Eli caught the control with his right hand and struck sideways with his left.
His knuckles hit the edge of the technician’s sleeve. The man recoiled. A tool fell against the platform, and Eli heard its ring as the knife striking stone. He turned toward the body blocking his way, ready to shove past, and saw Tessa standing beyond it with both hands open.
“Pause,” Juno said.
The word came through the room in which he had died. He hated her for saying it. Then the bridge gave a low, wrenching sound, and the man beside him said that the channel was coming back.
“Isolation holds,” the technician added. “He’s moved the local control against the stop.”
It had not been enough. The isolation had kept Eli from commanding a detachment, but the lever had mechanical travel before its stop. His motion had opened a pressure path the crew needed closed. Across Juno’s board a needle dropped, rose, and began trembling so violently that he could see it through the blood that was not on his hand.
Juno told the channel operator to hold position. The woman answered with a number and a warning. The remaining bridge reserve could absorb the recoil, but each moment spent doing so shortened what came afterward.
