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We sit helmeted in paired, facing rows, so red cabin light paints us like eggs cartoned in the devil's incubator. Eternad-battery-heated fatigues warm us against a cabin cooled to the surface temperature our enemy manufactures a hundred miles below.
Our backs mold against the ship's "pressure hull" that seals out space's vacuum. "Ship" my ass. It's a 767 fuselage looted from some airplane graveyard in the Arizona desert, tacked to a streamlined parachute and reinforced to drop us from the mother ship to the surface. Like most of the 1900s antiques we have to fight this 2040 war with, it was built when Annie was a live-acted musical, back before the Millennium turned.
That red cabin light preserves night vision. A hundred miles below our parking orbit, it's always night on Ganymede. Or so the astronomers say.
We'll be the first humans to see it. If our groaning hull doesn't pop when we fall through vacuum or melt as we thunder through the artificial atmosphere the Slugs have slathered around the rock below. If we don't slam into Ganymede like crash-test dummies. If our demothballed weapons can kill the Slugs waiting down there.
And who knows, since I'm the only human who's ever seen Slugs alive?
My gunner shivers warm against my shoulder clicking her Muslim beads, praying like her hair was on fire. Yeah. My boss is a four-foot-eleven Egyptian girl. But Munchkin can shoot.
My teeth grind, I close my hand over her beads, and she stops clicking. Divine help's improbable for agnostic me.
As improbable, I suppose, as Pseudocephalopod Slugs from beyond the Solar System camping on Jupiter's largest moon and killing millions by bombing Earth from out here.
They say that an infantryman's life is boredom punctuated by intervals of sheer terror. After six hundred days traveling in the mother ship's mile-long steel tube, finally being in the dropship liquefies my guts even though I asked to be here.
We all asked. So many volunteered for the Ganymede Expeditionary Force that they only accepted ten thousand soldiers who'd lost entire families. Munchkin lost parents and six sisters to the Cairo Projectile. I'm an only child, and the Indianapolis Projectile took my living parent. Such things now pass for luck.
So the media calls us the Orphans' Crusade. Munchkin hates "Crusade" because she's Muslim. So she calls us Humanity's Last Hope.
Our platoon sergeant's seen combat. So he calls us meat. He says "Orphanage" is true because in combat your only family is these government-issued strangers. Intercoms crackle. "Begin drop sequence on my mark ... now!"
Somebody sobs.
The mother ship releases all twenty dropships like dandelion seed. Red light flicks black for a skipped heartbeat as electricity switches to internal. Our cut umbilical scrapes our hull like a handcuff unlocked.
Which is how this started for me three years ago, a week after my eighteenth birthday.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Orphanage by Robert Buettner Copyright © 2004 by Robert Buettner. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Anonymous
Posted April 7, 2008
Those of us who read ¿genre¿ fiction choose these books because of the familiar stories, plot devices, people types, and, well, all the ingredients that make it a Romance, a Western, a Mystery and yes, even Science Fiction novel. We love to revisit these familiar stories and search for new authors who can transport us from our reality to their ¿worlds¿. Science Fiction has many genres within its broad scope space opera, hard science, first contact, alien invasions, discovering that big thing in the sky and, of course, military fiction. Which brings us to ¿Orphanage¿ the main reason I enjoyed this book so much, besides being just a good ol¿ fun read, is the story is about imperfect people repeatedly overcoming extraordinary odds 'not always with the best ¿final reel¿ outcome' and grow with each experience. Being a former Military Intelligence Officer, Mr. Buettner brings to his books a military reality to give the stories some real bite. And, gosh, I like Jason Wander he makes wrong decisions 'for the right reasons', follows his heart 'a bit too much for a soldier' and is constantly putting his booted foot in his mouth. In other words, Jason is a human just like you and me, and we can relate to his troubles AND triumphs! Robert Buettner is a wonderful new voice in Science Fiction and I hope to be reading his books far into the future!
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 25, 2007
I actually had to email the author to tell him how great his book was. Even my friend who is not much into reading, said he found it hard to put this book down. WE BOTH agreed, when we were finished reading, we WANTED MORE! I actually got mad at myself for reading this book to fast!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 7, 2005
The reviewers are calling Orphanage the best of the year, the decade, maybe to this generation what Starship Troopers and Forever War were to theirs. It's all of that. Fast, funny, moving and authentic . You'll wish it was longer.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 30, 2004
This book encompasses all you want from a military Sci-Fi perspective as well as including the smartass hero. This book rocked - at times funny, at times grim, always absorbing and moving quickly. I cant wait for his next book!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 7, 2004
I was wowed by Orphanage! Like all great fiction, it felt very real. All the dialogue rang true and Jason Wander was a fully fleshed-out, multi-dimensional character. There is a real grit to the novel; nothing was so clean that you felt it was contrived. I really became invested in the characters, even getting a little misty towards the conclusion. I particularly liked the humor (some very wry, funny lines), which appears to be completely absent from most sci-fi. I can't wait for the sequel!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted November 9, 2004
This book is such a quick, great read. I highly recommend reading it. It draws the reader in from the very first page and keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very last.
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Overview
Mankind's first alien contact tears into Earth: projectiles launched from Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, vaporize whole cities. Under siege, humanity gambles on one desperate counterstrike. In a spacecraft scavenged from scraps and armed with Vietnam-era weapons, foot soldiers like eighteen-year-old Jason Wander-orphans that no one will miss-must dare man's first interplanetary voyage and invade Ganymede.They have one chance to attack, one ship to attack with. Their failure is our extinction.