Baron stared down at his screen. He punched at the controls, pulling up schematics of Dauntless, each of them speckled with small, glowing dots…damaged areas. And both landing bays were lit up like holiday displays.

*   *   *

Sam Carson wiped his arm across his forehead, trying without much success to mop away the sweat that was pouring down into his eyes. He was crouched down, reaching inside one of the main panels, pulling out handfuls of fried circuitry. The plasma torpedoes had hit the outer sections hard, but internal explosions and burnouts spread the damage throughout the ship. There were radiation leaks in a dozen places, and burned out electronics in more spots than he could count.

“Sam, how does it look down there?” Commander Fritz sounded edgy. Carson couldn’t even imagine the number of problems she was juggling right now.

“It’s bad, Commander. I’m only on panel one, but I’d bet the whole system is fried.”

“Damn…” Fritz cursed softly. Carson suspected he wasn’t supposed to hear it, so he pretended he hadn’t. “All right, Sam…assign a squad of bots to replace it all. I need you up here. The primaries are down again, and we’ve got twenty-three minutes to get them back online.”

“Yes, Commander. On my way.”

He jumped up, wiping the black residue from his hands. He pulled the portable com from his belt, punching in the code for the engineering AI. “I need a squad of maintenance bots in sector F11. The entire central trunk needs replacement.

“Acknowledged. Dispatching bots now.”

Carson nodded, a pointless gesture, he knew. Then he turned and moved out into the corridor, heading toward weapons control. He took a breath, and then he went into a coughing fit. There was smoke in the air, chemical residues.

We’re going to have to deal with that too…

But the enemy battleship was coming…and that made the primary batteries the most important repair, even if half the crew was choking on toxic fumes.

Twenty minutes…

Carson was an engineer, not a tactical officer. But he knew how the ship would fare in the coming fight without its main guns. The Alliance battleship was fresh, undamaged. And Dauntless was already a patchwork of hurried repairs. Without the main guns…

He walked down to the end of the corridor, reaching up and grabbing a rung of a small ladder leading up. Half the turbo lifts were out, and he didn’t have time to look for one that was functioning, or worse, to get stuck in one. Not now.

He climbed up, not even thinking about it for the first few levels, but by the time he’d scrambled past seven decks and was heading for the eighth, he was feeling it. And weapons control was another three levels from there.