Shattered Peace

By Robert Wolff

About the Book
In a universe that is almost always at war, a team of some of the most elite soldiers from the United States fights both on and off the battlefield for survival. They are the Spartans. Austin, the leader of the Spartans and Spartan Team 1, along with his wife and second-in-command, Sarah, and several other characters, fight to keep the team safe against their numerous enemies at home and abroad. The Spartans are unique not only because of their impressive combat skills but also because they have a mutation that keeps their bodies from ever aging, so they’ve been through the hell of war more times than anyone deserves to—constantly facing the threat of falling in the line of duty or being assassinated while at home.
In Shattered Peace, as Team 1 completes mission after mission, a growing threat soon emerges and puts all their lives, along with the lives of all American soldiers, at risk. This unknown threat seems to know every move the team will make even before they do. Surviving the unknown threat while simultaneously facing the horrors of war will push Team 1 to their limits.

About the Author
Robert Wolff is twenty-five years old, born and raised in Minnesota, and recently moved to South Carolina. He has always been an avid reader of science fiction and military fiction, ranging from Star Wars to Tom Clancy’s works. Wolff receives inspiration from movies, books, video games, and TV, which he then uses to help create ideas for books. Outside of reading, Wolff loves to play video games, write ideas for books for fun, go to the range, and just relax. Since high school, he has been working on Shattered Peace on and off and only recently decided to take his book to the next level.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Aug 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685378653

Robert Wolff

Robert Wolff (d. 2016) was raised by his Dutch parents among the indigenous peoples of Indonesia. A psychologist and educator who lived at times in Suriname and in Southeast Asia, he also taught at the University of Hawaii.

Book preview

Prologue

The moment the world ended will always be burned into my memory. Billions of people were gone in a matter of moments. World War III…. At first, it was called The Cold War because both sides were constantly threatening to blow the other side up, along with the rest of the world in the process. What made it cold was that neither side could bring themselves to follow through with those threats. However, as both sides grew increasingly aggressive and bold, war would eventually break out—and humanity as a species would nearly pay the ultimate price.

The end of the world truly began when the Soviet Union attempted to transfer nuclear weapons and the parts to build them to Cuba. They had already managed to get a few parts and some weapons delivered without the United States finding out. However, the United States government was, by now, fully aware of what was going on and was not about to let any more weapons or parts get delivered. A blockade of Cuba was set up, and any ship that tried to deliver cargo there was intercepted and inspected.

The Soviets realized that there would be no easy way to get the weapons and material through in large quantities if they had to rely on blockade runners and smaller ships to sneak through. So, it was decided that the Soviet Navy would attempt to escort some ships disguised as a humanitarian aid mission to their Communist comrades in Cuba. The convoy met the American fleet, and a standoff ensued. The U.S. Navy wouldn’t let the Soviets through without searching their ships, and the Soviets wouldn’t let the United States board their ships to inspect them. Neither side would budge. Suddenly, one of the Soviet ships began moving forward, disregarding the demands from the U.S. Navy to halt. A shot was fired over the ship’s bow as a warning.

That one shot was all it took to begin a new world war. One humanity almost didn’t recover from.

Most of what happened after that first shot is unknown to me since I hadn’t been born yet. All I know for sure is that the Soviets fired back, and the war truly began as both navies opened up and began sinking each other. The entire world held its breath as they waited for the nukes to fly, but they didn’t. At least not right away. Neither side was willing to push that big red button yet, despite all their previous threats. So instead, they each started to pick away at each other by invading the smaller allies of the other. Places like Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, the Middle Eastern nations, and several other South American, European, and Asian countries became the primary battlefields of WWIII. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact (with China joining the Communists) would happily face each other in just about any place that wasn’t home.

There was almost continuous fighting in these areas until 1999 when the focus finally shifted to the Soviet and Chinese mainlands. The multiple fronts and constant action meant nearly every male who turned eighteen was promptly drafted and sent off to fight. By the time the frontlines moved to the mainlands of China and the USSR, I was alive and had been fighting for about seven years. I fought in Vietnam, Germany, and Korea. Over those seven years, I had made a name for myself as an infantryman in the Army and eventually switched over to the Navy SEALs, where I operated behind enemy lines on covert missions. I even ended up as a SEAL team leader near the end.

Overall, the war had been going well for NATO up to this point, and the plan was to commence the final push towards Moscow and Beijing. I was training with my team for the push when the nukes finally started to fall. No one knew if the United States began to use their nuclear weapons to bring an end to the war faster and with fewer NATO casualties or if the Communists struck first as a last-ditch effort to swing the tide of the war in their favor. In the end, it didn’t matter who started it.

