Sky-132 - [best]

His shuttle, the Last Gasp , docked with an echoing clang. The airlock groaned open. Inside, Sky-132 smelled of rust and old starlight. Gravity was a suggestion here—a faint spin left over from better days. Elias floated through corridors lined with faded murals of blue skies and green fields. The habitat had once been a tourist trap, a "slice of Earth" for Martians who had never seen a real cloud.

He knelt and touched the soil.

Elias took a step forward. His suit’s sensors went wild. Breathable oxygen. Trace pollen. Temperature: 22°C. sky-132

The door hissed open. Beyond it was no vault. It was a garden. A real, impossible garden. Under a ceiling of simulated sunlight, trees grew—actual trees, their roots tangled in hydroponic soil. A stream burbled. Bees—living, breathing bees—droned among flowers. The air was sweet and wet and alive. His shuttle, the Last Gasp , docked with an echoing clang

But Elias had a map. A real one, smuggled from a data-broker on Phobos. It showed Sky-132 not as a derelict habitat, but as a seed vault. Before the war, before the great fracturing, someone had stored the genetic codes of Earth’s lost forests in its core. Redwoods. Baobabs. Chestnuts. If the map was right, that data was worth more than a fleet of ships. Gravity was a suggestion here—a faint spin left

"Who made this?" he whispered.