Chapter One: The Launch
Six months before launch day, you can see the Asterion in orbit through the clear dome over Moltke City on Luna. Construction gantries spill out from a docking satellite along with three supply rockets that are set to be sent in advance of your arrival. The main ship and all the unmanned supply rockets are being built in space to save on fuel. Luna is the staging ground for the Europa colony: from one moon to another.
Like all great plans, it started as an implausible dream. And then, through countless meetings, emails, flights, discussions and projections, the possibility of a permanent base on Europa was wrought into something solid. It had all started when NASA's Europa Clipper, an orbital probe that reached the moon in 2030, discovered the remains of microbial life in a water plume spraying out from one of the many cracks in the ice. The discovery that we weren't alone in the solar system was too enticing not to follow up. But further probes failed to catch plumes, the microbes from the Clipper trip were too degraded to make any final conclusions from, and the intense hostility and distance of the moon made robotic investigation an expensive non-starter. Having a science base under the ice itself became increasingly enticing. But the political appetite for space colonies was set back by the debacle of the Martian catastrophe and the collapse of the U.N. in the 2060s.
But now, on the cusp of 2080, sights are set on Europa. The idea of one country or international grouping or corporation owning the moon was intolerable to most, especially after what happened to Luna. So it had to be an international effort. And they needed a figurehead, someone with the right kind of experience. Someone that each group thought (rightly or not) could be trusted to expand their interests. Someone like you.
Next