Chapter one
The Fight Backward



     The stage is dark and empty.
     It is the universe, cold and lifeless. Yet, in the sweep of all the 
emptiness, there is something worth seeing. It is a dim glimmering, a few 
points of light that breathe with fire and life. True, they fill the emptiness 
as much as a crumb feeds the hungry mouths through all of time, but they exist 
nonetheless. And their existence makes all the difference.
     Randomness would have flung them far apart, but something more flung 
them, because the specks were tied intimately together in their flight outward. 
Yes, the tiny specks of life speak of something more than themselves. They 
speak of a design that resists aimless chance, and verifies that life was more 
than a freak occurrence. Because empty worlds flew alone, and living worlds 
flew in flocks.
     So, with purpose, the living galaxies came together and made a 
metagalaxy; a cluster of clusters hugging close to one another. They made the 
place of the living, in Aeyelon called Cassoria, on Earth, called Outspace. 
     The worlds of Cassoria shared the same gravity, the same momentum, and 
the same fate. They were all as close to one another as the Milky Way and its 
nearest neighbor. 
     And why not? The Milky Way was once a member.
     
     Now, as I write this, human hands haven’t touched stones beyond this 
bunch of worlds, and the stones they’ve thrown haven’t struck ground beyond the 
property of this star. Visiting another system, even a system in close embrace, 
is a thing achieved only in science-fiction dreams. Nevertheless, I can say in 
their defense, these dreams aren’t so far from what was real, when technology 
tied together cuts of space-time, just as sutures tie together wounds.
     Then, the universe bent to the will of the living, and the power of its 
machines. The machines that bent the universe were called blastlocks. They were 
as large as cities, with an influence on existence greater than that of a star. 
Each had a region of time-space shackled to it, latched by a bolt that’s 
unbreakable by nature, latched by a bolt of immense gravity.
     Once assembled, and moored to space-time by the anchor of immeasurable 
force, each blastlock generated a thread of energy, and cast it off with the 
power of God. The thread wove itself through the fabric of space-time, until it 
intrinsically collided with, and connected to, another bolt of gravity, an 
incidental star, a lucky blackhole, or a precisely constructed blastlock. 
     And, when the time came, the thread, strung between two bolts of 
gravity, would tighten. By tightening, the thread would pull the bolts. In 
turn, the bolts would pull space-time. In short, they would pull together the 
folds of reality, just as sutures pull together wounds. And doing so, they 
would join the most distant worlds of Outspace, making them as near as the 
Earth and the Moon. 
     Through the tunnel made by a thread, a light-year became a footstep.
     When this was possible, millions of light-years from Ecco, millions of 
light-years from Terra, millions of light-years from Earth, on the edges of 
known space, the Bænnun built a blastlock. They called it the Quouenmar 
Observation Satellite, and the brilliant machine sat on a boundary beyond which 
a ship could never return. It was among the most remote outposts of 
civilization, a forerunner, pushing outward Haven’s Rim, orbiting a hostile but 
habitable planet. It was among the beginnings of the Freedom Alignment’s reach 
to expand its aging empire.
     I was assigned to this exotic location. I was always assigned to 
distant and dangerous sites. I volunteered for them; I demanded them. 
     At the time, I didn’t know why I went to these places. Now, I can guess 
that I was looking for my way home. I was searching for the world I’d come 
from, and I felt correctly that it was far away, and that the best way to find 
it was moving closer to the unknown space beyond the planet Quouenarr.
     
     There, in orbit of that planet, the gears locked together with a bang. 
There, the turning point for all of Livingkind took place, and history pounded 
our journey in a new direction. There, I met Ashanna, when she came to me in 
secrecy, while I slept, like a visiting angel.
     She was an angel because she was an omen of coming and violent acts by 
God. But, she was an angel, more, in the way she moved, and spoke, and sounded, 
and smelled. She was an angel in the way she looked. 
     Ashanna was not Human. She was a female of a species called Tulunayn, 
and born on a planet called Aerowohl, which is visible from Earth no more. Yet, 
she was not merely Tulunayn.  She was a fulfillment of their inborn ideals: 
warmly humane, coldly honest, living for forces of progress, for acts of 
creation. She is the best representative of her species that I’ve ever known: 
forever on the peaceful brink of chaos, where the old is readily abandoned for 
the new; where Creation rules unquestioned over Order.
     It might seem important that my emblem for the Tulunayn is a female, 
since several of their breed’s beliefs might be called feminine now, in this 
place. I might allow you to draw the lines of definition so simply. But it 
would lead to nonsense and contradiction. The reality of Tulunayn genetics, and 
the changeable illusion of feminine traits, shouldn’t be matched. Though, that 
isn’t to say that Ashanna wasn’t feminine. She was more a woman than I’ve ever 
known a creature to be.
     To describe Ashanna’s gift, Tulunayn beauty, in a physical sense, and 
to use the words available, I call the species humanoid. But to avoid absurd 
irony, let me introduce another language. I offer Aeyelon. It has come to be 
the language of my thoughts, and so I can’t imagine better words to use. 
     What the Tulunayn were, I call eleton. And what Humans are, what you 
are, I call eleton. Holding these pages in your fingered hands, covered with 
soft-skin, speckled with hair, seeing and hearing, feeling and tasting, 
breathing and beating, thinking and feeling, warm, sexual, and dying: you are a 
perfect model of eleton. Look into a mirror, and you’ll see what it is to be 
eleton.
     And so, I dare to believe that Ashanna’s beauty was one that Humans 
might agree to. Maybe I say it because I loved her. Maybe it’s nothing more. 
But I’ll mention, I know countless works of art, made by Human hands, meant to 
depict angels of a Human God, and these look less like a Human spirit might 
look, and more like my Ashanna once looked, before I killed her. 
     
