Some days it just didn't pay to be a soldier. Captain Rick Galloway and his men had been talked into volunteering for a dangerous mission—only to be ruthlessly abandoned when faceless CIA higher-ups pulled the plug on the operation. They were cut off in hostile territory, with local troops and their Cuban "advisors" rapidly closing in. And then the alien spaceship landed... The mercenaries are offered a deal, travel to the stars, to a primitive planet, and fight the enemies of the aliens. Intrigue, danger, and death await.

For the first few years, Rick Galloway and his band of mercenaries were doing well just to survive. They'd been swept off a hilltop in Africa by a flying saucer, and deposited on an alien world where the other inhabitants were human—but from various and unfriendly periods of history, all collected by flying saucer raids. Rick has faced facts: This place is going to be home, permanently. To create a society safe for themselves and the families they are gradually building, they need to do more than just survive. The must convince the others that a unified, peaceful society is better than a collection of warring tribes. Force would not be Rick's chosen method of persuasion, but on a planet where the other dominant culture is one brought straight from ancient Rome, force may be the only way.

The adventure begun in Janissaries continues. Kidnapped from Earth as they were about to die in battle, Rick Galloway and his band of mercenaries, like the other human slaves on the planet Tran, will not be missed. Subjects of the Shalnuksi slave masters, they are forced to harvest the priceless drug surinomaz. Now, even as slaves, Earth's transplanted warriors are locked in battle - against one another. But an epoch is ending. As the Demon Star sweeps toward its devastating apex, the slave masters flee the planet to await its annihilation in safety. Soon all life on the planet will cease, leaving it ripe for repopulation.

THE FINAL NOVEL BY LEGENDARY AUTHOR JERRY POURNELLE, WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR DAVID WEBER AND AUTHOR'S SON PHILLIP POURNELLE NO REST FOR THE WEARY Rick Galloway's still not sure what inspired him to volunteer to fight Cubans in Angola, and he certainly never expected to end his African adventure shanghaied by a flying saucer when his CIA superiors cut him and his men adrift as the Cubans overran their final position. He didn't expect to end up on the planet Tran, God only knew how many light-years from Earth, raising drugs for an alien cartel under the auspices—more or less—of a galactic civilization administered and run by a slave class of humans for their alien masters, either. But he did. And since then, he's survived mutinies, civil wars, battles against Byzantine "Romans," medieval knights, and Mongol raiders on a world where catastrophic "climate change" races unchecked through a 600-year cycle. Along the way he's found love, lost it, found it again, and become a great noble . . . all the while knowing his alien "employers" will probably nuke his people back into the Stone Age when they're done. He's managed his impossible balancing act for 13 years. He's lost people he cared about, been forced to do things he's hated, and tried along the way to make life better for the people trapped on Tran with him, and he's tired. So tired. But now, everything has changed . . . again. New Starmen have arrived on Tran, with dangerous gifts and star weapons of their own. Everything Rick Galloway thought he knew about his mission on Tran is about to be turned on its head. And everyone expects him to fix it. About Jerry Pournelle: “Possibly the greatest science fiction novel I have ever read.”—Robert A. Heinlein on The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle “Jerry Pournelle is one of science fiction's greatest storytellers.”—Poul Anderson “Jerry Pournelle's trademark is first-rate action against well-realized backgrounds of hard science and hardball politics.”—David Drake “Rousing... The best of the genre.”—The New York Times “On the cover . . . is the claim 'No. 1 Adventure Novel of the Year.' And well it might be.”—Milwaukee Journal on Janissaries