A/N: I'm sorry for not updating for so long! Got really busy with work and other projects. The game was too long ago for me to give a properly detailed account, but here's a digest version of how the rest of Apple's rise to galactic dominance went.
The first of many Apple Subsidiaries, the Makaru Mercantile Union would loyally serve Apple.
Apple soon discovered that it was flanked by hostile Machine Intelligences, but this led to an easy alliance with the Jehetma Dominion, which also felt threatened.
By 2240, Apple had a much clearer picture of the galaxy, and had met its long lost cousins in the Commonwealth of Man. Apple had a rocky relationship with the Commonwealth at first, and the two nations were even rivals for a time, but eventually the Commonwealth would become a loyal subsidiary and Unity in particular was a favorite retreat for Apple executives, far better than their first executive retreat on a tomb world.
After an extensive marketing campaign, Apple narrowly beat out the Hegemony of Pherkad for the Galactic Market, which curiously hadn't even bothered to make a formal bid.
Apple soon federated with the Jehetma and other materialist empires, forming the Sol Corporate Alliance. For many years, the Lokken Mechanists would lead the Federation, but once Apple regained its position as the economic leader of the federation, it was renamed the Apple Partnership.
For space communists, the Kilik were surprisingly amenable to working with multiple megacorporations in a federation.
The Tzynn Empire was invited into the Sol Corporate Alliance as well. Some in corporate leadership were uneasy at first about being allied with a slaver, until they realized that the Slave Market was a great source of labor for Apple. We weren't total monsters though. All slaves purchased by Apple were promptly freed, though many ended up working Clerk jobs, and the Vhlen, purchased from the Xani, would be eventually genetically modified to become thirsty and charismatic clerks. Unlike the Tzynn, the Xani were never friendly to Apple, so this did have the side effect of indirectly financing an enemy power.
Apple went to war with the Tebrid Homolog.
Apple won the war and carved out a swathe of Tebrid territory. Multiple star nations on the northern side of the galaxy accepted status as subsidiaries to Apple at this time as well.
Earth was encased in metal, becoming the Ecumenopolis known as Galactic City, befitting its rising prominence as the economic capital of the galaxy, and its extremely diverse population, which would become still more diverse following galactic-wide PR campaigns and the invention of Xeno-Compatibility. Eventually, all humans in Apple's employ would be at least part Avian, so that they could share in the enhanced genetic potential of the hybrids (or rather, so they would be more productive employees).
How a criminal syndicate like the Hazbuzans got the Glebsig Foundation to ally with them is a mystery to everyone. With the overwhelming numbers that the Apple Partnership had, victory seemed inevitable. Yet the war would drag on for over thirty-seven years! It could take nearly ten years for ships to reach the front, snaking around the galaxy, as the Partnership was not willing to wage another war with the Yondarim concurrently to force them to allow passage. The Hazbuzans and Glesbig reached the point of severe war exhaustion long before the Partnership, and would have agreed to a status quo peace decades before the war ended, but the Kilik were not willing to end hostilities without achieving the expulsion of the Hazbuzan from their planets, and so the war went on.
The Great Khan emerged in the Galactic east, hardly a threat to Apple but complicating the war effort against the Hazbuzans.
Hiverion fell seven years after the Khan's emergence, and the Voor Technocracy became a satrapy of the Khan.
It would be another seven years before Hiveron was liberated by Apple's navy.
Continuing the offensive against the Khan, Apple's admirals defeated him in the Pi Apodis system. The Khan would die two years later, and while a new Khanate would form, internal strife would quickly spell its doom, falling to rebellion.
With the Khan defeated, Apple decided it was finally time to end the threat of the hostile Machine Intelligences.
The war would go on for nearly sixteen years, but during the same time, Apple saw a period of great economic expansion. As the economies of other star nations faltered, it sold them the commodities that they needed in bulk, whatever they may be... for a price.
But soon, the other star nations could no longer afford their monthly payments for the resources that Apple was shipping to them. Apple's profits fell by nearly two thirds, and the entire galaxy fell into a recession, as multiple economies nearly collapsed without the resources Apple had provided to them. It would take nearly five and a half years for the galactic economy to begin to recover. This was in part brought about by negotiating more generous terms with Apple, and in some cases even outright charity on Apple's part, to get the economies of its allies back on its feet so that they would be able to afford payments later.
During the recovery, Apple had a run-in with a malevolent being known as the Worm. Losing multiple scientists to it was bad enough, but ruining Apple's plans to open a new resort in the Menkalinan Nebula, known throughout the galaxy for its beautiful views, and causing the disappearance of all of the staff there was the last straw. Apple set a trap for the Worm, and greeted it with overwhelming firepower.
By 2390, the Galactic economy had finally grown beyond pre-Recession levels, and Apple continued to see exponential growth with a new flourishing of trade.
Some criticize Apple's decision to open the L-Cluster and unleash the Gray Tempest, but its fleet contained the crisis before any worlds could be lost, and gained prime new real estate for colonists.
Nowhere was Apple's prosperity more evident than in the Hariasa system, which came to be rivaled only by Galactic City itself. Situated along Apple's most important trade routes, down the "Spine" connecting former Tebrid space to Apple's Core Worlds, the system was home to two large worlds, both of which would eventually become ecumenopolises in their own right, with legions of clerks, merchants, and researchers generating revenue for Apple.
There were still some holdouts, but two hundred years after taking to the stars, everyone knew who ran the galactic economy. He who controls the energy credits controls the universe!
(Had to end the game there, because it was getting too unstable at that point. Even if it's just a synopsis, and not the full version that I originally planned to write, hopefully you enjoy the after-action report).