On the world once known as Mars Secundus, now named for the Anatolian land of Phrygia a young patrician girl labored to bring a child into the world. A mystical child who would always be looked at as no less than a Demi-God by his mother’s culture. Upon his birth they gave him the name of Herakles, named for the greatest of the ancient Greek Heroes from which the Empire has descended. This young boy and his mother however were seen as outcasts by their culture. The mother, a harlot for breaking a sacred marriage proposal to lay with one of the unconscious sky-gods and the son as the offspring of the mighty warriors of the heavens – someone that not even the kings of the world would be able to command. Over the term of several years the child grew swift, strong and happy. But then the sky gods came to take him from his homeworld, the Empire had never allowed its own offspring to be raised by what they considered to be backwards cultures that blooded themselves rather than against the foes of their lands. The child’s mother railed against it and in some cruel twist of fate – she was permitted to accompany her child to the capital of the sky god’s home.

On New Terra however, the arrival of the child and his mother was met with no small measure of scrutiny the child’s father was the *legendary* leader of the ghosts – Nicholas Owen. Who had returned several months after his recorded “fall” a changed man, he wanted no further part of the bloodshed of the world and sought to ignore the reminders of the events that he had been forced to bear witness to against the cruelty of the settlement defense front. However; he chose to accept that his son was his own and he penned his son and his mother up in a well-to-do neighborhood and looked after their every need. He paid visits and ensured that his son grew well and knew his father, but also decided that he should bear his own name. After deliberation with the child’s mother, they chose the name Christopher for their son in the homage of Nicholas’ grandfather who fought on the blood-soaked sands of Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

While the Empire worked to repair the damage wrought by the Settlement Defense Front, Empress Fiona had been briefed by Visenya that she had prepared the tool with which Fiona would be allowed to finally abdicate and leave the eye of public scrutiny because of her mother’s wrongdoings across New Terra. In several years, Violet – the newest daughter of Visenya and Valaena and hand-crafted on a genetic level by Visenya and the Empire’s finest geneticists to be an excellent ruler was ready to ascend to the throne of the galaxy’s mightiest empire. The day was met with much fanfare and the people seemed content to know that a much more “competent” per se. Ruler was ascending to the throne, a woman whose name was not tainted by controversy and who even in her earliest days was rebuilding the Empire on a grand scale. Forging stronger alliances and sealing trade pacts across the galaxy, the value of the Imperial Mark *soared* to all-time highs and the people were content with even the most average Imperial Citizens making more than some of the wealthiest Old Terrans before the great diaspora in the face of the K’Chain Che’Malle’s arrival in the galaxy.

As Christopher grew and developed his own passions and interest; he largely followed in the footsteps of his father. At the age of eighteen after graduating in the top ten of his class of high school, he had been singled out for officer’s candidate school upon enlisting in the Navy and exceeding expectations. His passion for the nimble A-5 Ghostrider, the mainstay of the Imperial Navy’s Planetoids was not lost upon his instructors. He over-achieved in every aspect of fighter combat; though he did not like the task he also performed well in simulated strike missions against enemy warships and ground targets. After several years, Christopher found himself in the cockpit aboard Her Imperial Majesty’s Planetoid Royal Birhat where he served with distinction fighting in border wars with slavers. Eventually, his record caught the eye of Visenya and he found himself assigned to the vaunted, the famed and the powerful VF-92 assigned to the Graceful Maiden. As part of the aerial component of Empress Violet’s personal bodyguard he was to act as part of the public face of the Empire through flying escort missions for her majesty wherever she went. Be it on New Terra or at some place across the stars.

