The Stellar Front

A second Cold War between China and an America-led coalition goes hot. After seven years of chaos, nearly three hundred million dead, and the victory of democracy, the alliance disintegrates and five superpowers are given a world to govern... even as sapient aliens arrive and grace them with gifts of technology unlike any seen before. Humanity heads for the stars, burdened with the knowledge of political oppression on a galactic scale that the so-called "Givers" plead for aid in undoing. Thus, we enter a period of unprecedented advancement as we form our own small domain of colony worlds and ready ourselves to fulfill our overwhelming promise. Secret military alliances between several species are formed to overthrow the galaxy's tyrannical rulers, and ultimately a devastating war ensues across the stars that leaves our society in abject ruin. Yet in spite of all this destruction, we manage to rebuild, and rise into a liberated galaxy bloodied but unbowed, ready to take our place as the newest interstellar civilization in the Milky Way.