EPILOGUE

The Russian stood and stretched in his gray apartment. Out the window, the dishwater sky seemed to lack the conviction to promise rain, only to suggest it. The Russian rubbed the scar on his forehead and looked back at his now-dark laptop on the table in the corner.

This had not gone as planned. As promised.

He’d done his part. The invaders had not. He’d watched on the television as the tide of the battle shifted back and forth. He’d also had access to a video stream on his laptop that the Americans quite literally would have killed for; a vantage point in space that no one else on the planet had. That had gone dark when the Americans launched their final kamikaze attack.

It had gone dark, and then a last blip of data had arrived, and then contact had stopped altogether.

That blip contained a new world, though. Or, at least, blueprints for a new world. The invaders would return. Not immediately. They needed to regroup. But they would come. The Russian knew the blip meant he was expected to facilitate that effort. He considered that.

The invaders had been desperate. They had sent him much—perhaps too much for their own good.

The Russian had never been more than a general. A man who took orders.

Perhaps it was time to start giving them.