When mankind ascended into space, spreading into the vast and starry universe, some hoping to find sentient alien life, others dreading the prospect of contact with such beings. Man was right to fear some alien life, as it harbored a hatred for all things foreign to it, but without sentient thought to it. Other beings, while fierce looking, were harmless so long as they remained unprovoked. So it was that mankind would find himself alone in the Milky Way galaxy, having no interest in going beyond the outer rim of the Spiral Armed galaxy. With no sentient life to face off against, man would once again turn on himself for both war and deceit. A near dozen different governments and corporations had founded a series of colonies, and for awhile the sovereign Earth government reigned and kept peace with an iron fist. For nearly 10 centuries this arrangement worked well, each colony spreading its sovereignty from one planet to entire solar systems, the Old Earth government not allowing them to gain additional power nor influence in fear of rebellion. However, nothing lasts forever, and this peace through power was no different.

Earth went silent shortly after the year 3000 came and went. No one knew why they had stopped communicating abruptly, the policing Earth fleets vanished within the span of several years, setting out with the expressed goal of finding out what happened. They never returned, nor did they ever signal the skeletal remains of the Old Earth control network. These remains were absorbed by the colonies, who set out to rapidly expand, rediscover technology lost with the disappearance of Earth, and most importantly, rule sovereign over all. From the dozen or so colonies, it fell down to three major factions after another century of warfare. The Order, a quasi religious technocratic society that was largest in sheer amount of space owned and colonized, thanks to its advanced technology. The second largest was the New Earth Forces (NEF), a band of the remaining Old Earth fleets and loyal colonies, holding the most powerful fleets, if outdated when compared to the Order's technological marvels. Lastly, was the United System Syndicate, an organization of criminals and front corporations that, while holding far less colonies, was more ingrained within the Order and NEF and capable of halting any dreams of aggression against the Syndicate. The three came to war, and the NEF and Syndicate agreed to work together to match the might of the Order.

What the NEF didn't realize was the Syndicate had the same agreement with the Order, whom also had no idea of its dealings with the NEF. The 'Capitol' of the Syndicate, the name lost and unimportant, was wagered by the Syndicate as a viable loss in the quest for ultimate power. With a fleet of mercenaries and pirates, a group that would found the modern organization known as the Spacers, false information and aid requests were funneled to both the NEF and Order stating an impending attack on Capitol system of the Syndicate. The Order, bearing thermonuclear megamissiles and massive Battleships capable of vaporizing countless lesser vessels met the vastly larger NEF fleet, literally thousands of cruisers, frigates, destroyers and carriers with hundreds of thousands of fighters, bombers, and boarding craft. The Order had five Battleships, its flagship a super Carrier that provided the logistics and fighter screening for the other ships. The NEF were slaughtered, losing hundreds of vessels to the thermonuclear missiles, hundreds more to the weapon batteries of the battleships. But sheer numbers wore down the Order, losing battleships to dozens of vessels suicide ramming the Battleships, leaving the Carrier, bearing the Grand Priest of the Order, and the Lord General of the NEF was on the last surviving NEF battleship.

What the Syndicate did would be remembered in history, forever, as both a stroke of military genius, and an atrocity to never be forgotten. They, through the use of technology supplied by the Order and old ships given by the NEF to act as secret test beds, forced the system's sun to collapse into a black hole. The Syndicate HQ and all vital staff had long since moved, a dummy remained to make the fight seem valuable. The radiation from the nuclear exchanges kept the Faster Than Light travel from working, trapping the vast amount of the Order and NEF military forces within the gravity well of the newly created Black Hole, wiping all of them out. At the same time, moles and sleeper agents acted in unison, assassinating, replacing, and wiping out the entire command structure of the NEF and Order in the span of about a few days. In one battle, the United System Syndicate became the Galactic System Syndicate, absorbing the remains of the Order and NEF. Surviving loyalists of both fled, and had hold out locations violently hostile to any Syndicate vessels or citizens, but could no longer directly fight the Organization.

The mercenaries and pirates that the Syndicate used to mop up where sleeper agents and deceit failed were paid and disbanded, a proper armed force replacing them. The jobless groups decided to band together in a loose coalition called Spacers, each one wildly different from the next, but all working for whoever had the credits to cover their paychecks. While the Syndicate still gave them work, for the most part, it was private citizens and criminals who gave them work, shading the general reception of Spacers and criminals and barely tolerable necessities. The true history of the Syndicate's rise to power was hidden by lies and elimination of the few who would know the actual truth, as their atrocity was repainted as a necessary evil to break the yoke the Order and NEF would have gladly held on them. In reality, it was all a matter of greed, and greed would drive them to their eventual downfall.

While it held the majority of the universe, only two places remained out of their control. The Galactic Core, and the Sol Arm, where Earth resided. The Syndicate would begin to put out agents to search out for a Spacer, as a government vessel could not be spared, and would be much more costly a loss than a Spacer, crazy or stupid enough to venture into the commonly considered taboo Sol Arm, or the generally suicidal Galactic Core. Preferably both.