With Deaths Head, David Gunn rocketed onto the scene in the most explosive and entertaining science fiction debut since Richard Morgans Altered Carbon. Now Gunn is backand so is Sven Tveskoeg: antisocial, antihero, anti-you-name-it, a one-man killing spree whose best friend is an intelligent handgun with a bad attitude and whose worst enemy is, well, just about everybody else.And if Sven werent dangerous enough already, add in the lethal alien parasite that resides in his throat . . . and is capable of bending space and time. Then theres the fact that Svens genetic makeup is only 98.2 percent human, the rest being undetermined but possibly contributing to his enhanced healing abilities, superior strength, unusual agility, and notable sociopathic tendencies. The result is one seriously badass soldier with a hair-trigger temper and a chip on his shoulder the size of a small moon. These are qualities that would doom a man to prison or worse in any decent society.Luckily, Sven doesnt live in a decent society. He lives in the empire of OctoV, a tyrant who is part machine, part boy, part god, and all evil. Svens qualities have brought him to OctoVs personal attention and earned him a lieutenants commission in the Deaths Head, the elite corps of assassins and enforcers whose purpose in life is to kill and die for the greater glory of OctoV.Svens new assignment? Lead his ragtag band of Deaths Head rejectsthe Aux, short for auxiliariesto the artificial world of Hekati. It seems that a citizen of the United Free, an empire not only vaster than OctoVs but far more technologically advanced, has gone missing there. Now its up to Sven to rescue the poor soul.But Hekati turns out to be a vicious den of backstabbing and betrayal, where nothing and no one can be trusted, least of all the greenhorn colonel put in charge of the mission at the last moment. It looks like somebody wants Sven Tveskoeg dead.So what else is new?From the Hardcover edition.