He reached out, putting his gloved hand on the control. Then his fears burst out from every corner of his mind, images of Lise, of his child…of him doubled over in sickbay, vomiting blood as his body surrendered to radiation sickness. He found himself wishing Billings or Fritz had been able to do this…and then he hated himself for those thoughts. He felt the urge to turn, to run. But he knew that wouldn’t save him. If he didn’t get the reactor online, he would die anyway. And everyone else on Dauntless would die with him.

He felt a sudden burst of determination, and he pulled on the latch. The door slid to the side, and Carson stepped out into the reaction chamber.

Okay, you’re in…now do this as quickly as possible, and get the hell out of here.

*   *   *

Atara Travis raced down the corridor. She’d taken an intraship car from the gunnery station, using her command overrides to divert battery power to the otherwise shut down system. Dauntless was a big ship, and the gunnery was almost a kilometer away from main engineering. Right now, seconds counted.

They were fighting for their lives, for the lives of everyone aboard Dauntless. And she’d be damned if she was going to let him down. But for the first time, her self-assurance was gone, and she didn’t know what to do. She’d been waiting to fire the primaries, to put everything she had into making a single shot count. But now she was racing through the ship’s gloomy, partially-lit corridors, headed to engineering to see what had happened to Commander Fritz…and if there was any chance at all of getting the reactors back online before Dauntless was blown to atoms.

She sucked in a deep breath, pushing her legs harder as she saw the open doors to the section ahead. She raced through…and stopped abruptly. There were bodies everywhere, and wounded men and women. And lying against one of the bulkheads was Anya Fritz, covered in blood, a huge chunk of metal sunken in her shoulder.

“Anya, what is…” She froze, her eyes fixed on the clear shielding between the engineering deck and the control room of the reaction chamber. The radiation markers were flashing red…and inside the contaminated control room she saw a single figure, clad in a bulky rad suit moving slowly toward the columns of tubes and circuits on the far wall.

“My God,” she whispered to herself. Then she looked at Fritz. “Anya, who is that?

*   *   *

Sam turned his head back and forth, scanning the conduits and control panels in front of him. There was a break, somewhere in the system. It would be an easy fix, he knew, which seemed odd considering the tremendous importance of his task. But first he had to find the malfunction.