Excerpt

I was eleven years old when the war came to Deneb system.

At first, we didn't know that anything was wrong. Mom and Dad were clearing the table after dinner, Avi was building some sort of a castle out of plastic construction blocks, Sarah was asleep in her crib, and Grandpa was reading one of his thick Hebrew books, leaning into the volume and squinting a little by candlelight. I sulked because I was going be the only girl in my class to miss Karen's birthday party tomorrow.

There would be no chatting or video games for me that evening, or until after dinner the following night, because we weren't supposed to use electricity on Shabbos. This weekly routine was difficult to accept while living in the place where few others shared our beliefs. It was far more frustrating this time around, because Dad wouldn't drive on Shabbos, either, and that meant I had no way to get to Karen's party. All the other girls were going to be there. Her parents were bringing in a magician all the way from the city, and it had been the talk of the school for weeks. So I sulked, wondering why God didn't want me to have any fun.

For lack of anything better to do, I was staring out the window when I saw a streak of white light shoot across the night sky. I watched it fall toward the ground in a great wide arc, but before it completed its downward journey there was another, and another.

"Look, Dad, quick! A meteor shower!" I waved him over and pressed my face against the glass. Father set down the salad bowl and came over. He stood behind me and peered out the window. The sky was raining with shooting stars.

"Those aren't meteors," said Dad. "They're spaceships. Rivkah, bring me the scroll, please."

I ducked around some of Avi's toys and ran into Dad's study. There was only a little light from the candles in the living room, but I was able to find the scroll right away.

Dad unrolled the flex plastic across the table and swiped it on. Grandpa said nothing, but he watched from across the room and sighed theatrically to express his displeasure. Mom stopped what she was doing, and even Avi looked up from the building blocks, sensing that something unusual was happening.

Dad frowned as he browsed through the news pages on the scroll. "This is bad," he said without taking his eyes off the screen. "The Oligarchy broke the treaty. They're attacking many of the Union colonies. Not just bombing runs, either. They're landing troops. There are already firefights in the cities."

"It won't be safe here," said Mom, her brow wrinkled with worry lines. "There are too many military families living in our settlement. The oligos will come."

"You're right," Dad put away the scroll. "We shouldn't be here when they do. Get the kids ready. Pack light, and pack quickly."

"Where are we going to go, David?" asked Grandpa.

"Pearson's cabin," said Dad.

Old man Pearson had built a cabin out in the woods, far away from the settlement. Others liked to tease him about that; about how a man already living on the frontier didn't need another home in the middle of nowhere, but he said that he liked the quiet and the solitude. No one had used the cabin since Pearson died two years back. Few even knew exactly where it was, but Dad had helped him haul supplies there a few times, and he knew the way.

I had a lot of questions, but Mom and Dad had no time for that. They shushed me and went on to collect various things from around the house. Dad flipped the lights on, earning another disapproving look from Grandpa.

"Let's move to a colony world, he said. The family will be safe there, he said," Grandpa muttered, making sure he was loud enough to be heard. Dad clenched his teeth but didn't rise to the bait.

"Stop that, Zvi," Mom called out while folding some of Sarah's onesies. "Who knew the Union would decide to build a military base next door to our new home? At the very least, it took the war a lot longer to catch up with us here than it would have back on Earth."

There had been tension between Dad and Grandpa for as long as I could remember. Back before I was born, when the family still lived on Earth, Dad used to have an older brother named Yakov. Grandpa and Yakov had a huge falling out because Yakov married a Portuguese woman and left the faith. Grandpa disowned him, and when Dad refused to break the ties with Yakov and his family, Grandpa disowned Dad, too.

Yakov and his entire family died in the early days of the war, when the Oligarchy fleet bombed Lisbon. There were no bodies to recover, but a service was held at our synagogue, and Grandpa tried to patch things up with Dad. Dad wouldn't accept the olive branch. He couldn't forgive Grandpa for treating his brother that way.

It was only a month or two later when Grandma died. I was three years old by then, and my parents were planning to leave Earth and find us a safer home. Grandpa asked if he could come along because we were all the family he had left in the world, and Dad relented. Grandpa has lived with us ever since, but the two of them never managed to grow close again.

After an hour of preparations, the adults loaded the bags into the truck.

"I should stay," declared Grandpa. "Keep an eye on the house, in case there's looting."

"Looting?" Mom threw her hands up. "What do we have that anyone should want to loot?"

"He just doesn't want to get into the truck on Shabbos," said Dad. "It's okay to drive when lives may depend on it," he told Grandpa. "The Talmud spells that out for stubborn old men like you."

"I've lived too long when my own son is quoting holy texts to me," declared Grandpa, but he climbed into the truck.

We rode in silence for what felt like a long time. I watched the trees on the side of the dirt road, which looked kind of like badly drawn caricatures of Earth trees. The brown of their bark and the green of their leaves were a shade off from what I remembered. Similar, but different, kind of like our lives on Deneb Seven, or Sev as everyone here called it.

Finally, Dad drove the truck off the road and hid it in the bushes. We walked the rest of the way, dragging heavy bags through the forest. It was a cloudless night, Sev's moons providing enough light to travel by.

The cabin was dusty and small, but it was dry. The wooden walls and roof had withstood the test of time.

After the adults unpacked, we sat on the bench in the front of the cabin and watched dozens more falling stars make landfall. They seemed pretty and non-threatening to me. But then I looked at Mom, stone-faced and holding Sarah in her arms, and Dad, chewing his lip, and I was afraid.

#

By the time we woke up on Saturday morning, the Oligarchy forces had taken over two of the three cities on Sev and there were skirmishes in many of the settlements. My parents wouldn't let me watch any of the video; they said I was too young to see people die.

In the afternoon, there were reports of heavy fighting at the military base near our settlement. Also, that the Union was launching a counterattack across the entire sector.

By evening, the information feed went dead. We kept checking, but the planet-wide information network was down. We were truly cut off from the world.

I spent the weekend playing with Avi, exploring the woods around the cabin, climbing trees and gathering local fruit that looked like miniature pears and tasted a little like cucumber. Mom worried, but Dad had assured her that there were no dangerous animals or poisonous plants for us to fear. Sev was a tame, gentle world. It was why the family chose to move here in the first place.

Several times I heard faint rumbling sounds. I didn't know if it was gunfire or distant thunder. The war was too far away, too surreal. I kept expecting Dad to declare the whole thing over, and for us to go home and resume our lives, the entire outing nothing more than an extended, strange holiday.

On Monday, the refugees came.

There were a dozen of them, mostly young men and women, their clothing disheveled and dirty. Several of them wore bloody bandages. One man had a splint on his leg, and two others were helping him along. Some of them had guns.