Read more
Informationen zum Autor Taylor Anderson is the New York Times bestselling author of the Destroyermen novels and the Artillerymen 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 Marooned on a deadly alternate Earth, Colonel Lewis Cayce and his soldiers find themselves outnumbered and outclassed in this riveting new adventure set in the world of the New York Times bestselling Destroyermen series. After being stranded on a very different and more perilous Earth, Colonel Lewis Cayce led his small army of displaced Americans, natives of the Yucatán, and Jaguar Warriors to defeat the biggest host the Dominion general Agon could assemble. Most unexpectedly, General Agon came to recognize the inherent evil of the Dominion and its depraved Blood Priests and turned on his former leaders. Awkwardly at first, Lewis Cayce and Agon join forces to press their common enemy back toward the dark heart of the Dominion in the Great Valley of Mexico. But more Dominion troops have been drawn from the west to stop the Allied march on the Holy City, and a grueling race has begun. Worse, the Gran Cruzada—a vast Dom army that was marching on the far Californias to eject yet another heretic foe—might’ve already been recalled to face Cayce’s soldiers. Time has become more precious than ever, and before Lewis Cayce can even try to implement his plan for total victory, he and his force must brave their greatest challenge yet—a brutal fight against a larger, better-trained army whose commander has a gift for strategy to rival Cayce’s own. The struggle to keep all his soldiers alive, new friends and old comrades alike, will test Cayce like never before, and, win or lose, nothing will be the same. Leseprobe Chapter 1 July 1848 Colonel Lewis Cayce, formerly of C Company, 3rd US Artillery, and now commander of what he still referred to as his Detached Expeditionary Force as well as the entire "Army of the Allied Cities of the Yucatán," stood ramrod straight in his best (only, actually) dark blue frock coat. Carefully tailored to be stylishly tight and therefore, in his mind, unfit for combat, it could barely contain his wide, strong shoulders. A burgundy sash encircled his narrow waist beneath a freshly whitened leather sword belt, and his treasured, privately purchased and lightly embellished M1840 artillery officer's saber hung at his side. Like his belt plate and gilded shoulder boards, as well as the single row of brass eagle buttons down the front of his coat, the saber's polished steel scabbard gleamed brightly under the late-morning sun in a cloudless blue sky. Lewis's often sullen orderly, Corporal Willis, had even bestirred himself sufficiently to put a shine on the scuffed and battered black leather knee boots he wore, as well as the abbreviated brim of his 1839-pattern "wheel" hat. The latter had faded considerably, but Willis had reshaped and restuffed the saucerlike top with fresh horsehair so it stood tall and crisply round on Lewis's head like a big, blue mushroom. Otherwise, the colonel's brown hair and full beard had been neatly trimmed by Mistress Samantha Wilde, a lovely, remarkably capable Englishwoman stranded on "this" Earth alongside roughly six hundred surviving American soldiers. Despite his curmudgeonly persona, Corporal Willis was devoted to his colonel and wouldn't deliberately harm him, but his ability to manipulate tools was reckoned roughly on a par with otters', and it was preferred by all that he not bring sharp implements too close to the army commander's face. Samantha was an artist with scissors, and along with growing into the once-unimaginable authority (if not title) of assistant field quart...
