The Sirius system is a young system and may be only 200 - 250 million years old. The system is a binary in which one member has already become a white dwarf.

In 2130 a sub-light probe built and financed by private enterprise left the Sol system headed for Dirius. Unlike the government sponsored probes the one sent to Sirius was looking for explotable resources rather than habitable worlds. The probe entered the Sirius system in 2174 and reported back the presence of a number of high density worlds in the system. The reports were not made public however when they reached Earth in 2183, instead the corporations that had financed the probe reported that it had failed to reach its destination.

In 2190 a small fleet of sublight colonisation ships left Earth bound for Sirius. This was not the destination reported, and all vessels were reported lost presumed destroyed in 2194. Instead the fleet continued to head for the Sirius system, decellerating into it in 2234.

The Sirius colony was established on a planetoid found within the extensive asteroid belt surrounding the Sirius A sub-system. The planetoid being named Sirius Major. The colony was intended to be the hub of mining operations but spent the first ten years of its existance in setting up self sustaining life support system. Only when this was done did the colony began producing the processed metals they had been placed there for.

In 2294 the first shipment of processed metals and other substances began the long slow haul back to Earth arriving in 2338. In the Sol system the sub-light transports found that the government they had known had been swept away by the Federated States of Sol and that there was still a great deal of turmoil. Secretly contacting their corporate masters a plan was hatched. The plan resulted in the transport ships being hidden in the Sol systems asteroid belt and using their valuable cargoes to provide finace, the corporations which had funded them used the metals to cause the collapse of a number of rival corporations. The net result was the formation of a number of incredibly rich and powerful corporations with apparently inexhaustable sources of wealth.

As each transport was emptied of its precious cargo it turned out of system for the long journey back to Sirius Major. This cycle repeated itself until 2523 when the first faster than light vessels began entering service with the Federation. Shortly after that the first corporate FTL vessels also entered service replacing the old sub-light vessels on the Sirius run. When the Federation Fleet began the Centauran war a number of the corporations believed they could make huge profits out of it and orchestrated a number of incidents resulting in the destruction of several cities on Earth.

The corporate involvement in the Centauran war was discovered however and following the collapse of the Federation government and its replacement by the United Worlds Commonwealth, the UWC began seizing the assets of corporations held culpable. Several had planned for this eventuality and had already been moving huge amounts of equipment, resources and people to the Sirius Major colony. For awhile Sirius Major and the corporations turned their backs on the young United Worlds Commonwealth. Contact was not encouraged for some years.

The Sirius Trade Federation is a trading cartel consisting of many corporations, some decendents of those which abandoned Earth and new ones formed since. They are of varying size but amongst the largest are the Sirius Corporation itself, Ceraplast, Cybertech Industries, Hades Mining, Oberon Industrial and Sirius Defence Industries. All the Sirius corporations believed in profit first.

Technologically Sirius Major has a largely stable tech level 11 base in most areas. However in the microelectronic areas Sirius Major has just surpassed Earth and has achieved a borderline tech level 12 in the microelectronic and computer areas.