Once the age of expansion had once again come to an end, the life span of the Phoenix Confederation was numbered - even though the "numbering" was likely to be on the order of scores of thousands of years. The final result - another millennia long "Dark Age" - was never in doubt UNLESS Project Star-Reach could come up with a radical new method of interstellar communications.

There is little need to go into the few details we know of this period, as it followed the pattern already familiar from the collapse and interregnum periods of both the Consillium and the Old Empire. The outer reaches of the Confederacy gradually rebelled, were conquered by the "Outer Barbarians" (though the term is really a misnomer for races that must have had FTL capabilities) or simply lost contact with the mainstream of the Confederate civilisation - in any case, the process of collapse was begun. By the end of the twenty-fifth Cycle, the Confederacy was reduced to approximately the sphere of the Old Imperium, and the rate of collapse was accelerating.

Despite this - and some 50,000 years or more of research - Project Star-Reach was seemingly unable to do more than improve the reliability of FTL drives - the top speed remained at about 50 LY per day. The project DID result in the introduction of "Jump" Drives, which made INSTANTANEOUS Jumps between points in space - but which had the drawback of requiring almost as much time in computing the factors required for longer jumps as it took a standard Hyperspace vessel to do the voyage anyway. This invention may have made some difference - on a few well travelled routes where course tapes could be used to cut down computation times. Except for to things - the factors involved in calculating a safe jump were variable, and continually changing - meaning that course tapes had to be continually updated (and the computing power that even this required meant that Jump drive ships were limited to a number of highly important routes) AND also that the number of variables involved made even calculations done on the must powerful computers open to error. Where navigational errors in FTL ships on Hyperspacial drives were minor problems, Jumpships either disappeared FOREVER, or exploded on emergence - neither of wich factor encouraged their use!

The Confederacy was therefore seemingly doomed - but, as one would expect, the citizens struggled on in the hope that their cumulative efforts might have some ameliorating effect. Yet, despite all these efforts, the rate of collapse was such that, by the latter part of the twenty-sixth Cycle, the Confederacy borders were reduced to approximately those of the Consillium - and the chances of the Phoenix lasting another Cycle seemed remote.