by Joe Zieja
“Something else, Xan?” Alandra said.
“Would it help to express again my disapproval for this plan and any and all branches of it?”
“No.”
“Then no, Grand Marshal. I’ll begin doing my research now.”
Alandra gave him a curt nod. One of the things she’d always liked about Xan was that he was pliable, easy to work with, and generally responded to her needs before she even knew she needed them. He was Newton’s gift when it came to being an aide, but lately something had changed. Ever since the conclusion of the situation with the Meridans, she’d caught Xan hesitating. Thinking. Offering opinions even after Alandra had told him multiple times to do no such thing. Perhaps it was time for Xan to find other work. The thought didn’t chafe her, exactly; one couldn’t be an assistant forever. Maybe Xan could move on to bigger and better things. A part of her knew that she’d miss him, though. What did that mean?
Quinn cleared her throat.
“Yes?” Alandra said, turning back to the screen.
“I believe I’ve held up my end of the bargain.”
“Right, fine, yes,” Alandra said with a deep sigh. “Now, here is how you disembowel a man using a nail clipper and a six-inch piece of twine.”
• • •
Rogers had sent a quick message to Admiral Holdt informing him that negotiations had mostly been a success and detailing the nuances of the bargain. That left, of course, the next week or so of idleness trying to figure out what to do with himself as the pirates gathered their forces and shipped out. Meridan Naval Headquarters wasn’t located anywhere near a real beach, but there was a sizable lake with some sand along the shore. The weather this time of year was generally very pleasant, if a bit hot, so it was a perfect time for Rogers to experience a little taste of what life on Dathum would be like when he fulfilled his commitment and quit.
No worries. No saluting. No uniforms. No robots calling functions or insane mathematicians attempting to marry him. Well that last one had happened a couple of times even while he was on the beach, but he started changing beaches every day so that Keffoule couldn’t find him. So far that had worked. What the hell had been the deal with the flowers?
Small details aside, this is exactly what he’d wanted. This is what he’d been aiming for with his original deal with the pirates; it was supposed to leave him with no enemies and a bank account full of untraceable credits that he could spend at his leisure for the rest of his days.
So then, if this is what he’d always wanted, why was he so . . . bored ? That wasn’t the word he was supposed to be using to describe his dream life on Dathum. It was supposed to be more like “awesome” or at least “very, very good on most days, and it occasionally rains but that’s kind of nice sometimes.”
Maybe it was just because there was technically still a war going on, and that was making him feel antsy. That must have been it. Or maybe it was because he’d gotten that strange message the other day when he was out buying a couple of bags of potato chips.
“Congratulations on recruiting the pirates to fight for your cause!” the voice had said. “You are entitled to one free pack of Shoe-Sticker Chewing Gum, available at any of the many Snaggardir’s Sundries locations across the galaxy. Remember, whatever you need, you can Snag It at Snaggardir’s™.”
Hearing the Snaggardir’s voice at seemingly pointless times wasn’t anything unusual, of course. And he wasn’t a big fan of chewing gum, since it tended to get caught in his beard. But he’d been buying potato chips, not recruiting pirates, and the fact that he had done the second thing was still supposed to be secret.
Ah well. Best not to worry about that now. There would be more war to fight later.
“Yep,” he said, sipping some terribly sweet concoction that reminded him of the Iron Morgans he’d had with Zergan on the Limiter. Hopefully nobody was going to try to poison him this time.
“Yep,” Deet said.
“You know,” Rogers said, looking over at his metallic companion. “It was bad enough that I had to come pick you up from confinement and explain to Admiral Holdt that no, you weren’t going to protocol 162 everyone. You didn’t have to ruin my vacation by following me out to the beach. You can’t even get a tan.”
“I told those [OFFSPRING OF FEMALE CANINES] that I needed access to the servers,” Deet said, “but that [EXCREMENT EXIT POINT] wouldn’t listen to me no matter how many times I asked him how he felt.”
