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PrologueA Galaxy Divided . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .04Draconis Alba Galaxy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .06Arkadia / Helios Binary System . . . . . . . . . . .08

Chapter 1Iskandria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Excerpt 1The Watchers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Chapter 2Invasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

Excerpt 2To be a Soldier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Chapter 3War! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24

Excerpt 3The Old Ways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28

Chapter 4Viridians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30

Excerpt 4For the Fight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34

Chapter 5Syntha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36

Excerpt 5Out of the frying pan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40

Chapter 6VASA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44

Excerpt 6Cornered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48

Chapter 7Junkers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50

Excerpt 7Night Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54

Excerpt 8Fever's Flame . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

Chapter 8Koralon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56Excerpt 9An Honoured Guest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60

Chapter 9Triads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62

Excerpt 10...And into the fire [1] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66

Chapter 10Gladiators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70

Excerpt 11...And into the fire [2] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74

Appendix 1Viridia-Solaris / Leviathan Binary System . . .78

Appendix 2Void System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84

Appendix 3The Great Powers of the Tripartite Alliance . .86

Appendix 4The Colonies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94

Appendix 5A Capsule History of Modern Man . . . . . . . . .96

Appendix 6The Gateworlds of the Incursion . . . . . . . . . .98

Appendix 7Grav-Lines and Grav-Shunting . . . . . . . . . . .100

Appendix 8Kothon: Harbour Moon of Vacillus . . . . . . . . .102

Appendix 9The Last Millenium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106

Appendix 10Homeworld Sectors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108

Appendix 11Zones of Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110

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That expanding halo of gas is all that remains of fifty-seven of my ships,sleek VASA Cruisers and clunky Neros straight from the Ironglassshipyards, and the rock-solid Dreadnaughts that I have served aboard fortwo-thirds of my life. Below us Viridian kills Junker and Junker, Viridian;VASA hides its ugly deeds with pretty words; and the treacherous synthsattack all parties without apparent gain while the Slugs infest their waytoward conquest of the planet's surface. Here, in clean vacuum, enemiesand rivals fight and die as brothers, and in death their very essence minglesin a cloud of silver vapour. On that cesspit below, Iskandria, corpses chokethe streets and humanity tears at its own throat for the chance to makemore. When I see the reports from planet-side I fear that our victory in thevoid is for nothing, and the fate of our people rests squarely in the squalidruins of a city gone mad with war.

Grand Admiral Tobias Cranmer,Commander of the Joint Fleet Expeditionary Force in relief of the

Arkadia-Helios Binary System

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Mankind believes it has mastered the cold dark ofspace; having leapt the impossible gulf betweenthe stars the empires of man embrace thousands ofworlds and enforce an uneasy peace throughoutthe Draconis Alba galaxy. In the centuries sincehumanity's emergence from the Viridia-Solaris /Leviathan Binary System the galaxy has become ahome, worlds have been tamed and remade, greathighways of gravitic force have been tapped, andfar distant empires have risen to glory in the light ofalien suns. Expanding ever outward humanity hasbrought its drive and adaptability, its curiosity andextemporizing genius, to illuminate the cold dark ofspace and overcome the challenges of this newfrontier. But man has also preserved his follies andhis faults, his chronic divisiveness; and the schismsdeveloped in the age of exploration have becomepermanent partitions within the human race.Mankind is at war with itself.

The four great powers of the TripartiteAlliance exist in an uneasy state of mutual hostility,an equilibrium designed to maintain a galacticbalance of power. This perpetual cold war is one ofspies and secrets, of clashing ideologies, ofincompatible visions for the future of mankind. It isa colonial war, waged every day on a thousandbattlefields and in the space between the stars, acomplex game played by cautious giants for limitedstakes and within unspoken boundaries; for tooverstep the rules of the game would be to plungethe galaxy into a conflict from which it might neverrecover.

Central to this great game of dominanceare the homeworlds of mankind, the planets of theSolaris-Leviathan System. Though the TripartitePowers rule vast empires and manipulate eventsmore than half a galaxy away, it is to thehomeworlds that all mankind looks for guidance.

Viridia herself is still the best and mostbenign of humanity's planetary domains; anenormous, ever fertile world of extraordinarygenetic diversity. But while this lush, green worldstands as a balanced model of ecological andeconomic husbandry, the corporate houses thatdominate the Viridian Assembly have shown lessscruples abroad; often engaging in rapacious andthinly disguised colonial exploitation throughvarious intermediaries. Such companies controlViridian society as they do the Assembly,permeating all aspects of the Commonwealth's lifeand culture, and often involving the enormous andcapable Viridian Defence Force in unsavouryventures on far distant worlds.

