The Valley

Prologue

Mars.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. It resides in the what humans call the solar system, and on an even bigger scale, the Milky way galaxy.
Humans have wanted to go to mars for a very long time and the tests that began in 2018 soon lead to much, much more.

The first small test group to launch died before even reaching outer space with the ship blowing up in mid air while it was a tragedy scientists continued working with a new team of trained astronauts.
The second test group did reached Mars landing on ground and everythimg. This should be happy news, right? Their supplies ran out mucu to quickly, and unfortunately the crew fought each other to the death for the last of it. A resque didn't make it in time to save the last one standing either. The loneliness drove him mad, to the point he thought the bodies of his fallen friends were speaking to him. And then he hang himself.

In the following months of these events, scientists realized where they had gone wrong Earth couldn't send one single group of people who had all of the same set of skills required for space work. They needed farmers! They needed engineers, miners, builders, some of everything they already had on Earth. The scientists working on the project received plenty of criticism for their selection so in choosing the next group they also decided to take a more...more widespread approach as to selecting participants, with a variety of ages going down to children. Surprisingly, even with the mishaps of the first two, it didn't stop people from volunteering even with the risks involved. It was decided that 7 members from each country, which was decided through mental, physical and emotional stability tests, with a total of 1,365. This allowed for a wide range of diversity in color, age and skill sets.

Blast off was a complete success, all 195 ships took off towards the red planet. Nobody went to work or school that day, they all sat down on their phones and tvs to watch the blast off.

Then Earth forgot about them.

No, really.

Does this sound impossible? How does an entire planet forget about sending 195 ships to space, with over a thousand of their own people? Well it's very simple really...

war.

Rumors began to surface not to long after that some ships got to take more than 250 pounds of personal/cultural items, others said that the more wealthy countries got to take more than 7 crew members. Some even said that ships were sabotaged to run out of food or oxygen at a certain point before even reaching their destination!

This broke out fights in the streets, nobody would speak bad about their country's ship. No one. several stations connected to communication and well of the ships were bombed and destroyed. Nobody took into account that these people were still on their way to mars, and now had no connection to people on the ground.

Years of information was lost in weeks! One after the other. Some were broken into and wiped or shut down. And these people were abandoned, but they didn't die.

All but 4 ships landed on the planet, 2 were wrecked on impact. These poor people radioed earth for days before they finally accepted nobody was going to hearthem. They began to do what humans to best, build and conquer. Some of them were among the most intelligent and strong. Yes, there was some quarreling, they wouldn't be human otherwise. But the large group agreed together that surviving and taking care of the younger generations was way more important.

So, some got to work building bio domes for housing, livestock, and such. There was a couple ships dedicated to animals alone, with a single person to care for them. Some took out rovers to go search for metal and water deposits. They pooled all of their supplies together and while some did protest, it was the best thing to do until things were up and running. Luckily, there was serious success in numbers, but they still only used half rations as to not use up a single thing.

There was a select group of older people who were unable to assist in building that taught and care for the children of the mission, to keep their minds sharp as well as occupied.

Everything progressed until enough biodomes were completed to start working on the inside, fruit tree planting, working in fields, on generators. While those who built the place toke rest. It worked like a well oiled machine, who needed earth?

It finally began to feel like home for the abandoned people, once they were able to sit back and look around at all they had accomplished? They knew they weren't going to die.

To keep things running, seven people were elected as a council to take care of the station, it would be a lifelong job and they would need to carefully document their experience to be taken over for when the time came, or they simply stepped down. They had finally decided on a name too.

The Valley