The dream of every Death Charger was to die gloriously in battle serving the Galactic Rule: An altered strain of human, grown quick and powerful to fight in a seemingly endless war. One young Death Charger-Daryl Kard-was captured by mysterious beings, as evil as the Galactic Rule itself. The Rule's dark allies later returned with an infant-a clone of the boy-and they too had made some alterations. The child was given Daryl's name and his place within their empire; growing up to become the galaxy's most feared warrior and their army's most respected general. With the defeat of their armies and the depletion of their resources, the Galactic Rule's bloody crusade to enslave mankind and kill all nonhuman intelligent life-forms had come to an end. Refusing to live in a time without war, General Kard had himself frozen in stasis, hoping for the day when he could be unleashed upon their enemy once again. During the two centuries the galaxy believed him dead, his legend grew, until he became known as Death Kard-a powerful symbol of a war-torn time neither side could forget. Death Kard's shocking and cataclysmic return soon had an unstoppable wave of men and machines, hell-bent on the total annihilation of the Galactic Rule. On a quest to prevent what seems to be their imminent destruction, Death Kard sets out alone into enemy space, armed with only a lovesick computer and orders to save their empire. Witness the first 500 years of his amazing life, and its wake of destruction, that forever changes the course of an entire galaxy.

Telling Death Kard's story is like trying to describe an entire galaxy being pulled into a tiny black hole. He devoured our planets, one after another, while casting his ominous shadow upon everyone and everything, sending all of our worlds into a terrifying darkness.

I had first heard of Death Kard as a very young boy, by a woman who once loved him very much. She trained me night and day for only one purpose-to hunt him down and kill him. By the time I was ten years old all my thoughts were centered on that one goal. It was first my father's obsession that, in the end, cost him his life. Years later, it became my obsession, costing my mother her life. My loss only made me more determined to find the Evil General and send him back to whatever hell he had come from.

The woman told me tall impossible tales about a man who appeared as human, but was something much more. Like her, he was created during a time of war, centuries before I was even born; a war that raged on for nearly eight hundred years before Death Kard stepped foot on his first battlefield.

It was a time when two empires were locked in a seemingly endless battle for their very survival. Then, the small part of our galaxy that holds life was split into two parts. Twenty-one worlds on one side-the Galactic Rule's side of the galaxy-and one hundred and ten Free worlds on the other, with the battle planet Truss stuck right in-between.

It was during this time-the last two generations to fight on the Planet of Death-that the legends of swords were born. Great warriors from both sides wrote their names into the history books with the blood of their enemies. Countless blood drenched battles that ended in a decisive victory for the Free worlds. On the last day, after the final battle of the Great War, is when General Kard was transformed from being merely a terrifying warrior and a great general, into being Death Kard, the galaxy's worst nightmare.

His transformation began with a simple but desperate plan, born of necessity and the Evil General's endless thirst for war. Therefore, it is here where I will begin his story. A story of destruction, terror and enslavement-The story of Death Kard.