None can rival Ironglass, however, insheer, unrepentant bravado and naked greed:where other empires seek to conceal theirquestionable activities the Ironglass ImperialSenate blithely ignores protocol and does what itpleases. Their sprawling empire is part travellingstrip-mining operation and part pirate fleet, and theJunkers routinely seize marginal worlds andsqueeze them dry of resources before moving on;a pattern established long ago when convict labourgangs first worked the barren expanse of Ironglass.Now the one-time penal colony is the centre of atotalitarian empire that holds hundreds of worlds inan iron grip under the direction of the mysteriousSenate, the hard taskmasters of the Imperium, whorule their enslaved populations with brutal force.

Perhaps the very opposite of theunsophisticated Junkers are the Syntha, and theirstrange and airless planetoid orbits aloofly in thebleakest outer reaches of the Viridia-Solaris /Leviathan System as if to avoid the contaminants ofthe teeming inner worlds. The Syntha seekperfectibility in the cold calculus of the machine andtheir world, Prime, is a concentration of a unique,obsidian-like substance that is the key componentin the ingenious artificial minds that govern Synthasociety. One such artificial mind of unrivalledcomplexity is the Prime AI, the governing intellectand absolute authority for all Syntha, human andmachine alike. Utterly efficient and rational theSyntha have greatly surpassed the other factions inscience and technology, but it remains to be seen ifthey can successfully merge man and machine.

Overseeing the great powers is VASA, apseudo-empire in its own right and arbitrator of theTripartite Peace, a complex web of treaties andmutual obligations that have preserved man's greatempires for centuries. Key to VASA's authority is itsstrategic domination of the galaxy's grav-wells andthe mastery over trade and transport this allowsthem, as well as the fabulous wealth accordedthem as keepers of the keys to the galaxy. VASAmanages its multifarious concerns from Vacillus, anairless, frozen world in orbit around the dead starLeviathan. VASA's resources are stretched thinover nearly the whole of pan-humanic space,making them heavily reliant on surveillance anddiplomacy to maintain their power; but when forceis required their highly trained elite soldiers can bemobilized at a moments notice to intercedeanywhere in man's vast galactic territory.

For centuries these great empires, enginesof man's fate, remained at peace so long as they

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continued to look outward, to channel theirenergies into the colonization of the galaxy. But thefrontier recedes as pan-humanic space swells, andunresolved rivalries flare anew. And it is now, in thistime of mounting tension, that mankind faces itsultimate test, the alien Koralon; whose biogenictechnologies threaten humanity with enslavementand extermination. The fateful contact on Void1.1and the subsequent systematic invasion of humanspace by these aliens has created crisis points inwhich the Great Powers find themselves fightingeach other for control of key worlds even as theKoralon consolidate their gains.

One such world is Kyklops in the Arkadia /Helios System, old imperial seat of the Great TyrantIskander. The two island-continents of Iskandriathat emerge from the Koralon infested seas of thisocean planet may well be the crucible in which thefate of the galaxy is forged. Here, cut off fromoutside influence or aid, the Great Powers engagein bitter street fighting even as the Koralon emergefrom the depths to carve out their own holdings inthe endless urban sprawl. But with the coming ofthe pan-humanic fleet the balance of power hasshifted in the system, and the ranks of freshreinforcements rushed to the planet's surfacepromise an escalation of the engagement.

Mankind has never been so divided, sovulnerable, its vast empires poised on the brink ofcivil war and alien invasion. Whether the GreatPowers will combine in the face of the alien, or tryto use the Koralon to further their own designs,remains to be seen. Man may emerge at a newsynthesis, a new unity; whole empires may fall orrise triumphant, pointing the way to humanity'sfuture or dragging the species down into an age ofdarkness. Or the invidious Koralon may subvert theever-warring factions one by one, sweeping thefragments of a once proud civilization from theirpath as they aggressively expand to fill the galaxy.The stasis is broken, the future in question, butman's choice is clear: evolution or extinction.

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Arkadia/Helios Binary systemThe Arkadia/Helios binary system is a twin star system consisting ofyellow dwarf main sequence star Arkadia and a white dwarf star Helios. The binary system was formed when Helios, as a weakly radiatingwhite dwarf, arrived in the system and set up a tandem orbit withArkadia a little over 4 Billion years ago.

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