John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wifes grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So, we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding....

The members of the Ghost Brigades, made up of perfect soldiers created from the DNA of the dead, band together to protect the future of humanity when three alien races vow to stop humans' expansion into space.

"Humans expanded into space ... only to find a universe populated with multiple alien species bent on their destruction. Thus was the Colonial Union formed, to help protect us from a hostile universe. The Colonial Union used the Earth and its excess population for colonists and soldiers. It was a good arrangement ... for the Colonial Union. Then the Earth said: no more. Now the Colonial Union is living on borrowed time--a couple of decades at most,...