by Joe Zieja
“Space bugs?”
“Yeah. Space bugs. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of space bugs?”
“It’s just that I didn’t think that bugs could survive in—”
“Oh my god,” Rogers said, slapping his forehead and leaning back dramatically. “He’s never heard of space bugs. How have you never heard of space bugs?”
Rogers walked up to one of the large windows in the bridge and put his finger to the glass. When it came away, a small speck remained (it was a drop of Lopez’s vile concoction).
“This!” Rogers said. “This right here. You’ve got space bugs on your window from flying around, and you don’t even know it.”
“How is that possible? We’ve been stationary for years,” the helmsman said, but he was starting to look a little worried.
“Only relative to yourself,” Rogers said. “Didn’t you study orbitology at all? The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit!”
Rogers took a few steps toward Belgrave, who was definitely getting nervous. He kept shifting his eyes between Rogers and the smudge on the window.
“Do you want the admiral to find out that you’ve never heard of space bugs?” he nearly shouted.
“Keep it down!” the helmsman hissed, crouching into his seat. “Do you want the admiral to find out that I’ve never heard of space bugs?”
“1500 hours,” Rogers said. “Shut it down for at least twenty minutes. And go study Newton’s laws of interplanetary relativity!”
* * *
“You want me to give you what? ” Ensign McSchmidt said.
“I need a pressure suit and a vacuum mobility unit. With a full air chamber.”
“I’m not giving you a VMU,” McSchmidt said.
Rogers pointed to the shiny new rank on his collar.
“I’m not giving you a VMU, sir,” McSchmidt said, his face turning down in a scowl. “Our maintainers need them for repairs on the outside of the ship.”
“Didn’t I say I was going to help you with running the engineering squadron and all that?”
“You did,” McSchmidt said, his expression flat. “And I haven’t heard from you since.”
Rogers shook his head slowly and made an exasperated noise. “You know, I had more faith in an Academy officer. I thought they taught you duty, and devotion, and when to understand that you have to give complicated and valuable equipment to people who ask for it.”
“I’m afraid I skipped that class,” McSchmidt said.
“Well,” Rogers said, “if you had taken it, you might have learned about the Roman Battle of the Caudine Forks, where—”
“You mean the battle where the Gauls used a bunch of shepherds to trick the Romans into a dead end and then laughed at them?” McSchmidt said. “Are you going to use the VMU to herd Thelicosan sheep?”
Rogers blinked. He’d spent an hour searching the net for obscure battles just for this conversation, and he felt a little disappointed.
“I’m sorry,” Rogers said, “I meant the sack of Krak des Chevaliers in 1271, when—”
“When Baybars tricked them all into surrendering by sending them a fake letter from their own commander telling them to lay down their arms?” McSchmidt looked him over. “I don’t see you carrying any letters.”
“Damn it!” Rogers said with startling volume. He cleared his throat. “I mean damn it, I got it confused again. So many battles, you know?”
McSchmidt looked like he knew.
“What I meant to say was the . . . ah . . .” Rogers racked his brain. “The infamous Battle of . . . Battle of . . . Grumblebumble.”
McSchmidt raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, the Battle of Grumblebumble,” Rogers said. Lopez, who had been standing nearby, turned a loud guffaw into a cough and, at a sharp look from Rogers, scampered away, her face red.
“The Grumblebumble was a, ah, local term for a swamp. In east . . . Prussia. Ancient Prussiaburg.”
“Ancient Prussiaburg.”
“Ancient Prussiaburg, yes,” Rogers continued. “In order to cross the Grumblebumble, Scipio Africanus had to tell one of his lower-ranking officers to give him a special swamp boat powered by elephants that had wandered over the Alps looking for food. Very complicated, very new.”
“I see.”
“Right. But they wouldn’t turn over the boat. And do you know what happened?”
McSchmidt rolled his eyes and looked at his datapad. Behind him, troops were wheeling boominite containers in a circular pattern to make sure they all had their labels facing in the same direction.
