Confederation

Telling a two-star general what she really thought of him was the mistake Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr made with General Morris. But as a battle-hardened professional, she took pride in doing her job and getting her troops back alive. So after she'd saved the mission to bring the Silsviss into the Confederation-instead of losing them and their world to the enemy known only as the Others-she let the general know exactly how she felt.And Torin's reward-or punishment-was to be separated from her platoon and sent off on what might well prove an even more perilous assignment. She was commandeered to protect a scientific expedition to a newly discovered and seemingly derelict spaceship of truly epic proportions. And Confederation politics had saddled her with a commanding officer who might prove more of a menace to the mission's success than anything they encountered.Only time would tell if the ship was what it appeared to be or a trap created by the Others-or the work of an as yet unknown alien race with an agenda that could prove all too hostile to other life-forms.

Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr was a Confederation Marine's marine. She'd survived more deadly encounters-and kept more of her officers and enlistees alive-than anyone in the Corps, and she was determined to keep that record intact. But since her last mission, she'd been sidelined into endless briefings and debriefings with no end in sight. So, of course, she'd jumped at the chance to go to Crucible-the Marine Corps training planet-as a temporary aide to Major Svensson. The major had been reduced to little more than a brain and a spinal cord in his last combat, and he and his doctor were anxious to field-test his newly regrown body.It should have been an easy twenty-day run. After all, Crucible was only set up to simulate battle situations so that recruits could be trained safely. But they were barely on-planet when someone started blasting the training scenarios to smithereens. Suddenly, Kerr found herself not only responsible for the major and his doctor but caught in a desperate fight to keep a platoon of Marine recruits alive until someone could discover what was happening on Crucible.