For a responsible sixteen-year-old, Michael Wilson has a lot of problems--his father was killed in Afghanistan in 2005, his overworked and overprotective mother will not talk about their situation, and does not want him playing football, and he has suddenly started to receive letters that his father wrote before his death.

Loyalty to the Shield who watches your back, to the Strikers who risk their lives on the battlefield, and most of all to Mara, which was once the last nation free from the Karensa Federation's tyranny. But Mara has fallen. And its destruction has unleashed Talin's worst nightmare. With her friends scattered by combat and her mother held captive by the Premier, Talin is forced to betray her fellow Strikers and her adopted homeland. She has no choice...