Standard Year 3017: Earth's civilization was defeated by a mercenary corps employed by a consortium under the Star Alliance, and the Solar System vanished in the aftermath of that battle.
More than a century later, a scholar at the Star Alliance Science City who was studying the Black Crystal Temple accidentally fell into a spacetime loop formed by a cosmic string inside the temple. She traveled back thousands of years and encountered a group of mysterious, unknown creatures.
As Earth's surviving people gradually integrated into the Star Alliance, they discovered that their home planet had once had an identical temple. The deeper their investigation went, the more they realized that the war a century ago may not have been as simple as the official records' claims of a struggle over resources...
Years later, disputes over the temple's secrets began to surface. Then a bank robbery directly set the stage for a new interstellar war.
