Then his eyes locked on one of the panels. He could see the blackened steel around it, and he knew immediately he’d found it. Anya Fritz was the most gifted engineer he’d ever known, and she had scanned and searched every system in Dauntless’s reactor. Carson and his comrades had fixed and replaced dozens of components, and Fritz had declared with all the confidence she’d been able to muster that the problem he was now staring at was the last one.

Carson knew that had been a guess when she’d made it, and Dauntless had been pounded repeatedly since then. He could repair the severed connection and the reactor could still remain dead, damaged in a five other places, ten. But he couldn’t do anything about that.

He pulled the panel off, fumbling with it in the heavy gloves. It finally came free, and slipped from his grasp, clattering loudly on the deck below.

“Damn.”

He reached inside the small opening, struggling to pull out the burnt sections of the connection. He had replacement parts with him. They weren’t going to be a perfect fit, but they would do the job. Assuming he could get them in place.

He worked feverishly, the tension and fear making it hard to concentrate. He was rushing, moving too quickly for such fine work. But somehow he was getting it done. The replacement part didn’t fit, but he managed to come up with a workaround. It wasn’t pretty. In fact, it looked like some mad scientist’s wild creation. But it should work…

He pushed the final connection in place, and he tapped the com controls on the side of his suit’s headcover. “Commander, I think it’s in place. The reactor should be good to go.”

“Well done, Sam…now get the hell out of there.”

Carson started to scrambled down the ladder, letting the toolkit drop. It hit the deck below with a crash. He felt a burst of hope. He was going to get out…and maybe, just maybe, his fix would do the trick. Captain Barron would have his power…and a chance to win the fight. A chance for all of them to survive.

Then the ship shook. Another hit.

Carson felt himself jerked hard, and he tightened his grip, struggling to hold onto the ladder. He held firm, for a few seconds. Then Dauntless shook again, and he felt his hand slip off the rung. He held for a second, perhaps two or three, nothing but his injured hand gripping the ladder. The pain was intense, fire shooting up from his arm, through his chest.

He felt the shattered arm giving way, his body slipping off the ladder. Then falling…and landing on the deck, hard, his face mask slamming into the solid metal floor.