Nobody was much older than thirty when we got here. I was nineteen. I jumped out of the belly of an RM-390 atmosphere skimmer, you know, one of those hydrogen sweepers they turned into drop ships. It was fun during training, the drop. Knowing it was a combat jump, I soiled myself at the first sign of enemy movement on the surface. Those Guludeb—they're not ones for subtlety. They know that in a head-to-head fight they've got us whipped.
But I made it. Most of us did, actually. We landed in the hills, the youngest of us eighteen and the oldest of us thirty-two. Another year and the youngest of us will be older than the second extreme.