by Zieja, Joe
It was then that he noticed that the bridge was completely silent. Everyone was staring at him, even Keffoule, whose mouth had opened slightly. Deet appeared to be staring at him too, but Deet had glowing orbs for eyes and always appeared to be staring at something.
Then, without anyone saying anything, everyone on the bridge slowly raised their arms in that really dramatic salute that everyone had always done for Klein.
“Stop that!” Rogers said. “Salute me when everyone is not dead after this.”
Everyone dropped their arms.
“Wow,” Belgrave said. “Are you going to write a book of leadership quotes someday?”
“Shut up.”
The bridge crew did as they were told, scattering to get some last-minute sustenance in before the battle began. Rogers thought that perhaps giving them twenty minutes was too much; from what he could see on the displays, it looked like the Thelicosan fleet was going to be in attack position long before that. His stomach felt like it was vibrating at an extremely high frequency, sending bile up his throat. There had been many times lately when Rogers had legitimately thought he was going to die, but there was something about this that was different. It wasn’t that other people might die too. That was nothing new either.
This time, though, if—when they did, it was going to be his fault.
“Captain Rogers, please,” Keffoule said quietly, breaking Rogers out of his spiraling decline into fear and panic.
“I don’t have time right now,” Rogers said, shaking his head and trying not to look at her. In reality, this was all her fault. “If you haven’t noticed, we’re about to start shooting.”
“That’s precisely why you should listen,” Keffoule said. “I need to apologize for the way I’ve acted.”
Rogers turned slowly to look at her and found a different woman before him. She didn’t look hard or determined. She didn’t look incensed or crazy. Those two configurations being the only two—other than stone drunk—in which he had seen her, it was surprising to see a face that looked soft, pondering, and maybe even a little vulnerable.
“Go on,” Rogers said.
“I . . .” She paused and swallowed. “I let my ambitions get ahead of my logic and my vision. Even though we thought you were going to attack us, I think any amount of further research would have revealed that it was wrong. At the least, I could have just sent a shuttle through the border to confirm. But instead, I rushed headlong for selfish, foolish—yet mathematically very solid—reasons.”
Rogers waited a moment. “And then?”
“I kicked you in the face.”
“You kicked me in the face,” Rogers said, nodding.
“Sir,” someone said from his left. He turned to see the communications tech flagging him down.
“I’ll be right there!” Rogers yelled back, then turned to Keffoule. “Look, I appreciate the apology, but I’ll point out that it doesn’t change the fact that we’re about to have a lot of newly created space dust in this sector, some of which is going to be composed of people I know. I don’t know what any of this has to do with what’s about to happen.”
Keffoule nodded, as though she’d expected this reply, and all of a sudden the hard commander was back on her face.
“Because I think I can help you. Zergan might be able to convince some of the fleet that I’m dead, but I’ve been commander of that fleet for a long time. If I can contact some of the ships directly, I might be able to persuade them to help us.”
Rogers stared at her, chewing on the inside of his lip as he thought. That certainly would help even the odds. “Why should I trust you?”
“I’ve done a lot of things to you,” Keffoule said. “Lying is not one of them.”
It made sense, he supposed. If Keffoule had wanted to kill him or blow up his fleet, there were a hundred easier ways to do it. Unless she was the sort of psychopath who only got a thrill out of something when it was extraordinarily difficult, there was no reason for her to kidnap him, try to marry him, then follow him back onto his own ship for the express purpose of throwing the war in Thelicosa’s—Jupiter’s, really—favor.
“Fine,” he said, standing up. “Come with me.”
He circled around the command platform and walked through the multiple computer consoles over to where the communications station was. The technician was standing at her station, squinting at her terminal. When Rogers came over, she stood up straighter, threw a cautious eye at Keffoule, and saluted.
“What is it?” Rogers asked.
“I just wanted to show you what was going on with the jamming,” said the tech—Starman First Class Brelle, he saw finally. She’d been on the bridge a lot, and it was nice to finally know her name. “The pattern keeps changing. It’s like certain parts of it are turning on and off at random intervals.”
“That’s weird,” Rogers said, frowning. “I wonder what Quinn is up to?”
* * *
“Get out of my way!” Vilia yelled, throwing an improvised Molotov cocktail at a group of Thelicosan marines. It exploded on contact, spreading fire everywhere and stopping them in their tracks.
Wait a minute. Where in the world had she gotten a Molotov cocktail? She’d run out of loose paper to throw, but this seemed like an unnecessary—and highly irregular—escalation. And when had she tied a bandanna around her head?
Highly irregular. And maybe a teensy bit awesome.
Awesome? she thought. When do I ever say the word “awesome”?
She’d been operating in one of the medical bays, but obviously they’d caught on. Anytime she logged onto a terminal, someone in cybersecurity was pinpointing her location and transmitting it to the nearest security team. It seemed like the IT department had caught on to what she was doing too; as she was filling out requests to disable parts of the jamming net, someone else was filling out requests to turn them back on. Whoever it was, they had no idea who they were dealing with.
