Robert Buettner

When earth needs heroes, do we pick the toughest and brightest or the ones with nothing to lose? Mankind's first alien contact tears into Earth: projectiles launched from Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, have vaporized whole cities. Humanity, which has been at peace with each other for decades, gambles on one desperate counterstrike with an untried spaceship, old technology, and soldiers like young Jason Wander who are war orphans that no one will miss and are Highly Motivated to kill the enemy.

They have one chance to attack, one ship to attack with, and their failure means humanities extinction.