Page 234 (1/2)

“Oh,” Holden added “Might want to prep an SOS if we can’t get this fixed”

“Yeah, because we got a lot of people out there e really want coht now,” Ae between the two hulls and then out of sight Holden followed him in Twopu thrusters A parts off Holden waited behind hi

“How’s it look?” Holden asked after a fewto Amos curse under his breath while he worked

“It looks fine here,” Amos said “Gonna swap this breaker anyway, just to be sure But I don’t think the pump’s our problem”

Shit

Holden backed out of the maintenance hatch and half crawled up the steep slope of bulkhead back to the engineering hatch The angry red light had been replaced with a morose yellow one now that there was no atmosphere on either side of the hatch

“Nao I need to see what happened in there Have you killed the safeties?”

“Yes But I’ve got no sensors in there The room could be flooded with radiation—”

“But you have sensors here in the et radiation warnings, just let me know I’ll shut it immediately”

“Jim,” Naomi said, the stiffness that had been in her voice every ti a bit “How et yourself massively irradiated before it catches up with you?”

“At least once more?”

“I’ll tell the Roci to prep a bed in sick bay,” she said, not quite laughing

“Get one of the ones that’s not throwing errors”

Without giving himself time to rethink it, Holden slapped the release on the deck hatch He held his breath while it opened, expecting to see chaos and destruction on the other side, followed by his suit’s radiation alarm

Instead, other than one small hole in the bulkhead closest to the explosion, it looked fine

Holden pulled hi by his ar the space The massive fusion reactor that dominated the center of the compartment looked untouched The bulkhead on the starboard side bowed in precariously, with a charred hole in its center, like a miniature volcano had fory had to have been released to bend the heavily armored and radiation-shielded bulkhead in like that, and how close it had co a hole in their reactor How o from a badly dented wall to full containment breach?

“God, this one was close,” he said out loud to no one in particular