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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

His body was wracked with pain, his arm, his chest. He’d broken several ribs, he could feel that for sure. And the clear inside of his mask was splattered with blood.

The cracked, shattered mask, with a gaping hole in the center…

There was a strange sensation, a tingling feeling he’d never experienced before. He remembered his training, the classes at the Academy. Radiation was a silent killer, unnoticeable, invisible.

Except at massive levels…when it could actually be felt.

He felt himself beginning to lose consciousness.

“Lise, I’m sorry…”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight

CFS Dauntless

Krillus Asteroid Belt

40, 500,000 kilometers from Santis, Krillus IV

Year 58 (307 AC)

“Commander, we’re picking up energy readings from the enemy vessel.” There was surprise in Wentus’s voice. And confusion.

Kat didn’t answer. She looked down at her screen, staring at the numbers. The scanners were imperfect, inexact. But the power spike was massive. This was no set of batteries kicking in, no emergency power source. It was the enemy’s main reactor. It couldn’t be anything else.

And that means…

She felt a coldness inside her, a realization.

“All engines, reverse thrust.” But even as she gave the command she knew it was too late.

“Commander…”

“Now! Full power, reverse thrust.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Her eyes were on her own screen, reading the incoming scanner data. The numbers didn’t lie—the enemy had managed to restart their reactors. Was it a desperate repair job, an attempt to ward off imminent destruction? Or…

Or was I lured in? Was their reactor failure feigned?

She tried to imagine the raw courage and grit it would take to willingly shut down a ship’s reactors, to sit and endure a pounding without answer, all to lure your enemy forward. It seemed too fantastic to believe…but then she thought about the enemy commander, about the concern she had felt all through this encounter. If this was deliberate, he’d have to have a plan to make it work, to make the risk worthwhile…and that could only mean one thing.

Those primaries…

Is it possible? That a captain would take that kind of chance to gain surprise?

“Evasive maneuvers…now!” Kat shouted out the orders, even as she realized it was too late. Invictus was less than sixty-thousand kilometers from the Confed ship, and even decelerating at maximum thrust, the existing momentum would take her ship to within fifty thousand kilometers before it halted.

“Yes, Commander…initiating evasive maneuvers.” She could tell from the confusion in Wentus’s voice her first officer hadn’t yet come to the conclusion she had. She hoped he was right, that her fears were ungrounded. But she didn’t believe that, not for a second.

She stared at the symbol on her display representing the enemy ship, and she wondered who was in command, what kind of man or woman she had faced in this death match over the past ten days.

Who are you?

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