A crack team of explorers find themselves, in the words of one their number, "stark naked, in the dark, and totally clueless," buried deep beneath an Earth shattered by war, devastated by disease, and ravaged by alien monsters. The remnants of the team make their way to the surface, where they find that the familiar vistas of their home world have been replaced by howling wilderness and creature-stalked ruins. Making use of their full arsenal of low cunning, courage and sheer chutzpah, they survive. They soon discover alien invaders continue their slow, inexorable conquest of the planet, and that remnants of humanity continue to be locked in a stuggle between the half-human "Abataurum" overlords and the scattered descendants of Earth's military. Eventually making contact with the resistance, they find that the old rules, and struggles of love and honor, mendacity and treachery, still apply. Finally, having earned a bloody place among the veterans, they launch a strike against the overloards and their minions; teaching them the true meaning of modern war.