It was disgusting, it hurt, but there was just no possible way she was going to humiliate herself on her first transition. She knew that everyone would be watching, and judging. She was used to that, just as she was used to showing them all exactly what she wanted them to see and not a damned thing else.

Another set of heaves hit her as the smell from someone else wafted across the deck, this time actually backing up and filling her sinuses before she got it under control.

“Someone clean that mess,” she rasped out, snorting back the chunks and swallowing. “Ventilate the deck, please.”

“Aye ma’am,” Susan said. “Ventilating.”

The air scrubbers rushed a little. Normally soundless, they now made a comforting background noise as she sat as straight as she could and rasped out a new set of orders.

“Status.”

“All systems green, Admiral,” her first officer, Commander Son Ching formerly of the Block starship Wei Feng, said more stiffly than usual. A glance in his direction showed that his skin was slightly green as well, which struck her as funny in the moment, but laughing was another thing she had no intention of doing.

The urge to laugh at something she didn’t know whether he would understand faded quickly as Son handed her a handkerchief silently and gestured to his nose. She took it and quickly dabbed away the thin trickle of stomach acids that had begun to run down her lip. She nodded her thanks and handed it back, gratified as he tucked it discreetly away.

“We have telemetry reports from all other ships in the squadron,” he said. “All vessels show green as well.”

“Threat matrix.”

“Clear,” the instrumentation officer announced. “No sign of Drasin in our immediate vicinity. Still waiting on light-speed instrumentation for a good view of the system.”

“Go active,” she ordered.

“Ma’am?”

“We just splattered tachyons all over this system, Jake,” she told the young officer. “They know we’re here. Go active.”

“Aye ma’am.”

Jake Southerd was an example of both the squadron’s strengths and its weaknesses. They had only the men and women of the Odyssey, a handful from Liberty Station, and the personnel of the Wei Feng from which to draw crews for six huge starships, so a great many of their officers were inexperienced even if they were the brightest and best of their generation.

Granted, they’d filled the ranks with volunteers from the Priminae forces, but that made things almost worse in many ways. Her own weapons officer was actually the first Priminae the Odyssey had ever met, a young woman named Milla Chans. She was young, brilliant, and incredibly inexperienced in military procedures. Gracen firmly believed that her strengths would outweigh her weaknesses, but she was worried that the combined weaknesses of the squadron would lead to a disastrous error in the coming action.