<div>John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife&#8217;s grave. Then he joined the army.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce&#8212;and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity&#8217;s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don&#8217;t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You&#8217;ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You&#8217;ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you&#8217;ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine&#8212;and what he will become is far stranger.</div>