Humanity's First Contact with the Galaxy

State of the Starzone in 2794 A.D.

77 Years since humanity accepted the Sanujab into the starzone after their aborted invasion attempt and the invasion of a bio-mechanical 'Tuana-plaga plague.
The Starzone remains mostly divided along the original blocs of 'east and west' in the form of the 'Western' Solar Confederation or CONFED and the 'Eastern' Red Star Compact.
The Sanujab hold a portion of the Mandate coreward against the stellar frontier of the United American Systems, a CONFED state. Known as the Sanujab Principality this faction is further insulated by a bubble of former Mandate (a RSC state) systems which have aligned themselves with humanity's cousins known as the Tian-Shen Confederacy who see this created species as having the mandate of heaven.
Humankind remains in a state of 'light' cold war with the CONFED bloc and RSC bloc resuming their pre-invasion tensions, however wartime actions have led to a divide growing between the Mandate and the Progressive People's Systems.
The Sanujab sub-species itself has spread throughout the CONFED bloc, few are present in the RSC bloc as many among their populations still views them as something to be killed. The spread is mostly due to wartime combined forces activities that led many to forming bonds with their human counterparts, this has led to human-sanujab hybrids.

2752 A.D.
The Imperium discovers the Solar System nearly five hundred years after humanity left, finding the vast clouds of debris and destroyed orbital habitats still present as well as the still radioactive dustball that Earth had become. The biggest boon of all however was finding humanity's monument to it's own folly orbiting Neptune, an object depicting what had once been here, what had happened, how many survived, and where they'd gone.
The noble that discovered the monument promptly petitioned for funds for an expedition, the operation was later greenlit as a sideshow and would involve naval support due to the ships going far beyond any source of refueling infrastructure.
The motivation is simple, if humanity still survives and has established themselves they could be a boon for the Imperium which has now lapsed into a grand stagnant stand off with the other two powers. No real acquisitions having occurred for centuries.

1,240 warships enter the Principality system of Joathen, opposing them are roughly sixty Sanujab warships of various types.
Of the 1,240 vessels of the Imperium, 652 are destroyed outright during the battle, 510 suffer extensive damage, and the remaining vessels either flee or surrender.