Location(s): Titan, Mercury, Io, Europa
The approval of the USTIB-91A bill sent ripples across the Solar System. Within the first six months of 2192, the largest coordinated off-world mobilization effort in human history began. Horizon Industries led the charge, with specialized terraform teams, engineers, and AI-linked survey units fanning out toward the moons and inner planets. The UNSC provided military and logistics support, along with classified threat monitoring. Colonies contributed both manpower and resources, eager to secure future homes for their growing populations.
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TITAN – Mist and Ice
Titan's atmosphere had long been cloaked in a methane-rich haze. The planet's skies were orange and suffocating, and surface temperatures hovered around -179°C. As solar collectors and temperature-modulating satellites began to enter orbit, Horizon's lead team deployed in Dome Hub Alpha, nestled on a flat methane sea shelf.
Horizon biologists released engineered algae strains into the methane lakes, aiming to initiate the first step of chemical transformation.Problems arose with methane-storm turbulence disrupting the orbiting solar mirrors; several mirror fragments crashed into Dome Beta, causing limited casualties.UNSC engineering units from Luna repaired the dome and began installing the first hardened geothermal tethers deep beneath Titan's icy crust.A subsurface tremor of unknown origin registered on Horizon seismographs. While publicly dismissed as tectonic shifting, ONI agents flagged it as a potential anomaly, red-classified."The ice isn't dead. It shifts like it remembers something."
– Geothermal Tech Rajel Thorn, Personal Log, Dome Alpha
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MERCURY – A Scorching Start
Mercury's extreme solar exposure was both its curse and its greatest resource. Dawnfire's first phase focused on building a planetary solar grid, drawing power to run subterranean habs.
Magnetic field scaffolding was deployed in orbit to create a semi-stable shield zone.First dig team began excavating tunnels beneath the scorched rock, using Horizon's new seismic-dampening drills.UNSC escort units fended off a pirate skiff that tried to breach a supply convoy—indicating early black-market interest in terraforming tech.
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IO – Quaking Ground
Io was unstable from the start. Horizon's safety team marked the entire project site "yellow" for hazardous exposure. The moon's violent volcanism forced workers into reinforced crawler stations.
Deployment of seismic suppressor towers began under extreme conditions.Several drones were lost near a caldera while testing magma-core redirectors.ONI surveillance flagged unusual magnetic readings near the southern hemisphere, far beyond expected geological behavior. A scout probe was quietly redirected.
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EUROPA – Beneath the Ice
Europa's serene surface concealed a deep alien ocean. Horizon launched deep-ice drilling units and seeded the first bio-luminescent micro-ecosystem. Initial civilian teams began arriving under tight watch.
Drilling units made it to Ocean Layer 1—resulting in limited pressure breach and minor flooding.Horizon's VI "SEED-9" began real-time environment modeling for the future dome network.A deep sensor detected unusual warmth and organic mass drift near the southern trench. Observation teams were rotated in with full hazard gear.
The discovery was reported to ONI under black-tier clearance.By the end of 2192, each terraforming site had been established with its core infrastructure teams. Civilian support began rallying around the dream of a second, third, even fourth Earth. News agencies across the colonies broadcast daily updates from the sites, with Titan's hazy progress becoming a symbol of hope.
But beneath the surface—of the ice, the lava, the pressure domes—strange signals and deep anomalies began to flicker. Most were ignored. Some were buried. A few… were being tracked in silence.
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Location: Europa – Southern Subglacial Trench
ONI Operations Division – Black-Level Report Archive
In the final quarter of 2192, ONI's Subsurface Recon Division, operating under the codename "SIREN WARD", flagged several anomalous sensor returns from multiple terraform sites. After cursory analysis, most were dismissed:
Titan's seismic anomalies were deemed crustal flexing.Io's magnetic distortion was linked to magma movement.Mercury's flare activity matched solar cycle projections.Only one anomaly, from Europa, remained persistently abnormal.
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The Europa Signal
Detected by Horizon's SEED-9 VI and relayed to ONI via passive telemetry, the anomaly was a low-frequency pulse, repeating every 73 seconds. The pulse's harmonic structure matched nothing in human data sets—until cross-referenced against Atlas Core Relics recovered a decade prior from the Jovian Black Vault.
The match was 74% identical to what ONI once flagged as "Ceph Residual Frequency – Type Theta".
Origin point: Trench Depth Marker 09-K, approx. 17km beneath surface ice.Emission source: unknown. No heat signature. No mass displacement.Horizon was not alerted. ONI classified the find under VANTA BLACK status.SIREN WARD deployed a two-person covert dive team in specially modified Abyss-class submersibles.
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Operation DEEPMARK
Lt. Commander Maren Lasker (ONI, Xenotech Recovery)Dr. Alaric Voss (Contracted Specialist, formerly Hargreave-Rasch)Using Horizon's infrastructure as cover, the ONI team descended into the deep trench. The journey took 9 hours, traversing bioluminescent ecosystems that had begun forming due to synthetic seeding. When they reached the pulse site, they found a perfectly spherical chamber melted into the surrounding ice—not natural.
At the center was a structure, roughly the size of a dropship. It looked dormant—like a buried organ encased in crystal.
Lasker described it in her report:
"The thing isn't just transmitting… it's listening. Every time we approach, the pulse changes. Like it's recalibrating."
When they brought the submersible too close, it sent out a resonant burst that knocked out Dr. Voss' suit sensors. Within minutes, he began experiencing hallucinations, reporting whispers and flashes of geometric landscapes.
He was extracted, sedated, and later quarantined aboard an ONI cruiser in orbit.
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ONI
The structure was immediately flagged as a Ceph Vault Node—possibly dormant for millennia.
No attempt was made to breach or extract it yet.Vice Director Halbek authorized containment protocols, which included:Expanding the no-fly zone over the site under the pretense of environmental hazards.Covertly replacing the SEED-9 VI with a "cleaned" version that filters the pulse from all public data feeds.Locking down knowledge of the signal to five individuals inside ONI.
"The galaxy doesn't need another fire it can't extinguish."
– Halbek, in closed-door briefing to the High Command Oversight Cell