For the first time, Jonah appreciated the cynical comment that he’d heard on occasion from the older officers at headquarters: Nothing’s too good for our men and women in the militia; too bad the government hasn’t figured out how to give us less than nothing yet.

He’d have to rely on his people, who, though not regular military, were not without promise. They ranged from weedy pseudointellectuals taking a year off from college, through the usual assortment of troublemakers, slackers and steady, reliable, young men and women, all the way to Sergeant Wilson Turk—who was, in Jonah’s considered opinion, something close to a gift from on high.

Unlike most of the Kyrkbacken Militia’s enlisted personnel and noncommissioned officers, Turk had actually seen combat. He had served for two years in a front-line mercenary unit before cashing in his bonuses and returning home to semicivilian life on Kyrkbacken. Jonah, whose own battlefield experience to date was purely theoretical, soon found himself leaning heavily—but, he hoped, unobtrusively—on Wilson Turk.

Jonah and his men found themselves near a small town with the unpromising name of Rotten Creek on Kurragin, only a jump away from the Capellan capital of Sian. The fact that he was there, combined with the way he’d arrived, caused him no end of astonishment. He’d been in a JumpShip escorted by Capellan troops, guided into the heart of the Confederation. The missing JumpShip—or what was left of it—had been found. The troops within it had been located, mostly alive, but in deep trouble.

The JumpShip had, in fact, wandered accidentally into Capellan territory. Their mistake had been seized upon by House Ma-Tzu Kai, one of the more extreme elements of the Capellan Confederation. The Republic troops had run, only to dive deeper into Capellan territory. The ship, on its last legs, eventually managed to expel its DropShips near Kurragin, where the troops landed in a wide, desolate mountain range. The JumpShip was destroyed soon after, and House Ma-Tzu Kai had pursued The Republic’s troops to the planet.

The Confederation, in a display of generous diplomacy that struck Jonah and many others as quite out of character, announced to The Republic that the lost unit had been found on Kurrigan, and that they would allow a relatively small force into Confederation space to retrieve it. The Confederation reported that it had asked House Ma-Tzu Kai to cease molesting the Republican troops, but, regretfully, Ma-Tzu Kai had not responded well and seemed to be pursuing its own agenda against the troops, and the Confederation was not going to move militarily against one of its own Houses. If The Republic wanted the troops to return safely, it would need to extricate them with its own people.

Jonah, and many of the other soldiers he spoke with, were immediately suspicious of the Confederation’s strategy. They already had one unit stranded in Capellan space, and now they were asking The Republic to send more troops in far beyond The Republic’s border. Though Capellan diplomats repeatedly promised a safe escort to the Republican troops many considered such promises to be worthless.

The Republic knew it had to send troops in or risk alienating the government of several border planets, but it also knew it could not risk top-of-the-line troops on what could be a fool’s errand. So it had scraped together a ragtag group of militias, many similar to Jonah’s in composition and experience. This was a group that was supposed to go up against elite Capellan troops and somehow hold them off long enough to get the lost unit safely away from Kurrigan. If they succeeded, the Confederation promised to look the other way on any losses suffered by House Ma-Tzu Kai. If they failed—well, the Capellans would take the position that The Republic had lacked the strength to rescue its own troops.

Once on Kurrigan, most of the Republican troops were busy trying to root out the Ma-Tzu Kai forces and give the wandering army room to escape. Jonah’s company had been assigned to a backup role, ordered to hold its post and wait. Even in a desperate situation, Jonah thought bitterly, there’s little use for us.

They sat in the middle of hostile territory and waited. After two weeks on Kurrigan, he and Turk had run out of jokes to tell each other about Rotten Creek. By the end of the first month, his unit had its first fistfight, quickly followed by its first arrest and brief confinement. Jonah’s plans grew more and more detailed, but no orders came through.

They eventually spent six weeks encamped near Rotten Creek. Somewhere beyond the range of hills that lay to the west, the troopers of House Ma-Tzu Kai and the main Republic force fought and maneuvered and fought again while Rotten Creek remained completely and totally secure.

Then it came.

The order that changed Jonah Levin’s life forever arrived with a simple beep. After loading in the day’s encryption keys, Jonah watched the message organize itself from gibberish to coherent orders.

FIRST KYRKBACKEN ECHO COMPANY PROCEED IMMEDIATELY 45′36″ REINFORCE REPUBLIC FORCES AGAINST MAJOR HOUSE MOBILIZATION

House Ma-Tzu Kai was on the move. They must have pooled a large force, making The Republic desperate enough to call in all available personnel. The journey to the given coordinates wouldn’t take long, but it would force them to cross mountains and make a steep descent into the wide valley protecting the House troops.

After months of waiting, constantly wondering when they would be asked to do something, Jonah’s troops were hesitant. When you’re being asked to throw yourself at a larger, better-armed, and better-trained force, boredom suddenly doesn’t look that bad. The drill to break camp, which they’d gone over at least fifty times, proceeded slowly and clumsily.

Jonah, angry with his whole unit, vented at the first person he found, who happened to be Turk.

“What the hell are they doing out there? When orders say ‘immediately,’ they don’t mean ‘immediately, or, if not, as soon as you can get yourself together.’ We should be halfway to the blasted meeting point by now!”

Turk let Jonah vent, then met his anger with calm. “Have you walked through camp?”

“Walked through camp? No! I’ve been doing my part, prepping the Stinger. There’s not supposed to be a camp any more.”

“Just walk through. Don’t yell, at least not yet. See how things are going. Just take a quick walk, okay?”

Jonah was about to retort that the last thing his company needed was one more person wasting time, but it was Turk he was talking to. It wouldn’t hurt to trust him on this.

The fear in camp was palpable. A drill prepares you for real combat about as much as your first kiss prepares you to be married. The real situation is a whole lot more complicated than the practice.

The soldiers, Jonah saw, were trying to get their work done, trying to focus, but mental pictures of their own looming death kept wiping everything else away. They weren’t ready.

Jonah had no idea how to help them. They were right to be scared. He was scared, too, but had managed to bury his fear under the call of duty. He didn’t think he could bury the fear of an entire company.

He walked through the camp, and his soldiers watched him pass. His mind may have been whirling, reaching for something, anything to help his soldiers, but his face remained calm. Resolute. And as he passed, his troops found another image they could place in their head, one that finally pushed away the hundred images of death. Their commander was calm, and they followed him.

Within minutes of the completion of his tour of the camp, Echo Company was ready to move.