On July 6th, 1948 Earth gets its first contact with an alien civilization in the last few thousand years. It's cleverly leaked, downplayed, shuffled and muddied by government forces from across the planet until the time when the public is ready for admission of the event, almost a full century after the incident first began to encroach on public imagination. Five hundred years before Space Station 13 is built -- July 6th, 2050 -- the United Earth government provides complete and frank proof of extraterrestrial life in the universe. They also provide proof that, as far as a human mind can understand one so completely foreign to its way of thinking, this life is hostile. Mankind is no longer alone. Mankind is no longer supreme. The Chinese-dominated United Earth forces focus the many resources of the polluted and dying Earth to flee into the cold void. The larger Dwarf Planets are colonized and generational colony ships are launched into deep space. Research is done into fringe physics, most of the secrets ofphysics, most of the secrets of the Universe being turned towards terraforming or "defense" from xenos species. Compared to most sentients human beings breed like rats and the plague of new life they bring with them everywhere they go tends to blight out that which was. In this new infinite sea religion does all but disappear and the vast distances humanity spreads sees a return to defacto autonomous feudalism. For the next two hundred years the forces of Earth spread like wildfire across the Milky Way, stretching farther down Her spiraling arms with each generation of both humanity and technology. The Void Wars and the Great Schism