Dilandu wrote:The main question was, actually, the avaliability of starships to pull any kind of such trick. I really doubt that by the time of Operation Ark there were many non-combat interstellar starship remains, and probably none private ones at all. There were basically no need to maintain any kind of interstellar cargo hauling carpacity after the last major Federation colony outside Sol system was destroyed in 2406 (and, considering the blockade, all cargo transportation outside Sol system was probably stopped in late 2380s).
So, there probably were no cargo starships left in service by 2411, and all remaining starship-building industry was working only for a military. Operation Ark ships, I must remind, weren't the usual cargo haulers - they were purpose-build stealthy transports, specifically designed to be as undetectable as possible.
I think, it is possible that other government agencies might have their own projects, running parallel Operation Ark (like PICA-equipped ships), and probably they could secure at least some interstellar-capable ships for that.
I'm mostly talking about hiding out IN EARTH'S SOLAR SYSTEM. You don't need interstellar craft for that. as long as their stealth tech is good enough, and the Gaba are still outside of Pluto Orbit, the minimum requirements for a last-hope hideout attempt are pretty small... you could probably do it with an assault shuttle, or even a few dozen shipping containers.
Minimum requirements would probably be...
1 extreme-enviroment PICA.
10 highly experienced engineers, stored purely as active VR personalities.
1 small, bootstrap-capable fabrication device.
1 small, regen/artifical womb/genetic editing device.
1 Complete library, including manufacturing instructions for PICAS, Fabbers, NEATS, nanotech, and medical drugs/devices.
500 virtual colonists, stored as inactive data files.
1 Liquid-Nitrogen medical freezer, storing 50,000 pre-fertilized human eggs, possibly with nanotech preservatives.
1 long-life, low-power battery system, with no neutriono emmisions, and heavy electric shielding.
1 completely fail-safe, extreme enviroment-safe, cold-start boot-up system, with a 1000-year countdown clock.
1 small fusion reactor, turned completely off, with fuel types which are immune to long-term storage decay. such as water.
1 small, extreme-enviroment, universal mining system, calibrated for the target enviroment.
1 extreme-enviroment airlock.
1 extreme-enviroment hull, calibrated to store everything safely in the target enviroment.
1 short-term stealth system, rating for a few days of operation before shutdown.
That's pretty much IT. You could put all that in something the size of an assault shuttle, or maybe 4 shipping containers strapped together.
Then you just... drop it onto the surface of Venus, with a parachute. And leave it lying down there. Or strap a balloon to it, then drop it down into Jupiter's atmosphere. Or send it to bottom of the methane seas of Titan. The stealth system only needs to survive for long enough that no-one sees your landing.
And then it just sits there. for a thousand years. A colony-in-a-box, waiting on a timer. Figuring out how to survive at the bottom of a hostile gravity well, at extreme temperatures and pressures, with no engines, and only one airlock, one PICA, and one universal mining device is left as an exercise for the user.
You'll figure out a way to rebuild civilization down there eventually. Probably. Be careful when you wake up: the Gaba might still have a patrol boat orbiting overhead, and the only human-habitable planet in the system is probably still a nuclear-bombarded wasteland.