Location: Within striking distance of Eventide
Date: 175.11.09

Shortly after the Interstellar Imperium created the Titan-class planetbreaker missile, a mobile launch platform for the oversized planet-killer device was rolled out and pressed into service. Desperate to demonstrate the power of their new game-changer weapon, Minerva authorized a preemptive strike upon a Hegemony population center, Eventide. A fleet was dispatched within the week.

The Imperial Fifth Fleet sustained terrible losses attempting to enter the Samarra system, blocked in hyperspace by advance defense fleets dispatched from Sphinx. The feint worked; most of the Hegemony system patrols were tied up in the intense battle, allowing a simple trio of Imperium capital ships - a Caesar-class battleship and two Olympus-class siege platforms - to slip through the star's gravity well, reaching high orbit above Eventide long before reinforcements could arrive. Local leadership considered the splinter fleet to be a desperation move, clearly doomed to be cut off from hyperspace and wiped out in due time, and so deployed Eventide's reserve defense fleet around the station Samsara in order to avoid unnecessary losses.

This maneuver played right into the Imperium's hands; the tightly-packed defenses were in no position to intercept a Titan. After giving the order, the commander of the ISA Victoria would only need watch as the surface of Eventide is burned away, eliminating all life and securing a decisive first strike victory against the Hegemony. It would certainly be a glorious war - a war that would never be witnessed by the man who started it. But the cost...

Historians today debate why the ISA Victoria disobeyed the direct order from Minerva, their supreme commander, their god. Perhaps it was cowardice, guilt, or a misplaced sense of mercy. What the historians don't debate, however, is the efficacy of the doomed Imperial commander's choice to instead target Samsara, the station orbiting above Eventide.

Chilled by encountering such a near-disaster - one that might not be so "near" in the future - the Hegemony's foreign policy with regards to the Interstellar Imperium shifted dramatically. The cold war between the two polities had begun, ultimately securing the Imperium's continued survival and forestalling a conflict that they would inevitably lose.