Starliner
Michael was stirred awake by the dull but ever-present hum that filled the cabin and all the other cabins and halls of the ship. "Damn it", he thought, "I don't know why the hell I went this way, that new ship seemed comfortable..". Michael was referring to his method of travel to the Procyon system from Luna; he had optioned to travel with his friend on his fast small freighter, a ship lacking creature comforts or modern amenities such as the new soundproofing techniques. The 'new ship' he is referring to is a new Earth Starliner, a class of ships similar to the classic passenger liners of the early twentieth century. It had all the creature comforts as well as being resort-like, but, as a consequence of its size, it was slow and would take almost a week to travel from Luna to the Procyon system, while Michael's friend's freighter would take only two days. These ships, you see, lacked military-grade engines. Military-grade engines were off limits to but a few authorized passenger ships. These engines, employed by the large capitol ships of the Earth Republic's illustrious navy, allowed ships to travel across the galaxy in a matter of days, unlike the engines employed by civilian ships. The freighter on which Michael was now traveling, however, was originally a navy gunboat, used over forty years ago in the short but eventful Sirius War.
Mike, as his friends call him, was going to the second planet in the Procyon system, a binary system. This planet is one of the more heavily populated colonies in all of the Earth Republic, with about one and a half billion inhabitants. Mike's business there was just that; business. He was a weapons engineer in the 'Capitol Ship Weapons and Armament', or CSWA, wing of ZachCorp, one of the most trusted weapons production companies in all of the Earth Republic's domain. Mike was placed on a program called "PROJECT STOKES", a highly classified program involving developing an extremely effective weapon, on par with the strongest weapons in existence, but also one that was cost effective. It was not necessarily a weapon itself but two things; a new shell and a new motor. It would increase the rate of speed of the shell as well as an extremely new technology; the shells were "shield killers". Space combat was a slow process; although the shielding methods were primitive, they took awhile to weaken. No more; this new shell-motor combination would be able to penetrate shields in one or two shots. This new equipment did not take much to equip; it could be simply fitted out on the already-existing mass accelerator cannons, or MAC cannons, on Earth's starships and orbital platforms.
As soon as Mike arrived in the system, however, he knew the program wouldn't be as easy as everybody had thought. To his horror, there it was, in front of him; Procyon was under attack. A day many foresaw had eventually came true: the CSR, or the Commonwealth of Socialist Republics, one of Earth's neighbors, had attacked. The CSRS Sputnik, the massive flagship, began to bombard the Procyon colony. Many of the inhabitants of the planet got to their ships in a mad rush and left. A few defense stations and smaller frigates tried to fend off the CSR's ships with some success, but the defenses were eventually destroyed. The CSR had taken advantage of the Earth Republic's peacetime military levels and had been able to, after several years of intelligence probing, had been able to locate the development point of the new weapon.
In a mad frenzy, Mike's friend, the pilot of the freighter, turned the ship around and quickly plotted a Slipspace jump point in Sol. Everybody now knew what was ahead; Earth was going to declare war and launch a counterattack into the Procyon system and seize it back. After that, there would be years of prolonged warfare, and the first major war in over one hundred years.