Lines of Departure

Начало книги

Sometimes, the old sergeants talk about the Good Old Days.

There once was a blessed and mythical time when military service was a desirable job—a ticket to a low-risk career, access to decent food, and tolerable benefits. The military was selective, but when you got in, you were a member of a privileged class for the rest of your life.

Naturally, the Good Old Days came to an end about ten minutes after I signed my enlistment papers.

We’ve been fighting a new enemy for almost five years now, and we can’t even agree on a name for them. The xenobiologists came up with an unpronounceable Latin designation that nobody uses outside of a textbook. The infantry grunts, known for prosaicness, call them Lankies or Big Uglies. The Sino-Russians didn’t even have a name for them for the first year of the war, because they believed the North American Commonwealth was spinning tall tales to cover up terraforming disasters or natural calamities on the colonies we lost one by one.

Читать дальше →