Narud: No Way, No Way

In the sparsely star-studded fringes of the Milky Way Galaxy, the Sigma Sector was a virgin expanse that remained largely unexplored. After Emperor Augustus Mengsk ascended the throne, this vast stretch of space was incorporated into the Terran Empire amid its northward expansion.

As more and more human survey ships ventured into the dark and distant depths of the Sigma Sector, colony ships laden to capacity took to space. Tens of millions of people filled with hopes for the future established their homes upon those New Worlds brimming with promise.

Relatively speaking, the Sigma Sector could be considered barren within the Milky Way Galaxy. The distances between stars were far greater than those near the galactic core. As a result, the Imperial Colonies within it lay farther apart, with interstellar routes spanning enormous distances and falling far short of the prosperous core worlds.

Because the Sigma Sector had only been incorporated into Imperial territory recently, the Terran Empire continued to send essential survival and construction supplies to its newly established Colonies there through interstellar routes until the outbreak of the Final War. Even after entering a state of war, it had only been forced to reduce the size of its transport fleets.

On the Sigma Sector's interstellar route map, there was an exceptionally desolate region of space that had always maintained a secure secret route with Korhal. The transport fleets traveling that route each Earth month were enormous, and hundreds of thousands of people worked on that route and in its associated systems alone.

Yet even by Sigma Sector standards, this region was bleak and lonely. There were only a few ancient, silent lone stars there, while planets shrouded in darkness rose and fell like grains of sand in the sea of time. It lay farther away than any known