Seedlings of Earth

After climate change became climate crisis and forced the abandonment of Earth, humans have been living in the wider Solar System for over 8000 years, interraforming asteroids and establishing bases on planets and larger moons. Kye Sheb is a LifeScaper. She designs the interior spaces of asteroids and craters, adding the limited life that escaped on the Arks in self-sustaining combinations. Kye's parents, Monik and Dantam, fly the Ore-miner Marentin, searching out asteroids for precious metals and looking for large enough rocks that can be hollowed like an egg for interraforming. Sten works for Meltoric Comz, one of the wealthiest Politics in the System. Both are looking for Probe 19, a craft that has passed into myth. Probe 19 - so the story goes - contains the Svalbard Seed and Animal Bank and during the last days of the evacuation of Earth, a group of scientists blasted it into the furthest reaches of the System, hoping the cold and dark would keep it safe for future generations to find, eventually using it to return to mankind's home planet. Meltoric needs a young Lifescaper with a unique vision for LifeSpace design that doesn't exist in the currently rigid discipline. Even better should that LifeScaper have parents with a ship large enough to hold ore, one large enough perhaps to carry a different cargo. Alnan Comz blames his father for his mother's death and wants to see him humiliated, thwart his every move, take his seat as a powerful Politic, and Mykar, his tame psychopath, is only too happy to help. Killing for fun is what he does and a whole family is too good an opportunity to miss.