The crack in the voice of Wasp-Two’s pilot made it sound like he had much more to live for than the rest of us. “Good God! Am I the only one seeing this?” He wasn’t. Having been assigned as Dr. Jella Duverii’s bodyguard, I was seated in Wasp-Three’s cockpit with the command staff instead of…

Despite knowing that I would have to face him at some point, I was not expecting Gunny Malcolm to be the first person I encountered once I stepped off the dropship. Like me, he was in his dress greens, standing in the unrelenting Kanarisian rain, getting soaked to his bones while flanked by a pair…