The Final Fleet program was born of necessity. Nations were gone, rivalries forgotten and races irrelevant. We were just......one.

A fleet of ships, once transport vessels on the long hall runs to the failed Mars colonies, underwent a barrage of rushed modifications. They were to be our saviours, the hope of an entire species. The remaining humans underwent modifications as well. Their previous lives were forgotten, their skills were rewritten, their knowledge reforged. A random collection of survivors were shaped into an expert crew. A crew which was resigned to death, hundreds of martyrs who would give their lives to allow future generations to live.

The fleet was named after the ships which originally brought colonisation to the land down under that they now took refuge in. Launch was made on May 13th 2387.

Sahara - Chief Historian and Medical Officer, HMAS Sirius

Falkirk watched as the ship's water supply poured from the hull breach, bubbling and congealing in the blackness.  "Are you okay?" he asked, pulling Sahara to her feet. She nodded shakily, eyes wide with terror. "It's sealed," he reassured, checking his wifi feed from the bots.
"I guess there's no debate as to the point of this attack," mumbled Sahara, adjusting her dark hair. The captain didn't respond, too busy immersed in damage reports from the ship bots.

Dealing directly with the bot army was not something he would do under normal circumstances. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should," his mother would always say. "Use the crew, they need to feel like you need them on the ship. They need to feel duty of their own." It wasn't as if the crew didn't know about his connection to the bots, in fact they all had an inactive implant themselves, but there was simply no way that they could ever comprehend the depth and complexity of the bond. The rest of the crew would feel that static rush scamper across their minds when they were connected their workforce on Hope's surface. Under normal circumstances he would ask questions through the communicator, questions he already knew the answers to. With a saboteur wandering the corridors disguised as a friend though, the bots suddenly became his only trustworthy source.

Persia burst onto the bridge. "Are you two okay?" she asked. Essex stomped in close behind her. While Persia ran straight to Sahara, checking her over for injuries, Essex was drawn straight to the sight of life fluid seeping from the ship's wound. His initial shock and trepidation, at seeing their precious water supply lost, was only diminished by the looming sight of Hope before him.
"I spend too much time in the bloody bowels of this ship. I never realised we were this close," he grumbled.
"Everyone to the bridge," Falkirk announced into his communicator. His brow wrinkled, struggling to keep frustration from his voice. His inability to see the second attack coming crawled beneath Falkirk's skin with needle like spines. He had simply been too focused on who had betrayed him, to look at the bigger picture.

Kingston was the last to arrive. He was visibly shaken. His role as hydrologist was a duty he took very seriously, almost to the point of obsession. The loss of so much precious h2o had sent him into an emotional spiral. "I closed the tanks off as soon as I could, so what was in the pipe system is saved," he stuttered, desperately avoiding any glances out the large viewing portal.
"What does it matter?" asked Paris. "The planet is right there, let's land and get some fresh water rather than this recycled piss."
Kingston's eyes ignited with fire. "Recycled piss!? Do you have any idea how much work I put into getting your manky piss to the stage where it not only serves purpose as a hydrant, but also tastes palatable enough to keep down," he roared thrusting his thick dark index finger at Paris. "Might I add that it's better than this air you've been pumping into us. It smells like old man breath."
"You Jackass, I'll...." Paris replied before being sharply cut off by their captain.
"Enough!" Falkirk took a deep breath, quickly counting to make sure everyone was present. "Kingston, good job saving the water you could. Yes, we know there is water on the surface of Hope, but we don't know if it is potable." Mumbles of realisation rolled around the room. "Paris, we all know you are working miracles on a daily basis to keep oxygen in our lungs." She smiled under the praise. "But let's be honest, it does smell like old man breath in here," Falkirk said with a smile. The mood lightened.

"We were all in pairs," said Adelaide, uncomfortably raising her hand. "Does that mean there is actually two traitors on the crew?"
"Maybe," replied Falkirk, "or maybe the charges were place earlier with a timing device. Either way it was carefully planned. Once again, it was in a place where we all would have accessed in the last few days and positioned so it ruptured both tanks as well as the hull."
"But why do this now, so close to Hope? If they wanted to kill us they should have done it weeks ago, we would have suffocated in the middle of nowhere," said Sydney, running his fingers through his thick curly hair. His eyes stared off into space like he was asking someone no one else could see.
"Why are you assuming that there is any forward thought in anything this fuckbag traitor does?" grumbled Essex.
"Coms," said Persia. It was just a whisper at first, but the thought's second emergence found lungs. "Coms!"