“No,” the ensign said. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“Scipio Africanus used his superior rank to make sure that lower-ranking officer failed every single one of his MWH inspections for the rest of his short, short career.”
“Ancient Prussiaburg didn’t have—”
“Aha!” Rogers said, striking a finger in the air, “so you admit you know of Ancient Prussiaburg.”
“I don’t have time for this,” McSchmidt said. “If you don’t—”
“I’ve hidden four more raccoons in the engines of some of your fighters,” Rogers said. “I’ll tell you where they are if you loan me a VMU.”
“Lopez!” McSchmidt yelled as he sprinted away. “Get the lieutenant a fresh VMU! And get those raccoon traps back from the zoo deck!”
* * *
“You want me to do what with your ship?” Hart asked.
“I want you to fly it outside and use the boarding magnets to attach it to the side of the Flagship. I don’t have the authorizations to move ships between bays, and your old engineer credentials are still good, right?”
Hart frowned at him. “My boys and I just spent a lot of our free time fixing that ship, Rogers, and now you just want to throw it away?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Rogers said. “I’m saying that there’s no room in any of the other docking bays, and the engineering folks keep failing their inspections because there’s a random ship in the middle of the maintenance bay. By not doing me this favor, you’re directly contributing to the failure of the engineering crew to be prepared for—”
“Cram it, Rogers,” Hart said. “Don’t pull your bullshit on me. If you’re trying to run away, I’ll move your damn ship.”
“Right,” Rogers said. “Thanks.”
Oh, Chute
“Well, Cadet,” Rogers said, petting his unexpected feline friend on the head. “I guess this is good-bye.”
Cadet showed his concern for Rogers’ departure by turning over gracefully to allow Rogers to rub his belly exactly one time before scratching him. Rogers pushed the cat away, which, in a zero-gravity room, was a lot more fun. Cadet seemed to think so too, as he curled into a ball to do a somersault before latching his claws onto a floating fake palm tree, quickly forgetting that Rogers existed.
Rogers licked his lips, though his dry mouth didn’t do much to moisten them. This wasn’t exactly an easy or safe plan—jump out the garbage chute, use the VMU to rendezvous with the awkwardly docked Awesome, and then make a random Un-Space jump while the targeting computer was hopefully shut down. It was a lot of risk, but the prize was freedom.
The buzzer sounded, and Rogers sailed smoothly to the door and opened it.
“I’m here, sir,” Tunger said, saluting. Rogers returned the salute, hoping it was the last one he’d ever have to perform.
“It took you long enough.” Rogers exited the room and took a moment to readjust to normal gravity.
“Nobody uses laundry bins anymore,” Tunger said, gesturing to the large wheeled cart he’d pulled to the side of Rogers’ door. “I had to pull this out of the museum.”
“The Flagship has a museum?” Rogers said, perplexed. “And someone put a laundry bin in it?
“Not as an exhibit,” Tunger said. “It was just the laundry bin. And yes, the museum was installed to replace the shuffleboard and Ping-Pon
g arena on the commissary deck. I’m surprised you hadn’t visited yet.”
“I hate shuffleboard,” Rogers said. Even so, he felt a little stab of loss at the demolition of one of the Flagship’s famous game rooms. What happened to the laser tag arena and the trampoline room, then? What good was a battle group’s flagship without a trampoline room?
“What do you need this for, anyway?” Tunger asked as Rogers took the cart from him and wheeled it so that its widest side was flush against the doorway to his room. It was just about the heaviest laundry cart that Rogers had ever moved, but it yielded to his bulging muscles soon enough.
“Routine work for Admiral Klein,” Rogers lied. “He’s so busy being a brilliant tactician that he doesn’t have time to put his laundry in the chute. In fact, every time he gets up to drop off his underwear, the Thelicosans win.”
Tunger’s eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Really,” Rogers said. “It’s on one of the posters.”
That wasn’t a lie. There really was a poster that said that.
“Oh.”
“Anyway,” Rogers said, “that will be all. I want you to take the rest of the day off, Tunger. You’ve been working hard for me since I became the executive officer, and I want you to know how much I truly appreciate it.”