     She sung in a whisper, “Wake up, Jerress Kyl,” running the back of 
her fingers along the side of my cheek. “Volsor. Awake, for the west sun is 
rising.”
     I raised my eyes, and saw her showered in white light. Before I 
searched for her face, or an explanation, I searched for the source of light 
that made her into a silhouetted figure, with a heavenly aura of blue radiance, 
and made me into a stumbling, blinded idiot. 
     I found she’d opened my blinds. It faced away from the planet: out 
toward endless space, out toward the system’s blue-white star. With the star as 
a halo to her shape, she stood over me, smelling softer than flowers.
     She sat gently on my bunk, at my side. To face me, she bent her legs 
onto the bed, and lay them down in front of her, resting bare white arms on 
bare white knees. 
     “Are you Jerress Kyl?” she asked.
     Trying to use a pillow to block the light, I answered, yes.
     “I’m Ashanna.” 
     Her name enlightened me. She was an officer, part of the science staff. 
I’d admired her at meals before. We had no mutual friends, no reasons to talk. 
Yet, what struck me at the time wasn’t her unexpected visit, but the clothing 
she wore. The humble, silky gown sparkled blue and pearl, and revealed the 
virtue of her nakedness, by clinging so closely.   
     “Why are you wearing pajamas?” I demanded in a congested voice.
     “I hoped that I could talk with you.”
     “In your pajamas?”
     “Does it really bother you that much?” she asked.
     “They don’t bother me,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “No.”
     “That’s good.”
     “They confuse the hell out of me.”
     “Really?”
     “Yes. It’s still four hours before morning.” I was starting to grasp 
at my situation.
     “Yes, it is,” she said, smiling. She sat, breathing softly, and 
looking at me with the greatest affection. “That’s usually when I wear 
pajamas, actually.”
     Lost in my emotions, I studied her body, where pink mists of pigment 
carefully colored her naturally pale skin. They accentuated her smooth smile, 
her collarbones, wide cleavage, characteristically Tulunayn legs and fingers, 
long, her Tulunayn body, hairless, full and without obvious bones, without 
sharp edges, without fat, was as weightless and sweet as whipped cream. 
     Yet, all her beauty revolved around glimmering, pale purple eyes, 
glowing within a wild frame of deep-purple, maybe plum-red, hair, so nearly 
black that the ruby color only revealed itself where its waves fell into light. 
It was long, hanging down below her waist, and washing over onto my legs. 
     “Should I let you sleep?”
     “Oh, no.” I looked around, having lost the situation that quickly. 
“Wait. Wait. What was that you said? Waking me up—”
     “Awake, for the west sun is rising?” she whispered again. I nodded 
toward her, expecting something more. She gave it. “You’re promised this life, 
for this time.”
     “But the first time, you called me volsor,” I added. 
     After a pause, “Yes,” she answered. With evident fear, she said, “I 
did.” 
     In Aeyelon, volsor meant teacher. That was what I’d been, before TADSET 
existed, before they’d built that station, before the volsor were witches, and 
their beliefs were witchcraft. In the Freedom Alignment, and on that station, 
to speak of Azyrianism was embarrassing, to know an Azyrian was unhealthy, and 
to be an Azyrian was deadly. As an employee of TADSET, I wasn’t a volsor 
anymore, and as far as anyone knew, I’d never been. 
     TADSET, the Terran Armada, Deep Space Exploration and Technological 
foundation, was the science and defense force of the Freedom Alignment, and 
primarily, of the Bænnun people. When started, after the overthrow of old 
Azyrian rulers, the Freedom Alignment was the only real hope for peace. As 
Ashanna came to my bed, its hopefulness had been waning for decades. 
     The Undring Lords overthrown by the Freedom tolerated only Azyrianism; 
thus, the Freedom had begun to tolerate only its reverse, to tolerate only 
Aeyseerism. In truth, the two religions were not so different: they were both a 
little right, and both awfully wrong.
     But, interestingly, one of the things that Azyrians had right about the 
universe, one of the things that Aeyseers disregarded as fantasy, was soon to 
prove itself fatally true. The bloody truth, which was about to kill millions, 
was a playful myth about demons, about demons that Azyrians called the Gion.
     
     “You can relax. I’m a volsor. Not like I used to be, but, 
nonetheless.”
     “I’m so glad,” she said. “I’m so relieved.”
     “I can imagine. I’m sure you know I’m a solider.” 
     She looked up, wide-eyed. 
     “I might have killed you, for calling me such a terrible thing,” I 
said.
     She smiled, and wiped her mouth with her hand. “That’s why I wore my 
pajamas.”
     “Oh?” My tone was sneering.
     “Well, you wouldn’t, would you? Kill me in my underwear?”
     “No,” I admitted. Giving her my best grin, and preparing to give her 
the best compliment I could, I said, “I suppose I wouldn’t kill you.”
     It’s sickly funny, the way that certain conversations – especially 
conversations we know are fateful while we have them – can both mock and 
predict the future’s cruel love for irony and coincidence. It’s a comedy, and a 
tragedy. Because, the next thing I said, odd as it was, even then, even as a 
joke between infatuated Azyrians, was the most hilariously tragic thing that 
I’ve ever said.
     I said, “I’d have to be a Gion to do that, with you looking so much 
like an angel.”
     What a clever and charming complement! How poetic! 
     How tragically right.