What about these youngsters? Would they also fight to the last man—or woman? I recalled the words of an ancient general to his men: “Your job is not to die for your country. Your job is to get the other poor sonofabitch to die for his country.”

My job was to see to it that these young men and women won their battles with as few casualties as possible. I did not know them, not individually. Yet I was determined to be as good a commander for them as I could be. How good would that be? Would I be good enough, or would I get them all killed?

The testing time was fast approaching. Our landing vessel shot out of the cruiser’s launching bay, acceleration flattening us back in our liquid-filled seats. There were no windows, no viewing screens in the landing vehicle’s starkly utilitarian interior. Just the lurching and swaying of hypersonic flight and then the slamming shock of hitting the atmosphere, blazing through it like a falling meteor.

The whole squad was silent now. White-knuckle time. The enemy had thrown up nuclear missiles at the invasion fleet. We were supposed to be coming down on the far side of the planet, away from their only base. But what if they had more than the one base our scouts had detected? We had cleaned their satellites out of their orbits around the planet, but what if they had aircraft to intercept us? A single hit with a laser beam or the smallest of missiles would blow our hypersonic lander out of the sky. And us with it.

“Approaching jump zone,” came the word from the cockpit, little more than a whisper in my helmet earphones.

The ship was still bucking and vibrating badly, biting deeper and deeper into the atmosphere, its outer hull glowing cherry red from the heat. I stood up, unsteady in the rocking, jouncing plane.

“On your feet!” the sergeant bellowed. I knew his name: Manfred, a veteran, hard-bitten and tough enough to forge his squad into a unit that would follow him anywhere without question—and take care of each other, whether under fire or in some brawling training camp.