TBntG-3 Chpt 52

=The Bull and the Genie=
==Chapter 52 - Book III - The Clan Invasion==
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==Interlude: Diaspora==
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===A Refugee's Journey===
There is no place in the Combine for Whores. After we were taken from our school, the prettiest girls were divided and sent to sere the troops in the only way we could. I was pretty. I remember being very proud of that, before. I never dreamed... well. We were sent to a relief station for the Dragon. You behaved or you were beaten. Or you were taken to a worse place, and there was always "worse" in those days. 
But after the battle, we had no place to go. We were whores, after all, and the culture of the Combine... well. A woman was supposed to die to protect her honor, and obey the Dragon and if the Dragon commanded you to be a whore, you were... but everyone still looked at you like you were... unclean. 
 
The expectation was that we would kill ourselves. The Lieutenant who rescued us, survived both the battle and the attentions of his superiors, and he had some connections with the refugee agency, so at 15, I left the Combine with so many others. 
 
We were terrified. If the Black Dragons had made us whores... What would the Federated Commonwealth do? Even then, I believed... far too much of what I had been told. I won't say that we were all treated well--there were billions of refugees in those days, but the family that first fostered me, and then adopted me were kind. Some weren't--the Combine had done little to make itself loved, and I remembered how furious my second father was when some of the students at school helped me with my English... and slipped in some very uncomplimentary slang about Kuritans that they said I should identify myself by. But they were in the minority. I suppose it's easier to forgive a fallen enemy. 
 
Tharkad was so strange, I remember being terrified, people said things, in the open, where the police could hear, that even under Theodore would have seen them taken away. There were entire magazines dedicated to the failings of the nobility and don't even get me started on the constitutionalist movement. I lived in terror, for the first several years, that one day our doors would be kicked in. I had other terrors—but Tharkad also had child psychologists, and I gradually freed myself from them.
 
The Lieutenant checked on on me once or twice—but for those hoping for a romance, he never even hinted at it. I was a child, after all. That was something I think that helped more than many things else. He wasn't angry at what I had done—he was angry at what had been done to me. 
 
The rest of my life has been mundane. I graduated from school, decided to take a gap year, and then opened a little diner with a loan from my parents. I'd always enjoyed cooking, and not many people had tried a fusion of Lyran/Draconis food—though we didn't use the last name. It prospered, I met my husband when he was stopping by from lunch, and here we are forty years later, with four children and four restaurants. We're successful—both the First Prince and Prime Minister have dropped by for lunch. 
 
Go back? No. My friends are dead or scattered, my first family is gone, and I have few good memories of the Combine. Maybe the children will want to go visit one day to see where their mother's side of the family came from, but I'm content with my new home. 
 
Ryoko Grayson, Tharkad.
 
Excerpted from: An oral history of the Diaspora, 3132.
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===Negotiations===
Not counting the worlds that fell under clan domination, the Exodus from the former Combine was one of the greatest diaspora's in human history, only matched by the population movements during the First Succession War. In the decade after the final fall of the Combine, it is believed that over 15 billion people immigrated to other regions, a feat only possible due to the resurgence in FTL transport. 
 
Few of these refugees stayed in the border zones, where Combine atrocities had turned most populations rather completely against the idea of having close neighbors. Hanse Davion and Melissa Steiner, especially after their retirement, took on the project of moving refugees to lower population worlds, regions on the periphery— worlds that in many cases would be eager to forgive the origins of what would become an infusion of trained, and it must be said, dedicated workers. 
 
Other nations benefited in the same way. The Capellan Confederation, benefiting from cultural and political ties, took in a large number, as did the Concordat, Magistracy, and the Aurigan Coalition, the former worlds of the Outworlds Alliance, took in large numbers, especially as the growing Hegemony (based out of Wynn's Roost) brought more stability to the region. 
 
But beyond that, the scattering of the Combine also scattered it's culture. Fears of a Black Dragon Resurgence were unfounded, but today, in worlds as scattered as New Avalon and Brannis, it's possible to wander into neighborhoods where traditional Combine architecture competes with local styles or find a isolated monastery.
 
The Combine claimed it would spread its culture all over known space. In one of the deep ironies of history, it took the End of the Combine to bring that about. 
 
Diaspora! A Cultural History of the Combine Diaspora and its Influence. 
 
Tharkad Educational Press, 3139
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Book 3 - 52