Army of the Immortals
The last thing Sergeant Alex Rein saw was a blinding green streak of plasma turning Corporal Gibson into a charred silhouette. The last thing he felt was an unbearable heat piercing his armor and boiling his flesh. His last thought was his daughter's name: Lilia. And then… cold. He opened his eyes. The air smelled of ozone and sterility. Alex was lying on a hard platform. His body was encased in a thin, ice-like crystalline shell. It cracked with a dry snap, shattering into radiant dust. He sat up, instinctively checking his limbs. Intact. Completely intact. Next to him, another man was rising from an identical cocoon. A perfect copy of himself, down to the last scar above his eyebrow. The same primal terror and disorientation swam in the double's eyes. In the silence of his flagship's bridge, "The Relentless," Marshal Vance observed not the battlefield, but streams of pure data. The holographic projection before him showed not explosions, but columns of num...