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= FAR WARS =

a novel in the Empire of Time series

by John Argo

17.

We all understood the history behind this. Humankind had emerged from its evolutionary home, a planet now lost to an unknown fate, and had conquered much of the galaxy. As is the manner of our race, we brought with us the highest good intentions, in the form of the Holy Mother and her Church, but also the usual evils of greed and power madness. After centuries of misrule, our alien subjects attacked the City of the Universe, Mercury Free Port City, and destroyed our empire. Humans became the hunted, the hated, the hopeless. Where the alien races did not exterminate us on sight, or hunt us like vermin, they enslaved us. Nothing could be more cruel than some of the damage we did to ourselves, especially the human brain boxes and other genetic crimes. We were our own worst enemies, and paid for two thousand years in the Inversion of Man. Now we live in the Renaissance, in ManTime. So the Kaarrk Wars were a throwback to those evil and painful centuries. Just when we thought we had peace and freedom, along came these monsters who would turn every habitable planet into a roiling snake pit for their soulless, mindless tangle of shuddering disgust. You see from my language that it isn't possible for me to maintain the kind of even, objective attitude like that of the Holy Mother when She speaks from the throne of love for all life. I notice that the holy and blessed military priestess made no effort to yank the flame belcher from my enraged grip as I torched those death-pukers to a crisp. We are all human, which is what gives us our flawed humanishness. Amen, I say. Homen, as they say across the galactic seas wherever humans build fires and warm themselves, telling stories while they eat bread and drink wine. Our weapons are ever handy. We have learned. Never again.

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