The peacekeeping contingent of the state of Ranma maintains order in Remarque, a desert country that was recently engulfed in war. At first, the people living here accepted the Rammans as liberators, but now they consider them their main enemies. In such a situation, Corporal Marcus Trent survives in a routine modern war, which no one talks about, because officially the Ramman army helps the local population, and does not fight with them. But when his unit is sent to the Saladh desert, where intelligence reports indicate rebel activity, it encounters strange and inexplicable phenomena. People disappear here, after contact with mysterious ball lightning, soldiers begin to suffer from Cotard's syndrome, believing themselves to be dead, communications do not work, huge green and blue lights flicker in the desert at night, and Marcus himself begins to hear a mechanical voice in his head that tells him terrible things . Neither the command nor the soldiers themselves suspect that they will soon have to face a non-human mind. They do not yet know that, against their will, they will be faced with the most terrible choice in their lives, and few of them will come out of this collision alive