{"product_id":"starfist-force-recon-pointblank-isbn-9780345460592","title":"Starfist: Force Recon: Pointblank","description":"\u003cb\u003eA bold new contingent—Force Recon—joins the explosive Starfist space epic of marines at war. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A Confederation army is besieged on the planet Ravenette, cut off by and  facing destruction at the hands of a dozen Secessionist Coalition worlds arrayed  against it. The outnumbered and outgunned forces cling precariously to their foothold,  dubbed “Bataan” by the desperate men in their fighting bunkers. Reinforcements are  on the way, but will they arrive in time? And even if they do, can they match the  well-led, highly motivated enemy determined to destroy them in battle?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But the Confederation  commander holds a wild card, an elite force armed only with what they carry on their  backs and in their heads: a small detachment of Marines who lightly go where others  fear to tread, the Fourth Force Recon Company. For anyone else this mission would  be suicide, but for these Marines, it’s just another day in the maelstrom.\u003cb\u003eDavid Sherman\u003c\/b\u003e is a former U.S. Marine and the author of eight novels about Marines in Vietnam, where he served as an infantryman and as a member of a Combined Action Platoon. He is also the author of the military fantasy series Demontech. Visit the author’s website at www.novelier.com.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eDan Cragg\u003c\/b\u003e enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1958 and retired with the rank of sergeant major twenty-two years later. He is the author of Inside the VC and NVA (with Michael Lee Lanning), Top Sergeant (with William G. Bainbridge), and a Vietnam War novel, The Soldier’s Prize. Until recently, he was an analyst for the Department of Defense.CHAPTER  ONE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Planetfall in an Undisclosed Location\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    None of the watchers on top of the shore cliffs paid any particular  attention to the meteorite that briefly flashed down through the sky  before it plunged below the horizon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The AstroGhost stealth shuttle dropped far enough out to sea that the  diffused flares of its braking engines, fired at five thousand meters  altitude, weren’t visible from land. A ship at sea, seeing the diffused  flares, might be excused for thinking a meteorite was breaking up in the  atmosphere. As soon as the juddering of the firing brakes began to smooth  out, the AstroGhost popped a drogue chute. The chute tore off after only a  few moments, but it was enough to cut the descent velocity; then the  AstroGhost turned its descent from straight down to a velocity-eating  spiral, which further slowed its fall. At five hundred meters, it gained a  stable orbit and lowered its loading ramp. A Mark 8 Skimmer, a specialized  version of the standard hopper troop tactical air carrier used by the  Confederation Marine Corps, slid out of the AstroGhost’s bay and fell a  hundred meters before firing its engines. In another moment it  demonstrated how it got its name by staying barely high enough above the  waves to avoid raising a rooster tail. The Skimmer was fully loaded with  the Marines of first and third squads, second platoon, Fourth Force Recon  Company, and their gear. Staff Sergeant Fryman, second platoon’s first  section leader, commanded. The nine Marines were wearing chameleon  uniforms but the screens of their helmets were up, allowing their faces to  be seen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Fifty kilometers offshore, well out of sight of any watchers on the shore  cliffs, the Skimmer stopped, hovered, and lowered itself closer to the top  of the ocean swells. Staff Sergeant Fryman didn’t bother checking his men  to make sure they had all their gear; it wouldn’t have been possible in  the cramped quarters of the Skimmer; besides, he and the squad leaders had  done that before they’d boarded the Skimmer. Instead, he stood out of the  way and closely observed through his infrared screen as first squad, then  third squad, acting by feel, each lowered a chameleoned Sea Squirt out of  the Skimmer’s hatch, then followed the Sea Squirts into the water. Each  squad leader mounted his Sea Squirt and operated its controls to extend  transparent, bullet-shaped tubes, one on the top, and four more along its  sides. The squad leaders slithered into the open ends of the top tubes,  their men into three of the side tubes. The gear the Marines weren’t  carrying on their persons was secured in the fourth tube on third squad’s  Sea Squirt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When the last of his Marines was wet, Fryman gave an ungloved thumbs-up to  the Skimmer’s crew chief, closed his own chameleoning, and followed his  men into the water. The Skimmer gently backed off as Fryman paddled to the  farther Sea Squirt, first squad’s. He slipped into his tube, plugged into  the rebreather, took firm hold of the grips, and said into the all-hands  circuit, “Squad leaders, report.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “First squad’s ready,” Sergeant Bingh replied.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Third squad is go,” Sergeant Kindy said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Let’s do this thing.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Sergeants Kindy and Bingh, the two squad leaders, had already assured  themselves that their men were secured inside their tubes, their  rebreathers hooked up. The squad leaders took the controls and sent the  Sea Squirts on a shallow dive path to five meters’ depth, where they  leveled off, and, using inertial guidance, directed the Sea Squirts toward  the distant cliffs. In minutes, they were moving at twenty-five knots;  third squad’s Sea Squirt was at wing position, a hundred meters to the  left and fifty meters behind first squad. Everybody settled in for the  long ride.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A standard hour later, Fryman signaled Bingh and Kindy, and the squad  leaders began slowly edging their Sea Squirts toward the surface. When  Kindy looked over the side of his Sea Squirt through the light-gatherer  screen of his helmet, he could see the sea bottom slowly rising toward  them. At another signal from Fryman, the squad leaders brought the Sea  Squirts to a stop on the bottom with the tops of their upper tubes a meter  below the surface of the ebbing tide.