As it turned out, Hawker never set foot on his native world again.
***
Technology improved faster than he could keep up with it. Personal force fields were devised to protect the soldiers from most weapons—and then, just as rapidly, weapons were developed that made the force fields obsolete. Even the training caps became outmoded; any necessary information could now be imparted directly into the subject’s mind with a mental probe during the resurrection process itself, in a fraction of a second.
Mankind continued to expand into the galaxy and, as might be expected, the army was at the forefront of the expansion. Hawker fought battles on many worlds, under suns of every hue, against beings of every imaginable description. Sometimes the atmosphere itself was so dense he couldn’t see throu
