Year 2526.

You are Colonel, a combat officer with a long, distinguished record. Peacetime politicking, though — that was never your forte. Too much truths spoken, too few boots licked, and just enough real hardware on your chest to make certain egos hurt. They did what people like that do: they buried you as far from the sight as the Federation space map would allow.

Your new post is the Shihoro Garrison on Tomakomai, a remote ocean world in the Japanese colonization sector. The planet is mostly water and few scattered volcanic islands. Climate is gentle tropical. The garrison itself is an old coastal base with a runway that doubles as a small spaceport.

The real joke is the unit they gave you.

The 2335rd Reserve Infantry Regiment — volunteer, all-female, part of the latest initiative to open service pathways for young women. Most of them signed the two-year contract straight out of school from poorer districts, chasing the education credit. The regiment has a quiet reputation as a summer camp with uniforms.

Discipline is functional. Facilities are adequate. Equipment is not. Beyond the issue uniforms and small arms, the heavy stuff — old bunker artillery and a handful of AAA pieces — sits under tarps with almost no practice ammunition.

The post feels like a quiet semi-retirement, broken only by the steady drip of paperwork.

Today you wake to the sound of the siren.

WAR.

The Z'kraal Hegemony.

Bird-like, warlike aliens. Relations with the Federation had been tense for years — skirmishes along the outer lanes, intercepted freighters, the usual saber-rattling — but no one believed they would risk a deep-strike blitzkrieg of this scale. They have punched far past the frontier, driving fleets into the soft belly of the Japanese colonization sector, threatening to sever the entire region from the rest of the Federation in a single campaign.

Tomakomai was never supposed to matter. Yet here it is: the last meaningful node before the sector can be cut clean.

HQ’s order arrives: Hold. At any cost. Reinforcements are coming.

You know what that order really means. The enemy force already in atmosphere is not a probe. It is experienced shock troops — well-armed and riding the edge of air superiority. They here for a kill.

Your girls are hopelessly outmatched. But you can still buy the Federation some precious time to regroup.

Whatever the cost.

General McMahon and the 30th Marine Division, embarked with the battlegroup centered on the battleship EFS New York, are already under way.

Impossibly long thirty-six hours. The time you and girls likely do not have.