The bridge was silent as confused brains, already loaded beyond comfort with ceaseless cycling thoughts, tried to process the new addition. Then suddenly through the haze, as if those brains were linked as one hive mind, the glassy eyes of the crew sparked with lightning as they all understood. The Sirius had passed beyond the black curtain, the distance at which the data streams that connected the fleet were stretched and frayed to the point of failure. They were in the dark, on their own. It was an outcome that had been anticipated. The Sirius was markedly faster than the rest of the fleet, so they were prepared to land and prepare on their own. In a year or two, the Supply, the next fastest of the fleet should catch up. The attacks were planned to ensure the fleet arrived blind into, at best a hostile uncolonised planet or at worst a straight up trap.

"Well let's put this boat on the ground before we get blown into the cold black," growled Essex storming towards the massive viewing portal. A round of support grew from the crew as they joined him staring at Hope, excitement drowning out their fear.
"I'm afraid it may not be so easy," said Falkirk, reluctantly killing the moment. His crew turned their wide hopeful eyes to him. "We lost the thrusters in that first explosion, I'm guessing it was the target. I'm guessing they intended to prevent us landing."
"How the hell would old school tech like thrusters affect our landing, the dark-mag scales piss all over them. I mean they propel us by pushing against the magnetic field of dark matter itself, how freaking cool is that," spouted Persia energetically.
"No one's denying the 'freaking coolness' of the dark-mag scales, but what about the gravity?"
Persia's light drained from her expression, "Shit! The ship's mass, we'll be out of control."

Twelve generations of epic space travel can result in everyday parts of human life, like gravity, soon becoming as alien as the world they intend to settle. Panic started to take the crew. "We can't stay up here without water," spat Kingston.
"And the air is nearly gone," added Paris, holding her hands out to Falkirk.
"Can't stay here, can't get down there, may as well have one last god damn purge and join our parents," rumbled Essex.
"Why is this happening to us?" asked Sydney. "Why would one of us do this?"
"We are part of the problem," said Sahara. "We will be the solution. Wherever the disease should spread, the Utopians will be there to cleanse it," she recited, her eyes closed as she drew it from her memory. The crew hushed. "According to the histories, that is the final communication the fleet ever received from Earth. Most thought nothing of it, just more Utopian rhetoric, but perhaps there was something much more literal about the opening line 'We are part of the problem'. They saw their own species as a cancer on the universe, perhaps they infiltrated the fleet. Perhaps they have remained dormant all these generations."

The silence was so thick on the bridge that Falkirk struggled to force voice from his throat. "Well I don't know which of you if any is the Utopian, and I don't much care. I'm getting to the planet surface even if it kills me. It's what we were born to do. It's what our generation is destined to do. I'm not letting the twelve generations of floaters before us down. Strap in, I think this is going to be rough."

He calmly walked to his seat and began to fit his harness. It was hard, his heart was racing so fast that his fingers shook and quivered out of control, rattling the buckles loudly. "Wait!" called Adelaide. She waited a moment, as if stoking her tiny voice to a volume that could be heard. "The scales will work inside Hope's atmosphere right?" she asked looking at Persia.
"Yeah, but the gravity will make the mass of the ship too heavy to control once gravity takes hold. The thrusters would have counteracted that."
"You got spare scales?" Persia nodded and Adelaide continued, her confidence growing, "Give me ten hours and let me fire up a few of my bots and I should be able to rig up a little dark-mag pod for us to land in, something simple, but light. We can set the ship on auto, bail out to land and then track the ship down and see how she faired."
"Not much of a plan, the Sirius could just end up as a field of debris," said Persia.
"True," added Falkirk, "but us being onboard wouldn't change that. At least with Adelaide's plan we could survive." The captain looked around his crew. One by one they gave him a reluctant nod. "Do it Adelaide."