"Hey," he said. "Now that there"s something without motor oil in the kitchens, maybe you and I could do the Uncouth Corkscrew sometime."
She looked at him levelly.
"I mean go to the Uncouth Corkscrew. To eat."
"I like Sewer rats," she said, and started to walk past him. He felt all of the air come out of him. No matter what he did, he"d always be the cowardly metalhead. What good was stupidly sticking around to fight a war that you were certain to lose if you didn"t end up getting with the girl of your dreams?
"But sometimes, I like to put some Tabasco on "em," she said. "I"ll think about it, Rogers."
Rogers kept a straight face until the Viking turned around, after which Rogers gave himself a celebratory fist pump. Corporal Mailn, who had been discreetly listening near the door, gave Rogers a wink, a slow nod, and a thumbs-up. Despite the overabundance of affirmation gestures, Rogers mouthed a thank-you just before Mailn followed her boss out the door and down the corridor to do whatever it was that marines did all day. Rogers had some ideas, but he was pretty sure they were all just fantasies.
"Hey, Rogers," McSchmidt called from behind. Rogers turned to see McSchmidt walking over, looking rather spiffy with the new rank on his shoulders. "Can I talk to you for a second?"
"Sure," Rogers said.
"Outside."
They walked back into the hallway, Deet following silently behind them, where McSchmidt motioned over to a quiet spot in the large, somewhat-circular terminus of the command deck.
"Something"s bothering me about that data," McSchmidt said.
"What," Rogers said, "something bothers you about hundreds of battleships that weren"t there yesterday suddenly appearing out of nowhere?"
McSchmidt frowned. "You don"t believe it either?"
"It"s not that I don"t believe it," Rogers said, "it"s that I believe it too easily."
"You realize that doesn"t make any sense," McSchmidt said.
"That"s only because you"re not listening close enough. You and I both know that it"s not physically possible for those ships to be there if they weren"t there yesterday."
"Yeah, but what about cloaking? New technology?" McSchmidt said, taking a moment to salute a pa.s.sing commander. "Hey, where did that sling come from? Are you hurt?"
"Ignore it," Rogers said. "The cloaking device theory is interesting but not practical."
"Why?"
"At the Academy-" Rogers began.
"Yes." McSchmidt blurted, maybe a little too loudly. "The one I definitely went to. To become an officer."
Rogers blinked. "Yeah. That"s the one. At the Academy, what did you use for basic flight training?"
McSchmidt thought for a moment. "Paper airplanes?"
"Right. Because there"s no money. Because it"s peacetime. Why should it be any different in Thelicosa? We"re not in an arms race or anything. They don"t have the budget to come up with a super-secret stealth device and keep it hidden and install it on an entire fleet of ships and move them to the Meridan border."
"I guess," McSchmidt said. "But that still doesn"t explain why we"re seeing them on our scopes."
"No," Rogers said. "It doesn"t. I think that maybe-"
"Lurturnurnt Ruggers!"
"Munkle," Rogers said, turning around, "get back to your post at the public transportation-oh. h.e.l.lo there, Tunger."
"Hullur to yurself," Tunger said. He didn"t look happy. For that matter, neither did McSchmidt, though Rogers didn"t know why. The new intelligence officer eyed Tunger suspiciously, and his hands were balled up into fists at his side.
"I cun buluf you transferred mai to the zeooo deck!"
"I"m not going to admit that I may have almost understood that," Rogers said, "and I"m instead going to threaten to slap you in the face if you don"t drop that ridiculous accent immediately."
Tunger looked on the verge of sticking out his tongue. "I can"t believe you transferred me to the zoo deck!"
"Why?" Rogers asked, frowning. "That"s where you came from, isn"t it? You used to talk about how much you missed the chimps and all that. I thought you would want that."
"But I"m your orderly," Tunger said. "How am I supposed to help you keep all of your things in order in an orderly fashion if I"m in the zoo deck?"
"I have a new orderly," Rogers said, wrapping his arm around Deet"s shoulders in what he immediately realized was a very awkward thing to do to a droid. "So, you can go back to doing what you love."
"I was not given a choice in this matter," Deet muttered.
"Orderly or trash heap," Rogers said. "Seems like an easy choice to me."
"Still," Deet said. "You never asked."
Tunger looked at Deet with undisguised revulsion. "But you hate droids!"
Rogers felt his cheeks heating. "That"s not really-"
"You used to say every day how much you hated these "G.o.d-d.a.m.n shinies" and that you wanted to see every one of them melted down to sc.r.a.p!"
"Now you"re just making stuff up."
"And that if you ever had to work with another droid, you"d throw yourself out the trash chute without a pressure suit."
"Now, that"s nearly true," Deet said.
"Shut up," Rogers said. "Tunger, I"m a reformed anti-droidist, okay? I found one that doesn"t make me want to strangle myself with my own bootlaces. Besides, what kind of orderly are you, anyway? I haven"t seen you in forever! How are you supposed to be my orderly if you"re not around to keep things in order?"
Tunger at least had the grace to look ashamed at his prolonged absence. "I was busy," he said.
"Doing what?"
"Playing around in the zoo deck." Tunger looked up from the floor. "The chimps need me! And they"re so cute! And they let me talk to them in whutuver vurce aie wunt!"
McSchmidt was starting to look like he wanted to make like a chimp and throw p.o.o.p at Tunger, though Rogers didn"t know what he was so upset about. Rogers supposed if he had been interrupted in the middle of one of those dark, conspiratorial conversations where everything was all dramatic, he might have been a little bit upset as well.
