by Joe Zieja
“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 ‘god-damn shinies’ and that you wanted to see every one of them melted down to scrap!”
“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 poop 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 nobody 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 shit,” 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 god,” 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 buttons in front of me, Lieutenant.”
“Display something else!” Rogers said. “Maybe something to do with them attacking us !”
The image changed again.
“That’s a hell of a display,” Klein said.
It was, actually, nothing. Open space. Not a single thing on the screen.
“What is this?” Rogers said.
“It should be where the attack is coming from,” the display tech said. “I took the data from the computer. This is where it’s telling us to look.”
“Never believe computers,” Rogers said. “Slew the camera around. See if you can’t find something.”
“The light’s not going off !” the defensive array technician said.
“Probably because they haven’t finished attacking us,” Rogers said. He stared at the image as the screen moved around, the stars blurring in the background as the outboard camera swopped silently across open space. The whole bridge seemed to be holding its breath.
In fact, the whole bridge was holding its breath. Rogers was surrounded by people going blue in the face.
“Everyone breathe,” he said, and was answered by a huge, collective sigh of relief. “It looks like a false alarm. Maybe there’s something wrong with the—”
Something silver blurred past the viewscreen just before a huge explosion rocked the ship.
* * *
I. He wasn’t kidding.
The Military Never Said Anything About War
“What the hell happened?” Rogers said as he picked himself up off the floor. The explosion hadn’t knocked him down, but it was amazing what a full-grown admiral could do with a dive tackle while screaming, “Save me!” That man was just not cut out for combat. The fact that it took Rogers several tries to get to his feet because of his shaking knees told him that he was also probably not cut out for combat.
“Can’t tell you, sir,” the display tech said. “The systems are down. I can’t even get a damage report.”
“Get Communications on the line,” Rogers said.
“I already did. They told me to reboot.”
“The light went off,” the warning tech said, pointing to the THEY’RE ATTACKING US button. “We’re saved!”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Rogers said. “Did anyone else see that thing before we were hit?”
“I saw it,” the Viking said. “Looked like a little ship to me.”
Rogers walked over to Belgrave the helmsman, feeling dizzy and disoriented. He was nearly positive all the blood in his body was in his ears, they were ringing so loudly.
“What about the targeting computer?” he said. “Didn’t that pick up anything?”
Belgrave looked up at him and frowned. “But you told me to turn it off so you could clean—”
“That was days ago!” Rogers cried. “Are you crazy? You’re telling me the targeting computer has been off the whole time?”
“I just didn’t want any space bugs on it,” Belgrave muttered.
“Sweet mother . . .” Rogers said, pulling hard at his beard. “Turn it back on already!”
Belgrave gave him a dirty look before flipping a couple of switches on the computer in front of him. There were a couple of perfunctory beeps and squeaks before the display in front of him came to life, along with an increasingly familiar voice.
“Congratulations on activating your targeting computer! You are entitled to one free lobster dinner—”
“Lobster dinner?” Rogers said.
“Just kidding,” the computer said. “You are entitled to one free balloon to be redeemed at any of the many Snaggadir’s Sundries locations available across the galaxy. Remember: whatever you need, you can Snag It at Snaggadir’s™!”
The targeting display blossomed to life, showing blue dots where the friendly ships were, and a few yellow dots where civilian craft that happened to be transiting the sector were.
“There,” Belgrave said, pointing at a fleeting orange blip on the display. “Something just entered Un-Space, but there’s not enough data for me to tell what it was. It could have been anything.”
“Damn it,” Rogers said.
“We don’t need to know what it was,” the Viking said. “It was the Thellies.”
McSchmidt shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense, ma’am. They don’t behave like that. Why send one ship? Even if they were testing our defenses, it would have been a squadron full of Strikers followed by a larger force. One ship popping out of Un-Space and firing at us isn’t like them at all.”
Rogers frowned. He agreed with McSchmidt, but something about the situation felt wrong. Like he’d seen it before.
“Admiral,” Rogers said, walking over to the man who was still muttering about confiscating a balloon. “Aren’t you going to do something?”
