Owen Payne was a machinist from Wooster, Ohio. So it came as a complete surprise when he was asked to protect Earth from the most powerful and evil space fleet ever assembled.
That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to be his responsibility. Ira Malhotra commanded the fleets of Sirius. Fleet actions came under her purview. Payne had only recently become a mining supervisor! But the only solution Malhotra could come up with involved far too high a body count on both sides. She needed some out-of-the-box thinking.
Payne had an idea. It was a long shot. Dangerous. And stupid enough to work. His reward for sharing his idea? Malhotra said, “Good work, Owen. Now let’s go make it work.”
Payne wasn’t a soldier. He was just a machinist from Ohio. But now, he found himself responsible for the fate of two worlds.
All he could think was, “Man, I hope I don’t screw this up.”