John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited hiswife's grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space.The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce—and alienraces willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defendEarth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far fromEarth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity's resources are in thehands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reachretirement age, you can join the CDF. They don't want young people; theywant people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living.You'll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve twoyears at the front. And if you survive, you'll be given a generoushomestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what toexpect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, farharder than he can imagine—and what he will become is far stranger.