In the year 2257, Fleet Command issued orders for the TSS Dampier to undertake a decade-long journey to the outermost edges of the solar system to explore and map the dark matter fields lying there. Captain Xoxi Xiang was placed in command of a crew that included a genetically modified navigator, Jean-Paul Fourier, capable of perceiving gravitational gradients. Captain Xiang herself had undergone similar genetic engineering as a very young child,...