The Escape: Korvali Chronicles, #0

By C.A. Hartman

The epic space adventure begins.

The time has come. Eshel must abandon all that matters most to him: his home, his scientific work, his people.

He'll violate one of his planet's strictest laws, that Korvali citizens cannot leave or live among outsiders. He'll do it for his father… and to save his people. Which means he and the others must do what no Korvali has ever done successfully…

Escape.

It's dangerous. Their odds of success are low. But Eshel is determined to succeed… no matter what the cost.

The Escape is a prequel story leading up to The Refugee, the first book in the Korvali Chronicles series. If you love Star Trek or classic science fiction, you'll love this series!

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.A. Hartman
• Release date: Aug 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393519263

Book preview

1

The Korvali prefer our own kind, and have little interest in what occurs outside our small planet. This has always been true. Yet, on rare occasion, someone defies this axiom. Where we dislike outsiders, he fears them less. Where we are content on our homeworld, she will want to explore the outerworlds, like legend says the ancients did. Perhaps most of all, where we adhere to what we know, he creates change. The Moshal have a name for this rare and strange breed of Korvali: we call them Spirited Ones.

- Ashan, Moshal Clan

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Eshel walked through the lush gardens of Fallal Hall in his blue robe, barely noticing the few other blue-robed individuals he passed.

He stepped quietly over the small foot bridges that crossed the trickling rivulets, filled with their tiny magenta-colored plants, and took in the massive seshac trees with their broad crowns and weeping branches. Drizzle fell from a gray sky like it did most days on Korvalis, the oceanic planet where his people had lived for millennia. And although the gardens looked like they always did and the drizzle felt like it always felt, all of it seemed especially vivid to him on that particular day.

Perhaps because today would be the last day he saw any of it.

He was leaving his homeworld. He was leaving his people, his customs, his work, and all that he knew and loved. Even more, it was possible—perhaps even probable—that he would never return.

Eshel had prepared. He and his father, Othniel, had made sure of that. But despite the fact that Eshel had never taken one step off his homeworld in his life, he was wise enough to understand that no amount of preparation, even to the great extent he and his father had gone, would fully prepare him for living among outsiders.

These outsiders, these otherworlders… they were different. They did not live like the Korvali lived, did not conduct themselves like Korvali did, did not value what the Korvali valued. Not even close.

Of course, Eshel had never met an otherworlder. But his father had. He’d interacted with citizens from all four Alliance planets.

Did Eshel want to leave? No, he did not.

And yes, he did.

Eshel found his divided mind on the subject perplexing. He was typically decisive and knew the best course of action in most situations. But no matter how he tried to reconcile his mixed feelings on the matter, nothing worked.

Othniel understood Eshel’s decision to leave, had encouraged it. But very few others would understand, if they knew.

But they didn’t know. And never would, until he was gone.

Emigration from Korvalis was strictly forbidden. Even permission to leave for brief visits offworld for scientific or diplomatic purposes was granted on rare occasions and only to a privileged few.

But more importantly, the Korvali had no desire to leave their homeworld. They disliked outsiders, so much so that no otherworlder had ever breached the secure net surrounding Korvalis, much less set foot on their soil or sailed their oceans. Eshel’s people had their reasons for their isolation, and their Doctrine reflected that. And, in Eshel’s opinion, many of those reasons were justified.

Not that the others hadn’t tried. The Sunai in particular would often hover just outside Korvali space, and on one occasion had even dared to breach the net. The result had been disastrous for them.

Yet, despite what Doctrine dictated, despite his divided mind, Eshel would leave. He could no longer live in this place he loved, further its scientific pursuits, or swim endless hours in its chilly waters while pretending things had not gone terribly wrong.

Someone had to serve as the seed of change. And that someone would be him.

So he would go. He would abandon his scientific work. He would abandon his life in the place he belonged, and the family and friends he cared for. He would even abandon the investigation that had taken much of his time recently, the one that would prove once and for all that Korvalis’s leadership was corrupt and murderous.

Eshel stopped in his tracks when someone appeared in front of him in the gardens. His