It began with a whisper in the data streams—a solar flare, class X-17, erupting from the sun’s corona like a wound that refused to heal. The flare’s coronal mass ejection struck the station’s magnetic shielding twelve hours later. The gravity stabilizers—toroidal rings of superconducting coils that spun the habitat to simulate Earth-normal weight—faltered first. Power surges cascaded through the grid. Lights flickered. Alarms sang in soft, polite voices: “Structural integrity compromised.
