"What if Admiral Klein were to order you to share a bunk with me?" Rogers asked before he could stop himself.
"Bah!" the Viking threw up her arms. "If I thought I could reach you, I"d come in there and hit you again. Just stay out of my business!"
She stormed off, leaving only Deet in the doorway. Rogers finally came within push-off distance of his wardrobe, and he shot over to his desk, where he retrieved the Ever-Cool ice pack he"d taken to keeping in his room. He seemed to be getting hit a lot lately. Pressing the ice pack to his forehead, he floated back over to the doorway.
"You really need to learn when to keep your mouth shut," Rogers said.
"My mouth doesn"t move when I talk."
Rogers sighed. "Couldn"t you have just backed me up, there?"
"What data would you like me to back up?"
"That"s not what I"m talking about," Rogers said. He wrapped his salute-repellent sling around his arm, stepped into the hallway, and closed the door behind him. It was just about time to heat up Klein"s cheese-and-beet sandwich. Klein had some peculiar tastes, but at least he"d honored his end of the deal and allowed Rogers to sample the goods, which is why Rogers didn"t mind continuing to make Klein"s food. Kitchen operations were being restored slowly, so it was nice to eat some real food in the meantime.
"I"m saying, couldn"t you have told the Viking that I was really going and performing maintenance on the outside of the ship?"
"Droids have a very difficult time lying," Deet said. "We have to draw on known data to make conclusions. It"s called artificial intelligence for a reason."
"Well, you should practice," Rogers said. "Because I do it a lot, and I can"t have you telling everyone I"m lying every time I need to bend the truth a little to get something done."
"Have you ever considered employing the truth more often instead?"
"Absolutely not," Rogers said. "I"m trying to get with Captain Alsinbury, and being my true self isn"t going to get me anywhere at all."
"Get with?"
"You know," Rogers said. "Ah, you know. Get with. Roll in the hay. Do the horizontal boogie. Almost, very nearly reproduce but don"t really."
"I am unable to process nearly everything you just said to me," Deet said.
"Forget it."
They came to the admiral"s door, but before Rogers could slide his keycard into the slot and get ready to wake what would undoubtedly be a very grumpy, and specifically hungry, admiral, Deet made what sounded like a very important droid noise.
"Do you want to talk to me about something?"
Deet"s eyes flashed excitedly, and he beeped. "Yes! Do you speak droid?"
Rogers pointed to the blue-and-gray projection of a large stop sign that was coming out of the holographic generator in Deet"s chestplate, which was probably what had given him the clue.
". . . Yes."
Deet didn"t say anything for a moment. "Joke?"
"Yes. What do you want?"
"I thought I should tell you," Deet said, his digitized voice sounding, perhaps, a little annoyed, "that my sensors have picked up several strange devices in the admiral"s room. They are transmitting data, but they aren"t transmitting any of it to the main network of the ship."
Rogers raised an eyebrow. "Strange devices? You mean bugs?"
"Please do not persist in your deception regarding the cleaning of s.p.a.ce bugs from the exterior of the ship."
Rogers whapped him on the nose. "No, you idiot. "Bugs" is another word for hidden listening devices used to spy on people. Is that what you"re talking about?"
"I can"t be sure," Deet said. "The signal itself doesn"t tell me anything about the nature of the device."
Rogers scratched his beard. "What are they hidden in?"
"There are several hidden in the posters around the room, but there are others in various places as well." Deet beeped, and his head swiveled toward the DEFEND THE BRIDGE poster across the hallway. "I"ve detected similar emissions from other posters around the ship."
The propaganda posters. Not only were they inane, annoying, and omnipresent, but they were being used to spy on people. Rogers might have thought it was Klein"s security system, if not for the fact that Rogers wasn"t confident that Klein knew how to spy on anyone.
Opening the door, Rogers and Deet stepped inside, Rogers feeling suddenly very uncomfortable in this room. If there were bugs in the room, why were they listening to Klein? First, who in their right mind would want to listen to the ramblings of a Toastmasters graduate as he wrote yet another speech? Second, where was the data being transmitted? It had to be somewhere on the Flagship; he was sure of that. Rogers knew a thing or two about listening devices, and there was no way they"d be able to transmit their information all the way to, for example, the Thelicosan fleet. If there was a spy in their midst, the data would have to go to him or her first, and then they"d have to figure out a way to encrypt it and send it back home on a secure channel.
And, after all that trouble, all they"d get would be a fifty-five-year-old man yelling: "Rogers, I"m waiting for my sandwich!"
"Hey," Rogers said as the door closed behind him, "don"t bark at me. I"m not your scullery maid."
