“Waste of time,” muttered her partner, Kael, scanning for energy signatures. “We need hease, not museum pieces.”
In the glass-domed botanical station on Europa, “hease” was the most valuable currency—a rare, breathable essence extracted from the moon’s subsurface vents. Lyra was a hease-harvester, and she’d just found a snowflake. hease snowflake
Kael looked. Then he looked again.
The snowflake wasn’t just ice. Its lattice held a pattern—a molecular echo of ancient Europa water, structured in a way their hease-refiners had never seen. If they could replicate it, they wouldn’t just harvest hease; they could grow it. “Waste of time,” muttered her partner, Kael, scanning