“Sorry, ma’am. I’ll have to send a runner down. They’ll have formed up in engineering. We can get access from here.”

“Fine, Chief. I’ll send down a security team. Lieutenant Carey was in charge on D. Have him secure engineering. He’ll be staying put. I don’t want anyone fooling around near those fusion stacks.”

Borghino nodded brusquely. “Eminently sensible, ma’am. With your permission, we’ll seal the section as soon as the security team gets down there.”

“Make it happen, Chief.”

Anderson looked up from her pad. The illuminated screen had cast a soft, lambent glow over her features, smoothing out deep-worn stress lines and giving her, just briefly, the appearance of a mother fretting over a sick child. As she turned her gaze onto Chief Conroy, the illusion vanished.

“Status, Chief?”

“Clancy’s team is nearly geared up, Captain. We got eight suits of full body armor, reactive matrix and tac sets, and twelve sets of standard-issue Kevlar and ballistic plate . . . correction, ten. We just sent two sets forward with Ntini and McAllister. Eight G-fours to go with the suits and ten compact shotguns for the rest of the flak jackets. Ten sidearms, standard-issue Glocks. We have a dozen stun rods, too, for what that’s worth. And a couple of guys with meat cleavers and boning knives from the officers’ mess.”

He smiled grimly.

The ship gave a great lurch to port, a dire screeching protest arising deep within her metal innards. Both the captain and her senior NCO, long accustomed to the sea’s arbitrary moods, reacted without conscious thought, adjusting their balance. A few younger sailors were caught off-guard and thrown into the men and women standing around them. The emergency lighting flickered for a few seconds, and the sounds of battle hung suspended before ramping up again with seemingly increased ferocity. Anderson glanced at the group in the armory. “Recommendations?” she asked.

Conroy pursed his lips for the shortest moment before speaking. “We’re fighting blind. We have no idea where these guys came from, what they’re bringing to the game, what sort of reserve they have. Be good to get someone topside to take a look, since the sensors are kaput. Got to figure it’s going to be pretty fucking nasty up there, though, probably nonviable without a suit. Even then, I’d send two.

“We got five sets of reactive left. I’d put them on Snellgrove, Palfreyman, Paterson, Sessions, and Nix. The first three have completed the basic boarding course, so they’ve been trained. Nix ran with a pretty rough crew in LA, before the judge made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. And Sessions did three years with the Wyoming National Guard, tour of Malaysia, Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts.”