You're seventy-five years old, your wife is dead, and your life is winding down. What do you do next? If you're John Perry, the answer is simple: You join the military. The Colonial Defense Forces take Earth's senior citizens and retrofit them young, strong bodies -- and then throws them into the unending war humanity is waging against other civilizations up there among the stars. John Perry is in the middle of it all and learning fast to survive, because the alternatives -- for him and humanity -- are grim. And it's in the middle of this struggle for survival that Perry meets a woman who seems achingly familiar...