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Baen Books by Steve White
Eagle Against the Stars

Emperor of Dawn
Prince of Sunset

The Disinherited
Legacy
 Debt of Ages




PROLOGUE

Their hands were still tightly clasped when the universe reappeared.
Feridoun had taken AileenтАЩs hand in his just before TFNS Jamaica made warp transit. No
one else on the flag bridge had noticed the thoroughly unmilitary gesture as he reached out to
his admiral, for theyтАЩd been fleeing with the hounds of Hell baying at their heels. The rest of
Survey Flotilla 19тАЩs battered survivors had already preceded the flagship into the unknown.
Then it had been JamaicaтАЩs turn, and Aileen had returned the pressure of his hand and smiled
with the knowledge of a personal discovery that had comeтАФas such things willтАФat the worst
imaginable moment. That pressure, and that smile, had continued as the appropriately blood-
red star had seemed to vanish down a well of infinity astern, and the two of them had gone
through a hole in the continuum as one.
But then reality stabilized, and they were in a new stellar system, God knew how many
light-years away in Einsteinian space, and reports of successful transit began to arrive from the
ships ahead of them. As though with an electric shock of embarrassment, they each released
the otherтАЩs hand, and were once again simply Rear Admiral Aileen Sommers, Terran
Federation Navy, commanding Survey Flotilla 19, and Captain Feridoun Hafezi, her chief of
staff.
Not that the flotilla was much of a command anymore. It had escapedтАФbarely, and with
hideous lossesтАФfrom the most horrifying enemy humankind had ever faced, or dreamed of
facing. But the escape was only temporary. The Arachnids had witnessed their transit, and so
should have little trouble locating the warp point theyтАЩd used. No, she corrected herself:
would have little trouble. After the events of the past three and a half standard Terran years,
no human was apt to underestimate Arachnid capabilities.
So she took command of herself and ordered the flotilla onward into the system under
cloaking ECM, getting lost in the immensity of space before the Bugs could follow them
through the warp point. She also sent the Hun-class scout cruisers ahead to begin surveying.
They reported almost immediately that the system wasnтАЩt one of those in the Terran
FederationтАЩs databases, and there was no point in searching for a native high-tech civilization.
This star was a red giant, and like some insane god of ancient myth it had long since devoured
any planetary children it might once have possessed. So Sommers ordered the Huns to search
for warp points other than the one theyтАЩd just transitedтАФwarp points through which they
could continue their hegira.
She wanted to pause and appease a lack of sleep which had almost exceeded the human
organismтАЩs capacity to function. But there was no time. Instead, she called a staff conference.
 At some point, Hafezi had somehow managed to repair the hagardness of battle. Sommers,