When the news came over the broadcast net, every soldier received it simultaneously through their neural implants. The war was over. In the rice-paddy wastelands of Chinese countryside, men and women in the silver-blue uniforms of the Eastern Intelligentsia popped out of their foxholes and threw their plasma rifles into murky patches of swamp water. The air hung with the stench of plasma-charred flesh, seared blood, and death-opened bowels, but they breathed the miasma as though it was the sweetest perfume. The soldiers in the black uniforms of the Western Alliance streamed out of their bunkers to clasp hands with individuals who, moments before, they had pelted with plasma bolts and incindi-bombs. Soldiers blinded by gas and fire gazed over the ravaged terrain with their prosthetic eyes and exulted. Captain Sabin Tol sank to his cot, his blue eyes colorless with shock. His ears were deaf to the shouts of revelry outside his quarters, although the walls were mere centimeters of plasteel. The Captain wasn't a patriot, or a zealot, or even a devoted career military man. But the war had been his refuge, his oasis. Now it was over, and he had to go home.