Savage Hills — Chris Bostic

Savage Hills…where survival is incidental to the mission, and the mission just became ten thousand times harder. The Republic's kids were soft. Technology had made them weak. Pushbutton war was a great concept, and indeed had let them steamroll many a weaker nation. But the Regulators weren't made for this kind of war. The kind that required an iron will and a reservoir of endurance. Legions of troops would have been helpful too, but the Republic had been too decimated from years of empire-building to offer more than teens like Joe to the fight. And then the savages attacked with a fury never imagined. Joe could spit again and again and never rid himself of the stench of death. Nothing could take back what he'd seen. Too many friends and so many savages had lost their pathetic lives in some forsaken canyon behind enemy lines. Savage Hills, indeed.