Janissaries

Some days it just doesn'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. Rescued from certain death, they now must fight another world's war.

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 safe society for themselves and the families they are gradually building, they need to do more than just survive; they 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 each other. 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.