Frank Harris 'Rising panic'

Blue Dwarf
22/09/2100
Promenade
Donover and Lloyd patrolled the promenade sensing an uneasiness in the ship's recycled air, the fact the ship was in a asteroid belt with no clear way of getting out without being battered and ripped apart by the surrounding floating pieces of rock.
Half a dozen concerned civilians had already approached the two security officers about the current situation. They did their best to keep the situation calm and told everyone that everything was under control. The last thing they needed right now was a horde of panicking civilians.
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Harris had relieved the communications officer of her post or more to the point booted her out so he could take over. He was listening to traffic noise of the black channels (for those that don't know the black channels are they are only used by mercenaries, pirates and other nasty individuals). The last thing they needed right now was to be caught off guard by an attack.
Harris began to wonder how the communications officer managed to put up with the lump of metal stuck in her ear for long periods.
Harris had already received reports for several different security officers including Donover and Lloyd about the civilian situation. He had experienced this type of situation before. He once had been stuck in a ship trapped in an asteroid belt for two weeks before the captain finally gave the order to abandon ship but in that time there was a very nasty case of rising panic induced cabin fever among the crew. Now given the fact that his past experience of this situation was with a 'normal' crew and the crew of the Blue Dwarf were anything but normal, the results could turn out very nasty indeed.
Harris considered that nothing else could go wrong when fate stepped in and a problem developed in the ship's reactor, causing main power to fail and the ship was plunged into darkness.
"Ah hell!" Harris commented.
Within moments the backup reactor kicked in restoring power to most of the ship's systems but for the lights that were replaced with the dim red glow of the red alert lights. Harris breathed a sigh of relief as the red alert sirens didn't sound scaring the hell out of the civilians and most of the crew.
"Engineering!" Harris snapped over the internal com. There came no answer and Harris snarled again. "Engineering respond!"
Great, Harris throught, main power was offline and so was internal com.
"What else?!" Harris snarled.