The specter of war still hung like a shadow, but Barron’s crew was in good spirits, bound for well-deserved shore leave and a break from the grind of duty. He knew it would be a relatively short break, with danger lurking on the other side, but he’d been in the service long enough to realize just how much spacers lived in the now.

Tomorrow we may face destiny, we may fight and die and fall to the fires of perdition, but tonight is ours, and we drink and make merry.

It was an old quote, from pre-Cataclysmic times, but whatever centuries-dead spacer had first spoken it, Barron realized he had known his brethren well. Barron tended to be a bit over-serious himself, the inevitable result of growing up as he had, feeling the crushing expectations from the moment he was old enough to understand. But he knew there was logic in the simple spacer’s view. His crew couldn’t do anything to affect what was coming, and if war indeed erupted, there was little doubt many of them would die in the fighting.

They might as well savor the time they have…

He knew he was different from his crew, even from his officers. But he was devoted to them all, and his first thought was always to provide them the best leadership he could manage. He never let himself forget that every command he uttered had consequences, that his mistakes could get his people hurt. Or killed.

The first few months of his command had been difficult ones, as such things usually were, especially since he’d had to overcome the usual resentments, the impression that the Barron name had more to do with the insignia on his collar than his skills and service. But he and his people had gotten past it all and become a solid team, and Barron would have put Dauntless against any other ship in the fleet, despite the fact that she was neither the newest nor the largest.

“Dauntless, all scans check out. Please transmit alpha codes for final authorization.”

Barron leaned forward slightly and flipped open the small panel on the armrest of his chair, revealing the keypad below. His fingers punched out a code, one only he and his first officer knew. It was another wartime procedure, a failsafe designed to prevent an enemy from using a captured vessel to approach a Confederation world. Its implementation before the outbreak of hostilities, and on a world so far from the prospective battle zone, attested to just how worried the Confederation’s leaders were of an impending attack, and the fifth column tactics the Union would almost certainly employ if hostilities broke out.