Page 1

CHAPTER 1

M ost of the villagers had never even seen a starship before.

Not up close, anyway.

Only bright specks of light moving high above the badlands on their way to the trade depots at Jeriko, Haazor, and Ai.

Those flying machines never stopped at the village.

They never had any reason to.

Until now.

Rona Gideon stood in the doorway of her hovel and watched the ship make its quiet descent, a big armored warbird gliding down out of the sky on matte-black wings.

Rona wasn’t alone in her watching.

The whole village had come out to bear witness to the offworlder’s arrival.

She could hear her neighbors murmuring to each other, their voices a mixture of hope and apprehension.

Help had finally come.

But what manner of help, and at what cost?

As the ship came in closer, Rona lifted a hand to shield her eyes against the sun, and she studied the underside of the vessel.

It was hard to judge the exact size of the thing, but she guessed it was bigger than any building in the village, with the exception of the Common Hall.

Mean-looking tri-barreled guns were mounted beneath the wings, and closer in, nestled against the ribs of the fuselage, were racks of deadly missiles and bombs.

But the deadliest weapons of all, Rona knew, were the ones inside the ship.

The ones manning the controls.

The ones looking out through the deeply tinted windows of the cockpit.

Looking, perhaps, at her.

She shivered.

The ship was only about twenty yards up now.

The ventral thrusters kicked on, sending up swirling plumes of dust that came billowing over the village like a miniature sandstorm.

Rona retreated back into the dim confines of her hovel, letting the heavy curtain of her door fall closed behind her, blocking out both daylight and dust. Her heart was slamming hard in her chest.

The Mercs had arrived.