The Kar-Chee Reign

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It was the distant future of Earth, and the mother planet of a galaxy-wide empire had been forgotten by her far-flung colonies. Forgotten, tired, old and stripped of her ores and natural fuels, Earth and the scattered bands of humans left behind were totally unprepared for the invasion of the strange, monstrous Kar-chee from the depths of the stars.

The Kar-chee had come to strip Earth of the few natural resources the planet had left — to crack the marrow of the aged planet and scavenge whatever of worth was left there. It was a massive, planet-wide operation in which continents were sunk and oceans drained, and if the tiny, insignificant humans died in these holocausts, what did that matter to the Kar-chee?

But it mattered to the humans… and, at last, they began to fight.

The big place on the old Rowan homesite had just been freshly thatched — and what a disturbance of birds, snakes, lizards, mice and spiders the removal of the previous thatch had caused — but its thick walls had stood there for generations: scarred and chipped and streaked with smoke and smeared with grease, but in all, still sturdy. The first Rowan had built well; he had not come here with his wives and children and his flocks and herds after the sinking of California, for he had had none of those. He had in fact landed with one small boat and one small dog and a determined mind and a hopeful heart, marrying a daughter of the land (that is to say, he had concluded a major treaty by the terms of which he granted use of his infinitely precious cold chisel for half a year of every year and in return was granted use for the whole of every year of an area of land for building and farming and hunting and fishing, plus a girl who had been captured almost casually from a far-off people years back and was of an…

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