Tommy was clutching a shoulder, a dark liquid seeping from between her fingers, her other hand clutching the radar console to pull herself erect. The helmsman, Razo, had been thrown from his chair and lay facedown on the floor, unmoving. His head looked misshapen. Ops was bleeding from his right temple and Sara could hear him swearing. “Ops?”

“I got hit by some glass, XO, I’m okay!”

Everyone was yelling to be heard over the wind roaring in the broken windows. It didn’t help when general quarters sounded and alarms whooped up and down the length of the ship. “Chief? Chief!”

A hand came up to grasp the controls console and Mark Edelen pulled himself to his feet. His face was bruised and his right eye was swelling shut, but the rest of him was mercifully intact. “Find out if our controls still work and put our ass to the storm!”

“Aye aye, XO!” He stumbled over bodies and binoculars and broken glass to the helm. A few minutes later the gale roaring through the bridge had eased.

“Sara!” Hugh said, voice fighting the sound of the wind. “You’re bleeding!”

She looked down and saw with some surprise that he was right. No wonder her left arm felt so numb. She touched her reddened sleeve and found a three-inch splinter of metal run completely through the flesh. It didn’t hurt yet, but it would.

She raised her head and saw them all gaping at her.

“XO,” the chief said, taking a step forward and being thrown back by the movement of the ship.

“Are you okay, XO?” Tommy said.

“I’m fine.” She looked around and raised her voice. “How is everyone else?”

There were more wounds from flying glass and debris. Due to the chest-high sills of the windows, most of those wounds were to the upper torso, shoulders, arms, and heads. The captain and the helmsman had both been seated, the helmsman behind the captain and to his left. They were the only fatalities on the bridge.

“Tommy?”

Tommy had to shout to be heard. “XO!”

“Does the pipe still work?”

“I don’t know, XO!”

“Try it! Pipe damage control to the bridge at once! And Doc!”

Tommy was shaken but still capable of thought and action. “Doc and damage control, aye aye, XO!”

“Sams! Laird!” Sara lurched across the bridge, staggering from one handhold to the next, slipping and sliding in blood and glass. “Sams!”

“We’re here, XO!” Both had facial wounds from glass cuts but were otherwise unhurt.

The pipe worked. Tommy must have cranked the volume knob all the way over to the right because her voice blasted out all over the ship, loud and high but amazingly calm. “Damage control, Doc Jewell, report to the bridge immediately, damage control and Doc Jewell, to the bridge at once.”

Sara continued to move around the bridge, trying to assess the damage. The Transas hanging from the bulkhead in front of the window before the captain’s chair was gone, nothing left but shreds of circuit board and wire, but the one over the plot table was still there, to all appearances intact and still working. The radar console was still blinking out contacts, too, but then it was located almost directly behind the captain’s chair, which had taken the brunt of the attack.

People began to tumble onto the bridge. The captain’s and the helmsman’s bodies were removed. Doc Jewell bandaged everyone who didn’t move out of his way first. He winced when he came to Sara’s splinter, and it hurt like hell when he extracted it, but she refused anything stronger than aspirin. He looked as if he wanted to insist.

Sara cut him off, curtly. “Not now, Doc.” She flexed her arm beneath the bandage. Everything still worked, even if it felt like she’d been seared with a red-hot branding iron. “Anyone hurt anywhere except on the bridge?”

No, ma am.

“Very well.” She pulled her fleece back on. Damage control had unearthed some Plexiglas from somewhere and cut rough squares to fit over the gaping holes where the windows had once been, riveting them in place with power drills. The ravenous howl of the wind was reduced to a distant snarl of disappointment at being balked of its prey. Hugh had found a broom and was sweeping debris into someone’s cap and chucking it out the port hatch, which was still latched open. Tommy was standing at the chart table, staring at the captain’s chair with a set face. She looked at Sara. “If he hadn’t been sitting there-”

“Belay that, Tommy,” Sara said. “PO Barnette, you have the helm.”

Tommy’s face stiffened. “PO Barnette has the helm, aye aye, XO,” she said, and there was a chorus of ayes.

“Aye aye, XO.” Barnette took Razo’s place at the small brace wheel.

“Tommy, you have the conn.”

“BM2 Penn has the conn,” Barnette said. He had a deep voice and it seemed to boom off the Plexiglas.

Tommy looked at him, swallowed, and pulled her way around the console to stand in an imitation of Barnette’s brace. “I have the conn, XO.”

“Doc, canvass the ship for any casualties. I want a report ASAP. Chief?” This to Chief Lindsey Moran, the head of damage control on board, who stood waiting, power driver at the ready. “Report.”

“They only hit the bridge, XO. There has been no other damage reported.”

“Make sure of that yourself, Chief, and then report back to me.”

“Aye aye, XO.”

“Mr. Rincon, follow me. Chief Edelen, pipe all the officers to the wardroom, and then join us.”

THEY STOOD INSTEAD OF sitting, mostly because Sara refused to take the captain’s chair and no one else would sit down while she was still standing. “Talk to me, Lieutenant.”

“I was watching the roll indicator before we got hit,” Sams said. “It’s showing at least seven degrees, and sometimes more.”

“Which means?”

“We can do it, if we pick our moment.” Sams looked at Laird. “Maybe you should stay behind.”

“What!”

Sams looked at Sara. “Maybe you’ll need a spare pilot, if we don’t make it.”

“It’s a moot point, since we only have one helo,” Sara said. She looked at Ryan. “Put together a team. I want them armed. Anything you can find on this ship that will shoot, stab, or explode on contact, you make sure every member of your team has two of each.”

“Aye aye, XO.”

She looked at Sams. “How many can you take?”

“Well, maybe a few less than before you loaded them down with an armory,” Sams said.

Several of them smiled, but Sara was too focused on the task at hand and too close to what had happened on the bridge for anything remotely resembling humor. “How many?”

Sams’s shoulders straightened at the snap in her voice. “Six boarding team members total, XO.”

Sara looked at Ryan. “Can you get the job done with six?”

He started to go with bravado, saw her expression, and ratcheted it down. “Depends on how many people they’ve got on board and how well armed they are.”

She looked at Hugh.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I know about the two brothers. Noortman told me that the brothers told Fang he couldn’t bring all of his usual crew, that they were hiring some help of their own. Could be ten. Could be twenty, could be fifty. I just don’t know.”

She nodded and looked at Ryan. “Who is your best man on the can-non?

“Sullivan,” he said without hesitation.

“Have him report to me immediately. And then start putting your team together. Remember, the goal is to commandeer the ship, disable the launcher, and get her into the nearest port.”

“Aye aye, XO.” Ryan vanished.

“But if we have to, we sink the son of a bitch, and I’m not saying that’s a bad second-best.” She looked at Ostlund. “Ensign, start prepping for helo launch. I imagine you’ll have to do another traverse.”

Ostlund shrugged. “Not like we haven’t had a lot of practice lately, XO. I think we’ve got it down.”

“Good. Go.” She looked at Sams. “Anything?”

He thought, and shook his head.

“We won’t be able to bring you back on board the Sojourner Truth, not in this soup,” she said.