When Stars Fear Humanity
For millennia, the galaxy had been a place of order, ruled by civilizations older than Earth’s memory. The Concordant Alliance governed the stars with precision and calculation, treating younger species as anomalies, curiosities to be cataloged and ignored. Humans, they decided early on, were nothing more than reckless, fragile creatures—curious, yes, but insignificant. Earth was a minor speck in the cosmic order, a blue marble spinning quietly on the edge of the Orion Spur. But humanity had a habit of defying expectations. Where the galaxy measured logic and lifespan, humans measured courage, creativity, and stubbornness. It began with a single human vessel, the Endeavor, dispatched to the fringe of known space as a scientific mission. The crew was small, ill-equipped compared to the massive, armada-like vessels of alien fleets. Their mission was exploration, yet the Concordant Alliance saw them as an inevitable mistake—a species certain to fail. Then the Veyr Dominion appeared. ...