Rick Shelley’s Federation War trilogy begins with a novel that takes you through the barracks corridors and the trenches of war, bringing the war of the future home with a combination of battlefield action and home-town heroics.

For Doug Weintraub of the Buchanan Planetary Commission, it begins with a fuzzy call, quickly cut off. Federation troops have invaded his world. The battle they’ve long feared and tried to avoid is coming. Now it’s time to seek help, to launch a rocket into Q Space and hope for Second Commonwealth troops to arrive -- and soon.

Aboard the Starship Victoria, it begins differently. It’s a short, unexpected message on the screen for Sergeant David Spencer of the Royal Marines. New orders, surprising ones, that will send him and his men to an independent frontier world that’s become a new front in the war between the Commonwealth and Federation.

Doug Weintraub and David Spencer soon find themselves in unexpected roles, a skilled warrior in the Royal Marines side-by-side with a back-world farmer. They’ll need each other to keep the Federation at bay.