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Intro
In the late 20th century, an exterritorial species discovers, invades, and colonizes Earth. Because human culture is so different from their own, and because the humans’ technology is less advanced than theirs, the Settlers decide that humans are backward and savage, capable at best of only the most basic levels of intelligence. The Settlers oppress and enslave humanity, then cover their actions by claiming that they’re just trying to educate and civilize the Natives of a backwater planet to galactic standards.
Several decades after the invasion, an enslaved man named Jacky runs away from the homestead where he’s spent his adult life. He heads into the Australian outback searching for home. Within hours of Jacky’s escape, Sergeant Rohan, a representative of the Department for the Protection of Natives, has been dispatched to hunt him down. For this, Rohan raises a posse of young Settlers anxious for an excuse to hunt down human. Jacky heads first for the mission school where he was raised, hoping to find information about the family he was taken from as a small child.
Sister Bagra runs the mission school with an iron hand. She believes humans are little better than wild animals and she treats them as such. When they anger her or disobey, she subjects the children in her care to brutal punishments that often involve being denied food and water. Sometimes the children die. Shortly after Jacky breaks into the school (a sympathetic nun named Sister Mel points him east, in the direction of Jerramungup, where he was born), Sister Bagra learns that someone has reported her cruelty to her superiors at home. They are sending an agent to investigate. She immediately suspects Sister Mel and begins surveilling the young nun, hoping to catch her in acts sympathetic toward humans.
The inspector is a kindly older man named Father Grark. When Grark arrives on Earth, his experiences there quickly confirm what he already suspected: that humans aren’t a lesser life form but are just as intelligent and capable as Settlers. Indeed, their ability to survive and their artistic sensibilities might even make them superior to his own people. He also recognizes that on Earth, Settlers have enslaved humans, even though the Settler Empire recently outlawed slavery and even though Devil (the head of the Department for the Protection of Natives) and others claim that everything the Settlers do aims to protect and improve the human race.
Grark writes horrified reports home about the forced breeding of human women, the terrible conditions in the schools, and the fact that none of the human “servants” are. Although his reports do get Sister Bagra recalled, someone hires a hitman to assassinate Father Grark before he can return home and make a full report. This leaves the Settlers free to continue with the way things are.
Back in the outback, Jacky tries to find Jerramungup on his own, but it’s hard without a map (although he wouldn’t know how to use one) and while trying to evade his pursuers. Eventually, he stumbles on the outlaw gang of Johnny Star. Johnny is a member of the Settler species who grew up on their homeland. But even there, he was an outlier, preferring a life of solitude and self-sufficiency in one of the planet’s vast wilderness swamps to the so-called comforts of a technological advanced but socially repressive society. When Johnny got in trouble with the law, he was sent to Earth as a Colonial Trooper. He quickly became disgusted with his people’s violence and their oppression of an obviously sentient species, so he deserted. Eventually, he gathered a scrappy band of humans—Tucker, Crow Joe, Deadeye, Dip, and Dap—and has spent the last few years living the life of a roving outlaw, fighting back against the Settler.
Elsewhere in the outback, a group of free humans—some who’ve escaped enslavement and imprisonment, some who were never captured by the Settlers, and some, like Esperance, who were born free—have evaded Settler raids for decades. Their life is hard, but it’s better than the alternative. Led by Grandfather and a council of elders, the group finds itself perpetually on the run due to the Settlers encroaching deeper and deeper into the outback, even though their amphibious physiology means they can barely survive there. As she gets older, Esperance naturally becomes a leader in the group. Unlike the elders, who prefer to run, she begins to believe that the group’s hope lies in learning how to fight back.
Eventually, Jacky, Johnny, and their gang join up with Esperance’s group of refugees. Not long afterward, Sergeant Rohan finds them in the desert and raids their camp. In the ensuing firefight, both Jacky and Johnny die—but not before Jacky kills Sergeant Rohan. Johnny saves Esperance’s life, and she flees the battle with a stolen Settler weapon. In the days after the battle, she strikes out across the outback in search of other free humans, ready to join forces with them and prepare to fight another day.
