Honor swept her gaze about the bridge. Sparks and smoke streamed up into the near vacuum as Panowski’s splintered command station consumed itself, and her mouth tightened as she saw the way Webster clutched at his chest through his suit. The com officer hunched forward in his chair, his face gray, and blood bubbled at his nostrils.

“Damage control to the bridge! Corpsman to the bridge!” she barked, and made herself look away from her injured officer.

The second beam hit further forward, and Lieutenant Allen Manning stared at his console in horror as a lurid light began to flash. He unlocked his shock frame and shoved a corpse which once had been a friend from the chair beside him to clear an emergency panel, and his hands darted across it.

Nothing happened. The light continued to flash, and a harsh, ominous audio signal joined it. He hammered an alternate command sequence into the console, then tried still a third, and the light only flashed brighter still.

“Commander Santos!” he gasped into his intercom. There was no answer. “Commander Santos, this is Manning! Please respond!”

“W-what is it, Allen?” The senior engineer sounded shaken and woozy, but Manning almost wept when he heard her voice.

“Fusion One, Ma’am! The mag bottle’s fluctuating and I can’t shut down from here—something’s cut the circuits!”

“Oh, Jesus!” Santos’s voice was no longer blurred. It was sharp and frightened. “I’m on my way. Get forward and join me!”

“But, Commander, I can’t leave Cen—”

“Goddamn it, Allen, move! Put Stevens on it!”

“I can’t, Ma’am,” Manning said wildly, then clutched at his self-control. “Stevens is dead, and Rierson can’t leave Fusion Two. I’m all alone—there’s no one left to take over down here!”

“Then tell the Skipper to fucking well get you someone,” Santos snarled. “I need you up there right goddamned now!”

“Yes, Ma’am!”

Honor paled as Manning’s frantic message registered. Fearless could move and fight on a single reactor. She only had two for the security of redundancy, and that was also why they were at opposite ends of the hull, but if that mag bottle went down—

“Understood, Manning. Go. I’ll get somebody down there to replace you.”

Manning didn’t waste time replying, and she raised her head to scan her bridge, trying to think who she could send. There was only one choice, she realized with a sudden, icy calm.

“Mr. McKeon!”

“Yes, Skipper?” He made it a question, but she saw in his eyes that he already knew.

“You’re the only one I’ve got with the experience for it. Slave your ECM panel to my remotes and get down there.”

He wanted to argue, to protest. She read it in his face, but he didn’t.

“Aye, aye, Ma’am.” He unlocked his shock frame and dashed for the lift, and Honor ran a quick check of the ECM. She was down to her last two decoys, but the programs McKeon had set up seemed to be working well. She started to key in a modification, then stopped as Cardones spoke without looking away from his console.