Dr. Elara Voss floated in the observation dome of the research vessel Horizon, her breath fogging the reinforced polycarb glass as she stared into the endless black. The year was 2147, and humanity had pushed its fragile tendrils to the edge of the solar system. Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, hung like a pale ghost below them, its nitrogen geysers erupting in silent plumes that caught the weak, distant sunlight and scattered it into ghostly fans. Elara’s team had been stationed here for eighteen months, cataloging cryovolcanic activity, drilling shallow ice cores, and searching for signs of microbial life beneath the frozen crust.
