“All right, Fritzie. Begin restart procedure. All power directly to the primaries.”

“Yes, sir.”

The big guns would take about forty seconds to charge up. That meant Dauntless had to endure almost two minutes more pounding before he could fire.

C’mon, old girl…you can do it…

“Fuck!” Barron heard Fritzie’s voice through the headset. She wasn’t talking to him, but she was upset. He’d heard the engineer swear before—when provoked she had a vocabulary that would shame a career crew chief. But he’d never heard her like this. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…get up there, try the main bypass.” A pause. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

“Fritzie!” Barron raised his voice, not in anger but to get his engineer’s attention.

“Sir, we’ve got some kind of burnout in reactor A’s control system…and I’ve got the two units slaved together for rapid restart. If we can’t get A going, it will take at least twenty minutes to disconnect the controls and fire up B alone.”

Damn…you knew something could go wrong. Probably would go wrong…

“Do what you can, Fritzie.”

“On it, sir.”

Barron stared at the display, a rough 2D image replacing the power-hungry 3D holographic projection. The enemy ship was coming straight for them, and Dauntless was helpless, her tortured hill absorbing hit after hit.

“Fritzie…”

*   *   *

“Billings, I want a dozen more bots in there, right now!”

Fritz was standing outside the reaction chamber, shouting orders to the cluster of engineers around her. Everyone there was well aware they had to get the reactor fixed and online within minutes. Or they would all die. Everyone on Dauntless would die.

“The bots aren’t going to get it done, Commander.” Billings was staring across the engineering space, his eyes locked on Fritz’s. “It’s a level two overload, and there’s no time to fix it. We need to work a quick bypass. It’s the only way.” Walt Billings was a jovial sort in less stressful moments, a jokester not above the occasional prank on one of his comrades. His reputation as a bit of a clown tended to obscure his considerable skill as an engineer. But now, in the middle of the crisis, he was focused, serious. And Fritz knew he was right.

“Get me a rad suit,” she shouted to one of the aides standing next to her. “Now!”

“You can’t go in there, Commander.” Sam Carson was standing behind Fritz. He had been working at a panel along one of the walls, but now he turned toward the chief engineer. “The radiation level in there is off the charts. The suit’s not going to be enough.”

“There’s no choice, Sam.” Fritz turned and took the silver radiation suit her aide was handing her. “If we don’t get these reactors back online, we’re all dead anyway.

“I’ll go, Commander.” It was Walt Billings.