Both sides, now acting as if the invisible force that had been preventing them from using their weapons of mass destruction had been removed, started to launch pieces of their nuclear arsenal here and there. They still weren’t quite ready to end it all yet. Luckily, my team and I were just outside the kill zone of a nuke dropped on Minnesota. Why drop a nuke there? I had no clue. But we were actually thankful that the nuke landed where it did for more than one reason. Not only did we survive, but something unusual happened to us that day. To this day, scientists have been unable to understand how, but the radiation somehow stopped us from aging any further. They think that it had essentially mutated our somatic DNA, so our bodies constantly generated new cells, quickly replacing the cells that die over time, and the process never stopped or slowed down as it usually would. The cells just kept getting rebuilt over and over. It was as if our bodies were frozen in time, leaving us to stay the same age as when the burst of radiation hit us. Our organs, bones, cells… essentially every inch of our bodies was in a constant state of repair so that nothing aged or died for long. But while we no longer had to worry about aging, just about anything else could kill us, like bullets, severe blood loss, and most serious diseases.

We didn’t realize any of this at first, but after another few years of looking the same age as the years before, despite the amount of stress and combat we had been under, we were closely examined to see what exactly the radiation had done to us. When the scientists and doctors had concluded what was going on, my team realized that we were now the most important people in the world. We weren’t being egotistical or anything, but we knew that every egghead we came across would want to study us in hopes that they could reproduce the mutation somehow. So far, there hasn’t been any luck with that. As far as we know, there was something off about the Soviets’ nukes, or that batch of plutonium they were using, that caused that mutation in us. At the time, the Soviets had been way behind the United States in the nuclear weapons arms race and had been quickly producing cheap and simple weapons to try and catch up. Many of these weapons were more like a dirty bomb rather than a tactical nuclear weapon. Radiation posed the most significant threat with these kinds of weapons.

After the events in Minnesota, my team and I would not be fighting on the front lines as we were too crucial to have out in the field dodging bullets, bombs, and hellfire. Instead, we would be studied for the remainder of our time on Earth, even as the war raged on and we inched closer and closer to Armageddon.

We weren’t quite at the point of a total nuclear apocalypse yet. Bombs and missiles continued to sporadically hit various areas while doing quite a bit of damage. It probably took about another year before both sides finally started throwing everything they had at each other, destroying most of the planet, turning it into a barren wasteland, and killing almost every human and animal in the process.

How did humanity survive the war? The truth is, long before the nukes fell and my team essentially became eternal, everyone knew the Earth was pretty much done for. The leaders of several NATO and neutral countries had realized we were doomed and had been preparing an exit plan for as many humans, flora, and fauna as possible before everything was wiped out in the nuclear apocalypse. They knew full well they couldn’t stop the inevitable war, but they could at least try to save part of our biosphere. It took a shit-ton of resources, money, manpower, and caution to put the plan into action and keep it secret.

The second the first shots of WWIII were fired, the exit plan was put into motion. After the nukes started to fall, those of us with the Forever Mutation were gathered, along with about a billion people from around the world (including people from the Warsaw Pact nations), with most having vital backgrounds in fields such as science, agriculture, medicine, and such, and were taken off the planet by spaceships. It took many trips from hidden launch pads protected from the rain of bombs and missiles, but Project Ark, as it was called, was a success. We were brought up to a massive, top-secret base on the Moon that only a few world leaders, hundreds of astronauts, and tens of thousands of workers had previous knowledge of. All rumors of the base were covered up, and anyone who tried to bring light to this project was quickly silenced. The lunar base had been stocked up with enough food, water, and oxygen to keep the survivors of Earth alive for quite some time, and there was also abundant space to build farms and sustain the population for even longer.

The inevitable war had drastically sped up the American space program to finish the project. Even then, Project Ark took decades and nearly bankrupted the nations involved in building the lunar base. Those sent to the Moon to build it were isolated for the rest of their lives to make sure no one would learn about the project. This lunar base was the only survival plan for humanity and the various plants and animals from Earth. We would have to figure out how to continue surviving from there.

We watched as the remaining life on the planet was eradicated from the base as the remaining nations finally launched the rest of their arsenals all in one go. We all wept. Elite soldiers, the leaders of once-powerful nations, everyone. Not much more to say about it. Everyone and everything on that planet died after we let our hatred get to us. And as we watched bright yellow flashes span almost the entire globe, we realized that this was it. We were all that was left of Earth.

