Orphan's Destiny - Hardcover

At 25, Jason Wander could be called the Grand Old Man of space conflict, having survived Earth's very first alien attack. Launched in 2039 from Jupiter's moon Ganymede, the alien race called the Slugs devestated Earth's surface and slaughtered millions. Humanity's massive counterstrike tore directly into Ganymede, halting the invasion. And Wander, who, onlyfour years earlier, joined the military to escape jail, found himself the defacto acting general of the defining Battle of Gandymede - and commander of Earth's rag-tag surviving force. Earth'sappreciation comes slowly... if at all. Marooned on the icy moon's surface and out of radiocontact for five months, Wander and his troops receive a welcome suprise in the form of a relief ship Excalibur. But that suprise quickly turns bitter as their home-coming reveals an Earth no longer under Slug assault, but still quaking from the wreckage. Economic recovery - not a better defense - is the hard rule of the day, and anyone not in step with the times is quickly shunted aside. Not suprisingly, veteran soldiers do not fit into this new world order, Jason Wander least among them. But humanity's indifference to those who served is overturned when an undetected Slug fleet launches terrifying assaults on an Earth already in rubble. With the focus of the attack on the space defenses at Cape Canaveral, the still-intact Excalibur is suddenly cut off - and with it, Earth's few remaining ships in orbit. Galvanized, Wander sets in motion a daring recall of his own; scavenging together both a mission crew and a military shuttlenot consigned to teh post-War scrap heap, he will make his way to the Excalibur - and back into space. there, he will turn the immensecarrier into a floating blockade against the advancing invasion. But there's just one problem: the mission is pure suicide....