THE SIEGE OF ARISTA

The War Years, Book Two

TO FIGHT And DIE AMONG THE FARTHEST STARS ...

The Hothri have come to Arista ... and the Siege has begun.

For almost a hundred years, the Hothri waged a war of conquest against humanity’s strongholds in deep space. Greed upon the part of the humans of the Aristan trade empire triggered the war with the aliens, and that same greed led to treachery and incompetence, to soldiers denied the resources they needed to fight. Human world after human world fell under the ruthless, destructive domination of the Hothri, until ...

Forced back to their homeworld by vast fleets of Hothri warships, the leaders of the Aristan financial empires realized that they must look beyond the acquisition of wealth toward another goal—victory in a desperate, last-ditch defense against a foe that had never been defeated.

Christopher Stasheff and Bill Fawcett have created this high-tech far-future war, featuring stories by some of the most imaginitive science fiction writers working at their military best.

THEIR SHIP SLAMMED INTO THE ALIEN CRUISER . . .

The soldiers could hear Master Sergeant Pepe Stuart bellow, “In!” Then Pepe himself was hurtling forward, his shoulder slamming into a Hothri’s midriff and its roar echoing around him in the pea soup the aliens called atmosphere.

Pepe saw a sword-tipped barrel slashing toward his eyes, and he rolled aside, pulling the trigger of his own rifle. The Hothri’s head vanished in a splatter that Pepe didn’t stay to see, but another Hothri blasted him with a scatter gun. There was a sharp sting in his shoulder, a reek of methane in his nose, and he knew his helmet had been holed. He knocked the Hothri’s shotgun up with his rifle barrel, slammed the butt into the cricket’s helmet, reversed the weapon and pulled the trigger. The white hot fury seared through his back and everything went black . . .