Far Wars: Cosmopolis, City of the Universe (Empire of Time Series) by A. T. Nager (John Argo age 19)

Page 9.

Chapter 3. Kion the Runner

Freedom. How strange, Kion Danos thought, to leave behind the anonymity of being one drop in a river—to become a lone Runner who would shortly be hunted by every snout, skimmer, and gun on Manaul 5.

As he jogged steadily among the boulders, the sun Manaul floated low in the purplish-blue sky to the west, a festering yolk in a violent splash of reddish-purple cloud-fire. If he could keep running, ducking, and hiding past nightfall, the merks were sure to retire for the night. It would buy him a little rest and breathing time before tomorrow's continuing run.

In the next three or four minutes, a cascade of thoughts tore through his mind.

Amid the pack of thousands of human and loyal humanian and even alienoid prisoners of war, you were sheltered by anonymity. You survived by keeping your gaze downward amid a flowing, viscous mass of doomed lives. They died slowly, day by day, hour by hour. The body was steadily starved of minerals and nutrients. The desert robbed you of water as well, and the labor eventually broke every man. This freedom was unexpected, sudden, and exhilarating, as well as scary. You were alone and exposed. You were no longer anonymous. Who you were and what you did mattered. You made your own decisions from minute to minute—the payoff was life or death.

Kion often wondered how things fared in the women's camps.

He knew of three ugly suppositions about POW life on Manaul 5.

One: The Swarm held captured POWs for ransom and for prisoner swaps, except those who died or were killed for the sake of power and order.

Two: The Swarm scoured human minds at night, seeking information while trying to comprehend oxycarb thought processes. Prisoners joked that the concept was like a poison spider trying to comprehend a human man and wife kissing before sex, and stumbling over the detail that the human female did not eat him while he climaxed. The Swarm more generally used the prison camps as experimental ant colonies, to learn from their incomprehensible oxycarb enemies. The mind-scouring only worked at very close range, luckily.

Three: Rumor had it that the Kaarrk orbiting in their methane and ammonia filled hives actually had a reason for digging up and rearranging the red rocks of Manaul 5. Supposedly, they were looking for a lost portal to the Starways beyond time and space. If this was true, it surely must be the most important reason for the entire prison colony on this remote planet.

All of this meant that, instead of conveniently piloting shiploads of prisoners into the nearest sun—or just leaving them to deox, decompress, and die in mid-space—Kaarrk took the trouble to ferry them to labor camps on remote islands in deep space like Manaul 5. It meant a chance for warriors to survive, to run, to love, to fight.

Kion must put distance between himself and his work battalion, before the guards took their next head count, and realized they were missing one swinging dick.

Now I am free, Kion thought, though he could not convince himself yet. I am dead was more like it. He tried to send his mind to the safety and comfort of Tancran chA, but it wasn't possible just now, for the first time. He wanted to run toward Anet and Anetena, even as he pounded away among the large boulders strewn eons ago at the bottom of a long-lost salty sea. But this business of running for your life required concentration. No time for dreams. It was almost as if his two beloved women were waving him away—urging him to concentrate on living so he could return to them.

Plenty of time for dreams if you successfully got away. Eternal dreams if a fatal burst of deadly fire ripped your guts away. You then passed into the spirit world, the house of your ancestors. Realizing the desperate gravity of his situation, Kion recited the sacred prayer common to all humankind, no matter where they were scattered in a hostile galaxy. This was the anima, an ancient gaada dedicated to the four elements of earth, wind, waters, and starfire. Nobody even knew if there had ever really been a place called Earth, as myth and legend persisted there had been. Earth or soil was the first hieroglyph or sacred symbol of the anima (spirit, soul) on every human tombstone anywhere. It was recited by one's loved ones with great solemnity at birth, at marriage, on the birth of each child, and at one's final passing. Passing meant your mortal hull broke like a boat in its final storm. The vessel being a person's body sank beneath the ground, from where it had come, to rejoin the four elements and the ninety-two atoms. But one's spirit or soul crossed the door of life and death into the house of a one's ancestors, where a person found total and eternal peace. Homen, he whispered the sacred word from ancient times, Homen. Let it be, or So be it, or Gods willing.

He quickened his pace among the boulders. The holy spirits went with him, and he felt no fear—only a rage to live and to honor his fighting unit, his women, and his ancestors. What else was there, besides the soil, wind, waters, and starfire of his home world, which had given him life? Through their women, humans carried the soil, the wind, the waters, and the starfire of mythic Earth with them—Lost Old Earth, or LOE. In her fertility cycle, it was said that every human woman carried in her loins the godly lunar, solar, and tidal mechanics of the long-lost, three-body genesis system. Homen, Kion thought, feeling a strength to tear up trees, throw boulders, and smash the alien Swarm.

Thank you for reading. If you love it, tell your friends. Please post a favorable review at Amazon, Good Reads, and other online resources. If you want to thank the author, you may also buy a copy for the low price of a cup of coffee. It's called Read-a-Latte: similar (or lower) price as a latte at your favorite coffeeshop, but the book lasts forever while the beverage is quickly gone. Thank you (JTC).

TOP | MAIN