The Sharp End – David Drake Free Audiobook

Written by David Drake
Read by Stefan Rudnicki
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 32 Kbps
Unabridged

Hammers Slammers Series

Drake writes masterfully about future war in an environment that, if not dystopian, is clearly Hobbesian. Volume Six in the “Hammer’s Slammers” series shows mercenary-turned-President Hammer keeping his army keen by hiring out elements of it to fight in “the sharp end”–anywhere in the galaxy where someone can afford to pay them to participate in the endemic local wars that humanity’s expansion to the stars has done nothing to preclude. A survey team sent to evaluate a possible new assignment contains members with assorted physical and psychic problems. Major Matthew Coke’s previous paymaster was killed by an assassin; logistics specialist Sten Moden has only one arm; electronics wizard Niko Daun trusts no one outside the regiment; Intelligence Lt. Robert Barbour cannot confront the corpses that result from his calculations; Johann Vierziger is a pitiless killing machine, alien even to his hardbitten cohorts. None of the team is prepared for the planet Cantilucca, a nightmare combination of contemporary Somalia, Colombia and New York City. Its only export is narcotics; its only law is provided by gangs who destroy but cannot govern. Will it prove too big a challenge for these cynical soldiers-for-hire? Drake combines action and politics in a fast-paced space opera, building to an unexpected, if typically bloody climax.