Chapter 1: A Brief History of The Persean Sector
Cycle 0 – Ankylos Research Base, Tri-Tachyon space
"Phase engines will be online in 15 minutes" The cool, synthesized voice echoed around the viewing platform. The executive officers of the research base milled around excitedly. This was the culmination of twenty years of research and development. The first Phase Capital Ship the Persean Sector, indeed the entirety of the Domain of Man had ever seen.
CEO Hermes Andrada looked down from the great viewing platform onto the starry void platform where The Castigator stood ready for it's christening and first flight into the strange void between reality and whatever lay beyond. The crowning achievement of his tenure as the head of Tri-Tachyon would not merely give them the strongest fleet in the sector, it would mean that Tri-Tachyon would finally have the means to free itself from the yoke of the Domain, and take humanity into it's glorious future. Unrestricted AI development, nanotechology, full genomic conversions, and a thousand other banned technologies would give rise to a new civilization, free from want, free from war, free from mortality itself. This ship was his legacy given physical form.
He startled, briefly as his assistant tapped him on the shoulder. "Sir it's almost time, you should put these on". She held out a pair of holo-goggles, no doubt linked to observation drones orbiting The Castigator.
Hermes smiled briefly "Thank you Ms. Sun".
As he strapped the goggles over his eyes he felt a momentary disorientation as he was suddenly looking through a dozen sets of eyes simultaneously. He relaxed and let the sensory information flow over him for a moment and his eyes quickly adjusted, nothing he had not done a thousand times before. He marveled at the ship before him, a needle, almost a kilometer long, made of chromed steel, bristling with turrets and hardpoints, and the eight softly glowing Phase Field generators that would take it further into Phase Space than any ship before. The earpiece of the goggles was buzzing with excited scientists and engineers, and he quickly filtered it down to a single channel of audio.
"…Of course the foundational challenge of the project was the sheer size of the ship. Nothing like The Castigator was attempted before quite simply because it was by our naive understanding of physics, impossible. Above a certain mass, the transition to P-Space is simply not possible, the expansion rate of the Phase Field is simply too slow and the entire ship tears itself apart as parts of it phase into P-Space separately. The initial experiments that proved this were of course messy. Thousands of lives lost, and nothing to show for it other than some very expensive wreckage. However over the last 20 years, my team at Ankylos has been researching a new method of Phase Space Transition using synchronized harmonic fields to generate a larger, and more stable field that can encompass any mass instantaneously. That ladies and gentlemen is what you have come to witness in action today."
Hermes chuckled lightly, the fair haired Dr. Maxwell was as much of a showman as she was a scientist. But there were few more brilliant minds in the Sector. It didn't hurt, he admitted to himself, that she had aged like fine wine. Even discounting the rejuvenation treatments she looked excellent for a 120 years.
"As you should see over your goggles, we are now a mere 1 minute away from the first field test of this new technology. A technology which offers near limitless potential in both matters of economics and warfare."
The viewing platform had fallen silent now, 50 of Tri-Tachyons finest executives stood entranced behind their goggles. A faint purple glow began to grown around the eight generators embedded in the great ships hull.
"5...4...3...2...1...Phase field engage."
The ship disappeared and with it the view of the drones peppered across it's interior. Hermes allowed himself a satisfied smile. At the very least the ship hadn't torn itself apart like it's predecessors. He widened the audio channels again, and started as he let the feeds flow across him
"...Anomalous readings sir, we're getting a way bigger Phase spike than expected"
"...Somethings interacting with the systems gate, we're getting reports of a total system failure"
"...Can't get a read on the phase signature, it's like the ships in eight places at once, and there's something else showing up."
"...It's spiking again."
Hermes eyes narrowed as he disengaged the goggles, he grabbed his assistant and immediately started towards the lift. Ms. Sun looked at him in surprise, "Sir shoudn't we be here for when the test fini-"
"I've seen enough trouble in my day Ms. Sun, to know when it's best to step out of it's way, come, we're headed to the shuttle, and make sure that the Eyes Like Nuclear Fire and Intrepid have their batteries powered up just in case. I hope to Sol and back that we don't have need of them, but I have a bad feeling about this."
To her credit Ms. Sun didn't hesitate for even a second, and within minutes the two Paragon class escorts Hermes had brought with to this event had powered up their four tachyon lances and were drawing a bead on the exact point The Castigator had occupied a moment before.
It was unfortunate then that The Castigator emerged a mere 200 meters behind the Paragons in question, wreathed in unholy purple fire, and immediately opened fire. Perhaps even more unfortunately The Castigators weapons systems were just as advanced as the rest of the ship, and a hail of high explosive munitions ripped through Phase Space, bypassing the great fortress shields in their entirety, emerging just centimeters from the hulls of the Paragons in a thunderous hail of explosions. It took three volleys to turn The Intrepid from the second mightiest warship in the Sector, into a smoking shell.
Hermes Andrada would later recount in his diary that it was only a miracle that saved the Eyes Like Nuclear Fire from the same fate, as the Intrepid's explosive overload and subsequent destruction ultimately created such an immense explosion that The Castigator briefly overloaded. In those precious 30 seconds, four tachyon lances turned its Phase Field Generators into molten slag. And a few seconds later, carved the vessel into burning wreckage.
