Best Served Cold

It’s about revenge. Revenge. Getting even. Fighting back. Whatever it’s called, it’s supposed to warrant two graves – or at least, that’s how one old saying went. Just as Earth finally began to thrive again in the decades following a devastating global nuclear war, and to reap the rewards of growing interplanetary colonization, an even bigger threat than nuclear devastation arrived on their doorstep – an alien foe that didn’t communicate, didn’t negotiate and seemed absolutely intent on taking the entire solar system for itself. The only way forward for the war-weary people of Earth, Mars and Luna was to beat their plough-shares back into swords and fight for their survival. In spite of the aliens technological and military superiority, four long years later, a surprisingly fragile stalemate persisted - with each side waiting for the other to make the one fatal mistake that would tip the balance in their favor. Sooner or later, the war would end… one way – or the other. For Alex Nikolls, a combat pilot in the thick of daily fighting in the blackness of space, it couldn’t come soon enough.