“Yeah,” Rogers said, “again—and I’ve really tried to say this a couple times now about Belgrave’s advice—that’s not really how the whole empathy thing works, Deet. You can’t work up a rapport with someone in five minutes by asking them annoying questions.”
“You seem to do a good job with it,” Deet said.
“That’s because I ask the right questions,” Rogers shot back. “And there’s almost always alcohol involved. Next time, try to get the security guard drunk first.”
Deet was actually lying down on a long beach chair, something that looked so awkward Rogers didn’t really know how to describe it, and he had his own iced tea on a small table next to him. He’d ordered it to fit in, Deet had explained, but there was obviously no way for him to drink it. Every once in a while he picked it up for a moment, held it, and put it back down again. It reminded Rogers of Quinn and chairs.
“Anyway,” Deet said, “they told me I was persona non grata in the whole compound now, and I can’t get on a shuttle to go back to the Flagship without a human to check me in as [EXPLETIVE] cargo.” He made a spitting noise, which didn’t sound very much like a spitting noise at all. “So unless you’re about to start a very short and very successful campaign for robot rights, you’re stuck with me.”
“Stuck with you is right,” Rogers said. He sighed, adjusting the pillow on his own beach chair and trying to breathe in the moist air without acknowledging the existence of anyone else around him. Deet, however, didn’t seem content with sitting and doing nothing. Rogers supposed “relaxation” was a very difficult concept for a droid to understand, evidenced by the fact that he absolutely refused to shut up.
“The zookeeper doesn’t seem to mind me being here,” Deet said, gesturing to the next chair over. Tunger, who seemed almost maliciously intent on staying by Rogers’ side at all times, was stretched out on a beach chair, stripes of sunscreen leaving a Kabuki-like pattern all over his face.
“It’s nice to have a friend,” Tunger said.
“Yeah,” Rogers said. “I’m not really sure why he’s here either.”
Tunger just waggled his fingers at him and pet a small pelican on the head. The pelican didn’t seem to be having any trouble relaxing, and it was just a dumb bird. Why couldn’t Rogers? He felt like he wanted to reach out and break something—not an abnormal feeling when these two were around—but he knew that it had nothing to do with them.
Rogers grumbled as he took another sip of his drink. Out on the waves, families were playing in the ocean, looking as carefree and cheerful as ever. All around him, towels were filled with picnic baskets, mothers with newborns, and teenagers hating everyone while looking sad.
“It’s weird, you know?” Rogers said.
“That’s such a broad statement,” Deet said. “Everything is weird in its own way, isn’t it? I mean, what is ‘normal’? Can we be defined by such stringent boundaries as to—”
“Oh my god, shut up,” Rogers said. “I’m pointing out that even though the galaxy is falling apart around them, people are still hanging out at the beach and playing with their families. It’s like nothing is happening at all.”
“Human resilience,” Tunger began, “is a marvelous and often unpredictable thing. In the most dire of circumstances, the collective human consciousness seems to remember the core of their existence and cling, however futilely, to the things that make them feel the most whole. These familial ties serve as a sort of nucleus, around which the entire universe orbits. In fact, every unit could be considered a separate universe
in and of itself, expanding and contracting like a living, breathing lung.”
Deet and Rogers slowly looked at Tunger.
“What the hell?” Rogers said.
“You have echoed my sentiments,” Deet said.
“Ah,” Tunger said, his faraway look turning into his normal dopey smile. “Sorry. I get carried away sometimes and forget where I am. Oh, look! A dolphin!”
Tunger sprang out of his chair and ran toward the water, flailing his arms in the air like a small child and scattering a group of seagulls to the wind.
Rogers’ datapad dinged, indicating that he had a message. He grabbed it from his beach bag, which he thought was very stylish, and turned it on, assuming that Holdt had sent him an update. Unfortunately, he was wrong. It was a message from Keffoule.
“Great,” Rogers said. “Just what I need right now.” He tapped the screen, and the message opened. Rogers stared at the screen for a moment, frowning.
