The Invasion of Nexus
Kand's campaign strategies have typically received less focus on military power than you might think would be need to conduct a full-scale planetary invasion. Kand will typically use military to take a few resource-rich areas, engage in some heavy bombing of an area to "make an example", and then enlist large commerce groups. As a result, Kand minimizes the risks that individual troops face, keeps military losses down, and manages to avoid having to produce a large military for the sake of conquering a planet.
This approach has its drawbacks, however.
Kinetic attack
The Empire of Kand waged war on Nexus for a full two years in which the Nexians were completely unaware they were under attack! This happened as a result of Kand's first attack, which is predictably a kinetic attack. Due to Nexus' unique position, the Empire of Kand was unable to accurately target the planet with their meteor cannons. The result was that very few meteors made it through the Kandelian hole in the gravitational fields around the system, and still fewer actually made planetfall. The ones that did were shrugged off by Nexian astronomers as just chance meteors making it into the system.
Planetfall
The invasion itself, therefore, found the Empire of Kand descending on an already war-weary population that had not been weakened at all by the kinetic attack. When the Kandelian gunboats descended from orbit, Nexus had very little difficulty returning fire. Having already suffered from years of war previously, the Nexians were able to quickly adapt to the attack from orbit that they received.
Taking a step back, the Empire of Kand returned to orbit to reconsider its attack.
Second Kinetic Attack
What the Nexians failed to take into consideration, however, was that the Empire of Kand were very skilled miners, and there were several other planets in the system from which the Empire was able to reload their meteor cannons. The Second Kinetic Barrage was significantly smaller than the first, due in part to time constraints as well as the actual size of the cannons the fleet carried with them, but it was far more effective. It was so effective, in fact, that a second planetfall wasn't needed in order to exact surrender from Nexus.
The Nexians had had it, and they just wanted to get back to living.
Subjugation
The Empire of Kand never completely subjugated the population of Nexus. For the most part, every Nexian will tell you that they are not Kandelian subjects. Economically, however, Nexus was successfully pulled into serving the Empire. All of Nexian production became focused around making the Empire richer and more dangerous. The Empire moved troops in, but never saw the need to land significant numbers of troops. Their orbital emplacements were good enough to ensure the security of their holdings. For local security, the Empire frequently employed mercenaries, or just created local security forces. As a group, the Empire never really became more than just another faction on Nexus. A foreign faction, to be sure. And the controlling faction, but still just a faction.