Music of the Spheres
Premise
As humans measure things, it is the year 2236 by the Georgian Calendar; but by the reckoning of most species, it is the two hundred and second year of the League. Humanity has been flying outside its home system for almost one hundred and fifty years, and in its explorations, it has made contact with the League of Worlds. This group of alien species came together, creating a lasting government of grand scope, in order to face down a horrific threat: an incomprehensible alien species called the Cacophony.
Humanity itself has escaped many of the problems that once savaged it. Disease and poverty have all but been vanquished, and the ability to colonise other worlds has reduces the pressure on the earth's ecology, as well as much of the impetuous for territorial gain which previously caused wars.
But now something else is in the air. The League Security Council, with its repressive laws and directives, is increasingly distrusted and even hated by the states of the Six Races. The Cacophony stir in their systems, as if sensing blood; everywhere politics, schemes and even war disturb the normal balance of things. Meantime, in human space, tensions between regional blocks, Earth, and the colonies grow more and more pronounced, with terrorism and even war threatened for the first time in over a century.
It looks like the twenty third century, the second League Century, will be a very interesting time to live indeed.