Seventeen Galaxy class Battle Cruisers suddenly appear in the sky above the planet Tran. The massive ships contain seventeen thousand and sixty two souls, refugees from a distant, now uninhabitable planet. They are the last remaining people from a once vibrant society and unless they can find a new home their extinction is inevitable.

The people of Tran are a peace loving and welcoming race, but the aliens seeking refuge are considered by many to be vermin, a race of warmongers who have pillaged countless worlds and enslaved a dozen species. Even thier own world has been destroyed by their seemingly insatiable lust for violence and conquest.

But how do the compassionate Tranians respond to the refugees request? Have the aliens really, finally recognised the error of their ways and embraced peace and harmony as a way of life as they claim? Or does their arrival herald the dawn of yet another invasion, another violent atrocity at the hands of the alien vermin from across the galaxy?

Crime writer Kevin Willaim Barry’s first venture into science fiction.