There was not exactly much rest for Erich before he was shipped off with the Seventh Armada to the borders of Alfheim Space, well within the disputed zone where they intended to give off a show of force to deter the Svartalfheim Federation from continuing with their hostile actions.
It had been years since the Germanic Star-Empire had suffered a catastrophe at the hands of the Naraku Hive Fleet Terminus, and thanks to the aid they secretly received from the Alfheim Dominion, not only had their population recovered, with tens of trillions of babies being born, both artificially and naturally.
But also the worlds they had lost were now mostly restored. To the point where even the ruins of the Dvrakian Consortium were now being colonized by the Germanic Star-Empire. Because of this, the military strength of the GSE was mostly recovered. And in addition to that, their technology had been perfected of its flaws by the Alfheim Engineers who manufactured it.