“I was hooked up to a dialysis machine, praying I would make it to my seventy-fifth birthday,” Jefferson said. “I’d already gotten one transplant, and they didn’t want to give me another because they knew I was going to leave anyway. Cheaper to hook me up. I barely made it. But I got to seventy-five, signed up and a week later, boom. New body, new life, new career. Space is awesome.”

The shuttle hit an air pocket of some sort, tumbling the transport before the pilot could right the ship again. “There’s the minor problem that you might have to kill things,” Wilson said, to Jefferson. “Or get killed. Or fall out of the sky. You’re a soldier now. These are the occupational hazards.”

“Fair trade,” Jefferson said.

“Is it,” Wilson said. “First mission?”

“Yes, sir,” Jefferson said.

“I’ll be interested to know if your answer to that is the same a year from now,” Wilson said.

Jefferson grinned. “You strike me as a ‘glass half-empty’ kind of guy, sir,” he said.

“I’m a ‘the glass is half-empty and filled with poison’ kind of guy, actually,” Wilson said.

“Yes, sir,” Jefferson said.

Lee nodded suddenly, not at Wilson or Jefferson, but at the message she was getting from her BrainPal. “Drop-off in two,” she said. “Fire teams.” The soldiers formed up into groups of four. “Wilson. You’re with me.” Wilson nodded.

“You know, I was one of the last people off, sir,” Jefferson said to Wilson a minute later, as the shuttle zeroed in on its landing site.

“Off of what?” Wilson said. He was distracted; he was going over the mission specs on his BrainPal.

“Off of Earth,” Jefferson said. “The day I went up the Nairobi beanstalk, that guy brought that alien fleet into Earth orbit. Scared the hell out of all of us. We thought we were under attack. Then the fleet started transmitting all sorts of things about the Colonial Union.”

“You mean, like the fact it had been socially engineering the Earth for centuries to keep it a farm for colonists and soldiers,” Wilson said.

Jefferson snorted quietly. “That’s a little paranoid, don’t you think, sir? I think this fellow—”

“John Perry,” Wilson said.

“—has some explaining to do about how he managed to head up an alien fleet in the first place. Anyway, my transport ship was one of the last out of Earth dock. There were one or two more, but after that I’m told the Earth stopped sending us soldiers and colonists. They want to renegotiate their relationship to the Colonial Union, is how I’ve heard it.”

“Doesn’t seem unreasonable, all things considered,” said Wilson.

The shuttle landed with a muted thump and settled into the earth.