Some years in the near future, the world stage has become rather stagnated. Countries and nations continue to work together on trade while engaging in back-room deals and deceptive and traitorous politics behind others backs. This is something that had been going on for years while the populations of the nations continue on in blissful ignorance, or living in suspicion.

Eventually, after a major funding boost from a private donor, a new program was developed for the worlds' space agencies to follow. NASA, the ESA, British Aerospace and China's National Space Administration are the most heavily involved of all the space agencies in the project. Eventually, British Aerospace dropped out, leaving the ESA, CNSA and NASA to continue the project. Eventually, the Interstellar Transportation System is formalised and developed.

The development of faster-than-light technologies is not something that Earth's people have come close to developing despite the pursuit of several interesting ideas, but several areas that were accelerated in development included propulsion, cryogenics and radiation shielding.

A total of six space missions to various nearby star systems were launched, and included the presence of seven humans in cryosleep for each mission, a prerequisite of the donations provided by the anonymous benefactor. Each of these seven missions were projected to span between fifty and a hundred and fifty years in length, all dependant on the distance from Earth.

One of these missions was the Inter-Stellar-Shuttle (I.S.S) Tau Ceti, a mission travelling to the nearest star system in the Cetis constellation. Aboard the ship were two pilots, Stephen Hayward and John Malakhi, as well as two mission specialists, engineer Adam Su Lee, and communications and linguistics specialist Caitlin Xi Foster. Medical oversight was provided by the only other civilian member of the crew, Helen Deckland. The last two members of the crew were the surly army Lieutenant Walter Davidson, and the jovial, if firm, naval Captain Marlon Greenfield. This crew were selected for their specialisms, even if in some cases their psychological profiles were somewhat inaccurate.

As this mission departed the inner solar system, Earth's delicate and volatile international situation boiled over, and several issues contributed to the catalyst that led to the first worldwide nuclear conflagration, an event that everyone had assumed could never happen, and would not have if not for some fanatical people in charge of some dangerous nations that were not supposed to have nuclear weapons to fire.

For fifty years, the I.S.S Tau Ceti, as well as other vessels, would continue outward to their destinations, completely oblivious to the calamity that was taking place back home. The first wave of nuclear attacks gave way to the first of a deadly wave of automated attacks by a machine army that no-one knew existed, controlled by an artificial intelligence that had been irresponsibly deployed by agents that had stolen the technology from international research conglomerates.

Two decades saw humans in isolated pockets of resistance, against both a concerted machine extermination campaign, as well as a constant schism of nationalistic infighting and border clashes. Instead of people working together, despite the best efforts of the more intelligent and enlightened people of humanity's survivors, humanity continued to fight among themselves while assuring their own species of annihilation.

The AI had, over the course of the previous two decades, developed into a hive-mind. This mind was determined to stop the fighting by wiping out humanity, reasoning that at least the other species of life might stand a chance of survival without humans interfering. It failed to do so, and determined that the only option left was to raze the entire planet in a second nuclear attack, speeding Earth's decline, and also ensuring its' own destruction. No-one left alive had any idea what reasoning the AI used to make such a self-defeating decision. Those machines that were left were no longer able to receive command oversight, and simply executed their last set of orders, until they were finished. Then, they stopped, going into a powered-down state as per their in-built programming.

Nobody cared about the machines or the reason for the last attack. Everyone was too busy trying to survive.

After another three decades, humanity existed in isolated pockets. Earth was losing the fight to sustain its populace. Without something drastic happening, humanity would soon be extinct.

Meanwhile, despite the I.S.S Alpha Centauri arriving twenty-six years earlier, the I.S.S Tau Ceti was the first vessel to encounter an intelligent, advanced, technologically superior civilization. The seven crew members were roused from cryosleep by the automated systems and acclimated to a sterile, contained existence aboard the spacecraft. Two days later, the ship encountered their first two ships belonging to the inhabitants of the Tau Ceti system, where after a brief misunderstanding, they were introduced and began the first of a series of discussions that would lead to the first interstellar trade route between Earth and Tau Ceti. Their new contact was a Ship Commander (the equivalent of a navy Captain) named Miradima. Oddly, these "aliens" looked uncannily human, only differing by a slight variance in the hue of their skin, and their clearly-elevated physical characteristics. While this discovery was unprecedented, it did cause one member of the crew to become hostile, until the situation was contained with only moderate injury, and an understanding that was reached between the two leaders of their respective vessels.

Back on Earth, surviving pockets of humanity eke out a miserable existence in the remnants of the cities that had once been widespread and symbolic of humanity's achievements on Earth. One of these last pockets of humanity was located in a shelter in Arizona, close to Phoenix. The survivors included an Englishman named Edward, who had evacuated from the British Isles just before the last nukes fell, his two surviving children, Jason and Leila, the leader of the shelter administration named Janet Fletcher, as well as her guard unit, and perhaps less than a thousand survivors in the shelter. One of the survivors was a distant relative of one of the I.S.S Tau Ceti crew, a young man named Mark Hayward.