“I’ve barely done anything at all, sir,” Tunger said.
“I know,” Rogers said. “And I can’t tell you how thankful I am about it. It’s a lot easier for me to scheme . . . I mean, get things done when I don’t have to wonder which window I am going to throw you out of the next time I hear your Thelicosan accent.”
“Aw,” Tunger said, “it’s nur sur bad.”
“Yes,” Rogers said. “Yes, it is. Now, dismissed!”
Tunger saluted, and Rogers returned his salute, which suddenly became a salute for a Meridan Marine major, who was already saluting a corporal approaching from the in-line entrance, who had a droid behind him of undiscernible rank who may or may not have saluted Rogers back. Since nobody really knew who had saluted who, everyone’s arm stayed in the air until the major realized he was the highest-ranking in the exchange and shouted for everyone to carry on.
“God, I hate this place,” Rogers said, shaking out his arm. Turning back to the cart, Rogers grabbed the thin piece of fabric that covered the top of it and pulled it back.
“CALL FUNCTION [PERFORM PRIMARY DUTY].”
He barely heard the sudden whirring of an electric razor before he saw cold metal hands reaching up at him from the bowels of the laundry cart.
“No!” Rogers screamed as he felt the distinct pulling of a poorly maintained electric razor on his beard. A great, searing pain traveled through his jawline, and, he swore, he could hear a ripping noise not unlike the tearing open of the sky during a raging thunderstorm.
Time froze. Three curled beard hairs drifted slowly from his chin and landed with a rumble atop a dirty sheet that Tunger had forgotten to take out of the bin.
“CALL FUNCTION [ASSERT MINOR VICTORY]. OUTPUT STRING: YIELD TO MY INSTRUMENTS, LIEUTENANT ROGERS. THERE IS NO ESCAPE.”
“You son of a bitch!” Rogers screamed, and, in a feat of strength he was thoroughly unable to comprehend, flipped the laundry cart in one fluid motion. Barber Bot, his arms flailing like the contents of an upturned bathroom vanity drawer, spilled backward into the zero gravity of Rogers’ stateroom.
“CALL FUNCTION [ISSUE DISTRESS BEACON]. OUTPUT STRING: NOOOOOOO.”
Barber Bot tumbled and rolled, bouncing off the walls, though its hard metallic exoskeleton didn’t seem to be taking much damage. For good measure, Cadet the Cat, identifying an apparent interloper, attached itself to the droid’s face in a flurry of relatively ineffective claw swipes. He suffered a smoky tail at the hands of Barber Bot’s welding torch but otherwise remained uninjured.
Barber Bot continued to flail in the unfamiliar setting for a few moments, its tracked base spinning with a whirring noise not unlike that of its instrument-laden hands. After a few moments, however, it began to slow. Cadet the Cat, encouraged, redoubled its efforts to claw the robot’s eyes out. Rogers was beginning to think he might actually miss that cat.
“CALL FUNC . . .” The annoying robotic voice slowed and trailed off like a piece of machinery that had run out of lubricant. A moment later, a small ding noise resonated through Rogers’ room.
“Low battery,” said a familiar voice—Rogers realized it was the same one from the datapads.
“Ha!” Rogers said, adrenaline flowing through his body and making him a little crazy. “Ha! HA HA HA! Guess you shouldn’t skip meals, you worthless, stupid, good-for-nothing shiny!”
Barber Bot’s eyes flashed red for a brief moment, then went completely dark. Rogers stood there, his chest heaving, sweat pouring down the sides of his face, wondering what he’d done to exert himself so thoroughly. He’d only screamed a little and flipped over a laundry cart.
It took him a moment to get the cart right side up again, but once he did, he pulled on a couple of ropes that had been dangling—floating, really—from beyond the top of the doorframe. Attached to each of the ropes was a piece of his critical equipment—the SEWR rats and the VMU, mostly—which were far too heavy for him to lug all the way down to the garbage dump. A series of tugs positioned each of them just on the other side of the door, and one final tug tossed them effortlessly into the cart as they reentered gravity. No real physical exertion needed. Rogers allowed himself a triumphant smile as he re-covered the cart and pushed it toward the up-line.
