Aoife slid down the ladder that led to the aft dorsal shield emitter.  The ship shuddered at it was slammed by another energy weapon.  At the bottom sat the emitter still smoking from the resulting onslaught.

One more engineer followed her.  A crewman with a Texas drawl whistled, “She’s  taken’ a beating no doubt  about it.”

Aoife didn’t disagree, but time wasn’t on their side.  The Denver was outnumbered and probably outgunned.  The Dominion as a whole had proven to have superior weapons,  but over the last few months that gap had shunk considerably.

Accessing the diagnostic control panel the young engineer’s fingers danced over the controls urging the emitter to feed back self-diagnostic information back faster.

Another impact from enemy weapons sent her sprawling to the deck hitting her shoulder hard against the exterior housing of the shield generator.   The way the hull groaned Aoife thought that a hull breech had occurred. The shields now were more important than ever.

“Walker, get the phase distortion amplifier replaced!” Aoife shouted to her Texas counterpart.

The Texan didn’t respond,  and just leaped into action carelessly tossing the maintenance cover to the side with a clatter of duranium on polymerized black flooring.  With a laster cutter and brute force he literally cut and tore the damaged component from its mount and casually tossed it to the deck.

While Walker started prepping new component, Aoife was removing the remnants of the damaged amplifier tossing those to the side.  A process considerably sped up with the broken part being removed and not having to work around it.

A few moments latee Walker tossed her the replacement part and she went to work attaching it back into the housing. It was cramped with four hands and tools, but in short order the two had been able to replace it.

Returning to the console her fingers tapped out the nessicary codes to bypass the diagnostic subroutines.

“Ma’am the manual specifically says not to bypass that,” Wallker cautioned.  “Incorrect installation could cause a feedback loop and damage the graviton polarity generator.”

“We don’t have time for it,” Aoife snapped.  “Let’s hope we installed it. correctly.”

The generator started to hum as it powered up.  Aoife started to reroute damaged power relays and a second later the generator was humming with full intensity.

“Walker I got it here. Meet up with Chief Krel’sec leading damage control team four.  We’ll need to shore up primary power.”

“Aye ma’am,” Walked drawled.  

He started to climb the ladder, and paused before disappearing onto the deck above. “Thowing the book out the window.” He winked,  “I think I’m gonna like it around here.”

Aoife gave him a nervous chuckle, “It worked this time, but the book was written for a reason.”

“Yes ma’am it is. To be broken,” he teased and disappeared.

Aoife shook her head, “McKenzie to to Lovecroft.  Shield generator is repaired.   Moving to inspect hull breech on deck 28.”