Mid-22nd century…
Humanity finally stepped beyond Earth and established itself within the solar system. One valuable world after another was claimed and divided. Then their ambitions turned outward, toward the wider galaxy—but the technologies for true interstellar travel, long-term hibernation, and closed-loop ecosystems aboard ships were still immature. Expansion slowed.
After entering the space age, the New Racists on Earth spent more than a decade consolidating. In the end they formed thirty-six nations and stitched them into a shaky alliance.
Humanity’s political landscape split into two major camps once again: the Earth Alliance and the Solar Federation.
Because of clashing ideologies, relations between the two blocs froze. More than once, they teetered on the edge of interstellar war.
Later scholars argued that in the 22nd century, the two sides were still relatively cordial. The sharp decline began in the early 23rd century, driven largely by a series of major incidents.
The Moonlight City Incident:
Moonlight City began as a spacecraft launch platform connected to Earth by a space elevator. As land shortages worsened, it was expanded step by step into a super sky-city capable of housing twenty million people. It took its name from the enormous moon that dominated the sky overhead.
The Earth Alliance headquartered there. Each member nation, according to how much it invested, controlled a corresponding district. With stable climate and unmatched convenience—easy transit to every planet and to Earth’s surface—politicians and elites concentrated in the city.
In 2219, an aging Solar Federation warship, the Axiom, suffered a steering system failure and drifted on a collision course toward Moonlight City. The crew repeatedly insisted the ship was unarmed, that the malfunction could be fixed, and that they had already reduced speed significantly.
Moonlight City answered by invoking “airspace intrusion.” At long range, it activated its defense grid and destroyed the ship.
More than two thousand people died—so fast that many never even reached their escape pods.
Solar Federation citizens erupted. Online rage flooded across the network like a tide, demanding that the Earth Alliance give the Axiom its “axiom”…
The Europa Incident:
Europa held immense water resources, and both blocs operated extraction plants and research stations on the planet’s icy surface. Because conditions were brutal, the Earth Alliance relied on a small human presence and a large robot workforce.
The Solar Federation, meanwhile, placed its largest prison on Europa. Convicts—assigned to varying degrees of danger depending on sentence—did the hardest jobs.
A life-sentenced prisoner piloting a one-man mining sub discovered an unknown alien organism in Europa’s deep ocean. The prison population was infected and parasitized—along with the rescue teams that arrived afterward.
A bioweapon crisis swept across the “globe.” Personnel from both sides were nearly wiped out. Europa was ultimately sealed and quarantined.
The Earth Alliance demanded that the Solar Federation take full responsibility, and it demanded enormous reparations.
But one year later, the story took a shocking turn.
A video suddenly appeared online. It showed that after a year of quarantine, an Earth Alliance research facility was still operating beneath Europa’s ice. And its subjects were the infected prisoners from the Federation penitentiary.
The final reveal was even worse: a prisoner appeared on camera and introduced himself as Ethan Shaw—the very first person to discover the alien species.
He presented a chain of evidence claiming that Earth Alliance scientists had known the organism existed all along. They had deliberately guided the prisoners into infection in order to research terrifying bioweapons.
The video detonated like a bomb.
Both sides raged. The Earth Alliance called it a fabrication designed to help the Solar Federation evade compensation. The Solar Federation demanded a reopened investigation into Europa.
The dispute locked up again. Fleets faced off near Europa for a full month.
And then Ethan Shaw—the uploader—vanished, never to appear again…
The Saturn Ring Incident:
In 2241, an Earth Alliance mineral survey ship conducted detailed scans of several Uranian moons. On Uranus’s 29th moon, it found vast deposits of a rare metal: rhenium—an essential material for ship engines in the space age.
The Earth Alliance immediately declared mining rights.
The Solar Federation responded with a century-old agreement stating that all twenty-seven known moons of Uranus belonged to the Solar Federation.
The Earth Alliance shot back: “Yes—twenty-seven. But this is number twenty-nine.”
The Solar Federation exploded: “Only twenty-seven were known at the time. The point is the word ‘all’.”
The Earth Alliance ignored them. It dispatched a tug to drag the tiny satellite—only thirteen kilometers across—back toward Earth orbit.
On the return trip, near Saturn’s rings, the tug was attacked by a mysterious battleship. The tug was destroyed, and the rhenium-rich irregular body vanished into the dense ring system.
The Earth Alliance prepared retaliation.
The Solar Federation claimed it had nothing to do with the attack. It blamed interstellar pirates—and suggested those pirates might even be backed by an Earth Alliance nation infamous, even in the old Earth era, for sheltering pirates and terrorists.