It was time to get out of this madhouse.
* * *
The “dump” was actually just a series of hatches on the refuse deck of the Flagship, utilized exclusively for the jettisoning of trash, bio-waste, and finance paperwork. It consisted of a single hallway, the in-line system on this deck replaced by conveyor belt–like moving walkways to transport anything that wasn’t directly pushed into the release chambers by the Flagship’s pipe system. The hallways were huge, round, and empty, the soft hum of the conveyor belt serving as the only real noise. There weren’t even any propaganda posters. In fact, Rogers was starting to consider putting in a request to move his office down here if this plan didn’t work out. The smell wasn’t exactly inviting, but that was a small price to pay for a lot less saluting.
A group of Meridan Marines passed him, moving what appeared to be cases full of spent disruptor cartridges. Those wouldn’t be shot into space but stored in one of the special chambers until a cargo ship picked them up to be exchanged for fresh ones. Rogers wondered what they were using all of that ammunition for, but he supposed the marines still needed to practice. Thankfully, absolutely none of them saluted him.
“Where is it?” Rogers wondered aloud as he rubbed his eyes. The buzz from the fight with Barber Bot had worn off, leaving him feeling fatigued and a little addled as he searched for the door that would take him to the correct chute. If he screwed this up, the VMU wouldn’t have enough compressed air to get him to the Awesome, and he’d quickly learn what it was like to be a piece of space debris. It actually probably felt just like being in his stateroom but with a lot less oxygen.
He looked at his datapad. It read 1436 hours ship time. He had just a few minutes to get into the chute, put on his gear, and get out of here. Freedom. He could almost taste it—and it tasted absolutely nothing like a SEWR rat.
“There,” he said as he saw the sign that said CHUTE 12. He’d used his special accesses as Klein’s executive officer to get to some of the more detailed schematics of the ship, and it had listed out Chute 12 as the one closest to the hangar where the Awesome was stored. From there, he’d have a short flight to the Un-Space point that would take him the hell out of here. He checked the datapad again, though only a few seconds had passed.
Pulling the laundry cart off the conveyor belt, Rogers hit the button for the door and was promptly greeted by a giant red X on the display panel followed by a rude noise.
“Shit,” he said. Why
would they lock the garbage chutes? He should have come down here to do a practice run before all of that “In the Zone” shit. If he couldn’t get this door open, he’d have wasted valuable Zone time, and that wasn’t something he really liked doing.
“What the hell are you doing down here?” someone said from behind him.
He squealed like a little girl and jumped, spinning around to see the two people he wanted to see the absolute least at the moment.
Well, it was Mailn and the Viking. He guessed he wanted to see them. Rogers could certainly think of other people on the ship he would have liked to see less, so really, that whole thought pattern had been invalid.
“I could ask the same of you,” Rogers said, swallowing. He hoped he had that sort of cocksure, I’m-authorized-to-be-here tone. He’d practiced it many times, but he’d never done it in front of the most beautiful woman in the world and her corporal.
“We’re taking out the plasma cartridges,” the Viking said, the tremors of her full, Siren-like voice sending vibrations through Rogers’ body. Could he really leave her?
“With your whole unit?” Rogers asked.
“Marines do everything as a team,” Mailn said. It sounded like a rehearsed line, but it also sounded like she meant it. Rogers wondered what they’d do to him as a team if they found out what he was planning.
“And you?” the Viking asked. She eyed the laundry cart. Did she look suspicious? Or just wonderful? Rogers decided it was just wonderful.
“Klein’s laundry,” Rogers said.
You’re at the garbage dump, not the laundry! he realized too late.
Mailn raised an eyebrow. “His clothes that dirty, eh?”
Rogers shrugged, playing it off smoothly. “He’s the boss,” Rogers said. “He wears his clothes once and then gets rid of them. That way, he always looks fresh. Can’t stand loose threads on his uniform, and all that.”