...Soldiers are recruited into the army practically from the cradle. Children are sent to military schools, where—without parents and without any concessions for their youth—selected recruits are trained to become professional soldiers. Todd becomes one such soldier. He fought for over 40 years, becoming the best in his unit. When new recruits were sent to his spaceship—recruits who were supposed to surpass the veterans in every way, led by a West Point graduate—the colonel pitted three veterans against a new fighter, and the old men lost. They were cast out onto the wasteland of the distant planet Arcadia, but Todd survived. He was rescued by local settlers whose ship had made an emergency landing on this planet many years ago, and Todd stayed to live among them. In his heart there was not only fear and discipline, as he told the lovely, beautiful woman who had rescued him, but also kindness. When the colonel dropped new soldiers onto the planet to test them in an operation to exterminate the colony’s inhabitants, Todd proved that experience, combined with the human factor, is worth far more than genetic superiority and bulging muscles.

Jody is a young Black man who has lived under his mother’s wing his whole life. He’s constantly tormented by his dependence on her, but he has no intention of changing anything. Jody doesn’t have a job, but he does have a son and a daughter from two different women. But despite all this, nothing can make him leave his mother’s nest and start living on his own...