"I"m just keeping up appearances," Klein said as he scribbled away at his desk. Today he was referencing historical war speeches and trying to find ways to integrate them into the next conference call he would have with the 331st ship captains. That way he wouldn"t have to talk about serious things, like keeping them all alive in the case of an invasion.
Going through the motions of preparing the sandwich-cheese on top, beets on bottom, G.o.d-d.a.m.n you, and cut the crust off!-Rogers frowned, which reminded him that he"d been punched in the face. He knew he had to figure out a way to make the Viking not hate him again, but, in a strange way, that felt less important at the moment than figuring out who was listening in on Klein"s conversations.
That stopped him midcheese-slicing. What was happening to him? Now that he knew he was quite possibly the most powerful man in the 331st, he almost felt responsible for these people! d.a.m.n Deet for ever making that clear to him. He would have been just as happy had he gotten into the Awesome and cruised away forever.
Except he knew he wouldn"t have.
"Here you are," Rogers said, handing Klein one sandwich and taking a bite of the one he"d made for himself. Not eating SEWR rats all the time had already dramatically improved his life. "You know we have an intelligence briefing in ten minutes, right?" Rogers asked, picking a crumb out of his beard.
"I don"t go to those." Klein dabbed gingerly at the corner of his mouth with a napkin.
"Yes," Rogers said, "you do. You"re the commander of the fleet."
Klein gave a drawn-out, exaggerated sigh. "But they"re so extraordinarily boring. And I don"t understand anything that goes on in them. It takes away valuable speech-writing time, and I can"t afford it. I need to focus all of my attention on keeping everyone happy or the whole fleet will slip away from me."
Rogers handed the admiral his datapad. "I think we"re going to have to rework your priorities a little bit. Come on. Let"s get out of here."
With almost petulant reluctance, Klein stood up, straightened his uniform, took his datapad, and marched toward the door of the stateroom. Deet, who had been waiting patiently, made a few computation noises and followed them out into the command deck.
Klein immediately began saluting everyone that walked past, and Rogers quickly slipped on his sling.
"What"s wrong with your arm, Rogers?" the admiral asked, saluting so quickly that he tore a small hole in the elbow of his uniform. Rogers would have to fix it later.
"My arm has agoraphobia," Rogers said. "When there"s a lot of people around, or lots of noise, or I"m feeling lazy, it stops working."
Klein shot him a look over his shoulder, and it actually sent a tinge of fear through Rogers. Even the admiral"s facial expressions seemed to change when he was in public. How did this man do it?
"That"s a real thing?"
"As real as s.p.a.ce bugs, sir."
Klein shuddered. "I hate s.p.a.ce bugs."
Rogers covered a snicker and opened the door to the bridge, immediately after which someone shouted: "Admiral on the bridge! A-TEN-HOOAH!"
"At ease, valiant troops of the Meridan Patrol Fleet!" Klein bellowed. You could see every back straighten, every stare take on a glint of steely determination. Rogers wanted to poke them all in the eyes.
Until, that is, he saw the Viking, standing with her tree-trunk arms folded over on one side of the bridge. Corporal Mailn was with her; neither of them looked particularly happy to see Rogers at all. A brief, cowardly, self-interested impulse-also known as his typical inner monologue-wondered if they had told anyone about his escape attempt.
Before he realized what he was doing, he was waggling his fingers in a wave at the Viking. The look of hatred on her face deepened into something that might soon result in her diving across the helmsman"s console and wringing Rogers" neck. At least then she"d be close to him.
Mailn, on the other hand, shook her head, pointed at Rogers, and mouthed something.
"Win eat do dog?" Rogers asked out loud, squinting.
"We need to talk, you moron," she shouted back at him. At the sound of her own voice, she cleared her throat and turned a little red. "Later. Sorry, Admiral."
Klein didn"t seem to notice or care. "Lieutenant Lieutenant Munkle," he said as he sat down in the large chair in the center of the room. He gestured to a nervous-looking young officer who waited patiently beside a fully expanded viewscreen, the contents of which currently looked like static. "What do you have for me today?"
"Oh," Munkle said. "Admiral. Sir. I"m not used to seeing. Ah. Sir. Yes, sir."
Dear G.o.d, this man was completely addled by the mere presence of someone that barely knew the size and cla.s.s of the ship he was in command of. Rogers felt his teeth clenching. Who was this lieutenant lieutenant, anyway? By the way he looked so uncomfortable briefing the admiral, Rogers would have guessed that he was another "voluntary" transfer.
The screen blinked once, and suddenly there was a picture of the entire fleet"s disposition. It showed the "border" of the system and gave what Rogers thought might have been an approximation of how the Thelicosans" own border fleet was arrayed.
