Starfist: Blood Contact Book IV

Through three centuries of interstellar travel, intelligent alien life- forms had never been encountered . . . until now. When a scientific team exploring an obscure planet fails to make its regular communications check, the Marines of third platoon are sent to investigate. They prepare for a routine rescue operation, but what they find on Society 437 is a horror beyond description. Only a handful of ragtag pirates who were in the wrong place at the very worst time have survived, and there is little trace of the scientists. What happened to the scientists? Why have the pirates been spared? Gunnery Sergeant Bass and the men of third platoon are about to find out, and the answer carries a terrifying implication for the Marines--and the entire human race.

David Sherman is a former United States Marine and the author of eight previously published novels about Marines in Vietnam, where he served as an infantryman and as a member of a Combined Action Platoon. He is an alumnus of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and worked as a sculptor for many years before turning to writing.  Along the way he has held a variety of jobs, mostly supervisory and managerial. Today he is a full-time writer. He lives in Philadelphia.<br><br>Dan Cragg enlisted in the United States Army in 1958 and retired with the rank of sergeant major twenty-two years later. During his army service, Mr. Cragg served more than eleven years in overseas stations, five and a half of them in Vietnam. He is the author of Inside the VC and NVA (with Michael Lee Lanning), Top Sergeant (with William G.