Star-Crosst begins at the end of the war, but what was that war in the first place?
On March 26th, 2311, the Earth was visited by another species.
Giant, black, angular ships appeared in the skies high above the continent of Africa at exactly 7:00 AM UTC. Two of them were significantly larger than the others. All attempts to communicate with them were met with static. The ships design was neither earthling nor Ghian: these had come from someplace else.
They remained in the sky for forty-eight hours. They remained tidally-locked with the Earth as it spun on its axis. There was no sign of any form of movement.
On March 28th, 2311, at 7:00 AM UTC, after exactly forty-eight hours to the second, one of the two larger ships deployed a superweapon that caused the Earth’s atmosphere to behave erratically. Tornados struck at unusual locations; hurricanes would form closer to the poles, a previously-thought-impossible occurrence; tsunamis would form without tectonic movement, striking anywhere along a coast and sinking whole islands. Continents began to bake under the intensity of the superweapon; others froze solid.
The Earth could not mount a defense: any attempts to combat the new alien threat would first have to breach their own atmosphere, and any ship fortunate enough to power through the raging storms would be intercepted by the smaller enemy ships. The very Earth was turned against humans, Ghians, and all other form of life upon it. The aliens rarely descended upon the Earth’s surface personally, and when they did, it was often to attack resistance holdouts. It’s not certain whether the alien ships were even being piloted – Earth didn’t know if their enemy had a face.
The motivations of the invaders were never made clear. Nor was their name.
Humanity had taken to naming their enemies the Riklid.