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Page 1.

Chapter 1. Men's Camp Aerag-15 Desert

The prisoners of war—human, humansh, humanoid—were shadows, broken and leaning over their picks on a harsh red desert terrain under alien stars.

The human Kion Danos had his personal dream world that only he knew about. In it, whenever possible, he would escape from his harsh and probably terminal predicament on Manaul 5.

His home sun, Anacron, was so far away in time and space that its light had not yet reached this forlorn outpost, in a remote stretch of galactic rim now held by the alien Kaarrk.

Kion let his mind wander back across light-eons to an ivy-smothered little house in the peaceful Dominion, where his wife and daughter stood. Anet and Anetena waved welcomes from the red brick porch before their home.

In his soul, where nobody knew or could reach them, Kion nurtured his private memories of home and the two beloved women in his life. It was virtually impossible that he could ever see them again. He was determined he would either reach them somehow, or die trying.

Kion would feel joy in his heart and speed up his step. He would open his arms and run toward the spread embraces of his beloved women.

There were two types of prisoners in the camps on Maunaul 5.

A majority had fought the valiant fight, but were by now worn and beaten down. These men—and women, in their separate, distant camps—had resigned themselves to picking away at the hard red stones in the desert, hour after hour, day after day, growing weaker, until death came in the form of the brutal sun, or a humansh Sekurita’s spark-trunch.

For a tiny minority of prisoners, like Kion, their passion was no longer about fighting the Kaarrk Swarm—dying regiments on lost frontiers, house by house in fallen cities—but about their individual survival and return home to loved ones. Beyond that, certainly the war would not end until the Kaarrk were beaten back for good. Would he volunteer with a new regiment to fight again? Kion dared not dream beyond the moment he’d make his break for it. He dared not think about that unknown darkness in his dreams, about how he would manage to cross untold hostile eons of empty space to reach that doorstep on Tancran chA. He only dreamed about escape, and about that doorway, and nothing inbetween.

Sometimes, achingly, he would make it as far as the porch, and smell the flowers and citric blooms there in an early summer morning breeze.

What good food had they prepared? What fine teas and kofis sat steaming on a long table laden with rich cakes and meats?

He would just close his eyes, thinking to open them again as his warrior body melded with that of his wife.

An instant later, their daughter would wrap herself around both of her parents, as they had done in so many loving moments.

He would gently touch their warm, delicate waists with his rough palms. He would feel their delicate ribs under soft flesh, and linger upon the rhythms of their breathing. He would feel their excitement in his palms, the way a potter feels clay spinning under his fingertips.

As he ran toward that sacred doorway, Kion would close his eyes in exhaustion, anticipating the softness of Anet’s fragrant hair and freshly bathed skin in his arms.

As he leaped, he always prepared himself for the inevitable jerking end. This was the price you paid for blissful dreams. Before he could open his eyes, the harsh reality of his present—and maybe final—days and hours reasserted itself like a hammer blow.

Kion’s exhilarating dream of home snapped away as a shovel nearby stopped feebly clanging on hot stones.

The man had reached the end of his life. He simply could not continue. The will was gone—flown away, like a dove released. It would be. All the human prisoners on the reddish, rocky plain understood. They shared the moment, because it might be the passing of any one of them. For some, death came in the night, like a black-robed psychopomp. For others, death came under the stars and suns on the fields of aching labor. In all cases, it was a shared moment—a part of their greater, communal dying under the alien yoke.

A not-quite-human man's voice rose in anger. A lash snapped.

The clanging, and the yelling, and the heat tore Kion Danos' dream apart like the fragile curtain it was. Like blowing, undulating sheers they rippled away—the dimpled and smiling faces of Anet and Anetena.

Kion returned to this reality. He stood crouched over his brute-force pick, chipping at the hot red sandrock of Manaul 5—a prison world so remote that its light had not yet reached Kion's home world of Tancran chA in the Humansh Dominion.

For an instant, Kion thought the approaching prison guard was headed straight for him—a humanian turncoat in dark-blue guard jumps, with green scales across his forehead. The guard waved a truncheon, and barked commands—in flat-accented Humansh, amid a string of humanoid and alienoid curses—at a sagging man near Kion. Feeling disobeyed, the guard stepped in close to administer state-sponsored terror, Kaarrk style.

