In the year 2010 mankind produced the first working real rail gun, the weapon was so awesome, that the space program secretly also tested it when they launched the second generation reuseable shuttles finding that in space this weapon did even far more damage than on navy warships of the era.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/10/navy-railgun-shoots-bullets-electromagnet/Later in 2031 the United States launched the top secret weapon of all weapons, the DevilStar series of Military orbital platforms designed at first to stop any war before it ever started, but a mere 3 years later, signals from deep space were confirmed as life from other worlds and the defense department issued order 55.
Order 55 was a secret directive to turn one of the orbital weapons facing space to defend earth should any real alien threat appear not knowing if the signals from the aliens were friend or foe.
Later on these rail guns were fitted to the first of the Viceroy class scout craft to patrol the sol system.
other weapons later followed however the rail gun found its place with many improvements from the land based design that was first tested at full power in 2010.
Behold the power of the Rail Gun human kinds greatest weapon ever devised still in use on all warp equipped Terran war craft and some custom vessels built by other races.
