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“We’re hit,” the sensors tech said “So hit us”

“Do we knohat?” Drummer said

“Rail gun,” Vaughn said “Appears to have impacted section twelve, just spinward of the medical facilities”

“How bad’s the dae?”

“I’ll let you know as I have reliable infor to identify the chain of command with the EMC”

Which meant they were in disorder She wondered whether the band of suicide ships had been led by so People’s Hoain, then twice more

“Engineering’s been hit,” Vaughn said “The reactor’s … I can’t tell So with the reactor”

If the oing off Even if it didn’t crack the city open like an egg, the systems that kept them all alive would betheh to pass for never

“Drop core,” Drummer said

Vaughn didn’t reply, but the thrust gravity stopped Drued herself back into it, strapping doith the ease of a lifeti swaths of the city under lockdown, pressure doors isolating levels and halls Keeping the air in the city as best they could If she hadn’t sent away as many nonessential personnel as the ships would hold, it would have been worse As it was, it still meant deaths People who’d trusted the union elections to put soe ould protect theo? And how many more seconds before the next round caht dropped into her own brain

A sickly calm washed over her This hat it felt like to see death To know that the worst was co she could do to turn it aside

“Keep firing,” she said If we’re going down, let’s go doinging

The weapons tech coughed out soun rounds We are at six conventional plasma torpedoes, and five percent on PDC”

Fire anyway, Dru at them Except that if the Tempest threw a missile at them, there would be no defense Drummer closed her eyes The temptation was still there If it meant that she died—that all the men and women under her command died with her—at least it would be over She wouldn’t wake up in a wave of dread She wouldn’t watch the structures she’d sworn to protect be peeled away by a threat she hadn’t considered worth thinking about until the Teate

Come on There has to be a way Think of it Find it