A world, in which nuclear weapons have been brought into play, killing millions of people and a world, where the survivors envy the dead.

This is a world where Christian and Muslim civilizations meet in a deadly combat, a world in which tolerance and liberalism have been completely refuted.

This is the world where the danger of physical, intellectual and moral degradation of the mankind as a whole – is an obvious fact, the everyday reality of life.

Essentially, it is a world without a future.

Andrey Demidov’s heroes do not even get a chance to think about the future.

They have other problems to deal with.

Their past is war, their present is war, and their future – mysterious, enigmatic and unknown – will most likely result in war.

War – is the occupation of the novel's characters.

They are fighting for their race, their land, their families, but by chance they will have to take part in battles of a totally different level.

In childhood, joyfully shooting the space fleet of "the evil empire" on cheap game consoles, the novel's characters naively believed that monstrous plans of "Star Wars" would be carried out somewhere far away from Earth and certainly never dreamed of being at the forefront of these space wars, but soon… In a while they are going to find themselves taking part in a totally different war:

“Getting out from a pile of floppy disks and coils of a collapsed rack of the archive, Whitehouse was anxiously listening to the established silence.

The emitter of «Das Rhein» was quiet.

Mackliff was pottering about nearby, "Yes, it has been a long time I was hit in the face like that…"– he said, letting trickles of blood pour into the weightlessness down his smashed nose.

The speaker of internal communication rustled again:

– ‘Das Rhein’ calls up ‘Independence’, ‘Das Rhein’ calls up ‘Independence’.

Raumwaffe Colonel Manfred von Conrad speaking…As a result of penetration of a cumulative rocket, depressurization of all compartments has occurred. I beg permission to move to your Shuttle.

Whitehouse approached the microphone as quickly as it was possible:

– Yes, hurry up. We will open the lower gateway.

German astronauts appeared in ten painfully long minutes.

Covers of cadmium suits were torn apart; glass of pressure helmets was smoke-stained, identification badges looked faded.

Their eyes were empty, staring at one point. Their faces looked like the astronauts have just returned from the underworld. There were four of them, Colonel von Conrad, Navigator Eichberger and board gunner Hoffman, who was laid next to the fourth, Matthias Leiseheld, whose body was inside a funeral package with a small black-and-red-and-yellow flag pinned to the chest.

He was killed when one of the missiles hit the emitter tower.

– Well, what do we do now? – Eichberger asked gloomily.

– Allah Akbar. That's what. – Von Conrad looked up at his Navigator with his dull eyes, reddened from capillary bleeding, and brushed the edge of his hand across his throat.

A game of this self-confident giant with legless midgets went on for several minutes, after which the remaining Stergs were turned into rubble with a few exact salvos.

– Now, that’s what I call real war! – Von Conrad broke the deathly silence and clapped his hands. – Bravo, Swertz.”

Soon the soldiers from Earth will become space soldiers, the recruits of Natotevaal, and the victory or the defeat of the space race, for which they have decided to fight, will depend only from them.

This is where the author gets a chance to study human psychology and behavior in new, seemingly improbable situations.