In his peripheral vision Kolhammer noticed a few men and women on the bridge quietly cursing and turning to each other. Some turned to the strip window, although the image on screen was far superior to anything the naked eye could make out. The little gray ship heaved over to present a broadside to the Clinton.

"Admiral," said Brooks. "We have indications that that ship has torpedo capability. They may be trying to bracket us, sir."

The fog in Kolhammer's mind began to clear rapidly as a cold wind blew through him.

"Lieutenant Brooks!" he barked. "Guns free! Autonomy Level One. Initiate a fleetwide CBL."

But it was too late.

Rachel Nguyen was running from Hell. She was naked and the breeze of her passage slipped over her body-no, over a six-year-old's body, burning the skin. Melting it. Flesh fell from her in long, sloughed-off lumps. The pain was excruciating. Searing and white. She was screaming as the road beneath her blistered feet jumped and rumbled and the air was torn by explosions. She was… her great-grandmother… in Vietnam during the war. A child fleeing an air strike called in on her village by a desperate platoon commander. Some long-dead boy from Dakota.

She knew, in her dream, exactly what she was running from. It was all behind her, but she could still see burning huts and twisted corpses, some smoking and wrenched out of any shape you could think of as human. She could see all the dead pigs and chickens, soldiers tearing at each other, using their guns as clubs. She ran and screamed, away from a rupture in the thin membrane separating her world from Hell, away from the demons who had come through the rip and eaten her friends and family and spewed War all over the world. Demons in the bodies of Americans and Vietcong, the limbs and heads and torsos mixed and matched and sewn together by trolls.

She ran but the road beneath her was moving, back toward the village, accelerating like a moving sidewalk of sand and gravel. She tried to run faster, but her legs were so small and thin. She tripped and the road came rushing at her face.

There were no stones to bite into her cheeks. No sand or grit on which to choke. The road surface was smooth and cool. And sort of… wet.

She gasped, pulling in a mouthful of air, as though she hadn't breathed in a very long time. Like when she was a kid and she had those stupid competitions with her brother Michael, to see who could swim the farthest without surfacing. He was such a dick sometimes.

And he was gone now. Lost.

Her thoughts were disordered. Confused. Michael was home in Sydney, not lost.

In a rush it came to her. She had passed out on the table. Probably from exhaustion. Knocked the dregs of her coffee all over her notes. Oh, just great! How long had she been out? Not long or that sergeant, the one with the huge plate of sausages, he would have rushed over.

She had a serious headache, though. She'd been out long enough for that. And God it's bad! Like a migraine. Worse even. Jeez, did I have an embolism or what? A stroke? And where is that guy? she thought, looking around, a little pissed off. Why didn't he help?

She tried to stand, and three things happened. A brutal spike jagged through her head, her legs folded up, and a wave of nausea swept over her. She clamped her hand to her mouth as she dropped toward the floor, but it was no use. Everything came out under pressure, squirting through her fingers.

Embarrassment, shock, and fear swept over her all at once. What happened? Maybe the Chinese, or the Rising Jihad, had hit them with something. A neutron bomb? A transsonic device?

Not the latter, anyway. Not at sea.

Cramps shot up her legs and she began to shiver uncontrollably, curling into a ball on the deck and dry heaving for nearly two minutes. For fuck's sake! she whimpered. What is this?

Whatever it was, she tried to haul herself out into a passageway, where somebody might at least trip over her.

Then, all at once, the shivering and the nausea passed. The headache remained-she was sure now it was a migraine-but the other effects, symptoms, whatever, were gone. As though someone had thrown a switch.

Rachel lay, breathing slowly for a minute before climbing to her feet. The migraine had made her dizzy and she had to grab the table to help herself up, but it was just a screaming headache now. Nothing more. She was about to stagger off to sick bay when she heard the first shells detonating close by in the water.

Colonel Jones, sitting astride Hannon's chest, just had the man's arms locked down with his knees when he heard and felt the impact of a shell somewhere on the Kandahar. He would have sworn someone had hammered the decking just under his feet. He yelled at Chen to hold the lieutenant's mouth open while he fished in there trying to hook on to the tongue. Hannon had swallowed it during the blackout. He ignored the shrieking whine in his ears and the chisel banging deep into his frontal lobes. He bit down on the bile that threatened to come bursting up out of his mouth and he somehow kept up a reassuring conversation with Chen, who was close to bugging out.

Another shell struck the Kandahar, more of a wrecking ball this time, throwing them all off-balance just as Jones muttered, "Gotcha," and snagged Hannon's tongue out with a slick pop. The marine stopped bucking beneath him and began to suck in great shuddering drafts of air. Jones flipped him over just before a mother lode of chewed-up burger and fries came out.

"God damn!" yelled Chen, who got hosed.

"Make sure he doesn't choke on that mess, son," Jones said as he clawed his way onto his feet. He knew for sure now that they were under attack. No idea by whom or with what, though. You had to figure it was some kind of neural disrupter, given the effects, but those prototypes weren't even out of the labs in the States. And the dinks were still ten years behind in development. Once you eliminated Beijing, however, what then? Ragheads didn't have the delivery platforms, and never would.

The ship seemed to pitch beneath his boots like they'd run into a force-niner. But he knew that was his inner ear, because Chen's coffee rested undisturbed in its mug on the mess table. He fumbled for his flexipad, tried for a link to the bridge, and got nowhere. Same with the CIC, security detail, and the sick bay. Shipnet was unaffected-so there was no electromagnetic pulse-but nobody was answering. Probably all rolling around in their own puke.

Another dense, metallic boom sounded somewhere nearby. The hell with this, thought Jones, gathering his composure and what he could of his balance. Somebody had to get on the stick or their families were all going to be getting a folded flag and a visit from the grief counselors.

"Chen," he barked. "Can Hannon walk yet?"

"I don't think so, Colonel. He's still sort of spasming."

"Check his air passage for any more crap and leave him. We'll send someone through to look after him, but we have to get to work. Come on now, son. Let's hustle before someone catches us with our nuts in the breeze."

Again, he added to himself.

Chen arranged his friend to rest as comfortably as possible and pushed himself up toward his CO. The steward who had served them appeared from the galley on his hands and knees, a long string of blood falling from his lips.

"You there!" yelled Jones, cutting through the man's misery and doubling the intensity of his own headache. "You well enough to attend to the lieutenant there?"

The man groaned, but nodded.

"Make sure he doesn't choke, then. And see to anybody you got back there. Shut everything down. No flames or boiling water. Understand?"