The war began as wars often do, with a cocktail blended of misunderstanding, paranoia and desperation. Humans pointed to the nyri, an alien race whose aggression had escalated from tensions of the mid-twenty-second century, though the nyri blamed humanity for the war, thus locking the two races into staunch opposition. Mutually beneficial joint-colonization efforts and scientific collaboration devolved into resource hoarding, xenophobia and eventually violence. Humanity forbade the nyri to colonize within the boundaries of their territory. The nyri cried out, claiming the Earthlings had condemned their race to death.
The Nyri Empire was the first intelligent civilization encountered by humans in 2141 CE, a race of bipedal insectoids with a far-reaching empire and the propensity to colonize and consume new worlds to support their swelling population. They’d innovated interstellar travel one hundred years before humanity, a paramount initiative born of overcrowding and the dwindling resources of their home world, Koleos. By means of rapid colonization, the nyri sustained their people for a short time on the few nearby worlds with fresh water and comparable climate, but the Empire created sanctions to limit their number of progeny, stagnating further population growth. Uncontaminated water was precious and all too rare in the galaxy, a painful lesson the nyri learned firsthand.
Collaboration between the nyri and humanity was short-lived as racism and paranoia led to the sequestering of garden worlds, a category of planets within the desired range of a star to permit water, and thus life. Humans, fearing a nyri colony too close to Earth would invite an invasion, drew a border between solar systems. The Ribbon was an invisible fence to keep the insects out of humanity’s backyard, a strip of space one light-year in width and deemed neutral territory. But the nyri were envious of Earth’s abundance of water, and interpreted the borders as a sign of abandonment. Humanity no longer appeared interested in an alliance, instead seeking to weaken the proud nyri people and steal their vast empire once starvation had spread. Tensions mounted, leading to an inevitable interstellar war in 2145 CE, a brutal conflict that persisted for the next twenty-seven years.
As all wars must come to an end, so would this war, but not before a series of unlikely events that forever changed the course of galactic history, and it began aboard a human starship in 2172.
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