The POW's crime was that he'd stopped working—the man was weak from hunger and thirst, and his spirit finally broke. He could no longer lift his shovel to claw at the red desert rubble of Manaul 5. Half a dozen blows, administered with violent precision—Kion shuddered at each strike. The prisoner sank closer to the red ground with each blow.

Kion averted his gaze for fear of his own final, cornered, animal rage. He stayed bent, white-knuckled, over the pick he held. He felt like tearing the guard's truncheon from his cowardly, mercenary, human-hating hands, and beating him into a pulp with it, but it would have meant instant death in a hail of needlefire from the high watchtowers all around. Kion was not ready to die here on this miserable stretch of rock and sand.

Kion was making plans—which did not include dying here. He would escape, or die trying. And that scene of Anet and Anetena waving from civilization and humanity—he would make that a reality. What else was there to live for? Oh yes, to rejoin the war as a free soldier, and continue pushing back against the Swarm assault across the galaxy.

Dozens of hungry human males, scattered around the field, paused over their tools. It was as much an exhausted rest as a stare at inevitable cruelty that could strike any one of them next. It was a shared nightmare. Gaunt faces looked to where their fellow POW lay dead. They touched their palms to their hearts. A brief sound rippled among them—the sacred anima, prayer of life and passage, recited from one heart to another, for their departed brother. Guards yelled at them, and the men resumed labor as other guards came running.

Kion squeezed his eyes shut, and whispered his own anima for the unknown man. The prayer was common to all humans across the known universe, whether free or oppressed. He prayed that the man's soul would be graciously escorted over the river of suffering, and into the house of his ancestors. Kion added a personal wish for a man he had never known, obligated because he was the nearest human who last saw him alive, and as an officer. He tried to remember the words, as best he could, from one of the best-loved verses in the Book of Life:

Pray the Patermater will make fragrant rains and pale blossoms as you cross this bitter river to the holy garden of your ancestors. Let your brothers and sisters wash you, so that you shine with light. Go to the house of your mother and father, and their parents, and all who are your genesame. Your parents embrace you with love, as they did when you were a child. Helah! A bright new star shines in the western sky. Rejoice in the garden of flowers and birds, at the table where this night you are a shining moon. They have prepared a feast with wine, and khytaras, and chanting children in garlands, to send away your sorrows... Homen. (Songs on the River of Exile, SOROE 01:11:9).

Prisoner of War Number 2506678 Danos, Kion, Captain of Infantry, Armed Forces, Treaty Marches Union, Year 12469 MT (ManTime), outwardly looked like any other man among over two million ragged ghosts scattered in camps across Manaul 5. The men of Aerag-15 wore rags, and bent over picks and shovels. There were many such Aerags or POW camps across the harsh red desert of a remote pinprick in space called Manaul 5.

There were women, also, kept far away and well apart in separate camps, across the frozen polar wastelands, where wolvines sang during snowy nights. The last thing the Kaarrk Swarm and their Sekurita enforcers wanted on Manaul 5 was for two million human men and women POWs to find each other and link up. That could bring about a drawn-out rebellion. Humans, who had once ruled the galaxy, were still feared by other races—though the Kaarrk-Swarm were different and knew no fear. They had no history of knowing the humans and what they could do. The Swarm were too busy pounding the Dominion down on all fronts. The human-led Dominion was taking a hell of a beating across the Treaty Marches in the Ruby Arm of the galaxy. Far-flung worlds echoed with sorrowful animas.

Rumor had it that small colonies of escaped POWs were hiding deep in the vast equatorial jungles of Manaul 5. The Kaarrk were determined to find a rumored, hidden Starways portal on the planet, and to wipe out the hidden Runners nests in the jungles. The Runners colony was Kion's one burning hope, as a first step toward making the long journey home.

Kion was biding his time. Freedom had better come soon, or he'd be too weak to run. He thought of the poor soul whose empty shell lay nearby for macabs to devour. That nameless man was now escaped into the spirit world to his holy ancestors, enjoying peace to surpass all human understanding. Through gritted teeth, Kion prayed for years yet to live. As a warrior, he dreamed in turn of escape, a kiss for his loved ones, return to his unit, and his knife finding the neck of every Kaarrk in the Ruby Arm of the galaxy—in that order.

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