Starcruiser

A surprise production, at least to the leaders of the Federation, the Starcruiser was the flagship effort made by Xu Derui's Chinese Empire to colonise the recently discovered extrasolar planet Irata-3. With much of the technology, including the fusion drive which propelled it, being (unofficially) stolen from the West via espionage, the Starcruiser represented the pinnacle of Chinese technological advancement at the time.

While the launch was successful, the Chinese weren't ready for sudden disappearance of the Starcruiser from the long-range scanners at ground control and, with political turmoil at an all time high, immediately feared the worst. Sending airborne search parties out the same day, it wasn't long before debris was located.

Accusing the Federation of being unable to accept his Empire's advancement, Xu Derui publicly berates President Eva Goreman - his equivalent counterpart in the West - and vows to exact vengeance for the three thousand colonists he believes to have died in the Starcruiser's destruction.

However, the Starcruiser was never attacked by the Federation, nor destroyed at an indeterminate point following its launch. After leaving Earth's orbit on February 13th, 2143 - just four days before the outbreak of World War Three - the Starcruiser miscalculates its traversal of the asteroid belt and is forced to retreat. With both their sensors and long-range communication array inoperable, the people on-board the vessel decide to go for their only available option: to contact the Federation colonists on Red Terra.

With repairs to their damaged systems already underway, the Starcruiser's captain explains the situation to the colony, requesting that - in their stead - they forward the news to mission control in Beijing. However, due to the Starcruiser project being a closely guarded secret of the Empire, the colonists are skeptical about the ship indeed being a generation ship of Chinese design and pass the whole thing off as a joke made by their spaceborne patrol.

Because of the Federation's lack of information on the matter, Xu Derui continues to operate under his assumptions and, just four days later, he plunges the entire planet into nuclear war by launching a barrage of Kerolin Stealth Missiles at Germany.

Oblivious to the entire situation, the Starcruiser continues its mission without further incident. After making their trip to Irata-3 and successfully colonising the planet, they set up a deep space communications array and send a looping message towards Earth, asking for further instructions.

The message goes completely unheard for over 400 years, only being discovered for the first time when the Psi Monks - who, by now, are the rulers of Neocron - produce the fruits of their own space program and launch a manned mission to the Red Terra colony on Mars.

In response to the discovery of the signal, Neocron sends a total of 322,000 people to Irata-3 over the course of a century. With the journey between the two planets taking the better part of nine decades, interest in Irata-3 from the perspective of the citizens of Neocron - Lioon Reza included - eventually fades away to almost nothing.