Prologue
It was the 22nd Century. Mankind's darkest hour.
Humanity reached out from Earth, spreading throughout the Sol system. By the mid-22nd century, the first sublight space-warping drives were taking ships on decades-long journeys to the nearest stars, where new outposts of Humanity would be founded.
Such huge vessels - multi-kilometre long arks that carried examples of the bounty of Earth out to the stars, alongside hundreds of thousands of Humans - were the first ships. After all, it was decades there and back, and that meant they went out to stay; immense, star-travelling city-ships, that ultimately wouldn't need to settle on a planet.
Unfortunately, it turned out that they were the lucky ones.
Blasting through the void beyond the trans-Neptunians came the destroyers of all Man had made, and the blackest peace in Human history was came from the scaled claw crushing the throat of Earth's last defenders.
Much was left to ash, fire and wasteland; the raptors spared few, less than a tenth of the thirteen billion individuals alive in 2150 lived to see 2170.
But this is not how the story ends.
Humanity reached out from Earth, spreading throughout the Sol system. By the mid-22nd century, the first sublight space-warping drives were taking ships on decades-long journeys to the nearest stars, where new outposts of Humanity would be founded.
Such huge vessels - multi-kilometre long arks that carried examples of the bounty of Earth out to the stars, alongside hundreds of thousands of Humans - were the first ships. After all, it was decades there and back, and that meant they went out to stay; immense, star-travelling city-ships, that ultimately wouldn't need to settle on a planet.
Unfortunately, it turned out that they were the lucky ones.
Blasting through the void beyond the trans-Neptunians came the destroyers of all Man had made, and the blackest peace in Human history was came from the scaled claw crushing the throat of Earth's last defenders.
Much was left to ash, fire and wasteland; the raptors spared few, less than a tenth of the thirteen billion individuals alive in 2150 lived to see 2170.
But this is not how the story ends.