Rogers was only guessing, of course, because he couldn"t understand a word coming out of the man"s mouth.
"Mrrmrrr mrr nrr nrrr mrr mrr mrr. Mrr Thelicosa nrr nrr. Exit on the right."
He was from the Public Transportation Announcer Corps.
"A PTAC?" Rogers whispered into Klein"s ear, ignoring any further useless babble. "You made a PTAC into your intelligence officer?"
"He asked for the transfer," Klein hissed. "I"m just trying to keep him happy. Besides, what value comes from intelligence briefs, anyway?"
"You"ll never know if you keep listening to this guy," Rogers hissed back, pointing at the briefing screen. It had now switched to a screen showing the technical readouts of a Thelicosan Battle Spider, so named for its eight-legged torso, each of which had a terrifying array of weapons on it. Munkle took up a device that allowed him to make notes on the screen and began writing next to one of the eight weapons bays.
MRR MRRR, he wrote. He drew an arrow to a specific point and then nodded, apparently having completed whatever brilliant dissertation he"d been disgorging.
"You can"t be serious," Rogers muttered. "This is where all the rumors of the brewing war with Thelicosa came from? How does anyone on this ship even know how to spell "Thelicosa"?"
The PTAC very clearly wrote the word THELICOSA underneath his commentary of MRR MRRR.
"See?" Klein said.
"That"s not the point," Rogers whispered. "You need to fire this guy."
"Why?" Klein whispered. "He asked to be here."
"No, he didn"t," Rogers said. "I don"t know who asked for it, but I"m pretty sure he"d be much happier talking into a microphone at an aircar station on Merida Prime. Look at the guy!"
Munkle was shaking, sweat pouring down his face. From a small portable table on his left, Munkle retrieved a cloth from a basket marked CLEAN and put the cloth he"d been using to dab his forehead in one marked NERVOUS. The latter was filling up rapidly. Part of the defining characteristic of a PTAC technician was his aversion to speaking when anyone else was around. They were far more at home in small, dark booths underground.
"Fine," Klein said. "But who am I supposed to replace him with?"
Rogers frowned for a moment, thinking.
"I think I have an idea."
"Grat.i.tude is a sickness suffered by dogs," McSchmidt barked, tucking his hand in between the b.u.t.tons of his uniform shirt and looking dramatically off into the distance.
"I"m not asking you to thank me," Rogers said. "I"m asking you to take a position that is much better for someone like you than tinkering around in the engineering bay where you don"t belong. I mean, didn"t you just ask me if you could do the intelligence brief? I"m giving you the chance. And it"s a h.e.l.l of a lot easier than trying to teach a political scientist how to be an engineer."
McSchmidt looked at him, an icy stare turning his whole face into something resembling a snowman"s. "Political science is the engineering of cultures, peoples-"
"Right," Rogers said. "I get that. But you"re not engineering any people down here. At least, I hope you aren"t." He paused. "Are you?"
"Maybe I am," McSchmidt said, a dastardly smile flashing on his face.
"No, you"re not."
"No," McSchmidt agreed, "I"m not."
"Good. Look, you wanted me to help you not fail miserably. This is the best I can do. If you really want to have an impact on this fleet, you"ll accept the offer and sign the transfer request to become Klein"s intelligence officer."
Rogers extended the datapad in his hands, but McSchmidt still didn"t take it.
"I"ve spent months building this kingdom," McSchmidt said. "And you"re asking me to abandon my castle."
Rogers looked around at the "kingdom." The boominite containers were still stacked in a way that was almost certain to blow a freighter-sized hole in the side of the Flagship, the few engineers that hadn"t been transferred looked like they all needed to be a.s.signed to null-g rooms, and there was still one of the racc.o.o.ns Rogers had hidden running around the bay. It had built a nest on top of one of the backup fusion generators, where it was warm, and appeared to have been adopted by Lopez as a sort of mascot.
"Your castle sucks," Rogers said.
McSchmidt sighed. "My castle sucks."
The ensign reached out his hand and signed the release order on the datapad, then shook Rogers" hand.
"Thanks, Rogers," McSchmidt said. "Maybe you"re not such an evil, conniving, lying, backstabbing, traitorous b.a.s.t.a.r.d."
Rogers grinned, then handed him back the datapad. "I wouldn"t be so quick."
McSchmidt frowned, looking at the pad. "Why?"
"Because this is your material. Your briefing is in five minutes."
The former engineering chief"s face distorted into something between surprise and rage, but it lasted only for a moment before he took off at a run.
"It requires more courage to suffer than to die!" Rogers called after him.