The footage from the observation drones aboard The Castigator was largely a jumbled mess, but the few intact sections of audio there was only a single sound aboard the ship in its last moments, an eerie synchronized chanting "Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne".
Cycle 250 – Persean Sector, Empire of the Black Sky
It had been 250 years since the collapse. An unknown incident that had rendered every gate in the Persean sector a useless chunk of metal. Absent the wormhole network that allowed near instantaneous travel between systems, the sector had descended into chaos. Whole worlds fell into ruin as the trade network that sustained them failed to provide food, drugs and the raw materials necessary to live on the vast, harsh half terraformed planets that comprised the majority of the sector. Billions died, and in the wake of the single greatest catastrophe in the Sectors history, a new order began to emerge. The remnants of the Domain, vast corporate conglomerates and various rebellious factions vied for dominance for hundreds of years.
It had been 43 years since the Ancyra Incident. No one had known what that strange month had portended. An entire system locked out of hyperspace, waiting to starve itself into anarchy. Until a single enterprising soul had somehow pulled it back into the Sector. Officially it was the work of a top secret Hegemony research team on Ancyra, unofficially everyone knew they had only provided the technology. The actual deployment of the Hyperspace Stabilizer as it came to be called was left to a mercenary captain, Maximilian von Astra, who unbeknownst to the Hegemony would have his own technicians reverse engineer the machine prior to it's deployment.
This moment of heroism was followed by a ten year career as a smuggler, privateer and mercenary. By the end of those years, bounties were posted across seven separate factions offering in excess of a million credits for his head. At this point his story becomes a cipher. For the next 3 years only rumor and hearsay tell us anything regarding Maximilian's exploits. These vary from a deep space exploratory expedition, hunting down rogue AI, deep cover work for various governments, and in one memorable rumor, a pilgrimage/crusade to find the holy prophet Ludd and bring him back to the faithful.
It had been 30 years since the first emergence of the first ship bearing the flag (metaphorically of course, more accurately bearing the transponder code) of the Empire of the Black Sky. A lightning fast fleet of unknown make that descended first on the worlds of the Hegemony, and then in turn on the Tri-Tachyon corporate worlds, and even on the worlds of the Persean League. Midnight raids on the vast manufactories of a half dozen worlds that stole away the most valuable commodity in the sector, encrypted blueprint chips for some of the most dangerous ships and weapons in the Galaxy. The response of the great players was almost unthinkable, a truce was struck, and a nine great fleets were sent into the vastness of hyperspace to track down this new threat and end it as quickly as it had arisen.
Needless to say they failed. The record of their failed campaign could be written into an entire book on it's own merit, however for now it is enough to say that by an ingenious combination of espionage, false-flags, and in a few cases hotly contested pitched battles, the fleets of the Sector were crushed. This defeat ultimately lead to an uneasy peace, with the factions agreeing to a temporary cease fire with the emergent Empire. It was clear however that this peace would last only long enough for both sides to nurse their wound and replenish their fleets.
It had been 25 years since the Scouring. After five years, the Sector once more stood on the brink of war. The newly emerged Empire of the Black Sky, had received ultimatums from the eight great powers of the sector: The Hegemony, The Persean League, The Sindrian Diktat, The Tri-Tachyon Corporation, Dassault-Mikoyan Engineering, Diable Avionics, The Interstellar Imperium and The SRA. Disband, return what was taken or face destruction. What happened next could not have been dreamed of by any military strategist or governor, no CEO or scientist would have suspected what hell was to be unleashed.
High above Eventide, gem of the Hegemony, there opened a single gate into hyperspace only a few meters across. And through it came a single object bearing a single message. The message was very simple, and it came in the form of a kilogram anti-matter warhead, accelerated directly into the planets below at a small fraction of the speed of light.
The leadership of the Hegemony, along with no small percentage of it's population, was vaporized. In the aftermath, facing a weapon that could not be defended against, and an enemy that could not be reasoned with, the factions knelt. And for the first time in two centuries the Persean Sector knew peace.
The cost of victory was enormous. Nearly ten billion lives lost, and one of the finest worlds in the sector reduced to ashen wastelands. Yet a victory it was no less. Compared to the destruction the last 225 years of open and covert warfare had done to the Sector, it had been worth it. Or so Maximilian von Astra told himself, every night before he slept.
Now 25 years later, the Sector had entered a renaissance not dreamed of since the Collapse. Ten new colony worlds at the fringes of the Sector had been founded in those 25 years. The Remnant had been cleansed or brought back under human control where possible, and the warring factions had dissolved. Their leadership either retiring into civilian planetary governorship or being quietly executed and replaced with more loyal governors and executives. The Empire stood now, unchallenged in the Sector, and with the end of the war, a new era of expansion and growth had begun. Advancements in science and engineering had even begun to bear fruit, and it was on this 25th anniversary of the uniting of the sector, that the greatest of these would finally be unveiled. The resurrection of the gate system.