The accused nation erupted and, in furious defiance, mobilized two battleships to launch the first strike.
At last, a small-scale battle flared near Saturn’s rings…
***
There were other major flashpoints as well—the Nix Incident, the “Solar Umbrella Incident,” the Slingshot Ship Racing Incident, the Long-Leaf Algae Incident, the Stargazing Platform Incident, and more. Minor frictions were too numerous to count.
Political instability seemed to foreshadow full-scale war.
But in science, several long-distance travel problems were solved one after another in the late 23rd century.
The most important breakthroughs were photonic sail ships and inertial confinement fusion engines. Combined with particle beam generators, ships could reach one-quarter the speed of light. Tests showed these dual-engine designs could sustain stable, long-range interstellar flight.
Hibernation technology matured as well, capable of keeping humans alive and healthy across voyages measured in centuries.
And speaking of hibernation, one must mention a drug called Meshaphyto.
Meshaphyto had another name: the Soul-Dance Pill. It began as a narcotic developed by the Dalton family of the Solar Federation.
In normal use, it triggered massive dopamine release, producing euphoric hallucinations. It could even make time feel slower—as if you could savor the high inside stretched-out seconds. If someone fired a gun at you while you were on Soul-Dance, you might even see the bullet’s trajectory.
And in sleep, it could slow metabolism even further.
Soul-Dance took the Solar Federation by storm. Before long, scientists got their hands on it and immediately recognized the obvious.
Isn’t this the perfect hibernation stabilizer?
The Solar Federation’s Interstellar Expedition Bureau invited the Dalton family into hibernation research. Not long after, an improved and regulated version—Meshaphyto—was developed and passed clinical trials, solving the last major bottleneck of interstellar travel.
The once-obscure underworld family rose overnight into staggering wealth—enough, it was said, to buy the entire dwarf planet Ceres.
***
September 2292: Solar Federation astronomers confirmed humanity’s first interstellar destination—HD 85512b.
Discovered three centuries earlier, HD 85512b was a super-Earth with about 3.6 times Earth’s mass. It orbited an orange dwarf star in the constellation Vela, roughly 36.4 light-years from Earth. Its surface was believed to hold abundant liquid water. Not too cold, not too hot—strikingly similar to Earth. Life might even exist there.
February 2294: Construction began on three large interstellar ships. That same year, colonists and astronauts were recruited.
December 2298: The ships were completed and named the Plando, the Prilan, and the Wayfarer. They would carry 1.8 million humans and 60 million human embryos to colonize an alien world. The Dalton family also sent dozens of relatives to join the crew.
May 2299: All three ships passed their sea trials.
But when Earth Alliance scientists examined the finished vessels, they pointed out multiple flaws and warned that the technology was still immature—that humanity was attempting interstellar colonization too early.
The Solar Federation answered with mockery.
January 2300: The three ships departed.
Humanity crossed the Kuiper Belt for the first time and entered the never-before-reached Oort Cloud. The following year, the ships gradually accelerated to one-fifth the speed of light. By the third year they had left the Oort Cloud behind, entering the open void as they set course for Vela. The planned travel time was 160 years.
At last, humanity’s dream of leaving the solar system had come true.
At launch, everyone aboard overflowed with courage and bright expectation.
What they didn’t know was the scale of hardship waiting for them—or that they would never set foot on HD 85512b.
A hundred years later, Earth lost contact with the expedition. The three ships, watched by countless eyes and celebrated by billions, vanished without explanation into the endless dark…
***
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***
“When I was young, I thought money was all-powerful. Now that I’m old, I’ve discovered I was right.”
— Marlon Dalton
“People say they can’t see the future. Most of the time, what they really mean is that they did—and they didn’t like what they saw.”
— Ethan Shaw, Europa Deep-Sea Prison
“I roll the most delicate six-sided dice, begging fate for mercy. I throw a cocktail called Madness, trying to stop an apocalypse. I witness impossible life walking soundlessly through endless dark. I listen to addicts dancing all night under the shelter of radio waves. I imagine the ghost of post-communism crouched at a forgotten pier. I’ve met dignified vampires, mediocre syndicates, useless fascists—drifters and proletarians; trash and drunks; betrayal and amnesia; bullets rusting under dust; snow in April that never quite melts. All these cold cases will be devoured by a 2mm black hole—just like our cursed starflight.
“Stop asking where we’re going. The universe is our grave, and the Prilan is our coffin.”
— Madman Leon, Year 218 After Drifting Off Course
Vol. V: Star Ring War