He wanted to flee, to resign his commission and retire to his family estates…anyplace where no more men and women would die because they followed his orders. But he knew he couldn’t, and now another person was there in this thoughts, one he hardly knew but also one he was realizing had a great impact on him.

There would be no resignation, no retreat to the family manor. Barron was a creature of duty, as fixed on his path as Katrine Rigellus had been. She’d been a noble warrior trapped in bad cause, an example of the cost such devotion extracted…and he knew in her words he had seen his own future.

Epilogue

Epilogue

Tyler Barron sat at the small desk in his quarters. It was quiet, peaceful—at least when the repair crews weren’t in some nearby compartment, repairing one bit of battle damage after another.

His workstation’s screen displayed repair reports, requisitions, supply manifests…all the things that made command of a battleship seem like drudgery. But his eyes had glazed over, drifted to the tablet in his hands. The small display held text, the final chapter of the history volume Dauntless’s captain had been carrying around for over a year now. He’d finally gotten through it, almost, and he was determined that nothing would stop him from finishing. Not this close to the end.

He was glad, at least, to be back onboard Dauntless. His battleship had been a wreck when he’d gotten her back to Archellia base, it’s corridors and compartments shattered wastelands, as often as not stained red with the blood of those who had died at their stations. Barron had been relieved at first to get off Dauntless, to flee from the haunting of those whom he had led to death. But four months in the Starfire Suite had been more than he could take. The Archellians had fawned over his as the descendant of the great Rance Barron, but now he was the man who had saved them from Alliance invasion. At least that’s the way they’d insisted on seeing it. The steady stream of dinners and other festivities grew to a veritable avalanche, one which had begun to threaten his sanity. It had been nothing but a relief when Fritzie had told him Dauntless’s officers’ and crews’ quarters were again habitable.

Barron had executed a hasty retreat, thanking the local authorities for the luxurious accommodations and assuring them he would have stayed longer had the vital repairs to his ship not called. In truth, Barron was just about useless amid the crowd of engineers and technicians gradually rebuilding Dauntless. But it was a good excuse, and he jumped on it.

He glanced down at the tablet, leaning back in his chair, his eyes finding the last spot he’d read. He’d gotten through perhaps fifty words when the com unit buzzed.