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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

Barron felt another pang. He was busy. Dauntless was a wreck, half its engineering staff in sickbay. For that matter, half its crew dead or wounded. And, while he believed what Commander Rigellus had told him, he had no proof that there weren’t other Alliance forces on the way even now. Still, the idea of not having time for a dying man, one who had saved all their lives…it made him feel small, cold.

“Really, Captain…he’s in and out. I don’t even think he’s still here, not really.”

“You’re a good man, Walt.” Barron looked down at the lieutenant. “Stay with him, will you? Until…the end.”

“I will, sir. You have my word.”

Barron just nodded. Then he took one last look at Carson, and he turned and walked toward the door.

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-One

From the Log of Captain Tyler Barron

War. It is feared, glorified. A last resort or a cold-blooded way to achieve governmental ends. An ancient quote, its origins long lost in pre-cataclysmic history, called it the ‘final argument of kings.’

I have experienced it now, in all its unsavory horror. I have watched those who served with me die, some quickly, vaporized in a fraction of a second. Others, slowly, lingering in fear and agony as their lives slipped away. I have even come to mourn for an enemy, one I also hate for the death she brought upon my people.

I always wondered why my grandfather spent so little time telling me about the great battles fought. I couldn’t understand why he always turned the topic to fishing or the family estate…or any topic far from the travails of the battlefield. Now, I think, I understand him far better. I can perceive, at least in a small way, the demons that must have haunted his sleep and preyed on his mind.

I am a good son of the navy, and I serve the Confederation and its duly-constituted government. Yet, I question now the justice of men and women casting a nation into war when they have not themselves experienced it, or paid its terrible price. I do not long for a military dictatorship—far from it. We are surrounded by brutal regimes where freedom is a forgotten ideal. Yet, it sickens me to think of politicians who have never heard a shot fired making a decision that will send thousands of good men and women to hideous deaths.

I know war with the Union beckons, that my crew’s respite will be but a short one before the trumpet again calls us. And we will answer, as those before us did, as my grandfather did. And in this war to come, as in those that preceded it, there will be a Barron on the front lines.

CFS Dauntless

In Space Dock

Archellia, Cassiopolis III

308 AC