Mamelukes - eARC

Advance Reader Copy

THE FINAL NOVEL BY LEGENDARY AUTHOR JERRY POURNELLE, WITH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR DAVID WEBER AND AUTHOR'S SON PHILLIP POURNELLE

NO REST FOR THE WEARY

Rick Galloway's still not sure what inspired him to volunteer to fight Cubans in Angola, and he certainly never expected to end his African adventure shanghaied by a flying saucer when his CIA superiors cut him and his men adrift as the Cubans overran their final position.

He didn't expect to end up on the planet Tran, God only knew how many light-years from Earth, raising drugs for an alien cartel under the auspices—more or less—of a galactic civilization administered and run by a slave class of humans for their alien masters, either.

But he did. And since then, he's survived mutinies, civil wars, battles against Byzantine Romans, medieval knights, and Mongol raiders on a world where catastrophic climate change races unchecked through a 600-year cycle. Along the way he's found love, lost it, found it again, and become a great noble . . . all the while knowing his alien employers will probably nuke his people back into the Stone Age when they're done.

He's managed his impossible balancing act for 13 years. He's lost people he cared about, been forced to do things he's hated, and tried along the way to make life better for the people trapped on Tran with him, and he's tired. So tired.

But now, everything has changed . . . again. New Starmen have arrived on Tran, with dangerous gifts and star weapons of their own. Everything Rick Galloway thought he knew about his mission on Tran is about to be turned on its head.

And everyone expects him to fix it.

Cover Art by Dominic Harman

Hardcover

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Look for the final version on June 2, 2020

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13: 978-1-9821-2462-5

A Baen Books Original
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Electronic version by Baen Books
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