Description:

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 artifact 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?

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.