He tapped the com unit, and then he leaned back, closing his eyes. He’d almost told Fritz that getting the primaries back online—or even getting him one good shot from them—could be the difference between victory and defeat. Between life and death. But he’d held his tongue. She was the best engineer in the fleet, and the hardest worker he’d ever seen. She would do everything possible, he was sure of that. And the last thing she needed right now was more pressure.

“Commander Travis is at the door.”

The AI’s voice startled Barron. “Open,” he said, turning his head and watching as his first officer walked into the room. He could see the bridge behind her, bustling at a somewhat lower intensity than it had been during the battle. The enemy ship was still at least two days away, and Barron had knocked back the status to yellow alert, sending half his people at a time to their cabins with orders to sleep. If they could.

Barron moved his neck around on his shoulders, trying to work out the knots and kinks. He hadn’t slept, not in the nearly one week since Dauntless and the enemy ship had first engaged. He reached down to the desk, taking a pair of stimtabs in his hand and tossing them into his mouth.

“Sit,” he said to Travis, as he grabbed a small cup of water off the desk and washed the pills down.

“How many is that for you?” There was concern in Travis’s tone.

“I could ask you that too, Commander, couldn’t I?”

“We’re both going to need liver regens after this is over.”

“If we make it back. At this point, growing a new liver doesn’t seem like too high a price.” He paused, and his face darkened. “Atara, we’re in real trouble. Half the secondaries are out, blasted to scrap, with no chance of being repaired. With the primaries still offline, we’re just too outgunned. Your shot hit their engines hard—I expect we’ll have the edge on maneuver when we fight it out. But what does it do for us? We could make a run for it, get away…but that’s not an option anymore. We’ve can’t retreat…we’ve got to defeat them. Somehow. And I just don’t know how we’re going to engage and get the better of them. They’ve got too much operable firepower compared to us.”

“This asteroid field will play havoc with their scanners. The concentration of radioactive elements is off the charts.” She paused. “If we blast a few of the smaller ones before they get here, the debris field will be spread out. They’ll have a hard time targeting through the background radiation until they’re right on top of us.”