On one mission, Jason and a friend of his were scavenging for supplies, when they found an oddly-intact building situated deep within the ruins of the city of Phoenix. Despite Jason's misgivings, his friend took off and started prowling around the building for supplies. This would be his final act, as he was soon killed by an unknown assailant, only to seemingly absorb a strange glowing mist-like substance, before being resurrected as something other than the young man who had been killed moments before.

Despite Jason taking a warning back to the shelter, and the subsequent evacuation of the shelter ordered by Janet, the survivors were discovered shortly after as they traversed the wastelands looking for a secondary shelter to hide out in. The attack was swift, brutal, and almost final. So few people survived this assault, and they might have perished in a matter of days.

All while this was happening, the I.S.S Tau Ceti concluded their negotiations around one of the Tau Cetian worlds. Earth was now in possession of the first technological advancement they would need to advanced onto the galactic stage. Faster-Than-Light technology. The crew prepared to take their findings and return to Earth to report on the overwhelming success of their mission. To celebrate their success, Miradima and the seven Earth people had a celebration aboard the Ship Commander's command vessel, the Kl'Deesius.

At this point, Miradima suffered her one and only premonitory attack, a rare but recognised event among her people. It foretold the discovery back on Earth that the crew would soon make.

The crew set off for their home planet, accompanied by the Kl'Deesius. The journey that had initially taken close to fifty years and needing cryogenic sleep capsules to undertake, now took merely a few days. Arriving back in Earth orbit, they made the soul-crushing revelation that the Earth had essentially been decimated by war. The crew, distraught by this latest turn of events, did not know what to do. Miradima kept her vessel in orbit of Earth to assist in any way she could.

While discussing this tragic turn of events, the Kl'Deesius detected traces of their enemy. Miradima immediately ordered a heightened state of alert on her vessel, having more knowledge than the humans did about what they were facing. A detachment of combat personnel were sent along with Davidson, Stephen and John. They discovered for themselves just how potent the enemy could be, as they witnessed one of their soldiers killed, invaded, and then resurrected. Without any hesitation, the remaining detachment of Tau Cetians dragged the humans running from the area, to encounter the first survivors they would meet.

Returning them to the ship, the detachment reported their findings to their Ship Commander, who immediately placed the vessel in combat condition, and started actively looking for the enemy vessels they knew had to be nearby. The attack on their ship did not take long, as a hole was blasted in the side of the Kl'Deesius, sealing off the survivors from the rest of the ship. The ensuing battle was short, but Stephen was knocked out from a fall, while the Tau Ceti was crippled and the habitat section destroyed. Adam and Caitlin, both aboard the Tau Ceti, were lost.

It was decided that an emergency evacuation was needed, for medical as well as strategic reasons. Earth was no longer habitable nor safe for the survivors, and the enemy most likely had a presence in the system. The Kl'Deesius sent for reinforcements which were despatched, and the remains of the Tau Ceti command deck were brought aboard the Kl'Deesius's cargo bay, set aside for the humans to salvage what they could.

Soon, a plan was drawn up involving the assault against their enemy using the last of the discovered combat drones that were dormant on Earth. This initially met with resistance from the survivors of Earth, some of whom lived through the final AI attacks on the planet. The leader was highly reistant to the idea, until she decided to let the matter drop. Her initial defensiveness and detached attitude to the returning humans was eventually set aside when she reached an understanding with Stephen, who had forced the issue with her.

Not long after the drones were recovered from the surface and reprogrammed to follow instructions from the Kl'Deesius, the other ships arrived, and a teleportation chain was set up to move people from Earth to the largest surviving lunar complex that had been built before the war that killed civilization. Stephen, John and Helen were all ordered to the surface with the others, and this was not rescinded, even in the face of furious resistance on the part of both Stephen and Helen. In the end, Janet convinced Stephen to join her on the surface, and Helen was convinced by Marlon, albeit with bad feeling between them both. Davidson, Marlon and Miradima would remain on the Kl'Deesius and carry out their own tasks.

The enemy attacked within hours. The ensuing battle was intense, brutal, and costly. While the enemy ships were all destroyed eventually, the allies took heavy losses. Several Tau Cetian ships were wiped out, and the rest all took varying degrees of damage, including the Kl'Deesius. One of the last enemy ships in the area took off toward the lunar surface, having detected human life beneath the surface. The Kl'Deesius intercepted at maximum acceleration, hoping that ramming the ship might give the humans a chance of survival. A late arrival obviated the need to sacrifice their ship, as the largest destroyer vessel the humans had ever seen arrived in lunar orbit and attacked the enemy.

While the allies survived the assault, there were many losses. Among them, Captain Marlon Greenfield.

The news was distressing among the humans, and John lost control completely, indiscriminately striking out at everything around him in his uncontrolled sense of fury and grief. Stephen tackled him to the ground and snapped him out of his rage, causing John to collapse in his grief.

The news was the worst that the returning humans could have had. Three of their number were now dead, and the four survivors were never quite the same afterward. Healing would take time that the human species just didn't have.

The next phase in their survival plan would need to be drawn up, and this all began the following day.