In the Foundation trilogy, one of the all time great sci fi series, this scrappy start up civilization at the edge of the galaxy, the Foundation, survives the collapse of the galactic empire and the subsequent descent of the galaxy into chaos.

Every chapter covers a different time period in which the Foundation faces an existential threat and is saved at the last minute by a surprise turn of events. It's all been preordained by a new field of science that can predict, with very high accuracy, the flow of human history over vast scales of time and space. But nobody alive knows how it will turn out. So the resolution to each threat comes as a surprise to the characters in the story.

In one chapter the imperial remnants, still dominant over the center of the galaxy, discover this upstart state all the way in the hinterlands and decide to subjugate them. They send an armada with the goal of conquering the Foundation. This fleet has enough military might to utterly destroy the Foundation, so the protagonists are rightfully scared.

They try all kinds of political machinations and fail at every turn. At the end of the chapter the fleet is recalled for political reasons. If the general did manage to conquer the Foundation it would empower him as a direct rival to the emperor. The emporer can't allow this, so he ultimately has the general tried and executed. The Foundation is once again saved from certain destruction, this time by the dysfunctional politics and deadlock of their most powerful antagonist.

I think about this story often. It has a lot of parallels to real life. Pay attention to the divisions and internal disfunction of those supremely powerful entities who would try to crush a promising young upstart. Their failures might just be your greatest successes.