Three hundred years after humanity spread beyond its first new home, the frontier has become a map of worlds, borders and nations. Day 3 follows a fighter pilot launching into the third attack in as many days, defending a station above a moon against an enemy whose motives seem, at first, almost impossible to understand.
But repetition wears away the simplicity of the battle. The pilots on the other side are not monsters or an unknowable force. They have homes, fears and people to protect as well. Humanity has crossed the stars, divided beneath different suns and learned to call many worlds its own — yet some of its oldest patterns have travelled with it. The distance between worlds has grown enormous. The distance between the people fighting over them has not.