Supreme Mandate (Tarizon, #8)

Volume I of the Tarizon Saga. Tarizon's thirty-one states have been at war for over a hundred years. The cost of these wars has been the loss of millions of soldiers and civilians, the destruction of most of the world's infrastructure, and a toxic pollution of the air that has made the planet nearly uninhabitable.
Believing Tarizon's fate was sealed, the twenty most wealthy and powerful men on Tarizon known as the Group of Twenty make plans to evacuate with their friends and families to Tarizon's sister planet Earth. Others board ships and go into orbital hibernation hoping someday the planet's environment will recover allowing them to return to the surface. But for most there is no escape and they face the harsh reality that they will all soon be facing a slow and painful death from either violence, disease, starvation or asphyxiation.
Then, miraculously, a young boy named Sandee Brahn and Whisper, a wild beast called a rhutz, come out of the wilderness claiming that the God Pelgrem came to them in a dream and gave them the task of bringing peace to Tarizon. Although many mock Sandee Brahn and Whisper's claim, thousands flock to his side believing he truly is a holy man and is Tarizon's last hope.