4 ideas
Macy Minnot, an ecologist from Earth, is sent to Rainbow Bridge on Callisto to help build a closed biome as a goodwill gesture between Earth and the Outer colonies. The project is sabotaged, and Earth-side interests use the incident to discredit détente. Stranded and blamed, she defects to the Outers, so the diplomatic project becomes a pretext for war.
When the prize is a set of fragile, hard-to-replace life-support habitats, open bombardment destroys what the attacker wants to own. The war is therefore fought mainly through infiltration, sleeper agents, cyber and sabotage attacks, and a short precise strike that disables resistance while leaving domes, factories and people largely intact to be seized.
After climate catastrophe, Earth's ruling powers justify centralised control and dynastic rule by claiming to be restoring the damaged biosphere. The same ecological creed that rewilds Earth condemns the Outers' genetic self-modification and freedom as dangerous excess. Seen this way, environmental stewardship can serve as a ruling ideology that licenses expansion and suppresses dissent.
On moons where every breath depends on a designed biome, whoever can build, repair or poison the ecosystem holds real political power. Gene wizards who design organisms and biomes therefore become strategic assets, fought over like weapons designers. Control of biological design knowledge decides who can survive, and so who governs.