After the world ended, all weapons of mass destruction were banned, and any knowledge on how the weapons were designed was deliberately lost to the ages. Not only that, but our military technology was stalled out as there wasn’t much of a need, or desire, for weapons of war. And you know, after all that death and destruction, you would think it would be over. No more war, just peace. You’d think maybe we, as the remnants of the human race, would ultimately stop our militant ways and pursue peace for the rest of our existence because we’d experienced first-hand what happened when we lost control of our emotions.

Well, you’d be wrong. It lasted for a good while, but it was far from permanent.

Centuries and numerous scientific breakthroughs later, we were able to combine all the spaceships we had brought to the Moon into one enormous spaceship, large enough to carry billions. We named her The Last Resort, and she was capable of going faster than light. She was fast enough to reach, in a matter of days, a brand-new planet in another stellar system that bore a strikingly similar appearance to our lost Earth, right down to the general shapes and positions of the continents. We had to make this move as our population had grown far larger than the lunar base could hold.

Our spaceship came out of what the eggheads had called hyperdrive, which was almost a thousand times faster than the speed of light thanks to using a combination of antimatter, dark matter, and exotic matter to propel the ship. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was already intelligent life on this planet. If so, I wondered what they would think of the huge, vaguely oval shape now floating in the sky above their world. The Last Resort was in no way a beautiful ship. It was long, thick, and full of sharp corners resulting from long, late nights spent building the ship that would transfer all of us to our new home. But we seemed to be the only lifeforms on the planet apart from the native flora and a few micro-organisms. The animals and plants we brought with us adapted quickly to this planet, and so did we.

As soon as we landed and set up a settlement to live in on the continent that bore a resemblance to North America, the spaceship was scrapped for conversion into tools and buildings to start over with. I won’t retell the whole story of how we became a brand-new nation or how humanity once again thrived because it was so long ago that I really don’t remember how it all happened; turns out the human brain can only hold so many memories. Besides, it would take a whole lot of books to get all that information out. Needless to say, we hit many rough patches over the centuries, but we somehow pulled through.

Initially, we had decided as a whole to maintain a political system similar to the democracy we had in America before the end of the world. Since most of the population was American or had American ancestors, we figured we might as well stick with it since it (mostly) worked. Those with ties to the other nations reluctantly agreed, but they knew that it didn’t really matter at the time. We were all just trying to survive. Because of the type of government we chose and based off where we initially settled on our new planet, we voted to call our nation The United States of America. Again, the others reluctantly agreed. Rather than pick something new, we wanted to use this name to help us remember those we left behind and help prevent another war like that last one, as the pain was still fresh in our minds every time we remembered our past.

It worked. We humans became a single united nation, and war didn’t exist in the new America. For the first time, humanity was united. There were few serious crimes, everyone spoke the same language, and the world was near-perfect. In the thousands of years after our landing, humans and the species of animals and plants we brought with us exploded in population—so much so that we soon spread across multiple planets and even to several different galaxies.

Then, one day, it all almost ended again.

Officially, it was called The Rebellion. I think of it as the great betrayal. People became more and more aware of their ancestors and their history. The more they became aware, the more they wanted to resurrect their ancestral nations, as we had done with the United States. Several groups even wanted to leave and create their own separate countries on other planets. It started peacefully, but growing cultural differences and increasing desires to become independent nations began to increase the hostility people had for one another. Riots and fighting sprang up almost everywhere. Things got worse and worse until it evolved into a massive civil war, and, for the first time in a long time, my team and I once more fought against other human beings.

Humanity was essentially divided into two groups: The Americans and the rebels. The rebels wanted to break away from America and create their own separate and independent countries. These countries ranged from historically allied nations like Canada and Britain to less-friendly ones like China and Russia (the new name for the Soviet Union). Meanwhile, we Americans wanted to keep everyone together as one nation as we had for so long; but by then, we were heavily outnumbered and would ultimately lose the fight.

Somewhere along the line, a lieutenant and a friend named Maxis led part of our team and his closest friends to the side of the rebellion. They broke our hearts and nearly killed us in the process, but we managed to escape and lick our wounds.

