Prologue

On a ship far across the galaxy lied a peaceful colony ship sent from Earth.

Onboard the vessel were more than 2,000 colonists, all were experts on their own fields.

By this time, to no surprise, humanity had ended up destroying their own planet in hopes of supplying the endless need for energy.

They had miles upon miles of radioactive dump sites, reactors were always roaring, oil kept burning quicker than it could be renewed, flora and fauna were decimated from poverty.

Everything on Earth was a mess.

The humans then decided to start colonizing other planets with seriousness this time around. They cancelled all their extremely inefficient space programs and focused on building a ship capable of travelling extremely long distances in space while also searching the stars on where would be a suitable planet to colonize.

A century and a half later, mankind had finally made something more useful than an A.I. that shitposts on twitter. They had completed a sustainable propulsion system that could theoretically last them at least a few light years.

They had first developed a mutated strain of a bacteria they found on an asteroid on the edge of the outer ring.

The bacteria could eat anything organic and produce a combustible material called Xenogen, a complex gas that was a mix of xenon(90%), hydrogen(4%), helium(4%), argon(1%) and carbon dioxide(1%). mixed inside.

It was first considered useless.

Until DS6G was invented and made the bacteria become mankind's saving grace.

DS6G (Dual Stage-6 Grid) Ion propulsion system was an extremely high efficiency propulsion engine that could rack up to 1,000 kilonewtons of thrust continuously until the grids start falling apart or the power runs out.

There was only two problems.

One, it could not use any other ejection element other than Xenon or else the Ion Optics get shredded in 10 hours.

Two, it needed nearly 300 kg of plutonium-238 on a reactor to run for a few centuries and eventually accelerate to lightspeed.

The humans at this rate were not using plutonium, but had rather been using the Earth's outer core as heat together with a massive plant they built on mercury to harness the Sun's power.

Thus, the 2,000 kg of plutonium-238 harvested from the entire solar system was used on the mission together with the Xenogen producing bacteria, now renamed as Xenon Bacti. (Creative, these humans are...)

Nobody would think that such an invention would cause problems.

But of course it would, it was something made by humans after all.

And that was just the beginning.