Dauntless had been on patrol for almost nine months now, and the pressure had built steadily, wearing hard on his crew. He’d tried to keep formal alerts to a minimum, an effort to control the stress levels as much as anything else, to keep his people as rested as possible. But it was a losing fight. They all knew why they were there, and for all their training and courage, they were afraid. Even without the yellow or red warning lamps lit, they all knew the call to battlestations could come at any moment.

War was coming. They’d all heard about it for years now. Vague warnings at first, then firmer ones, reports from the intelligence services of Union buildups, force movements. Finally, the Code Black alert had gone out, a designation that had one meaning. Invasion imminent.

But the invasion hadn’t been imminent. It had been almost a year, and the frontier had been quiet. The intel reports were still coming hard and fast, manifests showing fleets of new Union warships pouring from shipyards, moving toward forward bases behind the border. But they hadn’t attacked. Not yet.

Barron looked around Dauntless’s bridge, feeling a twinge of guilt as he watched his officers at work. They were here to patrol the frontier, and to report if—when—the enemy came streaming across the border. It was a dangerous job, suicidal, many would say. The primary mission was to send off a warning, along with as much data on the invasion force as possible. Survival was decidedly a secondary prospect, and an unlikely one at that. And that weighed heavily on Barron, for reasons that went far beyond personal fear.

His people were here because of him, because he had rebelled at the preferential treatment he’d experienced his whole life, the assignments to rear areas, the efforts by the admiralty to keep him safe even as he served in the fleet. He’d practically demanded the frontier posting, going so far as to threaten to resign his commission if his request was denied.

And now, more than nine hundred officers and spacers face desperate danger because you wanted to prove you’re more than just Rance Barron’s grandson…

Barron shifted slightly in his chair, expending a bit of nervous energy as much as anything else. Dauntless had been his for almost a year, and she had spent most of that time on the border, staring into the face of an invasion everyone knew would be massive when it came. He was the youngest captain in the fleet to command a capital ship, and he knew he owed at least some of that to his last name, the one he shared with his famous grandfather.