Abnett’s opener is a darkly humorous report on a wake for a fallen colleague on a waystation, the combat troop heading for some R&R after an engagement with aliens simply referred to as Scaries.
The soldier relating the turn of unexpected events, and his colleagues, are far from noble warriors, simply guys worried about staying alive and not cacking themselves (I do like to see the British vernacular of my youth being used in fiction). It’s a shortish story, as many in the volume, so doesn’t go beyond the bleagh of finding out just how insiduous their alien enemies are.