"I don"t know," Tunger said. He shuffled his feet. "I was starting to like being your orderly, I guess. I got to do important stuff, like talk to important people and give you bad news."
Rogers put a hand on his shoulder, feeling a little awkward. "Those chimps need you," he said. "And the Flagship needs someone competent working in the zoo deck. What would happen if people didn"t have a place to go and feed the ducks after work?"
"The ducks would get hungry," Tunger agreed.
"Well, yeah," Rogers said, "that"s not really what I meant, but sure."
"And the rabbits would have n.o.body to talk to."
Rogers just let that one go.
"I guess you"re right," Tunger said. "Maybe that is where I belong. But if you ever need anything, you"ll promise to come and get me, right? Like if you need things, you know, put into a particular order or anything?"
"Of course," Rogers said. "You"ll be the first person I call."
Tunger smiled and walked away, and for the first time Rogers noticed that he had a small golden lion tamarin attached to his back. The monkey reached up a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture.
Rogers shook his head and turned back to McSchmidt. "As for you," he said, "I wouldn"t worry too much about it yet. It"s just one day of data, and you and I both know that there"s something funny about it. We haven"t received any corroborating intel from Merida Prime or any of the other outlying stations that are keeping tabs on the Thelicosans. We can"t just all go crazy over a change in formation, can we?"
"No," McSchmidt said, shaking his head. Some of the tension seemed to leave his body. "No, you"re right."
Rogers clapped him on the back. "Right. Now, if all of a sudden they start grouping their ships in the shape of the words "Die, Merida!" then we know we"re in trouble."
They shared a good laugh over that.
The briefing screen displayed an array of enemy ships that had been carefully arranged to spell "Die, Merida."
"Now, that"s just ridiculous," Rogers said.
"Are they trying to pick a fight?" the Viking asked. "What happened to the element of surprise and all that? They must know we"re looking at them."
"Of course they know we"re looking at them," Rogers said, still staring at the screen. "We"re always looking at them. They"re looking at us. They"re looking at us looking at them."
The Viking grunted but didn"t argue with him anymore. Klein, engaged for once, rubbed his face with his hand.
"It looks like there are even more ships than there were yesterday," the admiral said.
"There are, sir," McSchmidt said, "but that"s the thing. There aren"t only more, they"re different ships."
He zoomed in and started going through some of the data collected by the sensors, most of which Rogers didn"t understand. It all looked very technical, but McSchmidt seemed to have no problem picking through it. For a political scientist, he sure seemed comfortable with all this information.
"These Battle Spiders have different radiation signatures from the ones that were at this location yesterday. Unless they"ve all gone back to a maintenance facility and had their cores switched out, or they"ve been in combat and taken damage, that"s not possible." He switched the image again. "It"s the same with a handful of these frigates. If the Thelicosans were preparing for a full-scale invasion, I would say that maybe they just brought in new ships. But they"re not new; they"re different. The ones that were here yesterday have disappeared."
"That"s pretty sharp," the Viking said. "And I can understand the words coming out of your mouth. You"re a natural, Lieutenant Lieutenant McSchmidt."
This seemed to ruffle McSchmidt a bit. His face turned red and he began to sway back and forth uncomfortably where he was standing, creating the impression that he was either doing a very unenthusiastic slow dance or was a little drunk.
"Thank you, ma"am," he muttered. He cleared his throat and pointed back at the diagram. "For this reason, I"m willing to say that there"s less evidence of an attack than we might have thought. It"s possible that the Thelicosans are doing change-out drills, practicing refitting and resupply. Despite the, uh, creative formation, there"s no reason to believe that they-"
"Admiral!" someone shouted from the corner of the bridge. Rogers hadn"t spent that much time on the bridge to know everyone, but he thought it was the defensive array tech. "Something"s wrong with my system."
"What?" Klein said, standing up. "Have you tried rebooting?"
"I"ve rebooted four times," the tech said. "I can"t get this little red light to go away."
"What about turning it off and then back on again?"
"I"ve tried that, too!"
"A reset?"
"Twice!"
Rogers was moving across the bridge now, heading toward the tech and wishing that he could tell his fleet commander to shut his mouth in front of all these people.
"What is it?" Rogers asked. "What light? What"s the light?"
"This one here." The tech pointed to the display. On it, there was a big red light blinking furiously underneath the words THEY"RE ATTACKING US.
"Oh s.h.i.t," Rogers said. "They"re attacking us!"
"But the intel briefing!" McSchmidt cried, pointing at the display. "It"s intel! Intel is never wrong!"
"But I have this light right here," the technician said. "It"s telling me . . . it"s telling me that the intelligence is wrong!"
"Oh my G.o.d," Admiral Klein said. "We have no intelligence!"
Rogers fought down the nervous urge to vomit and started shouting at the rest of the bridge.
"Bring up the display!"
"Which display, sir?" the troop controlling the display said.
"Any display!" Rogers said. "Just let us see something!"
What had formerly been the very wrong intelligence briefing suddenly changed into a CCTV shot of the zoo deck. Tunger could be seen running around, giggling like a little girl, as he was chased in a circle by a pack of chimps throwing something unsavory.
"This isn"t the display I wanted," Rogers cried.
"You said to display anything," the tech yelled back. "I have lots of b.u.t.tons in front of me, Lieutenant."