Interlude (1999)

It is the year 2134. 24 years ago, mankind and Calderans defeated the Iron Savior. The ancient machine left the solar system and vanished into deep space. Today mankind and Caldarins live unified on Earth, and are growing together more and more. The Caldarins shared their knowledge and technical development, so deep space travel has become quite normal for man.

It was also this year that a small vessel on its way to Earth disappeared mysteriously without any trace. A bigger "starbird class" cruiser was sent out to investigate this matter. The crew detected a small but fast-growing abnormality 6.8 light-years away from the solar system. Two weeks later the distortion was as big as the planet Jupiter and a stationary research center was established. It seemed that inside the abnormality, space and even time itself were somehow contorted, not following any known laws of physics of our continuum. A theory that the abnormality might be something like a gate to multiple strings of time or even multiple continuums was developed.

But suddenly a huge fleet of alien vessels emerged from the phenomenon. Without any attempt at communication, they opened fire on the research center and destroyed it completely - and the gateway theory became a cold and hard fact. A violent species of predators with the ability to manipulate time and the continuum burst into the hemisphere of man and Calderans, sending out their greetings with deadly fire. They call themselves the Masters of Time...