Into The Great Unknown (Arks 2/3)

While Humanity eventually had a happy outcome by being adopted into the galactic culture and treated fairly and given a pair of planets to live on, they still had a rocky start. Out of the 21 Arks that set out from Earth, the 20th Ark was the sole contact point for alien life. Even then, it was sheer blind luck that they crashed into a random tour group cruising through a backwater sector. We already know the 21st Ark flew off into the realms of myth and legend, but what happened to the other 19? After the first Human refugees were brought into the Central Systems and the settlement of New Terra began, Federation authorities initiated a monumental quest to seek out the other arks that fled Earth and might still be sheltering survivors. Federation engineers took the 20th Ark apart, reverse-engineering some of its core technology and creating a system of mobile radio telescopes. These could be mounted to exploratory ships and would allow them to sweep large swathes of the galaxy for the remaining human ships. 

This was a truly enormous undertaking. Even with the ability to track down the remaining arks, there was a huge amount of space to search through. With the Human launch strategy essentially boiling down to "point an Ark in every direction and pray", the arks could have potentially ended up anywhere. Over a period of approximately fifty-five Alliance Standard Years, a coalition fleet of Federation ships numbering in the thousands scoured the galaxy to try and locate each and every lost ark. Amongst these ships, a contingent of humans was tasked with translation and detering any potential conflicts between the rescue crews and any other humans they might find. The idea was that, when an ark was found, a human on a nearby ship would be sent as an envoy in the hope that a familiar face would calm any hostilities. Initial sweeps were not encouraging. The 1st ark to be found had crashed landed on a moon without any atmosphere, the hull ripped to shreds and all hands lost. Today, the only thing left on that moon is a monument to those who lost their lives there. Many were beginning to lose hope until a Rivangian ship came across an ark that had made planetfall on a world with a thankfully oxygen-rich atmosphere but with some less than hospitable wildlife. The planet was home to many species of megafauna that were both acting as occasional food source and a continuous threat to the settlers. By aiding in the defence of the settlement, the rescue crew managed to earn the respect and trust of the settlers, eventually resulting in them gratefully agreeing to be repatriated to New Terra. 

Thirteen other settlements were discoverd in the years following although not all of them were found on the surface of a planet. Six separate arks had managed to get into orbit around planets that were not able to properly support life. This was usually either due to an atmosphere rich in toxic gases or temperatures being far higher or lower than human life can endure. The way that these arks managed to survive was by canablising their ship into a rudimentary space station focused on harvesting resources from the planets below. Three of these space stations gladly dismantled their setups and went with the rescue crews without much resistance or question. For while they had been managing to survive, the lives those humans had been living were not exactly idyllic, often in cramped settings with questionable food sources and barely enough room for the poor souls aboard. However, the final ark that had managed to convert itself into a space station metaphorically struck gold. The 7th Ark had managed to find itself in orbit around the beautiful but utterly hostile planet Xerel. The refugees aboard the ark had managed to send out a few exploratory missions to the surrounding moons, where they discovered what appeared to be a Federation ship that had crash landed there some two-hundred years prior. They salvaged the wreckage and used it to upgrade and maintain their ship, fully converting it into a functional space station. Today, that station has expanded and grown into one of the busiest commercial space ports in the galaxy, commonly known as "7th Heaven". The inhabitants of the station trade heavily with both the modern day Galactic Alliance and those who like to operate on the fringes of the law. They are, to this day, very proud of their independance & that so many of the original crew refused rescue, staying aboard the station to mould it into a sprawling cosmopolitan hub.

While the fate of twenty of the arks was eventually determined and Humanity found new homes and a place amongst galactic society, the fate of the two people who did the most to get them there remains a complete mystery. The 21st Ark, which carried Elias Hodge and Dorje Dhondup amongst so many desperate for a new home, vanished without a trace. What happened to them? What mysteries might the 21st Ark contain? These are questions that have plagued the mind of spacefarers for generations.