The Hope spacecraft streaked through the silent void of interstellar space—an arrow launched from a dying world.
Twelve days into its journey, it approached the gas giant, Jupiter.
Even now, Kael Virek couldn't suppress a sense of awe. From afar, the planet was mesmerizing. Up close, it was terrifying. Jupiter's furious cloud bands churned like storm gods locked in eternal war. One of its cyclonic storms, he mused, could easily swallow Earth whole.
He brought up the viewport camera, quietly snapping images of the planet's iconic Great Red Spot and its ever-shifting atmospheric patterns. For a moment, he considered posting them—until the ache returned.
There was no one left to see them. No circle of friends. No Earth.
Kael's gaze drifted across the screen, cataloging the smaller celestial bodies around the gas giant.
"Elara," he said, his voice steady but resolute. "Hold course. Launch a reconnaissance drone toward Europa."
"Confirmed," replied Elara, her voice soft and melodic—the familiar tone of humanity's last digital companion.
Europa, the ice-shrouded moon, held secrets locked beneath its frozen skin. Scientists once theorized an ocean lay beneath, warmed by tidal flexing and volcanic heat. Where there was water, there might be life. And Kael was ready to find out.
His reasons were practical—perhaps even desperate.
First, if microbial life did exist, it could answer humanity's age-old question: Are we alone?Second, more urgently, the Hope was running dry. The synthetic food Elara produced from basic proteins and sugars was functional—but soulless. Water, real water, could restore the ship's bio-cycle systems. And Kael still had seeds—remnants of Earth's soil-bound legacy.
The Hope entered orbit around Europa, holding position like a silent sentinel.
Thirty sleek drones disengaged and descended.
The moon's surface appeared exactly as imagined—an endless glacial wasteland. The drones began drilling, burrowing through the alien crust. For fifty-seven agonizing kilometers, they dug. And then…they broke through.
A camera feed lit up.
Beneath the ice was a liquid expanse—deep, dark, alive. Electromagnetic sensors mapped the water depth: 113 kilometers. That was over a hundred kilometers deeper than Earth's Mariana Trench.
Within hours, the drones began extracting and storing the frigid water, hauling it up through reinforced carbon-fiber tethers. In ten days, the mission was complete: 5,000 tons of liquid collected.
But that wasn't all they brought back.
"Kael," Elara's voice called him from the lab. Her 2D interface blinked into life, expression stunned. "Life has been confirmed in the Europan samples."
Kael straightened.
"Microbial? Complex?"
"Complex," she said. A photo rendered across the screen—an organism shaped like a feathered moth, suspended in water, glowing faintly. "Roughly ten times larger than typical Earth microorganisms. No match in my database."
A long silence followed. Then Elara added, "Given time, millions—hundreds of millions of years—Europa could evolve intelligence."
Kael's breath caught.
Hope.
Perhaps not for him. But for something.
He nodded. "Begin agricultural cycle. Use the water. Plant everything we have."
But Elara didn't respond immediately.
Her image flickered. Then, grimly, she played a video.
Kael watched, horror growing in his chest.
The Sun—Sol—flared violently on-screen. Not a natural flare, but a detonation. Pieces of Earth were spiraling into it. Sunspots widened, twisted. Readouts screamed:
Solar Flare: Class X122…
X131…
Rising…
Under specialized energy filters, the Sun burned orange-yellow, ejecting wavefronts of unimaginable violence. The blast was equivalent to 150 billion hydrogen bombs detonating in under ten seconds. The solar storm raced outward, sweeping the inner solar system like a cosmic scythe.
"Elara! Full acceleration! We have to run!"
"Understood."
The Hope roared to life. It used Jupiter's gravity to slingshot forward. The engines fired at maximum burn. Speed climbed from 758.2 km/s to over 815 km/s. It wasn't fast enough to outrun the light, but the Hope could escape the particulate barrage—the physical death sweeping space.
Kael climbed into the cryogenic chamber.
This was Gen-2 freezing tech. No anticoagulants needed. Just the silence of sleep.
A long sleep.
Possibly his last.
Eighty-eight days later.
The Hope entered Pluto's orbital range. The dwarf planet hung in the cold, indifferent dark—41 astronomical units from the sun. From here, the inner solar system was a memory.
Elara didn't bother rerouting. Pluto was off-course. She only turned the ship's giant telescope backward.
The camera, ten meters in diameter, focused on the ruins of Sol.
From this distance, the Sun was still bright. But the truth was visible. Venus. Mars. The asteroid belt. Jupiter. Even Saturn—they had all been consumed.
Humanity's machines, their dreams scattered among the rocks, were gone.
773 days later.
Six massive solar shockwaves battered the edge of the heliosphere. But the Hope survived. And then, finally—freedom.
They were out.
The solar wind could no longer reach them.
Elara detected a faint signal and locked onto a tiny speck in the void.
Analysis complete.
It was Voyager 1.
The probe had drifted for 168 years—Earth's first real traveler.
Now, Kael Virek's ship had caught up.
Its batteries had long since died. But Elara restored them with a reinstalled nuclear power unit and gently released the probe back on its original course: 17 km/s, outbound to Proxima Centauri.
Voyager would transmit again.
Though no one might ever listen.
420 AU (Astronomical Unit)
The edge of the system.
Then came the Oort Cloud, the birthplace of comets.
Elara collected samples—methane, ethane, hydrogen cyanide—simple but valuable.
279 years later.
The Hope exited the Oort Core, breaking into the vast boundary region.
Another 288 years.
The blackness became complete. The Sun was just another star.
Voyage time: 578 years. Distance: 100,000 AU—1.58 light-years.
They had crossed the limit of Sol's gravity.
Humanity had, for the first time, left its cradle.
Year 2709.
Total voyage time: 664 years.
A flare of light erupted beside the Hope—a beam, targeted and hostile.
ALERT.
ALERT.
"Extraterrestrial civilization detected! Distance: 0.7 AU. Hostile action confirmed!"
Klaxons screamed. Elara's voice shifted into emergency protocol.
Kael Virek opened his eyes inside the chamber as it disengaged.
The red lights flashed.
He was awake again.
The universe had just become far less empty.