By David C. Daoust
Very little is known of the age before the Ark Age. Not just because of the centuries involved in the trek to the second sun, it was, in fact, forgotten by design. While most humans of the Onion know next to nothing of the Age before, the Ark Ships still hold record of it all.
Earth was abandoned thousands of years before, as the swelling sun had made it uninhabitable. Humanity had pushed all the way out onto Saturn’s moons before the sun started to show signs of the impending catastrophe. A catastrophe that would not only destroy the sun, but all in its orbit. Most of the ‘old world’ was considered to be Mars by the time the humans decided to abandon the solar system entirely.
The Martian population was so vast, that they filled two of the ark ships themselves; Grandeur I and Grandeur II. The Jupiter Front and Saturn Colonials each built their own ships; Neo Ganymede and Rhea Epsilon. Not surprisingly, it was the two Martian ships that instigated the fighting, fighting against each other at that. The wars raged for years between the two ark ships. Star fighters battling it out -in transit- as the two main Martian societies, which had become at odds throughout Martian history, had allowed the battles to follow them to the stars.
Saturn and Jupiter found it next to impossible to stay neutral, and choosing a side was the same as declaring war. It was not until the threat of complete and utter destruction of an entire Ark Ship that the AI of said Ark Ships stepped in.
It was a bomber, a last daring strike against a winning regime, tantamount to a terrorist strike that crippled the fourth ark ship. Under normal circumstances it was not in the Ark Ships programming to interfere with the affairs of man, though so many had died already and since the repairs to the ship may prove near impossible, something had to change.
The ark ship, Grandeur II, was lost. The existing ark ships took as many of the survivors as they could fit on their decks, though somewhere out there still floats a crippled ark ship not completely barren of people. Whether or not these people survived, will probably never be known.
What the survivors didn’t know was that the ark ships instated an integration protocol after the incident, which basically jumbled the families of all ships, all communities, all the civilizations, separating anyone that may be trouble makers and integrating them elsewhere among all three of the remaining ark ships, all of which under the guise of re-distribution to make room for the survivors of Grandeur II. Most of the populations were so horrified by the loss of an entire ark ship… that they did not question, and they did not fight for longer than one might imagine.
As the years went by the Ark Ships, little by little, stopped teaching certain facts of the Age before, unbeknownst to the people, history slowly fell away until the only history those people of the ark ships knew was that of the three Ark Ships; Neo Ganymede, Rhea Epsilon, and the surviving Martian ship which was renamed Grandeuri Alpha, mostly due to the lost history of Grandeur II.
This history wipe was true for most, though legend always prevails, and history is not that easily erased. Amongst legends of the horrible nightmare civilization of the returning lost ark ship (that no one believed, though was center stage of many -many- horror movies) there was one family that kept record. Probably not the only record in human hands, but of them all, it was the most accurate.
The Swan family was one of the surviving families of the lost Ark Ship. Their family was actually famous for the act, despite the fact all they did was not die. When it came time for people to look to someone to lead, the Swan’s vaunted reputation helped their voices to be heard in hard times.
The Swans, while not the first of the Royals, dated back to the beginning. Socialist by situation, like all those aboard the Arks, they distributed resources and decided production among all the Ark Ships for centuries. A strong family line that survived, in power, from just after the lost ark, all the way to the start of the Age of the Second Sun and beyond!
Mari Swan was just a wisp of a girl when she first read through the records of the Age before the Ark. She was enthralled by it all. The idea of the battles, and star fighters, and guns, amused her to no end. The fact that it was real, didn’t register in her mind until much later in life.
Mari Swan dreamed of being a Star Fighter, from the very start.
Much of her life was spent swaddled in silk, a spoiled little princess, like many of the descendants of the original Royals. Their reputation was the most important piece to hold them in power, and the only way they managed to hold on to that, was through their intelligence. Spoiled or no, education was the most important part of the Royal’s hold over the people. As such their records were meticulous . It was not far off to guess that the close relationships between the Swans and the Ark Ships were due to just how much knowledge the Swans held of the past.
Their family had bought into the Planetary Domes immediately, as many of the Royals had upon arriving to the new solar system. An act that removed them from power just enough, for the Trade Consortium to gain a toehold. The Consortium’s strong capitalist movement was backed by coin from the construction of the Domes the Royals, and those others rich enough to afford it, would need to survive whilst the planets were being terraformed around them. With this toehold the Trade Consortium was able to develop trade routes between the different city-stations, colonies, and the Planetary Domes that made up the Onion. All of which strengthened the Trade Consortium’s hold.
Mari Swan spent many Sundays in the family’s archives, reading through past events, events very few in the Onion would ever know.
The Ark Ships wanted it this way.
Her grandfather was not a fan of this fact, though it was something their ancestors had agreed to long ago… And it helped to quell any possible feuds.
Her grandfather though, he had his own views, his favorite of which, was quite simply that those that fail to learn from the past, are doomed to repeat it.
The truth was, Royals were a figure head to the Ark Ships, a front man, a human face that the population could relate to. This helped the Ark Ships keep the wars to a minimum whilst they completed their trek. That’s not to say there were not problems, violence and fighting, though very rarely was there violence as there was before the lost Ark Ship was left stranded in the nothing, crippled.