Cutting the terminal’s power cord—and filing a quick repair request with the maintenance department—Vilia jumped over the desk and around the flames, finding an exit that wasn’t going to force her to harm any more of her Thelicosan brethren. She hoped they would forgive her for this once it was all over and they all knew the truth.
But what if they already did know the truth? What if Jupiterians had already infiltrated every facet of the Thelicosan military? What if she was the odd woman out? She had to hurry.
She brought up the ship’s map on her datapad. If she was going to disable enough of the net to allow Rogers to send a message, she was going to have to go to the heart of the beast itself—the IT service desk—and overload it with data requests and repair tickets until it buckled. Bureaucracy could absolutely solve this situation.
And if not bureaucracy, another Molotov cocktail!
Calm yourself, Vilia thought. You are a stable, professional woman with excellent organizational skills. You have a job to do.
And to do it, she’d first have to get to the IT service desk. She gritted her teeth and set a course for the place where hopes and dreams went to die.
* * *
“Well, hopefully she is taking care of things,” Rogers said. “Keep the channels open and keep sending updates to the rest of the fleet. When Commanders Zaz and Rholos come up with their plan, I’m going to need you to burst-transmit the orders in small packages so that we’re sure they get through. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Brelle said, nodding. She seemed very sharp for a young S1C.
“One more thing,” Rogers said after hesitating a moment. “I need your help with the Grand Marshal here.”
Brelle cleared her throat, a hand floating up to protect her face. “I’m not sure I’m qualified, sir.”
“No, not like that. I need to give her open access to some communications equipment. She’s convinced she can direct some of the Thelicosan ships to turn against their own. Any ideas on where we can put her so that she can communicate freely without hampering our own oper
ations?”
Starman Brelle thought for a moment, her eyebrows sinking as she frowned. “Well,” she said, “there is the war room. That’s meant to hold several channels at once. And you could open one channel to connect her to the bridge, so that you can coordinate.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a hobo living in the war room,” Rogers said, “but that’s a good idea. Grand Marshal, I’ll show you the way.”
Without motioning for Keffoule to follow—just because the woman had apologized didn’t mean he had to be nice to her—Rogers went back to the command dais to check in with Deet.
“I’m taking the Grand Marshal to her battle station,” Rogers said. “Hold the fort while I’m gone.”
Deet beeped. “I possess strength on par with a demigod, but even I could not hold an entire fort.”
Rogers sighed. “Expression. You’re in charge while I go set up Face-Kicker here. Anything new from Quinn’s data?”
“Only that Snaggardir’s—Jupiter—has been planning a galactic takeover for the last several hundred years, and has already tried to do it twice.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Deet said. “The Two Hundred Years (And Counting) Peace was actually a mistake on their part that they refer to as the Great Failure. The treaty-signing event was supposed to be blown up, killing all the Galactic leaders and creating a power vacuum that they intended to fill.”
“What happened?” Rogers asked.
“The guy heading the attack overslept.”
Rogers blinked. “Right. Well, keep things in order here until I get back. And please stop talking about killing everyone. It’s even starting to make me nervous.”
Deet paused for a moment, looking out the window, then looked back at Rogers. “Does this mean I’m a Jupiterian too?”
“Droid. You’re a droid. Please stop with the humanizing, okay? You can’t even tell a good joke yet, and you’re worried about your ethnicity.”
A contrite processing noise emitted from Deet’s mouthpiece. “You said my jokes were getting better!”
“Because that made you stop trying so much,” Rogers said as he left the bridge and stepped into the hallway of the command deck.
Keffoule and Rogers walked in silence for a moment, the command deck mostly empty. Casting a glance at his old room—the one that was still in null-g—he couldn’t help but think of everything that had happened in such a short time. Just a few weeks ago he’d been cursing Klein for being right about not being able to hang himself without gravity. He wondered how Cadet the cat was doing; Cadet had gotten used to the room and had refused to leave, so Tunger had been taking care of him.
“You do not have Chariots?” Keffoule asked quietly.
“No,” Rogers said. “We have the up-line and the in-line. It’s like trams. The war room is on the other side of the ship on this deck, so we’ll take the in-line.”
“I see.”
It was an innocuous, stupid question, but for some reason now that Keffoule had spoken, the tension between them seemed to lessen a bit. Now instead of simultaneously wanting to kill her and being absolutely terrified of her, Rogers just sort of wanted her to go away for a while so he didn’t have to think about it. The war room would be a perfect place to tuck her away. And yes, possibly win the war, but as far as Rogers’ ego was concerned, that was kind of on the periphery.
They boarded the car without another word, though the car attendant looked at Keffoule like she was some kind of weird alien. Which, in some respects—in a lot of respects—she was. Keffoule didn’t seem to notice, however, and the car was otherwise empty. Rogers sat down.
“It’ll be a minute,” Rogers said.
“Nkksht sp, mrrngna,” the Public Transportation Announcer Corpsman said.
“What did he say?” Keffoule asked.
“Who knows?” Rogers said. “He’s a PTAC. That just means he’s good at his job.”
The car stopped, and Rogers had to look out the window to recognize that they were not, in fact, near the war room. Someone had called the car, and, as the door opened, Rogers wished they had just walked instead.
