In their fiercest combat yet, the hard-charging Marines of 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team (FIST) have finally won their battle against a fullscale alien invasion of planet Kingdom. But as citizens try to return to some semblance of normalcy, the old government is replaced by a ruthless new regime.

Meanwhile, in a cave in some forgotten Kingdom backwater, several humans slowly regain consciousness. Their minds have been probed repeatedly . . . by whom and for what reason they cannot say, for they've been stripped of all memories of themselves and their past lives. These half-dead outcasts begin a journey into the unknown- in search of civilization, in search of themselves. And one survivor's journey will take him to places of overwhelming danger, where his identity will be revealed-to the shock of all.

"Non-stop action . . . This is state-of-the-art military SF."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Autorentext

David Sherman is a former U.S. Marine and the author of eight previously published novels about Marines in Vietnam, where he served as an infantryman and as a member of a Combined Action Platoon. He is also the author of a new military fantasy series, Demontech. He lives in Philadelphia.

Dan Cragg enlisted in the United States Army in 1958 and retired with the rank of sergeant major twenty-two years later. During his army service, Mr. Cragg served more than eleven years in overseas stations, five and a half of them in Vietnam. He is the author of Inside the VC and the NVA (with Michael Lee Lanning), Top Sergeant (with William G. Bainbridge), and a Vietnam War novel, The Soldier's Prize. In real life, Mr. Cragg is an analyst for the Defense Department. He and his wife, Sunny, live in Virginia.