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Ten years of war that saw us beaten and forced to retreat, only to regroup and claw our way back into the fight and throw the enemy onto the defensive. In the four years since I'd graduated from the Academy we'd taken a big swath of Caliphate territory and reclaimed the momentum. Or at least evened the score.

But the enemy still held a whole sector of our worlds, conquered in the disastrous early years of the war, and now we were going to do something about that. I Corps was the largest formation ever fielded in space by the Western Alliance. The 1st and 2nd U.S. Marine Divisions, the Royal Marine Division, the 1st Canadian Spaceborne Brigade, and the Oceanian Assault Regiment. Over forty-five thousand troops, all committed to Operation Sherman, the campaign to recover our lost systems. Commanding I Corps was a marine I'd served with before, and one I would have followed into hell itself, the newly-promoted Lieutenant General Elias Jackson Holm.

While I was on Earth trying to keep a smile on my face and the contents of my stomach inside while dealing with politicians and government officials, General Holm was organizing and training what would become I Corps. After the successes of the Tail and Outer Rim campaigns, the general pretty much had a blank check, and he used to it appropriate every veteran formation he could find for the offensive.

This left many of our systems defended by green troops, but the general made sure that every crucial planet had a least a component of veterans and a seasoned commander. The newly conquered rim worlds were left lightly defended. The Outer Rim campaign was a diversion, intended to shift the enemy's focus to retaking his own systems, and we couldn't realistically hold the worlds we took anyway. They were just too remote, too far from our own bases of support. Hopefully, the Caliphate would be fully committed to recovering some of this territory, giving us an opening to take back what we'd lost early in the war.

The whole conflict had become more complex, and was showing signs of widening further. There was a lot of diplomacy and spying going on, though we generally didn't get too much information from those quarters, at least not until it was time to act on it.

Our alliance with the PRC was starting to pay off. Fully mobilized now, the PRC was keeping the CAC busy, launching attacks on multiple worlds, raiding supply lines, and generally preventing them from starting any new offensives against us. The CAC outnumbered the PRC, but the Coalition had great technology, certainly better than the CAC's, and even superior to ours in certain areas. In a long one-on-one war of attrition the PRC would probably lose, but as an ally causing the CAC a world of problems they were perfect. On a personal level I enjoyed the reports I was getting on the exploits of Major Aoki Yoshi, who was rapidly becoming the hero of the PRC. Aoki was a good officer and a good friend, and I wished him only the best.

Open war had broken out between Europa Federalis and the Central European League as well, though for now it was a separate conflict. No one was seriously wooing either of them since an alliance with one would mean war with the other, but most likely that conflict would eventually merge with this one. This new fight would play havoc with the general's supply of good cognac, but that was likely to be the biggest effect on our war effort for now.

Our intel teams were more worried about the South Americans. Generally, they were more closely aligned with us than our enemies, but the systems they really wanted to annex were mostly ours, so it was easier for the Caliphate to offer them a reward. Intelligence reports suggested that they had been very close to entering the conflict before our recent victories caused them to delay. There was still a lot of concern they would eventually come in against us, though, and we just didn't have the reserves to manage another front. Their empire was in decline, barely holding onto superpower status, and they desperately needed a bigger presence in space. They were cut off from the rim by the other powers, and they were effectively landlocked in space. They needed to conquer someone's colonies to create a pathway to unexplored areas, and ours were juicier and better located for them. I was no expert on diplomacy or intel, but I suspected greed and expediency would win out over other considerations.

We had our own diplomatic initiative underway - we were trying to get the Martian Confederation to come in on our side. They were closely aligned with us and would never have sided with the Caliphate or the CAC, but they also had a strong resolve to remain neutral. While they'd fought a skirmish or two over the years, they had managed to stay out of the First and Second Frontier Wars, and they had no desire to get dragged into the third. I suspected they would enter the war rather than see the balance of power shift significantly to the Caliphate and the CAC, however. My opinion was unqualified, of course. One thing I have never been is a diplomat.

Regardless of diplomacy and the shifting of national alignments, I Corps was going to liberate our people. Some of them had been held by the enemy for seven or eight years, and it was well past time for us to free them from the yoke. I believe that opinion was shared by every member of I Corps, from General Holm to the lowest, greenest private fresh out of camp.

The assembly point for I Corps was an amusing one, at least for some of us. The Eta Cassiopeiae system had the warp gates to facilitate our advance, so the planet Columbia was again the destination of troop transports, though this time the situation was significantly less dire. When I stepped out of my ship onto the field outside Weston it felt odd, as though I'd only been away a very short time. Six years. Had it really been almost six years?

I walked quietly to the edge of the field, gazing over at the hills in the distance, my mind lost in thought. There were ghosts here, ghosts of friends I'd left behind. Friends I'd sent to their deaths. "I'm back, brothers," I whispered somberly. My introspection was short-lived. An orderly came over and told me the general wanted to see me immediately.  God, he must have been about twelve. And why was he looking at me with that crazy stare. There are real heroes around here, kid. If you're dazzled by me you need to get out more.

The Columbians had been busy. We'd left their world in pretty rough shape, but they'd somehow managed to get it looking almost the way it did before the battle. In fact, many of the new buildings were larger and nicer than the ones they'd replaced. There were some red zones, of course, the unavoidable result of a battle where sixteen nuclear warheads had been used. But they had all been tactical nukes, and the biggest was roughly 12kt, so a complete cleanup was possible and, in fact, was well underway.

The defenses had been dramatically improved as well. Two large orbital fortresses protected the planet, and each commanded a huge array of firing platforms and combat satellites. Any enemy fleet approaching Columbia was going to have its hands full. The militia had been upgraded too, and the planet now had a regular army of sorts, with 1,100 fulltime professional soldiers under arms. With the enhanced militia, Columbia could field over 3,500 reasonably well-equipped and trained troops for its own defense.

The orderly had brought a transport to take me to the general. I jumped in, and we headed over to the main HQ. The open plains around Weston had become a massive military camp. There were temporary shelters, rows of parked vehicles, and thousands of troops marching, drilling, and conducting exercises. I wanted to get a look around, so I had the orderly pull up a little short of the general's pavilion so I could go the rest of the way on foot.

I'd left Columbia a sergeant, but I came back a major. As I walked through the bustling camp I couldn't get used to the deference, the constant salutes from everyone I passed. Of course, I was scared to death of majors too when I was a young puppy solider. But it was still an odd feeling.