The rebels ultimately won their independence and split up into their separate nations. Each nation took a fleet of transport spaceships full of people, supplies, flora, and fauna to colonize other planets away from each other and the remnants of the United States. At this point, our so-called friends that had once been on our team decided to add insult to injury and join the newly founded nation of Russia. They didn’t even have any old Soviet heritage in them, but their greed got to them. Russia offered serious monetary rewards for any soldier willing to join their side, which they only partially honored at the end of it all. Russia was the most powerful and wealthiest of the rebel nations and would become the one nation we were almost constantly at war with. Go figure, right? Other nations were less violent in their revolutions and became allies later on. Granted, it wasn’t easy to forgive and forget what they did during The Rebellion, but we would need their help eventually. War was once more part of our lives, and every human nation got dragged into it eventually.

A couple of millennia after the betrayal, the now numerous nations had built up substantial populations, planets, resources, and military power. Alliances formed, enemies were made, whole nations fell.… We even encountered a few alien species, who then got dragged into the massive unending war as well. Before long, the entire known universe seemed to be at war, and the conflict kept growing in scale every year, with more people joining in the fight. Ceasefires were the only moments of peace we really knew, and they were few and far between. They lasted just long enough for the war machine to fill back up with bodies, bullets, and money; then it all started again.

But enough with the history lesson. First, I should do some introductions. My name is Austin. My wife Sarah and I are both soldiers in the 1st American Army, which essentially includes all of the elite and special forces (SF) units the United States military has. Armies were now groups of at least one billion soldiers for frontline infantry alone. That number doesn’t take into account the number of crews operating things like vehicles, ships, field weapons, and the more numerous support personnel and rear-echelon troops. They’ve grouped up so many soldiers and support personnel because the war had evolved to include full-on invasions of entire planets rather than the occasional country or continent. And the term Army isn’t just about the ground forces anymore either. As I had touched on before, armies included infantry and armor, naval fleets, and numbered air forces to create a large, flexible force capable of handling anything thrown it's way.

At the head of each army are two Generals of the Army. While technically considered the same rank as an Admiral of the Fleet or General of the Air force, these officers are in charge of commanding the entire army and work together with the other officers to do so. They typically have several Earth-standard years (365 days) of experience in combat and work with the lower-ranking generals and admirals to create an overall strategy for combat and operations. They also have command over the space fleets attached to their army, though the admirals usually have freer rein, considering they knew their battlefield better than anyone else. There are two generals for each army to somewhat lessen the amount of work one person has to do, and it also adds a second opinion to any decisions. Each army has different characteristics, a slightly different size, and obviously consists of separate units than another army. The 1st Army comprises the most troops and the most diverse units of all the armies in the United States military. Having all the elite units and SF units in one army might not seem like a good idea to some, but we were designed to split easily into smaller forces and send troops to many different areas at once if necessary. We were more of a support army than anything. Rarely was the 1st Army ever all in one spot. Generally, if another army requested the assistance of an SF unit or needed the aid of a force like the Marines, that unit or force was temporarily absorbed by the other army.

Along with increasing the size of armies, unit sizes were increased to cope with the larger battles being fought. Everything from platoons up to divisions and corps was much larger than before. Considering how large the human population had grown since our time on the lost Earth, we could handle the strain of sending billions of soldiers at a time to war.

Anyways, back to me and my story. I’ve been in the service for quite some time now, obviously, and love to fight. If I didn’t, I would probably have gone insane from all the shit I’ve seen and done by now. Born and raised in the old Minnesota, I had my life already planned out for me. I knew I would fight in WWIII the moment I turned eighteen, so I just enjoyed my life until then. When I did hit eighteen, I was immediately drafted and sent to the Army. Eventually, I switched branches and worked my way into the SEALs. As I said before, that’s where I was when the bombs fell. Once The Rebellion ended, I stayed enlisted to help combat the new threats we faced and secretly get revenge on those who betrayed us. I’ve been in almost every major conflict since The Rebellion, and I’ve pretty much seen it all by now, or at least I’d like to think I have. Being alive for millennia will do that to you.

Overall, my life was pretty damn rough, unlike Sarah’s. She started life in a very wealthy family. Her father created and still produces some of the most advanced weapons and weapon systems the military uses. Even though she was rich and didn’t have her life planned out for her as I did, she still wanted to fight in the war. She constantly dreamt of being in the military but wasn’t allowed to join since, at the time, women were considered unfit for combat. However, many generations later, that changed. Women were eventually allowed into the military due to the ever-increasing demand for soldiers and the realization that women were just as capable as men due to the constant war. That whole gender dispute faded once men and women were increasingly likely to perform at the same level on the battlefield. There was no weaker sex anymore. During the collapse, both Sarah and her father went through the same nuclear fallout that my team did and acquired the same mutation as a result. They were in Minnesota when the nuke fell, as Sarah’s father was testing out some new equipment on my team. Sarah was fortunate enough to be tagging along as she was also interested in her father’s work. They, too, managed to get off the old Earth due to that, their money (which meant nothing for a while), and because of his skills in engineering, science, and medicine.

