The Hero

Product Description The human was an expert sniper-and a psychopath. He had never failed in the past when he stalked human prey. But now he is on an enemy planet, and his prey is anything but human. The Darhel are a race with a highly developed empathic sense. Long ago, they learned that they cannot deal death to another intelligent being without being destroyed by the death agonies of their victim. Even though they have been manipulating other species behind the scenes for millennia, including the humans of planet Earth, they cannot bear to kill another being, and depend on other, less sensitive beings, to do their dirty work. But now one of the Darhel must kill or be killed. And the fate, not only of his own race, but all of humanity, is riding on his survival. The course of the next thousand years will be determined by whether or not he can learn to fight back. If he cannot, it will be too late . . . for the entire galaxy. From the Author I've noticed a lot of confusion over the nature of the device. The following is a spoiler, so if you've read the book and didn't grasp the significance of the artifact, here it is: Hardcover, page 310 bottom and 311 top Paperback, page 390 top to 2/3 down. The device is a Lindal, an artificial means of initiating Lintatai--catatonia--in an empathic Darhel. This is the psychological danger Tirdal faces throughout the book. This genetically engineered trait is called Lindai. Obviously, the Aldenata needed some way of keeping a race as dangerous as the Darhel from rebelling, and this was the extra safety--a psionic device to prevent them from entering controlled areas. Naturally, it would be disastrous to allow humans to study this device and possibly gain control of Darhel. Which left as the ending of the story: which one of the three was the hero? It's a matter of trust. For thousands of years the Darhel, a warrior species conditioned to be incapable of killing, manipulated and controlled the human race. Then the humans threw off their yoke and, as humans tend to do, attempted to exterminate them. Now, for the first time, a Darhel has been assigned to the elite Deep Reconnaissance Team commandos. Trust, in a small unit, is vital. And there was no trust to be had on either side. But when the mission encountered an alien device worth more than a king's ransom, it was the humans who betrayed the trust. Now the despised Darhel must race against the team's sniper to prevent the artefact falling into the wrong hands. The Darhel has empathic powers, superhuman strength and the speed of a cheetah. The sniper has years of experience and enormous ability. The sniper can kill. The Darhel cannot. The fate of the galaxy and the human race for the next thousand years hangs in the balance and that balance rests on the shoulders of a Darhel. The Hero has a thousand faces, but is one of them the face of an elf? On An Enemy Planet Inhabited By The Darhel, An Alien Race With Extraordinary Empathic Abilities, A Human Hunter Stalks His Alien Prey, A Darhel Who Must Overcome His Sensitivities To Kill His Stalker, Or Be Killed In The Process. John Ringo And Michael Z. Williamson. A Baen Books Original--t.p. Verso.