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Marines slid backward out of their tubes and gathered their gear, then  paddled to where they could kneel on the bottom with only their heads  above water and observed the shore—half with their infra screens, half  with light gatherers. The squad leaders took a moment before exiting to  key the “wait” instructions into the Sea Squirts, which headed for a  designated hiding area in deeper water as soon as the Marines were all  clear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    While the nine Marines were assembling, Fryman gave the beach and cliffs  close behind it a scan with his motion detector. No one there. “Hit the  beach,” he ordered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Keeping only their heads above water, the Marines advanced on a line,  propelling themselves with their fingertips and toes against the sandy  bottom. When the water was shallow enough that they were almost on their  bellies, they rose to their feet and surged forward, past the waterline  and across the shallow, boulder-studded beach, to the foot of the cliff.  Water streamed off their water-repellent chameleons.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Fryman took a minnie from his waist pack, turned it on, and placed it  against the cliff face. The minnie felt about for tiny irregularities in  the rock that would give it purchase, then began scampering upward. The  miniature reconnaissance device was disguised as a type of rodent common  to the cliffs in this area and would easily fool any casual observer. As  dark as the night was, a casual observer wouldn’t even notice the  unnatural assemblage hanging off the rodent’s hindquarters. Two more,  similarly disguised, minnies followed the first.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The cliff at that point was a little more than thirty meters high. It took  the minnies only a few minutes to reach its top, where they skittered  about in a most rodentlike manner, looking at their surroundings and into  the middle distance in visible light, infrared, and amplified visible.  They raised their noses and sniffed at the air, seeking airborne chemicals  that would telltale hidden watchers. Then waited for instructions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At the foot of the cliff, Fryman studied the data his controller comp  received from the minnies. Satisfied there wasn’t anybody directly above  the Marines, he transmitted new orders to the minnies. Still rodentlike,  the minnies skittered about until the assemblages on their hindquarters  hung at the edge of the cliff. A faint whirring was the only indication  they were doing something unrodentlike; the thin lines the minnies lowered  down the cliff were almost invisible in daylight, completely so in the  dark. Except for the weights on the ends of the lines, which had markers  visible in ultraviolet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Fryman and the squad leaders watched through UV lenses for the lines and  caught them when they reached the bottom of the cliffs. Working rapidly  but carefully, they attached lightweight grasping cables to the ends of  the lines. On a signal from Fryman, the minnies skittered away from the  edge of the cliff to small boulders they could anchor themselves to and  towed up the lines. Fryman and the squad leaders let the cables trail  through their fingers. When the tops of the cables went over the cliff  top, they tightened their grips and the minnies stopped reeling them in.  The three Marine leaders twisted the cables just so, and the top ends  frayed and splayed out, to grip the rocky ground as firmly as a clinging  vine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Marines attached a climbing grip to the cables and headed up, half  climbing, half towed by the grips. When the first three reached the top,  they rolled away from the cables into defensive positions and let the  climbing grips drop back down for the next three Marines.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In moments, all nine were atop the cliff. Their objective was right where  they expected it to be, spreading out two hundred meters to their left and  fifty meters from the cliff edge. They’d studied the latest images of the  objective right before boarding the AstroGhost to make planetfall; nothing  they could detect from the cliff top indicated anything in it had changed.  They’d rehearsed the mission several times before leaving for it and had  studied it constantly during transit. Each of them knew exactly what he  had to do and how to do it. Staff Sergeant Fryman said, “Let’s do it,”  into his helmet comm, and the nine Marines rose up and headed toward their  objective.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Half an hour later, eight of them returned. They gathered the minnies,  then rapelled down the cliff. The last Marines down twisted the cables  just so; the tops of the cables released their grips on the rocky cliff  top and fell over the edge. While the cables were being gathered, the  squad leaders signaled the Sea Squirts to come out of hiding and pick them  up. In a few more minutes, the eight Marines were back in the Sea Squirts,  heading for the rendezvous point with the Skimmer that would transport  them to the AstroGhost, which would return them to the starship that had  brought them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As for the ninth Marine in the party . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Staff Sergeant Fryman quietly drew the camp chair from under the camp  table and comfortably settled himself in it before he took off his helmet.  He sat quietly for a moment, gazing on the man sleeping on a cot so close  Fryman’s knees almost touched its side. He checked the time, watched the  seconds tick off, then gently reached out and shook the man’s shoulder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Hmmpf? Wha—” the man began. He began to sit up before he realized someone  was next to his cot, in a position to block him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “Sir, I’m Staff Sergeant Kazan Fryman, Fourth Force Recon Company. It’s my  pleasure to inform the colonel that in”—Fryman glanced at the time—“eight  seconds your command post and operations center will be destroyed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “What!” the man roared, leaping out of his bed. But before he could do  anything, there was a rapid series of explosions nearby, culminating in a  flash-bang inside the tent of the commanding officer of the Confederation  Army’s 525th Heavy Infantry Regiment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    “That one killed you, sir,” Fryman said with a grin, thinking, Gotcha,  doggie.","brand":"Del Rey","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302381342949,"sku":"NP9780345460592","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345460592.jpg?v=1767737258","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/starfist-force-recon-pointblank-isbn-9780345460592","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}