It’s been nineteen years since the beginning of the Last War, and the United States Army is losing land faster than it can supply good men to defend it. Their last hope is the synthesis of Android Angeles, a series of humanoid machines designed without the capacity to feel, and thus enabling them to be the perfect super soldiers.
Men, women, of all shapes, sizes, and colours, all dressed in neat matching combats, a pale green colour beyond the usual colour system for soldiers of the U.S. Army – brown for infantry; navy for air corps; pewter grey for intelligence; sand for support units – and more than anything, it’s the sight of that new green uniform which cements in Dean’s mind the realisation that the squad are not human.
As he gets closer, the group becomes more distinct and separates into a small dark-haired woman, a burly man with a beard and a flat-cap, a woman in a beat-up jacket, and a very large dog. Both of the women hold rifles, one of them with a sniper sight attached; the dog is holding a tennis ball, which it abandons as Dean approaches.
Dean crosses to join him and find out what he’s doing, but when he reaches 5284, he just finds him staring out into the distance. Dean comes to rest beside him, and the two of them gaze off into the distance, where the dust swirls in small red tornadoes and the land stretches hard and barren as far as the eye can see, until the edge of the earth and the faint semi-circle of the sun making its dim yellow struggle above a horizon which cuts it in half as neatly as soft butter.
