A short story where a space pilot has a device that sends the ship back in time just before losing a space battle. He is duplicated by accident

Question

Fairly sure I read the story in a mammoth Sci-Fi collection around 15 years ago. The character is fighting another ship, triggers the time shift defense, and inadvertently creates a duplicate of himself. The duplicates are named 'first name' then blue or red depending on which version they are. One version ends up doing hard labour on a mining colony and is shamed. Can't remember the fate of the other.

Answer 1

This is very reminiscent of Stephen Baxter's novel Exultant which has a pilot named Pirius, who is duplicated and referred to as Pirius Red and Pirius Blue. The Wikipedia article does not mention a short story version, but I'll continue to look.

From the article:

Commissary Nilis of the Office of Technological Archival and Control, part of the Commission for Historical Truth, defends both the older Pirius (whom he calls "Pirius Blue") and the younger one ("Pirius Red") but loses the trial. Pirius Blue is sent to a penal unit at the front as a foot soldier, and Pirius Red is remanded to the custody of Commissary Nilis, who has plans for the fruits of Pirius Blue's battlefield victory. Using the Xeelee fighter and the innovative tactics that saved Pirius Blue, he starts to plan an unheard of assault on the Xeelee's primary stronghold at Chandra itself.