Klein looked a little shaken, but he was doing a good job of covering it up, aside from the dive tackle when the blast had hit. He’d recovered and was now sitting in his admiral’s chair, tapping his fingers nervously on the armrest.
“I can’t think of anything to say,” Klein said quietly.
“Maybe instead,” Rogers said, “think about something to do. And if you can’t do that, consider trying to calm everyone down while we figure out what happened. Everyone felt that explosion; they need to know that we’re not about to get torn in half by Thelicosan plasma cannons.”
“We’re about to get torn in half by Thelicosan plasma cannons?” the admiral half shouted.
For some reason, Klein’s words echoed through the PA system. Everyone on the bridge stopped for a moment.
“Whoops,” a starman first class said from behind his terminal. “Should I not have turned on the All Personnel Address System? I thought you said the admiral was going to tell everyone something.”
Lights started to flash on the dashboard from all the incoming calls from the other areas of the ship, everyone wondering what the hell was going on.
“Klein,” Rogers said in a warning tone.
“I can’t,” Klein whispered. “You and I both know that I don’t know what I’m doing. If I can’t talk to the Thelicosans, I can’t do anything about it. I don’t even know who to talk to, never mind what to say. Is there any chance of them having a meeting about this? I can deliver a killer slide show presentation.”
“Probably not,” Rogers said. “You need to take command, Admiral. This is your fleet.”
Klein’s countenance broke for a moment—the man looked like he was about to sob again, and Rogers didn’t know if he could handle that—but he pulled it together. “I can’t. I can’t.” He looked at Rogers, his face brightening. “I have an idea. You do it.”
“Me?” Rogers said, his voice squeaking. “I’m not the admiral of the fleet! I have no practical experience in—”
“Everyone!” Klein said. The room went silent. “I’m required in my stateroom to . . . analyze things. For the war effort. Communications must be sent to Meridan headquarters to inform them of recent happenings. In the meantime, I’m leaving Lieutenant Rogers in command of the bridge.”
“What?” Rogers said.
“What?” the Viking said.
“Fear not, valiant soldiers of justice!” Klein said, puffing up his chest as he slowly began backing out of the room. “Rogers can handle everything in my absence
.”
“He’s a lieutenant!” McSchmidt said. “I mean, not a lieutenant lieutenant, but still a lieutenant. He’s like . . . six ranks below you!”
“For victory!” Klein shouted as he reached the door. “For glory! For honor! Galactic agility! Synergistic battlespace effects! Slide shows!”
The door closed, leaving the bridge a quiet space of emotional confusion as Klein’s charismatic effects mixed with the utter strangeness of it all and lingered in the air like the clash of two cheap colognes. One particularly dense starman second class actually clapped a few times from the back of the room, and the corporal next to her did that slow, dramatic salute thing.
And then Rogers realized the entire bridge was looking at him.
“You can’t be serious,” he said, though he wasn’t sure to whom he was speaking. The lights on the communication tech’s dashboard were still blinking rapidly, and he could hear him telling someone to please stop trying to climb out the window, and that pillows were not critical items to transport in the event of an emergency, anyway.
“Um,” the communications tech said, placing a hand over his headset microphone. “Lieutenant Admiral Rogers?”
“That’s not even a real rank,” Rogers said. “What is it?”
“Well,” he said, “I thought I should bring to your attention the following.” He took a deep breath. “There are people in the kitchen screaming about a fire, there is a group of droids that seems to have been knocked over in the mess hall and can’t get up, several animal cages have broken open on the zoo deck, the IT desk in the communications squadron is rebooting itself and I don’t know what that means, and it sounds like there is a group of finance troops running toward the escape pods with their pillows.”
Red-faced, the communications tech gasped for breath, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
Rogers just stared at him. What the hell was he supposed to do with all of that? He wasn’t a fleet commander. He wasn’t even a real lieutenant. He was an ex-sergeant who liked to drink alcohol, play rigged games, and trick people into doing silly things for amusement. This was insane. This was completely insane.