“Roll ship twelve—no, fourteen degrees to port!” he shouted.

“Rolling fourteen degrees port, aye!” the helmsman’s voice replied over his suit com, and Diamato gasped in relief as the ship turned. But then a sudden, icy shock washed through him as he realized he hadn’t heard the Citizen Captain confirm his order.

He turned his head, and his face twisted with horror as he saw thick, viscous blood bubbling from Citizen Captain Hall’s skinsuit as the last of the bridge’s air fell away into vacuum.

“Damn, I didn’t think she could do that,” Jackie Harmon muttered as she watched her target roll. Whoever was in charge over there must have ice water in her veins. She’d managed to roll at exactly the right angle to turn her weakened port sidewall away from the LACs following Lieutenant Commander Gillespie in from port for a followup shot. Unfortunately for the Peep, however, it had forced her to give Harmon’s group an almost perpendicular shot at her other sidewall, and that was about as good as it was going to get this side of a hot tub, a good-looking man, and a chocolate milkshake.

“Stand by to take us in, Ernest,” she told Lieutenant Takahashi.

“Aye, Ma’am.” Takahashi checked his own plot, then looked up at Harpy’s engineers. “Watch the power to the forward nodes when I call for the wall, PO,” he reminded Maxwell.

“I’ll watch it, Sir,” Maxwell promised him.

“Yeah, I’ve heard about you and forward nodes, ‘Silver Hammer,’ ” Takahashi said with a grin, and the hirsute petty officer chuckled.

“Take us in—now!” Harmon snapped as the numbers matched on her plot.

“Captain! Captain Hall!”

Diamato knelt beside the command chair while fat, blue-white sparks leapt and spat silently in the vacuum. Citizen Captain Hall sat upright on the decksole, but only because he held her there, bracing her shoulders against his body while he tried desperately to get her to respond. By some miracle, his tactical section was untouched, and so was the com and the helm. Everything else was gutted, and he fought nausea as he tried to ignore the slaughterhouse which had engulfed his fellow officers and friends.

Citizen Commissioner Addison had been torn almost in half, and most of the rest of the bridge personnel were just as dead. But Citizen Captain Hall was still alive… for the moment.

He’d slapped patches over the worst holes in her skinsuit, but her life-sign readouts flickered on the med panel. Diamato was no doctor, but he didn’t need to be one to know she was dying. There was too much internal bleeding, and no one could do anything about it without taking her out of her suit… which would kill her instantly.

“Captain!” he tried again, and then froze as the dark eyes inside the blood-daubed helmet opened.

“O-Oliver.” It was a faint, thready sound over his suit com, with the bubbling sound of aspirated blood behind it, and his hands tightened on her shoulders.

“Yes, Skipper!” He felt his eyes burn and blur and realized vaguely that he was crying. She must have heard it in his voice, for she reached out and patted his skinsuited thigh feebly.