The Trophy

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Following the Treaty of Garak in 52000, intragalactic commerce began to expand at breakneck speed.

The Great War had introduced literally millions of people on both sides to space flight and forced loosely linked dominions all over the galaxy into new dependence upon one another. A burgeoning transportation industry found itself pressured for more and more speed as frontiers rapidly expanded to the most remote parts of the galactic spiral, and beyond.

To conquer distance, to couple new power generators with the subtle properties of HyperSpeed Drives and hull configurations, then spur all three to the limit of their potential—that was the challenge. The urge to produce the fastest starship in the known Universe became an obsession that captivated the best technical minds everywhere.

Among the major galactic dominions, this burning quest for speed was eventually subsidized by government treasuries and entrusted to special government employees who contended as much for national honor as for personal glory. The starships they flew evolved rapidly from reconditioned war machines that coursed through space at perhaps forty thousand times the speed of light to such engineering masterpieces as Sherrington's M-6B in which (then) Lt. Commander Tobias Moulding, I.F. achieved an absolute velocity of nearly 112M LightSpeed late in 52009.

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