IronStar

AN EXCEPTIONAL MISSION:

Marooned by treachery and alone on an unexplored planet far from the frontier, Lieutenant Kirrah Roehl of the Regnum Survey Service finds herself in exactly the sort of simple, pastoral environment a jaded tourist, or a properly enthusiastic RSS field agent, would give her eyeteeth to explore.

…Except that Kirrah is not qualified for fieldwork, and dislikes tourists. She is a highly trained and competent starship navigator, dependent on the technology she grew up with, and far more at home on the bridge of a starship than wandering the surface of a planet, trying to recall her rusty field survival training.

…Except for the raiders, the politics, the monsters, and the young boy who saves her life, and the war she must wage and win, to save his.

…Except for the locals who make her their Warmaster, trusting their lives to her skills and her promise that help will come, in the form of a ‘ship of iron’ that will appear in their sky as a star.

…Except for the fact that she is not nearly so alone as she believed. It seems her Regnum is neither the only, nor even the first starfaring empire to discover this planet.

…And except that somehow, when rescue finally arrives, things only seem to get worse. Altogether, a positively exceptional mission.