For colonist Scott St. Andrew, the only route off his poisonous rock of a home planet is the elite South Point Military Academy on the moon Exeter. If he can complete the military's most grueling training program, he will qualify to become an officer in the Guard Corps of the Terran Alliance. But genetic defects have reduced Scott's one-in-a-thousand chance for escape to practically nil and have made him a target of ridicule and ritual hazing by his classmates.
Then long-smoldering colonial resentments against the Alliance erupt into violent open rebellion. And suddenly Cadet St. Andrew is forced to choose a side to die for.
Sent into deep-space combat long before his training is complete -- tested and toughened in a horrific baptism of blood -- he must now survive the deadly "conditioning" process of a vanished alien race. For only then can Scott St. Andrew know his true destiny -- and his role in the imperiled future of a universe at war.