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A smooth-talking ex-sergeant, accustomed to an easygoing peacetime military, unexpectedly re-joins the fleet and finds soldiers preparing for the strangest thing -- war.

The Two Hundred Years' (And Counting) Peace is a time of tranquility that hasn't been seen since... well, never. Mankind in the Galactic Age had finally conquered war, so what was left for the military to do but drink and barbecue? That's the kind of military that Sergeant R. Wilson Rogers lived in before he left the fleet to become a smuggler.

But it turns out that smuggling is hard. Like getting-arrested-for-dealing-with-pirates-and-forced-back-into-service kind of hard. It doesn't seem so bad -- the military was a perpetual tiki party anyway -- but when Rogers returns after only a year away, something has changed. These are soldiers -- actual soldiers doing actual soldier things like preparing for a war that Rogers is sure doesn't exist. Rogers vows to put a stop to all this nonsense -- even if it means doing actual work.

Captain Rogers, despite his best attempts to do otherwise, has become the acting admiral of the 331st Meridan fleet. His first task: worrying. A lot.

The rival Thelicosan fleet, under the influence of bad intelligence, a forbidden romance, and a communication officer with an eardrum injury, is about to break a two-hundred-year-old nonaggression pact. They have offered a vague, easily misinterpreted message: "We're invading." Rogers isn't sure, but he thinks that's probably bad.

War is hell, especially when you've forgotten how to fight one.

With the galaxy thrown into chaos by mutual breaches of the Two Hundred Years' peace, what seemed like an isolated incident on the Thelicosa/Merida border has become an epidemic. In the midst of this chaos, the Thelicosan and Meridan fleets on their respective borders have come to a sort of tense peace after the events in Book II but now it's clear: somebody wants war. And it's not the Free Systems of the galaxy.

No. It's a mom-and-pop convenience store gone galactic. It's the purveyors of balloons and nachos and supplies for bowling lanes. It's the company that made the droids and a large part of the technology that all of the Free Systems are using in their militaries.

It's Snaggardirs. And they want to snag it all.