Caught In The Crossfire - Softcover

David Drake

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671878824 ISBN 13: 9780671878825

Publisher: Baen, 1998

Synopsis

Mercenary leader Alois Hammer has created an armored regiment that wins battles--Hammer's Slammers. Booklist says Drake's popular Hammer's Slammers series about futuristic mercenary tank troops . . . has produced some of the best in military science fiction. This book contains two novels, Counting the Cost and The Warrior, two short stories, and a completely new novelette, arranged in the order the author finds most satisfactory.

About this title

About the Author

David Drake was attending Duke University Law School when he was drafted. He served the next two years in the Army, spending 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Upon return he completed his law degree at Duke and was for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1981. Besides the previous novels in the Lt. Leary series (with the Lightnings, Lt. Leary, Commanding and The Far Side of the Stars), his books for Baen include the best-selling Hammer's Slammers series (the most recent entry being Paying the Piper) and such stand-alone books as Ranks of Bronze, Starliner, All the Way to the Gallows, Redliners, and many more. For Tor, he has written the best-selling "Lord of the Isles" fantasy series, the most recent installment being Goddess of the Ice Realm.

From the Back Cover

THEY WERE THE BEST -- THEY WERE HAMMER'S SLAMMERS!

In war, the only rule is survival. People on the side that hires Hammer's Slammers have the best chance of surviving.

Mercenary leader Alois Hammer has created an armored regiment that wins battles because it has better equipment and training than the opposition, and wins wars because Colonel Hammer and his troops are willing to do absolutely anything that's necessary to succeed. If that means vaporizing a village or drowning a riot in blood, they'll do the job they're being paid for.

There is an infinite number of moral shades to the decisions a war requires. The winner is usually the side whose troops pull the trigger anyway, because they know that the worst decision in a crisis is no decision at all.

After a war, the survivors have regrets. Nobody else has anything at all.

Reviews

Drake's collection of shorter stories about his best-known creation, the futuristic tank mercenary band Hammer's Slammers, may overlap here and there with the contents of other collections, but altogether it constitutes an excellent place to get acquainted with the Slammers. Two of the pieces in it are actually short novels: "The Warrior," featuring the perpetually victorious but perpetually insubordinate Slick Des Grieux, and "Counting the Cost," yet another take on the Nika Riots in sixth-century Constantinople, with a Slammer officer shamelessly cast in the role of the historic Count Belisarius. "The Interrogation Team" and "Caught in the Crossfire" in many ways better represent Drake at his best, though, and "The Immovable Object" finds him skillfully handling ethnic brawling and offering a surprise ending. The stories all boast high body counts, but they also let us see Drake developing them from pure hardware-and-gore exercises to more character-centered fiction over the course of some 10 years of writing about the Slammers--and the action scenes are good throughout. Roland Green

Edition details

• Publisher: Baen
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671878824
• ISBN 13: 9780671878825
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400