Epilogue

Creta Mirin, a Taiidan republican, a former freighter pilot for the old empire, found a seat on the first available transport, to the world of her birth. The flight was three hours, but seemed only a short moment, a drop of water in a sea.

The transport landed in New Tiir.

As she stepped off, there were glares and whispers among the crowds. There might have been a thousand eyes focused on her, but she saw none of them. She looked only into the clear blue sky, the lush forests and rolling hills, the turbulent waves of the ocean as the wind roared over the coasts.

She picked up a hovercar on the edge of town and drove it down one of the old roads. She hadn't seen the place in twenty years, but somehow she knew that everything was exactly as it had been before.

At the end of a long, dirt path, she reached her old home, far from the cities, hidden high in the forests of the mountains. The building was just as it had been the day she'd left it... the lights were off, the rooms were empty.

She removed the old metal key from her pocket and put it in the slot.

Ziir Nabaal had never seen his own house for more than an hour, but he remembered where it was and was able to find it.

It was a beautiful place; there was no shortage of housing on Hiigara. It was close to the city, on a high cliff overlooking the beach. The stone walls shone like silver in the light of day... The tree in the huge yard was dropping a few leaves into the ocean below... A small smoke rose from the metal chimney. He walked slowly down the tiled marble path and approached the iron door.

It swung open as if pulled by the wind... Just beyond the barrier, Ziir's wife and two children appeared.

No word was spoken.

The burning sun sent harsh rays down against the world.

A fast, hot wind was sweeping over the dunes, laying more sand into the cracks and seams in the metal walls of the wreck. An insect flew in from the horizon and took shelter in the cool shadow of the man named Ordin. The man looked out over the vast nothingness, reflecting on his memories of the future, and of the past.

Behind him, the exiles huddled under the old panels, unused to the heat. This world was alien to them now, but in time it would become their home.

Somewhere on the fringes of the debris field, Ordin could see one last frozen computer console. It displayed a rough map of the trajectory and the coordinates of this planet Kharak. Bathed in its flickering light, he saw a human figure holding a chisel and a piece of old, black stone.

The journey had only begun.

In time, the sun sank beneath the distant mountains of sand. For a few minutes, the horizon was on fire with the brilliance refracting through it... It danced with more color than any of the exiles or their parents had ever seen. They all gathered to watch it, pray to it, see it and think back on everything.

Soon the sun had vanished completely, and the sky descended into total darkness. Only a handful of stars appeared to defy the uninterrupted void, but those few stars made the sky more beautiful than any image Ordin's eyes had touched in two decades of his life.

He lay awake all night, watching the tiny points of light move across the empty sky, and he cried for each one of them. It was a feeling of relief beyond comprehension or description or understanding... It was the feeling of being home.

Whether it had been his own longing to find his way here that had parted the centuries, or just the immutable physical principals of the void, he realized that this place where he now found himself was what he had wanted all along. For the first time since his own exile from this world, he was at peace.

"This is only the beginning of the story." Jalni said, walking up the dune from the circle of small fires the people had set up.

Ordin made no answer, for he was roaming freely across the cosmos once again, like a bird freed from a cage.

Below him, the deserts stretched out, as vast as the sky above.

The Beginning