In the 1st Army, the two of us belong to the most elite unit we know of: Spartans. Spartan Team 1, to be more specific. We work with the other members of my old SEAL team and some other highly trained fighters we met along the long way. The Spartans are the units at the front of planetary invasions and the center of planetary defenses. We work our asses off to be flexible enough to perform well no matter what mission is thrown our way. From black ops and assassinations to reconnaissance and hostage rescues, we’ve learned and done it all. While we aren’t necessarily the best in any particular field, we’re a jack-of-all-trades unit that can be reliably called upon to do just about anything, anywhere, at any time.

Team 1 consists of twenty operators, as do all the other teams. Sarah and I have personally had a hand in training every Spartan who had fought for the U.S., which came in handy much further down the road. We’ve been through a lot over the millennia we’ve been alive. Through battles and serious life-or-death moments to daily life and the peaceful years, I plan to cover as much as possible. So, I might as well start during the middle part of our service to the United States so you can get a feel for what we do and face.

One last note: This isn’t a fairy tale that ends happily ever after. I really wish I could say that we all live in the end, but unfortunately, some of us made the ultimate sacrifice. They joined a constantly expanding list of service members who have put themselves in harm’s way to protect the United States and her interests abroad. Obviously, I survived, though sometimes I wish it could’ve been me inside those flag-draped caskets instead of my friends and family. I managed to make it through hell and back mostly in one piece. Everyone else, though… well, you’ll find out as I tell the story.

Chapter 1

Austin

The USSS (United States Spaceship) United States

Orbiting New Earth

November 2101 AR (After Rebellion)

The whole room suddenly shook as I finished typing, indicating that the fleet had come out of hyperdrive. We were once again back home after a long fight for a planet that was rich with oil and other resources required for the ever-growing war machine. We had taken it after a few years of bitter fighting, as was the case with most planetary invasions, which typically lasted until one side realized it was a lost cause and finally retreated. In this last invasion, the new Warsaw Pact, an alliance that contained Russia, France (that caught me off guard too), China, Korea (which had been reunited as one nation), and many other smaller countries had put up a good fight. The new NATO force, an alliance with America, Britain, Germany (also reunited as one), Canada, and many smaller countries as well, took many casualties but inflicted more than we received. Despite no longer meaning the North Alantic Treaty Organization, we kept the NATO name since we were still fighting Russia and her allies. Technically it was a win, but what really counted as a victory these days? Hell, why were we even fighting anymore? At this point, it felt like we were just wasting resources, money, and most importantly, lives on this fight between NATO and Warsaw. I mean, there was easily enough space for us all to live peacefully and well within our means.

Before we got thrown back into the fray, it was time for some much-needed R&R. I got up, stretched, winced at the numerous pops that came from my stiff spine, and started to make my way to the bridge. I could contemplate the futility of this war on the long walk and would have plenty of time to get all philosophical with my thoughts.

About twenty minutes later, and still unable to explain why this war was still going on, I finally made it to the bridge. Interestingly enough, mine was one of the closest rooms for the soldiers to the bridge, and it was still that long a walk. I saw that a few members of my team were already there. We weren’t technically supposed to be up there, but the admiral of the 25th Space Fleet didn’t care since we were longtime friends. His name was Nicholas Bowman, or just Nick as he liked to be called. He was technically in his late-thirties, with jet-black hair mixed with a bit of gray. He claimed the gray came from the stress of his position, but I was pretty sure he secretly dyed it. He was, in all fairness, very attractive. I knew that there was a long list of both women and some men who would gladly go out with him if he asked. He was single too, but only because he was married to the Space Navy, as he would often bring up. I thought the same way about the Spartans until I met someone even more special to me.

He was wearing the Space Navy’s (SN) dress uniform since we were about to land: a crisp white outfit with black stripes on the shoulders with specks of white that symbolized the stars. I kept teasing him about it looking like dandruff. His pants also had these stripes and spots. This was the only significant difference between the regular (wet) Navy and the Space Navy dress uniforms. That and the emblem of the SN, which was a spiral galaxy with an eagle in the middle clutching an olive branch in one talon and an anchor in the other.

