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Chapters (44)
  1. The Crimson Worlds Series
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  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Chapter Twenty-One
  24. Chapter Twenty-Two
  25. Chapter Twenty-Three
  26. Chapter Twenty-Four
  27. Chapter Twenty-Five
  28. Chapter Twenty-Six
  29. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  30. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  31. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  32. Chapter Thirty
  33. Chapter Thirty-One
  34. Chapter Thirty-Two
  35. Chapter Thirty-Three
  36. Chapter Thirty-Four
  37. Chapter Thirty-Five
  38. Chapter Thirty-Six
  39. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  40. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  41. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  42. Chapter Forty
  43. Chapter Forty-One
  44. Epilogue

“I’ve served since you were a boy, Lieutenant. Don’t make me a mutineer, not now.”

Plunkett looked back at Hargraves. “Okay, Sergeant…on one condition. If we run into trouble, you drop me and leave me behind. Whatever chance you guys have, I don’t want it thrown away dragging my dying body around.”

Hargraves took a deep breath. Then she said, “Okay, sir. Whatever you say.”

“Your word, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir…my word.”

Plunkett nodded. Then he laid his head back and struggled to take in a deep breath.

Hargraves turned away, partially to head back and get ready to head out…but mostly because he couldn’t face the lieutenant, not after lying to his face.

Clete Hargraves had never broken his word before, but if it came to leaving Plunkett to die or forsaking a promise, he knew exactly what he would do.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

AS Invictus

30 light minutes from Santis, Krillus IV

Alliance Year 58 (307 AC)

“Open the power feeds…but slowly. No more than five percent at first.” Raban Cinatus stood on the deck, looking up at the massive engines. The structures were immense, rising thirty meters from top to bottom, and almost seven hundred meters in length. And he felt as though his people had covered every centimeter of that vastness.

The Confederation weapons had torn huge gashes in the engines, and they’d shattered the hull, exposing most of the engine room to the vacuum of space. Thirty of Invictus’s crew had died almost instantly, most of them blown out of the rents in the hull. Another fifty, at least, had been wounded. And the engines themselves had shut down immediately, leaving Invictus tearing away from the battle at greater than one percent of lightspeed, with no way to decelerate.

Which it still was. Cinatus had deployed his crews immediately, and he’d worked them around the clock, pumping them full of stimulants and ruling over them with iron discipline. The gruff engineer had always believed loyalty and fear were a combination designed to squeeze the very best out of people, and he’d done his part to supply the fear as well as inspire the needed devotion.

Commander Rigellus had been clear. She needed those engines back online. Every day, every hour before Invictus could return and finish the battle, allowed the enemy to make more repairs, to prepare for the final engagement. At best, that meant more of Invictus’s crew would die in the final confrontation. At worst…

Cinatus stood behind a control panel, watching the indicators as his engineers fed power to the engines. In any other situation, he would have done days of testing before he’d dared to pump energy from the reactor into the engines. But there was no time, and the commander had been perfectly clear. Get the engines working, regardless of risk.