Despite the excesses of the Overlord, humanity voted for a strong executive again, and began more cautious, systematic forays into the galaxy once more.
During humanity’s long night, the former Consortium had fallen into three large, rival factions. The new Terran Empire (having reclaimed Osiris and Utopia at least) threw in with a faction called the Protectorate, and contributed to the move to overcome the other two factions.
During this time, Humanity reached its greatest glory, ruling close to 50 separate star systems, and influencing as many as 200 in concert with their allies. For a hundred years, Earth was one of the richest planets in the Orion Arm. Pride cameth before the fall.
Those factions, partly in response, and partly for their own reasons, merged, and the remarkable part is how the Protectorate, lasted as long as it did.
The demise of the Protectorate was inevitable. The Factions (as humanity would call their opposition) had 2:1 or even 3:1 resource advantages and eventually able command. Star by star the Terran Empire was beaten back, with each battle more violent and each defeat more bitter than the last. Still, the Terran Enpire conquered 50 systems within a century and it took three times that long to lose them. Even so, less than 500 years after the Overlord sailed off into history, humanity was back to defending their one home system – for that was all they had left.
Xeno Occupation
The Siege of Sol lasted nearly 100 years before Earth finally fell for alien invaders. Most of the Orbitals were destroyed (only Venus and New Earth were spared). The surviving humans of Earth were confined to Antarctica, while the aliens stripped away the hundreds of stories of city that covered the planet, and then transformed what remained to their own liking.
They liked it hot and dry. Whatever remained of the Cenozoic biosphere – the Age of Mammals – was blown-dried to a crisp. Only the refugees in Antarctica or the deep oceans remained at all intact.
In the midst of this, the Menace returned, only the humans – who had been instrumental in beating them back twice before, were nearly extinct – or scattered to the galactic winds. The Factions had fallen into, well, factions, and the Menace tore a huge hole in their composite civilization before any kind of effective defense could be mounted.
Meanwhile, the scattered remains of humanity began to gather at places like Procyon and Epsilon Eridanni and organize and plan. Between the wars and the Menace, whole systems were vacant, and humans were among those able to reclaim these systems and build a base of power again.
This new system was methodical, calculated, determined to avoid the martial zeal that had undone the Protectorate. The Third Imperium, as they began to call themselves, conquered no one. They merged, and sometimes bought, but they never conquered. Civilizations joined because they wanted to.
Except those who occupied Earth. Aggressive humans who had been appearing among the general population had been pulled aside, heavily trained, and finally loosed upon the smoking wreckage of their home-world to claim it back.
The Retribution was a success – but an empty one. The alien occupiers had managed the place poorly – even towards their own ends, and were as impoverished as their captive humans when the Third Imperium came for them.
Earth was liberated, and then abandoned. Whatever humanity’s future held – it was out there among the stars.