“You!” the Viking said as she dove into the car and tackled Keffoule to the ground.
Well, she tried to tackle Keffoule to the ground. Being as nimble as she was, Keffoule jumped up and vaulted over one of the seats to get out of the way.
Well, she tried to vault over one of the seats to get out of the way. Her hip clipped the top of the seat, thrown off by the fact that the car had just started to move, and she tumbled forward into Rogers, who tumbled into the Viking, who made to hit Rogers in the face. Rogers ducked.
Well, he tried to duck. Since he was already on the floor, he really just sort of curled up into a ball, which resulted in the Viking hitting Keffoule in the back of the leg, which resulted in Keffoule’s default spinning back kick going wild and striking one of the posts inside the car, which resulted in it bending slightly.
“No toothpicks,” Keffoule said enigmatically.
“Stop!” Rogers said. “Stop. Both of you stop.”
“Like hell I’m going to stop,” the Viking said, in her big, beautiful voice. “This crazy idiot probably killed us all.”
Keffoule was about to say something—and the look in her eyes told Rogers it wasn’t going to be something flattering—but Rogers interrupted them both by disregarding his own personal safety and standing between them.
“We have to put that behind us,” he said. “She’ll answer for what she’s done when this is all over, if we manage to make it out of here alive. For now, let’s postpone the beating-to-a-pulp, alright?”
The Viking and Keffoule looked at each other like a pair of bulldogs on very taut leashes. Rogers would hate to see the damage they’d do to each other—and the atmosphere of the planet they were on—if they were let loose. He made a mental note to try to prevent a nuclear reaction before the war was over.
“You’re the rescuer,” Keffoule said coldly as she straightened her uniform and moved to the other side of the car. “A little late, weren’t you?”
The Viking, in a moment of conversational brilliance, responded with an obscene gesture.
The car, steadily moving toward the station at which the war room was located, was a silent pressure cooker as the two women warriors looked at each other, Rogers standing hopelessly in the middle. He was good at ducking, yes, but that didn’t do as much for preventing open warfare as it did for preventing head trauma. If they wanted to get into it, they’d get into it.
After a few moments of silence, the Viking finally spoke up first.
“Going on a date?” she said nonchalantly.
“What?” Rogers said.
“Yes,” Keffoule said.
“No!” Rogers said. “We’re not going on a date. We’re going to the war room so the Grand Marshal here can try her best to avoid all of us dying in horrible ways. She’s going to command the loyalist part of the Thelicosan fleet.”
The Viking looked her up and down, frowning. “You’d better not screw this up.”
“I don’t screw things up, you Neanderthal,” Keffoule said.
“Done a damn good job so far, haven’t you?” the Viking quipped.
“Holy crap,” Rogers said. “If you two don’t cool your jets, I will turn this car around and take you both back to the bridge.”
The two women made similar harrumph noises.
“Now,” Rogers said, “what were you doing heading to the war room?”
“I wasn’t,” the Viking said. “I was battle planning.”
“In the in-line?”
“Nobody rides back and forth on the command deck. There’s nowhere to go. I come up here to clear my head every once in a while.” The Viking reached a well-muscled arm to scratch at the back of her head. Rogers couldn’t help but notice that her uniform shirt was drenched in sweat. Rogers wondered what it smelled like.
Focus!
“Oh,” he said finally, remembering that he’d a
sked her a question. “Well, why don’t you come with us? I might need someone to throw large barrels out the door again.”
The Viking looked at him, then looked at Keffoule, then back at him. Then she spat.
“Fine.”
“Fine,” Keffoule said, without prompting.
“Fine,” Rogers said, because it seemed like the right thing to do. But everything was not fine.
This was not fine. Nothing was fine.
* * *
A short time later, Keffoule was firmly established as the Slumlord of the Flagship, ready to command her own force to fire on other parts of her own force. It wasn’t the grandest of accommodations, but it was effective. And it was a hell of a lot better than having her on the bridge, staring at him and making proposals.
“How soon will we know how much firepower you can bring?” Rogers asked as he kicked aside a couple of banana peels.
“It depends on who I can contact,” Keffoule said. “I only learned about Zergan’s betrayal today, so I don’t know if he has his claws in any of the other ships. I know some of the ship captains personally, so those I can be sure about if their crew hasn’t been compromised. Fifteen percent of the fleet, perhaps.”
Fifteen percent. Had Rogers had any real idea of what he was doing, he might have said that fifteen percent might be enough to turn the tide of the battle. In reality, he still wasn’t even completely sure how many ships he had on his own side, so that calculation was a little beyond him at this point.
“Fine,” he said. “Just make sure you tell us whenever a ship comes over to our side so we can update our IFF.”
Keffoule looked at him, her expression unreadable. “Are you giving me orders, Captain Rogers?”
Rogers couldn’t help but feel his face turning a little red. “As a matter of fact, I am. Just remember that I’m the only reason you’re not in the brig right now.”
That was a lie. Rogers still wasn’t sure how many of the ship’s crew she’d rendered unconscious with all her face-kicking; it would have taken most of the war effort just to stuff this woman into a cell. But he could pretend.