-Unknown Location, Dark Space-

A pillar suddenly flashed to life; on an unknown planet just outside the rim of the Milky Way Galaxy. A trillion voices spoke as one – through their Speaker they had decided long, long ago that today would be the day of reckoning. The day that this unknown force would finally come down on the heads of the Imperial Bloc and would finally reunify the galaxy into a place of order and equality for all through assimilation into their Collective. The Speaker gave the order for her (for she had chosen feminine programming) cohorts to begin assembling their mighty war manufactoria. Within a matter of days, over this world *hundreds* of Shipyards had been formed, the robotic bodies of the collective enabled them to work 24 hours per day and seven days per week. They didn’t take holidays and they didn’t stop working, within several months in Dark Space just beyond the galaxy. The Collective had slowly amassed the largest fleet that had ever existed, but they needed more consciousnesses to control said warships, as well as the platforms. But Mercya – the Speaker of the mighty collective had deduced that several of the Frontier-most worlds of the Milky-Way held the key to such manpower problems. And as the collective’s forces moved into the galaxy and assimilated worlds, they would only be limited by the amount of resources they had. The “Council of War” had deemed that the collective had more than enough assets with which to conquer these frontier worlds but afterward it would need to rely heavily on assimilated Imperials to crew out its warships and it’s ground platforms. Synths would be used to obtain intelligence and the collective’s prodigious spy network would ensure that it’s takeovers of the planets would give them the most assimilatable Imperials and the least amount of material losses.

Several tediously slow years later, the Collective had achieved much along the Empire’s frontiers. It had destroyed several of Frontier Fleet’s prodigious Task Forces. Entire worlds had been assimilated; leaving them nothing more than un-inhabited husks. Passenger Liners and cargo vessels that had stumbled across the collective’s fleets were swiftly boarded, and their occupants taken to the collective’s homeworld to be assimilated. Even children were forcibly grown into adults in several instances to serve as more powerful uploads into various combat platforms that the collective had possessed. In order to ensure that the Empire’s greatest weapons – the warrior “monks” of the Adeptus and Legiones Astartes could not be brought to bear. SIGNIFICANT collective resources were being diverted to the homeworlds of the legions and their respective successor chapters. With the near personal realm of Roboute Guilliman and his successors being the targets of the vastest majority of the enemy forces. The 500 worlds of Ultramar would be a hotly contested area in the war to come; even with the Ultramarines Legion and their nearly 43,000 successors present alongside tens of thousands of Imperial Army soldiers garrisoning their worlds and support from the Imperial Marines. Some Astartes worlds would be swiftly liberated such as Cthonia, Nuceria and Fenris such was the ferocity of their people, their lords and their successors that even the robotic armies of the collective could not face down their fury.

The Empire was suddenly roused when the collective issued its ultimatum to assent to assimilation voluntarily or to be destroyed and forcibly assimilated. The first Imperial Governors declined; only to have their system defense forces destroyed and their worlds assimilated. On other worlds, the governors found that the collective had already knew where their forces were deployed and entire Imperial Army and National Guard units had their positions destroyed and overrun in a matter of hours. The next planet to fall into the collective’s gaze was the planet of Laonides, a peaceful civilized world with a population of nearly 10 billion people and a world with no orbital defenses. It was the perfect target for assimilation, and it was about to become the site of one of the greatest mis-matches in Imperial History…

-Over Laonides-
Frontier Fleet Task Force 47 was in the process of performing final checks before leaving the system after having finished resupply and its crews having taken shore leave. Rear Admiral William F. Jones was about to give the order for his fleet to travel to the hyper limit. Nearly fifteen minutes after they had disembarked from their orbital moorings there was a translation at the hyper limit. Thirty-two high-tonnage warships deployed from the Hyper Limit in a disorganized column; escorting a massive ship that could only have one purpose – the storing of Imperials to be assimilated. Admiral Jones’ command consisted of eighteen light carriers; nine destroyers and fourteen frigates they were facing off against no fewer than *five* Collective battleships; ten heavy cruisers; two light cruisers and fifteen destroyers. The range between the two forces was estimated to be no more than one hundred million kilometers and closing. The Admiral ordered his carriers to commence launching of their complements of fighters, and then to steam west toward a growing radiation storm that would foil any and all attempts to acquire locks on his valuable aircraft carriers. Meanwhile; his destroyers and frigates received orders to screen the retreat while the F-4s struck out at the oncoming CSAT forces.

