Crimson Worlds: Prequel - Bitter Glory

by Jay Allan

  Garret was silent as he walked, deep in his own thoughts, his private struggle with himself. All his life he’d longed to taste glory, and now he had. But it wasn’t what he’d imagined, sweet and invigorating. Instead, it was bitter, gut-wrenching. He choked on it. Had he traded Charlotte’s life for it? For the fleeting rush of victory? The acclaim he’d ached for so longingly that now tore at his soul? He couldn’t imagine any accolades worth Charlotte…sweet, beloved Charlotte. Charlotte, whose love he never truly appreciated until it was lost.

  He’d been away from the Academy for twelve years, but he remembered the way perfectly. The little knoll - another construct designed for effect – and the small cluster of stone buildings perched upon it. Stokely Hall, room 311, he remembered. He walked down the corridor, past the bank of lifts to the stairs. My God, he thought, it hasn’t changed at all. He could feel himself drifting back in time, remembering an 18 year-old version of himself, fresh from Terra Nova and cocky as hell.

  He turned at the top of the stairs and walked slowly until he stood in front of a small sign that read, “Room 311.” He reached out and pressed the intercom button. “Admiral Horn? It’s Augustus Garret, sir.”

  The door slid open, revealing an office that hadn’t changed either. Seated at an antique oak desk – the same desk, Garret remembered well – was his professor, older now, but somehow also unchanged. Except for the admiral’s stars on his collar.

  Horn had long been out of the real line of command in the navy, and his eventual promotion to flag rank was a purely honorary gesture. He’d committed the cardinal sin, the one thing a serving combat leader could never do…he’d lost his nerve. It had slipped away, the ability to go back, to forget the consequences of his command decisions and face the same conflicts again.

  Augustus Garret was there to talk to his old professor, to finally ask him after all these years what terrible event had driven him from the combat ranks and banished him to the classrooms of the Academy. He was there to decide if he, too, had lost the driving force a combat commander needed.

  The older officer stood up and leaned across the desk toward his visitor, extending his hand. Garret could see it was shaking as he grasped it firmly. Garret had always liked Horn, though he’d pitied the man for what he had always seen as cowardice. Now he knew he’d been a fool. Stupid, obstinate bravery was easy, simpler at least than learning to deal with the consequences of command action. Facing your own death was one thing, but dealing with the phantoms, the faces of those who paid the price of those decisions…that was altogether a different thing.

  “Augustus, it is good to see you.” Garret snapped to attention and gave Horn a crisp salute, but the older man was already waving him off. “No salutes today, Augustus.” Horn could see the anguish in his old pupil’s face. “Today it is just two friends talking…catching up. No officers, no chain of command.” Horn walked around the desk, extending his arms to embrace Garret.

  Garret walked forward and put his arms around his old teacher. “Thank you, sir.” He took half a step back from the hug and looked into Horn’s eyes. “I was hoping we could talk about a few things.”

  Epilogue

  Garret closed the door behind him and walked through the silent corridors of Stokely Hall and out into the main quad. He’d lost all track of time, and now he realized he’d been with Horn almost four hours. They had spoken of many things, and Horn had told him what he’d come to hear. One thing Augustus Garret knew for certain…he would never again think of Jackson Horn as a coward. There were simply things from which no man could ever recover.

  Now he had to decide if he could move past all that had happened to him, to put it behind him…to fight the navy’s wars and climb through its ranks…and put the guilt and grief in its place. Charlotte’s face was there in front of him as he thought, one moment smiling, an image from their past – and the next, terrified, begging him for help, tears streaming down her raw, red cheeks. She was dead now, and nothing he did would ever change that. Worse, she’d died knowing he hadn’t come to her aid, that he’d abandoned her once again.

  The grief alone was enough to consume him. He hadn’t seen her in twelve years, not since she’d come to his graduation. He’d never intended for so long to go by, but time has a way of slipping past, draining away in small bits until the days and weeks become years gone by. Now he realized, though he’d long thought that part of his life was far behind him, he’d never stopped loving her. Memories kept flooding into his consciousness, the two of them together, always together. All those years he’d longed to leave Terra Nova, to win glory fighting among the stars. Now he wished he could go back; he ached for a single day with Charlotte, a chance to appreciate what he never truly had before, when it had been his. He wondered what life with her would have been, a life with love, but without war, without glory. But he knew that had never been his destiny.

  His mind drifted to the tragic days in the Wolf 424 system. He’d been sure he could take out the CAC battleship and get back in time to save Charlotte…at least he’d convinced himself he could. His ambition had made him leave her all those years ago, and now his arrogance had gotten her killed. He would carry the guilt with him the rest of his days…and the images of the life he might have had with her, the one he’d walked away from.

  He understood now, at least he thought he did, the pain she must have felt when he left her on Terra Nova, when he walked away from her again after graduation. He imagined what she must have thought, how she reconciled with the one person she trusted more than anyone leaving her behind, alone and abandoned. Garret’s own emotions had been masked by his ambition, but now the coverings were stripped away, and he felt the grief, all of it. Charlotte was gone forever…how could that be? How could he deal with that, and with his own failure?

