Abn al Habbad is a refugee, but the ocean he has to cross to reach a new home is a dozen light-years across.
With the Earth nearly spent by war and ecological ruin, two separate expeditions launched into space to settle the only known habitable world outside our solar system. Centuries later, Abn is the last leader of the second of those missions. Meant to found a religious settlement of at least a thousand Muslim pilgrims, catastrophe has reduced their population to less than twenty.
Because the damage to their ship has left them with no way of reaching the surface on their own, they believe they will be forced to accept the charity of the other settlers on the planet. Instead of founding their own religious colony, they will have to join a community that is everything they don’t want to be: Godless. Decadent. Western.
While the other survivors dread this inevitability, Abn secretly longs for it. He wants to be free of the burden of leading his people, to abdicate his responsibilities, to simply live without the constant fear of failing them.