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Informationen zum Autor Taylor Anderson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Destroyermen novels. A gunmaker and forensic ballistic archaeologist, Taylor has been a technical and dialogue consultant for movies and documentaries and is an award-winning member of the National Historical Honor Society and of the United States Field Artillery Association. Klappentext On their way to fight in the Mexican-American War, a group of American soldiers are swept away to a strange and deadly alternate Earth in this thrilling new adventure set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Destroyermen series. The United States, 1847. A disparate group of young American soldiers are bound to join General Winfield Scott's campaign against Santa Anna at Veracruz during the Mexican-American War. They never arrive. Or rather . . . they arrive somewhere else. The untried, idealistic soldiers are mostly replacements, really; a handful of infantry, artillery, dragoons, and a few mounted riflemen with no unified command. And they've been shipwrecked on a terrible, different Earth full of monsters and unimaginable enemies. Major Lewis Cayce, late of the 3rd US "Flying" Artillery, must unite these men to face their fears and myriad threats, armed with little more than flintlock muskets, a few pieces of artillery, and a worldview that spiritually and culturally rebels against virtually everything they encounter. It will take extraordinary leadership and a cadre of equally extraordinary men and women to mold frightened troops into an effective force, make friends with other peoples the evil Holy Dominion would eradicate, and reshape their "manifest destiny" into a cause they can all believe in and fight for. For only together will they have any hope of survival. Leseprobe Chapter 1 April 5, 1847 The world was shades of gray, reminding Captain Lewis Cayce-formerly of C Battery, 3rd United States Artillery Regiment-of different kinds of lead. The sea to the north of the Yucat‡n Peninsula was the blue-gray color of molten lead when it got too hot, and the sky had the chalky gray-white look of a corroded musket ball. The comparison struck Lewis Cayce as he leaned on the weathered windward rail of a wretched old barque-rigged whaler named Mary Riggs, wallowing down toward Vera Cruz, Mexico. There'd been more real lead in the air around him over the last year than he cared to remember, and a bloody-fingered surgeon had even plucked a particularly shiny wafer of it from his side after the Battle of Monterrey. Now that he was heading back to the fighting, to join General Winfield Scott's push inland from Vera Cruz, he'd soon be exposed to a great deal more. Staring grimly across the choppy sea at three other ships straggling along in company, he decided the sea and sky were a portent. Mary Riggs's closest companion was USS Isidra, a neat little former Mexican side-wheel steamer captured at Frontera on the Grijalva River. She was crowded with regular infantry, officers' horses and personal baggage, as well as most of the senior officers responsible for men on the other ships. USS Commissary was a government transport, loaded with munitions, supplies, and volunteer infantry. Xenophon had joined them en route and looked like another old whaler. Lewis suspected her cargo and circumstances were much the same as Mary Riggs's. Worn down by decades of yearslong voyages, storms, and hard use associated with her former occupation, Mary Riggs was destined for the breakers or abandonment when she was purchased cheaply by a group of New Orleans investors at the outbreak of war between Mexico and the United States. There was money to be made by a transport for hire to the army, and she was hastily reconfigured to carry horses. She'd done that several times already, but this time she'd been loaded with fa...
