Take the Shilling

"Military science fiction concentrating on the psychology and politics of societies in conflict."---Analog, on the Confederated Worlds seriesThey gave him a soldier's skills.His war was still hell.Tomas Neumann wants off his backwater planet and away from his suffocating mother. "Taking the shilling"-joining the Confederated Worlds Ground Force-promises escape, purpose, and the father figure he's never had.The Confederated Worlds uploads combat training directly into his brain-decades of tactical knowledge in mere hours. He's the perfect soldier before he fires his first shot.But no implant can prepare him for the reality of killing. Especially when his "enemies" are human civilians who should welcome him as liberator, not occupier. On the war-torn world of New Liberty, Tomas discovers that downloaded skills mean nothing when every doorway could hide a sniper.As his unit bleeds out in brutal counterinsurgency warfare, Tomas faces a choice that will define him: break under the weight of what he's become, or forge something stronger from the wreckage of his innocence.Because soon, with thousands of lives in the balance, he'll need more than programmed reflexes to survive his war's ultimate test.Take the Shilling is the first book in The Confederated Worlds trilogy. Raymund Eich files patent applications, earned a Ph.D., won a national quiz bowl championship, writes science fiction and fantasy, and affirms Robert Heinlein's dictum that specialization is for insects.In a typical day, he may talk with university biology and science communication faculty, silicon chip designers, patent attorneys, epileptologists, and rocket scientists. Hundreds of papers cite his graduate research on the reactions of nitric oxide with heme proteins.He lives in Houston with his wife, son, and daughter. A thousand years from now, while Earth sleeps in virtual reality, three polities-the Confederated Worlds, the Unity, and the Progressive Republic-strive to connect the scattered, terraformed worlds of humankind by artificial wormholes. When they meet, they clash, in a decades-long struggle of arms embroiling the settled galaxy, in which dedication to duty liberates worlds-and oneself.