Weathering the Storms

A loud crack of thunder shook the room, causing the windows to rattle so much Evie thought they would break. It was silly of her; she knew that the windows were well-made and so durable it would probably take a direct hit from one of the orbital lasers to even scratch it. There were blackout curtains on all the windows, and she pushed one aside in time to see a spear of lightning illumintate the city. Storms like this were getting more and more frequent as the planet continued to decay.

Another boom of thunder rumbled through her small room. Sighing, she let the curtain drop and went to her desk, rather than back to bed. There was no way she was getting any sleep now. Might as well get some work done.

She waved her hand over the desk, activating the terminal. The gentle glow cast soft shadows on her face as she brought up her latest project. The thunderstorm continued to rage outside, but it only cemented her need to work. She was near a breakthrough, she just knew it. It was absolutely vital that she find it and progress to the next stage of her work.

The planet outside was not Earth, the origin of humanity. It wasn't even in the same solar system, in fact. Humankind had left Earth hundreds of years ago in vast colonial ships, leaving behind a scant few thousand on their dying world.

Many of those ships reached their destinations and found the potential new worlds to be dead, useless, or completely hostile. Terraforming had been in its infant stages at that point, and few worlds had survived the process. Sigma Tau had been one of the few that match Earth closely enough to allow for habitation, though the native population had suffered greatly.

Evie knew her history, knew that humans were always meddling where they needn't, were always destroying, always pushing their way in to places they didn't belong. But those original settlers were hundreds of years in the past. Evie had been born on Sigma Tau. She didn't approve of her forebears actions, but that would not stop her from trying to save the planet of her birth.

The heart of her city was a massive terraforming station. Every ship had been equipped with what had been groundbreaking technology. It had been added to and upgraded over the years but the meddling had caused massive climate shifts that eventually led to superstorms, much like the one over the city now.

Evie was doing her best to correct the meddling. Her proposition to shut down the facility entirely and let nature take its natural course had been shut down nearly unanimously. She'd been given two options, after that: fix it, or quit and let someone else try.

There was no one else with her level of training. So, she'd had no real choice at all.