  But for all the pain, Garret knew in his heart he wasn’t finished, that he wouldn’t succumb to Horn’s fate. To let the heartbreak and guilt defeat him would be to render Charlotte’s sacrifices even more meaningless. The war was still going on, and there would be new conflicts after this one, of that he was sure. He would be there, fighting those battles, making the enemy pay the price for his pain and remorse.

  The youthful cockiness that had clouded his judgment, that allowed him to turn his back on Charlotte…that was gone, as was the hunger for glory. In their place was duty, obligation, grim resolution. He could feel the chill, the emotion draining from his eyes, leaving in their place only the cold-blooded stare of a predator. Garret would heed his calling - he would carry the standard wherever his navy went to battle. He would become its sharpened blade, and he would never falter. He would destroy his enemies, the Alliance’s enemies, without pity, without mercy. That much he owed to his lost love.

  AS Wasp

  Barracuda-class Fast Attack Ship

  (2nd ship in class)

  Complement:

  18 officers, 61 crew

  Primary Armament:

  Dual plasma torpedo tubes

  8 – 3 gigawatt plasma torpedoes

  Secondary Armament:

  2 – dual light laser (500 megawatt) turrets

  8 – light cruise missiles, thermonuclear-armed

  Defensive Array:

  4 – anti-missile lasers (50 megawatts)

  2 – laser-diffusion systems (“angeldust” launchers)

  1 – wide-dispersal magnetic cannon (“shotguns”)

  Mark V advanced ECM system

  Primary Power Plant:

  1 – 16 gigawatt laser-primed fusion reactor

  Propulsion:

  2 – GDL Model 6 Engines (max thrust – 24g)

  6 – gas-ejection repositioning jets

  Western Alliance Navy

  The Alliance Navy traces its existence to the Frontier Patrol, an early organization tasked with defending the Alliance’s first interstellar colonies. With the outbreak of the First Frontier War, Alliance Gov combined the Frontier Patrol with several smaller paramilitary forces into a unified comman
d structure.

  The Frontier Patrol had been recruited mostly on Earth, with enlisted personnel drawn from the Cog populations and officers from the lowest levels of the political class. But the privileged classes were reluctant to serve in space, and the Cogs generally lacked the basic education to facilitate the training required by a modern space fleet. As the war continued and expanded, the newly-formed navy began to look to the colonies themselves for recruits. By the time the Peace of Titan ended the First Frontier War, most of the active duty personnel were colonists. In the years immediately following, most administrative and support functions were also moved from Earth to more strategic locations among the colonies.

  As the Superpowers continued to raid each other in space while adhering to the Treaty of Paris’ prohibition against warfare on Earth, the navy became more and more a frontier-oriented force, with little or no connection to Earth save a chain of command that eventually led to Alliance Gov in Washbalt.

  Although an entirely different organization, the Alliance navy considered itself the successor to the British and American forces that had dominated Earth’s oceans for several centuries. Prickly about its short history, the young organization quickly developed a significant body of tradition, mostly borrowed from the older, predecessor forces.

  The growing colonies embraced the fleet that protected them and safeguarded their trade lifelines back to Earth. Service in the navy became highly respected and, eventually, extremely competitive. As fleets became larger and space combat tactics more developed, the Alliance navy grew into the largest and most effective of all the Power’s space forces.

  Despite its ultimate skill and power, the geo-political situation generally worked against the Alliance navy, and it was frequently compelled to face the combined forces of the Caliphate and CAC, often alone and outnumbered. As a result, it developed an aggressive officer corps that encouraged boldness and risk-taking. A cult of glory grew up around the senior commanders, and subsequent generations aspired to equal and exceed the exploits of those who had come before.

  Augustus Garret and Terrance Compton came of age during a period of rapid growth in the size and scale of the navy. Human-occupied space was expanding rapidly and, with explorers and colonists, man also exported his wars. The senior officers of the day had cut their teeth commanding the ragtag squadrons of the First Frontier War, and they struggled to keep up with changes in tactics and ordnance. Garret and his brethren were the first class brought up from the start within the “big fleet” navy…the first ones comfortable thinking in terms of battlegroups and fleet maneuvers. He and his compatriots would set the standard for naval tactics through the Third Frontier War and beyond.

  By Jay Allan

  Marines (Crimson Worlds I)

  The Cost of Victory (Crimson Worlds II)

  A Little Rebellion (Crimson Worlds III)

  The First Imperium (Crimson Worlds IV)

  The Line Must Hold (Crimson Worlds V)

  Tombstone (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)

  Bitter Glory (A Crimson Worlds Prequel)

  The Last Veteran (Shattered States)

  The Dragon's Banner (Pendragon Chronicles)

  Upcoming

  To Hell’s Heart (Crimson Worlds VI)

  (September 2013)

  The Gates of Hell (Crimson Worlds Prequel)

  (October 2013)

  The Shadow Legions (Crimson Worlds VII)

  (December 2013)