The World Before

Chapter One

The Federal European Union greatly regrets the loss of life on Bezer'ej and the deaths of Superintendent Frankland and her ussissi aide. We condemn the actions of Commander Neville. Let me restate our position: we did not and would not sanction first-use of nuclear devices. As we have no effective military structure left on Umeh, there is no direct disciplinary action we can take against Commander Neville or the troops under her command; but they are now dismissed the service, and in the absence of FEU enforcement, they fall properly within the scope of your own judicial system as the protectors of the bezeri. Our representative Dr. Mohan Rayat will offer every cooperation.

Birsen Ertegun,
Foreign Minister, Federal European Union,
in a statement to the matriarchs of F'nar


F'nar, on Wess'ej, August 2376

Ade Bennett clung to his schedule twenty-five light-years from home in an alien city that was coated entirely in pearl.

He ran ten kilometers every morning at dawn and there was no reason to stop doing it just because the sun was now a different star and he was a prisoner of war. He pounded along the terraces of F'nar and down its stepped slopes.

Wherever the sun warmed smooth stone, the tem flies would congregate and deposit a thin layer of nacre. The iridescence was insect shit: Shan had found that funny, Aras said. She liked irony.

And she's dead. And it's all your fucking fault. You let her die.

Ade wanted to erase the final picture of her standing in the airlock, seconds from death. But it was the last scrap of her that he could still grasp, the memory of a woman he had never expected to love and to whom he had left everything unsaid. Something in him wouldn't let it go. He had decided to confront it instead.

The native wess'har paused to stare at him as he made his way down the terraces. Some acknowledged him with stiff nods of their sea horse heads. He was a POW in a city where he was regarded as a hero, but every day he was here served only to remind him that he was alive and Shan wasn't, and that he'd failed the basic heroic qualification of saving what you loved.

Sweat prickled its way down his back. He made his way through the alleys that honeycombed the lowest level of the city at the bottom of the encircling caldera. Beyond the city lay the irregular mosaic of fields and allotments that blended into the natural landscape, and beyond them were the plains that were arid in summer and covered with quick-growing vegetation in the brief, wet winter. F'nar had been built where it would have least impact rather than the most convenient location. Wess'har didn't seem to have the same priorities as humans.