Cynthiana

Fresh out from Earth, Lieutenant Cindy Scott reports to her first assignment with the 20th Legion of the Terran Defense Forces on cold, inhospitable Ostmark. When she loses her fiance in the opening assault of the alien X-Chri on the planet, she blin... Read more

Fresh out from Earth, Lieutenant Cindy Scott reports to her first assignment with the 20th Legion of the Terran Defense Forces on cold, inhospitable Ostmark. When she loses her fiance in the opening assault of the alien X-Chri on the planet, she blindly takes her revenge for his death, and in doing so, gravely injures her long-range recon partner, Major Jim Harkins, a man closing in on the end of his military career when war intervenes. Jim Harkins spares Cindy from court-martial and dishonor, and they go on to carry out one dangerous mission after another, as the 20th Legion fights a desperate holding action to protect Ostmark's human population from extermination by the X-Chri. With time, too, Cindy discovers she possesses a strange telepathic understanding of the X-Chri consciousness, especially that of the X-Chri Clan Leader X-Mastrus, who has ordered the invasion of Ostmark in obedience to the command of the merciless deity spoken of as the One Whose Name Is Secret. The campaign on Ostmark drags on. Son after son falls unliving before X-Mastrus to atone for the disgrace of the clan's losses in battle, but still the Clan Leader ignores his own duty of self-immolation. paradise he is fated to conquer. And only Cindy Scott and Jim Harkins will ultimately stand between X-Mastrus and his destiny. Less