[center][h3]History Lesson 3: “Survivors’ Guilt”[/h3][/center]

OOC:  This episode will include a few interspersed history briefs to set the stage for China Doll’s adventures at Asteroid AN-3872.


From [u]Let’s Learn History!  Grade 3[/u]

…”The arks carried all the people from Earth-That-Was for a long, long time, over 100 years! If you were a new baby when the journey began, your grandchildren would be very old when they arrived in our new home.”


From [u]Foundations in Alliance History - Grade 12[/u]

…”While the arks carried a substantial portion of Earth’s population to the new system, there were other vessels that followed in the journey.  Conditions aboard those ships could be harsh.  Some didn’t survive the rigors of a 125 year spaceflight.”


From [u]The Eternal Voyage: The Lost Generation Fleet[/u]  - Banned

…”Due to the physics of inertia in spaceflight, these ‘ships of the dead’ kept pace with their living counterparts, a vast, traveling graveyard that over time hindered navigation and forced the use of precious fuel in collision avoidance burns.  When the time came for the designated course correction burn to intercept the terraformed worlds of Londinium and Osiris, many ships of the following fleet lacked sufficient fuel.  Some fared well, choosing pre terraformed worlds on which to land and await possible rescue.  Others lost the gamble, and were subsequently doomed to join their counterparts of the ‘Graveyard Fleet’ for an unending journey.”

…………………………

For a humanity now spaceborne, the first few years were dreadful.  Year One of The Migration saw an astonishing death toll.  Most casualties were those whose only choice to escape their fate on Earth was a berth aboard one of the thousands of vessels ill suited for a 1.25 century voyage.  The first ‘Mayday’ calls came after only a week, mechanical and structural failures outweighing the wishful thinking of those who cast their lots in the ragtag flotilla.   As weeks became months, once optimistic supply manifests were reduced to ever more draconian rationing.  When a vessel’s food, water, or oxygen reached critical levels, their fate was broadcast via the now customary SOS call.

The cruel truth not taught in history classes was that none of these cries for help was ever answered.

This willful ignorance was based in sound reasoning.  In space, the old adage about “turning the battleship” is made exponentially more costly and difficult.  The first challenge to a would-be rescuer would be their own fuel consumption.  The acts of changing course and implementing acceleration/deceleration burns would greedily consume resources sorely needed for the final maneuvers at voyage’s end.  The actual rescue itself was fraught with danger, from two vessels maneuvering in close quarters at speeds beyond 20,000kph to the crewmembers who’d be forced to traverse the void between them.  Of course, supply was the most insidious hurdle. Those rescued and their eventual progeny would spend the rest of the voyage consuming their savior vessel’s food, water, and oxygen.  Long story short, a rescue attempt could very well be a death sentence for the rescuer.

Many bridge crew personnel suffered neurological trauma, relative to the ongoing litany of exceedingly desperate distress calls.  For those tortured souls, relief did not come when a ship would eventually fall silent.  One had only to glance at the radar screen, or in some cases, look through a viewport to witness the fate of their fellow travelers.  The corpse ships would glide along their course headings, a ghostly reminder of unanswered distress calls that drove many a conscientious survivor to madness.

Most of those afflicted fell into deep bouts of depression.  More serious cases retreated into delusional thought, manic judgment, or suicidal tendencies.  Some lapsed into a wanton depravity that present day Alliance officials are quick to point toward as counterpoint to the assertion that their Miranda experiments might have created Reavers.

Though it is rumored that some records of the Graveyard Fleet exist, the Alliance firmly refutes this claim.