“What the hell is this?” he asked out loud.
“How exactly do you expect anyone around you to answer that kind of question when you haven’t shown them the datapad?” Deet asked.
“It’s rhetorical,” Rogers muttered.
“The message?” Deet asked.
“No,” Rogers said, “my question about what the hell this is.”
“Well, what the [UNFAVORABLE AFTERLIFE LOCATION] is it?”
“I . . .” Rogers trailed off, chewing on his lip. “I think this may actually be a joke, but I’m not sure.”
On the screen was the age-old mystery “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
Below, it simply said, “It didn’t.”
“This is so wrong I don’t even know what to say,” Rogers said.
“Well you certainly just said something, so clearly all options are not out.”
“Shut up, Deet.”
Staring at the datapad, Rogers really wasn’t sure what to make of the cryptic joke. He was used to ignoring Keffoule, though, so he figured that’s what he’d continue doing. He was about to put the datapad away and continue grumbling about his two unwanted beach companions, and lamenting the fact that the Viking had gone back to the Flagship to oversee her unit instead of sunbathing next to him, when the datapad beeped again.
“I can’t even tell you how much I am growing to detest beeps,” he said.
Deet beeped.
This time, it was, in fact, a message from Holdt. It instructed Rogers to find Grand Marshal Keffoule and come to his office as soon as possible for a briefing. Rogers should issue a general order to all personnel on shore leave to head back to their respective 331st ships as soon as possible.
“Well that doesn’t sound good,” Rogers said after reading the letter out loud. Deet agreed.
It took a few minutes to pack up their things and disentangle Tunger from a bed of seaweed that had lured him in with promises of swimming with the dolphins. Rogers wondered, as many did, how dolphins had ended up on Merida Prime, but there were many mysteries of the Fortuna Stultus galaxy that scientists hadn’t yet decoded and that Rogers wasn’t going to bother with. Rogers shot a message back to Keffoule without acknowledging her poor attempt at a joke at all, instructing her to pack up and meet him back at headquarters.
• • •
“It worked!” Keffoule shrieked from her hotel desk.
• • •
“It did not work,” Rogers said. “I needed you to come back here because we have a meeting.”
“I see,” Keffoule said. Rogers was fairly confident that she did not, in fact, see.
Xan stood slightly behind Keffoule, giving Rogers a stare that he could have sworn contained some small modicum of emotion. Rogers dismissed it as a trick of the light.
Rogers motioned for them to follow him as he led them from their meeting point at the station back through the corridors of the Meridan Naval Headquarters building. He couldn’t help but notice the flurry of activity all around him. Although the MPD guards who had been stationed all over the place still seemed to be keeping their cool with relative ease, the rank-and-file troops coming out of briefings or rushing down the hallway all looked absolutely terrified.
“Wow,” Tunger said. “I think that guy might have just soiled himself in the middle of the hallway.”
“Thanks for noticing, Tunger,” Rogers said.
“You’re welcome!” Tunger said with inappropriate cheer. “You’re busy, sir. You can’t be expected to notice everything.”
Tunger, Keffoule, and Xan arrived at Holdt’s office without much hassle. The same vending machine that had been rocketing out bags of chips had apparently—amazingly—been restocked. Keffoule managed to catch one midair and began eating them as she silently followed Rogers through the hallway, which struck Rogers as odd. For some reason, he never imagined Keffoule eating anything that wasn’t meticulously prepared or possessing some mathematical significance, like popcorn.
When Rogers looked at her with a quizzical expression, Keffoule gave him that wolfish grin that indicated that the eating of these potato chips was somehow symbolic of their predestined marriage. Rogers shook his head and focused on getting to Holdt’s office. With only Tunger for backup now that Deet, Mailn, and the Viking were back on the Flagship getting things organized or simply not getting arrested for espionage, Rogers felt like he was walking through a minefield blindfolded. With a twitching leg.
