Take the Shilling
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---Analog, on The Confederated Worlds series
They gave him a soldier's skills.
His war was still hell.
Tomas Neumann wants off his backwater planet and away from his suffocating mother. "Taking the shilling"—joining the Confederated Worlds Ground Force—promises escape, purpose, and the father figure he's never had.
The Confederated Worlds uploads combat training directly into his brain—decades of tactical knowledge in mere hours. He's the perfect soldier before he fires his first shot.
But no implant can prepare him for the reality of killing. Especially when his "enemies" are human civilians who should welcome him as liberator, not occupier. On the war-torn world of New Liberty, Tomas discovers that downloaded skills mean nothing when every doorway could hide a sniper.
As his unit bleeds out in brutal counterinsurgency warfare, Tomas faces a choice that will define him: break under the weight of what he's become, or forge something stronger from the wreckage of his innocence.
Because soon, with thousands of lives in the balance, he'll need more than programmed reflexes to survive his war's ultimate test.
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Raymund Eich is a science fiction and fantasy writer whose middle American upbringing is a launchpad for journeys to the ends of the universe.
His most popular works are military science fiction series The Confederated Worlds (novels Take the Shilling, Operation Iago, and A Bodyguard of Lies) and the Stone Chalmers series of science fiction espionage adventures (novels The Progress of Mankind, The Greater Glory of God, To All High Emprise Consecrated, and In Public Convocation Assembled).
He has over ten other published book-length works and more than forty published short stories. His short fiction has appeared in Analog, Odyssey, Boundary Shock Quarterly, and the anthology Surviving Tomorrow, and has earned honorable mentions and a semi-finalist award in the Writers of the Future contest. His works are available worldwide in ebook, trade paperback, and audiobook editions.
After circling the world by age five, he grew up in the Ozark Mountains of southwest Missouri. He earned a B.A. and a Ph.D., both in biochemistry, from Rice University. Though he’s no longer a working scientist, hundreds of papers cite his graduate research.
In addition to his writing career, he works in patent law, won a national quiz bowl championship, is a husband and father, and affirms Robert Heinlein's dictum that specialization is for insects.
He lives in Houston with his wife, son, and daughter. His last name has one syllable and is pronounced “eye-sh.” He can be found online at https://raymundeich.com.
