transport ship, the Iason. It sent a greeting beacon to the unidentified ship, but the kilrathi ship closed in, opened fire on the Iason, and destroyed it; though not before they manage to send a data burst about their encounter. Unofficially, however, the first contact occurred in Fawcett's World, which Baron Vakka seizes, capturing its human colonists. They also capture a ship whose on-board computers provide the kilrathi with a wealth of information about the Terran Confederation; –its maps, defenses, technology and culture.
By 2634, the kilrathi Emperor decides to conquer the Confederation. His son, Crown Prince Gilkarg drafts the battle plan, which ironically is based on a strategy that Confederation military planners had tested in an exercise called the Panama war game. Meanwhile, Vakka grows to respect, and even like, one of the prisoners in Fawcett's World, Abram. He comes to believe that humans, in spite of not being carnivorous hunters, do possess the “Warrior Spirit”. He sends his son, Jukaga, to Fawcett's World, to spend some time with Abram, for him to learn about this race he will soon be fighting against.
Vakka and Jukaga are of the Vakka klan, a sub-clan of the Ki'ra clan, who hate the Kiranka clan (the Emperor's), and they will secretly work against the Empire. Vakka makes arrangements for proof of the Emperor's war plans to reach Fleet Intelligence (see the Lost War Orders mystery (resolved)). (And 34 years later, Baron Jukaga will save Earth from chemical devastation in the last moments of the Battle of Earth, as well as of his own life.)
As the preparations for war continue, in 2634, Confederation Fleet Intelligence begin to suspect that the kilrathi are preparing to attack. The complete closure of the border area, intercepted reports about shortages of transports, and many other details are cumulative, if circumstantial evidence. In a classified document to Admiral Banbridge, Intelligence officer Joshua Speedwell writes,
Action Stations, page 7:
…There will be War.
They are a predatory society; their definition of existence, both individually and societally, is predicated upon conquest, upon the clear establishment of superior and inferior. The stasis of peace, without the clear resolution of who is superior, is anathema to them.
Action Stations
by William R. Forstchen
Baen Books
Copyright (C) 1998 by Origin Systems Inc.
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But the brass have a pretty hard time convincing politicians about the growing danger, specially in a time preceding an election.
Thus the war begins with a massive kilrathi attack on McAuliffe.
