The CIC was always a dark blue cave, but it seemed more so now, with the dozens of screens blacked out. It was warm, too, which was wrong. The center was supposed to be uncomfortably chilly, allowing the quantum systems to run at white heat.

At least Anderson was in better shape than her ailing vessel; she’d recovered quickly from the transition through the wormhole thanks to a subcutaneous antinausea insert she received every six months during routine checkups.

She had been quick to note that her crewmembers with Promatil inserts or dermal patches were less drastically affected by whatever had happened. When it became obvious that the shipnet was in disarray, she immediately dispatched runners to the nearest casualty stations with instructions to gather supplies of the drug and distribute them as widely and as swiftly as possible. That was how she’d learned about the violation of the forward decks. But she didn’t have to look at the expanse of dead electronics all around them to know her ship was gravely hurt. She could feel it down in her meat.

The Gulf was dying.

Anderson straightened herself at the console, squared her shoulders, and traversed her gaze over every man and woman in the room. She was twenty-two years in the United States Navy and wore a uniform heavily burdened with decorations won the hard way. In her two decades at sea she had exercised for, and performed, almost every kind of operation it was possible to conceive of in modern naval combat. It had never occurred to her that she would have to issue the orders she now spoke. Keying a button to power up the ship’s PA, without really knowing how far the broadcast would carry, she drove any trace of fear or doubt from her voice.

“Attention all hands. Attention all hands. This is the captain. Arm yourselves, and prepare to repel boarders.”

If her crew within the cocoon of the CIC were surprised, none dared show it. A few obviously braced themselves for what was coming but only one, Chief Conroy, said anything.

“Captain, if I may? We should get to the gun lockers, gather crew as we go. They may not have heard the announcement. We’ll need to establish a perimeter on all decks and push forward from there.”

Conroy checked the flexipad that was Velcroed to his sleeve. “Short-range point-to-point links seem workable, at least here, ma’am. We might be able to coordinate through that.”