He turned to me when I walked in, and we shook hands. Bet you can’t wait to get rid of us again, I joked.

Nick shook his head in response and turned to look away from me so he could check on a display near his chair. "You can say that again. You’ve been eating all our food, drinking all our coffee, and disrupting my crew since the moment you stepped aboard, he replied, then laughed. Nah, you know we love you guys. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be on the bridge right now. I just can’t wait to get some R&R for both my crews and me." Nick loved his sarcasm, just like me.

We all could use a few years of R&R after that one, I sighed. Everyone was beat after the last invasion. So, how long until we land?

Apparently, we have to wait for the 3rd Fleet to finish loading up, so that would be another month or so, he answered, still looking at his monitor. There were many icons, words, and numbers on the screen, but I had no idea what they meant. Way beyond my MOS.

I smiled at his comment. Everyone in the armed forces made fun of each other, and we really enjoyed poking fun at the different branches of the military. It was something born of the competitive nature that most people in the military had and was just a way to mess with one another more than anything… though the 3rd Space Fleet’s admiral was rather slow and meticulous when it came to loading and unloading his ships. Scanning the large bridge again, I looked toward two doglike creatures standing on their hind legs. One was pitch black, the other pure white. How long have Scout and Storm been here? I asked Nick.

Scout and Storm, whose names in English were the closest translations of their actual names, were members of a species of aliens that had been living in our midst for quite a while, disguised as normal dogs before we were made aware of their presence. Averaging at around five feet tall, they could walk on four legs like an average dog, or they could stand on their hind legs and sort of stretch their size a bit to regain their preferred form, like they were currently doing. They had opposable thumbs too if you were wondering. However, when disguised as dogs, they hid that thumb from sight, which was apparently very uncomfortable for them. Their species was called something unpronounceable and untranslatable in their language, so we settled on calling them Canis, the genus that all the varieties of dogs are found. They didn’t mind the name at all, so we stuck with it. Storm and Scout were the Canis’ queen and her bodyguard/top general. Coincidentally, Sarah and I had adopted the two as pets long before realizing who and what they were.

They’ve been here for about an hour; said they needed to escape the crowded halls, Nick answered as he checked his watch. And those two lovebirds have been here for only a couple of minutes, and already they’re at it again, he said as he pointed off to his right where our team’s medic, Mark, and his new-ish girlfriend Scarlet stood together, whispering to each other. Scarlet happened to be the 111th Wing’s leader, nicknamed the Birds of Prey (BoP). The BoP were part of the 3rd Air Force and were one of the best and most versatile wings the Unites States Air Force had. They, along with the rest of the 3rd Air Force, were part of the 1st Army. She was the best damn pilot I’ve ever served with and was ever-so-slightly insane. She really was a perfect match for our ever-so-slightly insane medic.

Makes me sick, joked Nick.

Hey, I’ve seen you talk to your flagship like it was your wife before. You can’t say a normal relationship like that makes you sick, I replied.

"That’s different. The Last Resort is pretty much my wife. Those two are just dating, he responded. And that was only a one-time thing," he added quietly.

Sure, Nick. I’ll bet it was. Nick liked to transfer between the three dreadnoughts, but The Last Resort was his primary flagship. I looked at the screens displaying the images outside the bridge. The massive turrets on the spaceship had just finished extending out of the slots they were usually retracted into for better aerodynamics in both space and the atmosphere. They slowly scanned the area around the ship as an added precaution. Past the turrets and directly in front of the ship loomed the large blue-and-green planet that was our home. It really was a miracle that we’d found a world like the old Earth, and more so in the sense that the continents were relatively similar and that it had about the same gravity and atmosphere. It was larger than the old Earth and had a younger star that was supposed to last a lot longer than our old Sun. One significant difference was the lack of an island continent similar to Australia on this planet. A lot of people forget just how lucky we were to call it home. Then again, a lot of people never saw what happened to our last home world.

Still looking around the ship’s displays, I saw the rest of the 25th Space Fleet waiting impatiently to land and take their leave. The vaguely dagger-like shapes of the capital ships maintained a fairly tight formation while still leaving enough room for evasive maneuvers, should the need arise. The 25th Space Fleet had been attached to the 1st Army along with the 1st Space Fleet, which was somewhere behind us, also impatiently waiting. Each army had one or two space fleets attached to them for support. Ours just