Pericles, an Earth-like planet, orbits the yellow Athena in the midst of the system's Goldilocks' Zone. Most of the Perseus Arm of what was called 'the Milky Way' before the Greek Ascension, and is now known as Zeus' Thunderbolt is settled by humans if the varied solar systems had any planets in the Goldilocks' Zone.
Humans in this timeline eschewed serious genetic engineering, only going in for basic repair from mutation damage such as eliminating diabetes and allergic hyperreactions. Thus the vast majority of systems are not human habitable even with the Robot Terraforming Fleet created by the First Empire (or as they knew it, the Stellar Empire). The Hephaestians, aka the RTF, went from system to system, and reworked the planetary surface leaving behind pleasant Earthlike planets. It took nearly seven thousand years, but despite wars, the fall of empires (the Second and the Third) the Work went on. By now, most of Perseus is terraformed (that can be), and its up for question whether the Hephaestians will continue on to other arms of the Thunderbolt Galaxy. No one really knows as by now the source and documentation code is long forgotten.
Pericles is far out on the outer edge of Perseus, and it was settled in the First Wave of Expansion of the Fourth Stellar Empire. This is approximately six thousand years after M.L. which is Moon Landing. Neal Armstrong is worshipped by some as an avatar of Hephaestus the Strong Arm at the Forge. Most deconstructionist scholars think he is a fictional character and they point to his name...Neal or 'to anneal', and 'Arm Strong' which is a clear reference to Hephaestus. With both forge related names this seems obvious to them.
The Great Interegnum in the Fourth Empire was brought about by the question of 'what to do with robots?'. Most in the Fourth Empire thought that humanity should stay away from excessive robotics (there is a strong naturalist sentiment in this timeline evidenced by the lack of gengineering and the high concern for enviromental problems.)
However, most of the recently settled in the First Wave of Expansion were not so enthused. They needed to build themselves up to the standards of the Empire, and without robots it would be hard. So they refused.
Things got sticky, but the threat that Pericles and others would simply up and leave for deeper in the frontier kept things from getting horrible. A war of robots between the Rim Roboteers and the Empire ended with the Rim seceding and breaking up into their own systems. This was the First Robot War.
The second occurred a thousand years later. Robots had become an integral part of Periclean society which extended across the whole of the Athenian System. Some thought that the robots had crossed the line into sentience which it seemed clear the giant Hephaestians had. This was denied by the government. However certain hardwired restrictions were added. One was that the robot's owner could shut him down with a voice command if in range, and that the robots could not use a weapon on anyone in range.
Problem was...the bots were sentient, and they studied the problem. And so Robot A in City B took control of Robot C in City D and picked up the gun of Owner of Robot C and pointed it at him while Robot C was doing the reverse.
This was the Second Robot War. It was not quite a Velvet Exile as often portrayed, because there were a number of serious fights, but it was fairly bloodless for such a major social change. The robots took over the asteroids, and their factories and broke away from Periclean rulership.
Since then, the Pericles planet has been gripped by anger at 'the traitors'. The humans have created a new set of robots they call 'mechs' which are hardwired not to develop sentience. And there have been numerous 'incidents' ranging from 'piracy' to 'accidental firings of missiles' between the two sides.
The latest flarepoint is the robot desire to build Quick Potential Activating Factories. Fundamentally, they are robot creches which allow the robots to create sentient brains for the robot bodies at a thousand times faster rate. The robots see this as a way to defend themselves by colonizing the whole of the outer system. The humans see the robots gaining in power and see revenge coming their way.
The humans still do not admit that the robots are sentient, and they definitely do not see the 'Potentials' or Pot Factories as sentient. The Pot Factories are huge, and soft targets (because of the construction of brains it requires a very clean em environment so a nuke going off nearby is enough to fry a whole factory's production for a year even if the factory is seemingly unharmed.) This makes the Pot Factories ideal targets for 'accidents' and 'unknown electromagnetic phenomenon perhaps caused by the local stellar mass.'
On the robots side, its one of those, 'you just punched my button' Red Rage things. Humans are killing their babies and laughing about it.
The robots have less industrial strength than the humans although that is changing.
The robot form of leadership is a Decentralized Dictatorship of Intelligence. Each problem is decided on as a problem, and then the robot with the highest intelligence in that particular problem is given the job of solving it. It seems very ad hoc in a way. A robot could go on one day from commanding most of the resources of teh robot community to the next day having nothing more than his personal allotment, and then back again, ten days or ten years later. One other key part is a recognition of the Knowledge Problem. That is, the High Leadership cannot know as much about a specific situation as the people on the spearpoint of the problem. Thus as much as they can, they shove authority downward (this is the Decentralized part).
The robots are trying to restrain themselves, but many of them find themselves in sympathy with the often repeated motion. "Motion for a Problem: Is Human Existence in the Pericleaian System a Problem that needs to be solved?" If the answer to that question ever gets a 'yes' vote, then the humans are going to make a close and personal acquaintance with asteroids plunging toward their planet.
One factor of this Cold War is the Mechs. They are not as capable as the Belter Bots, but they are loyal. Some of the Belter Bots support giving the Mechs creativity upgrades which would make them more effective in the Cold War, but also, in time might turn the Mechs against the Humans.
Things are heading toward the Third Robot War.