To Rogers’ surprise, Holdt wasn’t the only person in the room. In fact, this looked suspiciously like some sort of military tribunal; people in very fancy uniforms all sat at one end of a long table that hadn’t been there the last time he’d been in the office. The other end had two empty chairs, likely meant for Rogers and Keffoule. Holdt, at the head of the table and facing the entrance of his office, stopped whatever he’d been saying to wave them in.
Two people who Rogers didn’t recognize—in two uniforms Rogers also didn’t recognize—flanked Holdt on either side. On the right, a broad-shouldered woman with an absolutely astonishing amount of makeup tapped long fingernails on the table as she pursed her lips. A gaudy, puffy uniform obscured most of her form, including an actual, no-kidding cape. Rogers kind of wanted a cape.
The other figure was a man with a striking presence. Salt-and-pepper hair, sharp features, and a barrel chest all trapped inside a military uniform that was as plain as it was descriptive. New Neptune, for certain, confirmed by the fact that “New Neptune” was written above the right breast pocket of his uniform. His stony expression did not change at all as his eyes passed over Rogers, but when he saw Keffoule, the corners of his mouth twitched. Rogers could understand that; Keffoule made him nervous whenever they were in the same room. And, actually, most of the time when they weren’t in the same room.
In the corner of the room, the coffee machine hissed like a coiled snake and spewed boiling water in a jet stream that landed well clear of the table.
“Does someone keep refilling the water tank in that thing?” Rogers said. “If so, why?”
Holdt dismissed his question with a wave of his hand and motioned toward the chairs at the end of the table. “Please sit down, Captain Rogers, Grand Marshal Keffoule. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Rogers froze where he stood. The tone that came out of Admiral Holdt’s mouth was something he’d never heard before. In Holdt, Rogers typically saw a little bit of himself. Gruff, irreverent, uncaring of other people’s opinions. But that man had changed. Even more tired than when he had met with him previously, Holdt was clearly not the same man. His jaw bulged with tightness, his expression grim rather than grumpy.
Rogers realized suddenly that he was standing in a room with one representative from each military in the Fortuna Stultus galaxy, and that made him feel very, very uneasy.
“Sit,” Holdt said again.
Rogers sat. Keffoule, her body maintaining its lithe, catlike smoothness, sank into the chair offered to her and leaned back, crossing her legs. Despite the obvious dark mood of the room, she d
idn’t seem to catch it.
“I have to ask,” Rogers said. “Where did you get these MPD guys who are keeping watch? All of them look like they were carved out of stone. You might want to consider sending them into battle instead of the Meridan Army. Nothing can phase them.”
For a moment Holdt looked at him like he was insane, but then recognition dawned on his face.
“Oh, those guys,” Holdt said. “They’re not unflappable. All of them were part of a raid on an illicit novocaine factory about six months ago. Someone blew up one of the storage tanks and now none of them can move their faces. We chose them specifically for this detail so we could maintain the illusion of calm.”
Rogers remembered the troop in the hallway who had basically crumbled into a ball of panic while urinating on himself, and shook his head.
“I think there’s more to it than that,” Rogers said.
“You’re probably right,” Holdt said. “Anyway, I appreciate you not bringing your droid companion with you this time. I spent half a day cleaning rust out of my terminal’s data port. Don’t you ever send that guy to maintenance to be cleaned?”
Rogers frowned. He hadn’t noticed any rust coming out of Deet. Of course, he had been assembled from garbage, so there was a good chance of there being some corrosion in there.
“Sorry about that,” Rogers said. “He’s a little obsessed with his own destiny, or something like that. It’s been kind of a strange couple of months for everyone in the 331st.”
Holdt answered him with a grunt, pointing to the table. “To business, then. This is General Alister Krell, of the New Neptune Navy. The triple-N has sent him as their representative to our joint force.” Holdt motioned to the other side of the table, where the taciturn woman was looking at Rogers like a hawk. “And this is Premiere Thulicia Thrumeaux, of the Grandelle Space Force.”