In the void of old Solaric space the ruptured shell of an STC ship spins restlessly...
From distant galaxies the distortion in the fabric of space can be seen clearly as a teardrop in the sky, a glittering shard of ice in the darkness of deep water, a slit of fire on the horizon.
And from that slit, thousands of miles across in diameter, emerge the fleet of suns, hundreds of them, huge belts of metal slung round them like tethers in the habitable region, the contents of a whole empire scattered about the rings like grains of salt.
Following these come the tiny flecks of purple that are the Solaric fleets, their ships of the line and support vessels huge chunks of gear and metal mass with the tiny specks of Solaric life scrambling about inside them...
Aboard "Vox Dei", the huge purple hulk serving as the fleet's command centre, Commander Goldd swivels his chair to look at the huge dome-mounted display that caps the control room, watching the yellow arrows that represent fleet sections crawling along their projected paths from the crack, fanning out to form a thin protective screen around the suns that spin in perpetuity, huge gravity generators having arrayed them in a giant Klemperer Rosette.
And finally from the dimensional slit, flanked by yet more ships, slides the hulk, half the radius of a sun in length and constructed of some sort of crystalline material, it's surface pockmarked by the meteors and debris of aeons, it's crystal spires shattered and cratered, and a huge rent in it's body halfway along where a planet met it's demise ploughing into the leviathan...
"Is the position secure sub commander?"
A spindly droid looks round from it's position standing behind the navigation section.
"Yes commander Goldd, we have a secure border, there are some foreign individuals inside our space who will have to be processed before being allowed to remain but apart from that everything is optimal."
"Good, good."
Goldd scratches his chin, then rearranges his magnificent moustache, which had begun to droop somewhat, well, here they were, and it felt... it felt like home.
