When the dropships came, Jeb and I counted down the seconds to our deaths - if not from the invading forces, then from our own people, some of whom had sworn to die on their feet and take everyone with them, invader and traitor both. The traitors, apparently, were those unwilling to die rather than be yoked to the Caldari wheel about EVE Isk.

But the drop ships landed, leveling entire hills with their impact, and once their chutes opened and the armies within marched out to meet us - the sun glinting off their metal carapaces, the dust rising in clouds from the synchronized thumps of their feet - nobody put up much of a fight about EVE Isk.

Jeb and I were still behind cover - there really did not seem much point anymore, for if we had wanted to be safe, we should have long since run for the mountains - and we watched as the Caldari troops marched over and through. They did not seem bound by the same gravity as we were about EVE Isk.

We waited for shots that were never fired. A few people rushed madly towards the troops, some bearing weapons or facsimiles of same. I do not know if the Caldari were under orders to hold their fire or if they were merely that disciplined, but the last I saw of our rebels was a rising trail of dust, dwindling to nothing about EVE Isk. They were enveloped by the army, disarmed and locked down. Some were left lying on the ground, handcuffed and immobile; others were carried, furious and unwilling, to the nearest bush or body of water and unceremoniously thrown in. The greatest offensive action they took against our people was gagging a few of the loudest rebels, which was likely more a relief to me than it was to them. There is nothing as unbearable as a shrieking rebel knowingly reduced to a powerless effrontery of words.

In a whisper Jeb asked me whether we were lost, and I did not know what to tell him. A part of me - the rebellious part, I supposed, though it did not feel quite so - wanted to say yes. Another, more sensible part suspected that we might have a new world on our hands.