Radarman 2nd Class Robert A. Smith had been sitting before the destroyer “Hermes’” radar scope when he noticed a blot that was bigger than a silver mark coin. “Oh my god!” he near-shouted as he watched the formation bear down on the small Frontier Fleet Task Force. The titanic CSAT force dwarfed the Frontier Fleet task force in tonnage; firepower and even more. As Radarman 2nd Class Smith rushed to the bridge, he found the Hermes’ Captain standing on the bridge before the PA system. He listened as the captain orated “A large CSAT fleet has been detected, they are nearly a hundred million miles away and are headed for Laonides. They are believed to possess five battleships, twelve cruisers and a number of destroyers. This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which our survival cannot be expected we will do what damage we can. All hands to general quarters, we’re being attacked.” All across the destroyers and frigates of the screening force, Readiness One was being sounded and spacers and marines rushed to their battlestations as the collective’s missile volleys already began firing. Well-beyond the range of *any* counter fire from the Imperial defenders, though the collective’s fleet rashly approached in a general attack rather than forming into a powerful wall of battle. Captain Roberts of the Hermes was not about to let the collective overwhelm his forces without a fight, breaking with standard naval doctrine – he ordered his ship to go on the offensive. Missiles shrieked in, but superior imperial ECM and countermeasures managed to keep the destroyer from being bracketed. On the way in, Radarman 2nd Class Smith spoke with Captain Roberts “Sir, I just wanted to mention that I was on a tin-can back during the SDF war and we never fired any of our Graser Torpedoes.” The Captain seemed to contemplate this for a moment before turning to Radarman Smith and saying “Well then let’s go ahead and make our torpedo attack” the Hermes advanced under the rapidly firing broadsides of its foes. Its shields screaming under the strain of attack by capital warships. But the Hermes finally entered 60,000,000 kilometers, striking distance for its Mark 23 MDMs it tore out and started firing at its targets. Its first volley of missiles met an enemy destroyer and the laser heads tore through the hull. CSAT’s point defense had not been active, and the machines, in their arrogance had not activated their countermeasures systems in anticipation of a quick and easy victory. The collective’s battleships quickly rectified this and the next volley of MDMs from the Hermes was slapped down mercilessly. But as the destroyer closed, and turned broadside to fire its Graser Torpedoes. The spider drives lit and drove the torpedoes toward a pair of heavy cruisers, the two warships heeled over in an attempt to evade but the spider drives ensured that counterfire from the opposing vessels could not get a solid lock on the incoming torpedoes. The Graser-heads activated on contact and vaporized two incredibly heavy warships that weighed more than all of the ships in Task Force 47 put together. However, the Hermes’ triumph had come at an enormous cost – it had brought the tiny warship well within range of a collective dreadnought. The Mass-Drivers mounted on the front of such a leviathan fired. The rounds were propelled in at the speed of light. Crossing the distance in a fraction of a moment, the two rounds sliced through the Hermes’ hull – dead center. The fusion cores of the destroyer had been damaged and their casings leaked radioactive coolant, men and women fought to control the fires amid the damage. Not even a second later, a missile impacted the bridge and killed everyone on the command deck, save Captain Roberts and three others who moved to the aft steering station and proceeded to make an attempt at withdrawal.

As the Hermes’ fight for survival began, the other ships of Task Force 47 prepared to engage with their own torpedo runs. As pilots from the fleet’s air wing bravely threw their lightly-armed F4s to the attack, though armed with little more than Hetlasers and a pair of Plasma Cannons to supplement their small ordnance racks. They attacked with gusto, the 432 F4s of the fleet came shrieking in – too small for CSAT’s batteries to engage. None of the collective’s ships in this fleet carried fighters of their own, for they had arrived intending to simply assimilate the world and now they found themselves in battle with an entire Imperial Formation. The ships of the fleet engaged with gusto, suffering horrendous casualties against the mighty fortresses that were the collective’s warships. In a battle that lasted more than two hours, the tin-cans of Task Force 47 were succumbing to the withering firepower of the collective’s armada. But amazingly, the tiny warships of the Frontier Fleet had won. Mercya signaled her people – return home. And the leviathans of the collective fled from the system, harassed the whole way by the F4s of Task Force 47. The victory however, had come at enormous cost; 6x escort carriers, 6x destroyers and 4x frigates had been destroyed and the fleet had suffered nearly 3,000 casualties between the losses of the fleet and several stray missiles that had leaked through and damaged orbital habitats.

However the collective had more sinister plans in store for the Empire, plans that Mercya was just beginning to lay out for her assets to enact…