Mechanical Failure (21 page)

“Where have you been?” Rogers asked. He stepped into the hallway—there was something disconcerting about floating while the person you were talking to was firmly in place—and closed the door behind him.

“What do you mean?” Tunger asked.

Rogers saluted a passing lieutenant commander. “I mean, the last time I saw you was three days ago.”

“Oh, right,” Tunger said, saluting Rogers again for some reason. “I was getting that stuff from Supply that you asked for to help you secure your stuff in your new quarters.”

“And it took you three days?”

“There was an inspection going on and everything was stacked wrong. They put the big stuff all the way in front, so there was no way to get to the small stuff in back. That and they sealed up the entire supply chamber in cryo-wrap on accident. Including Suresh.”

“They
froze
the supply chief  ?” Rogers asked as he returned the salutes of two corporals heading toward the bridge.

Tunger shrugged and saluted Rogers on accident, likely assuming that Rogers had just been saluting him, which didn't make any sense at all.

“They turned operation of the freeze wrap over to a few droids, and someone told them to ‘stop everything.' You know how droids are.”

Rogers did know how droids were, and he was liking it less and less every day. He almost slapped his forehead in exasperation, but it turned into a salute as a group of harried-looking starmen second class rushed by. His arm was already beginning to ache and he hadn't even eaten breakfast yet.

“So, what did you get?” Rogers asked, gesturing to the small bag that Tunger had in his left hand.

Tunger handed him a bag. “I asked Suresh for something to stop everything from flying around, and this is what he gave me.”

Rogers opened the bag, looked inside, and felt something he couldn't explain jump up into his throat and hold it closed for a moment. It seemed like an hour before he could finally get the words to leave his lips.

“. . . Paperweights?” Rogers said, his voice trembling.
“Paperweights?”

“That's right,” Tunger said. “Just the thing to keep papers in their places.”

Rogers looked up at him slowly, feeling malice drip from his eyes. “And what,” he asked slowly, “is going to keep the
paperweights
down? There's
no gravity in my room
.”

Tunger frowned. “You'll have to cut Suresh some slack, sir. He was a finance troop until a couple of weeks ago, before they put him in charge of the munitions depot and then rapidly transferred him to the command staff and then the zoo deck custodial staff and then Supply. Plus he was a little shaken after being frozen.”

Rogers snapped a salute but quickly realized that there was no one else in the hallway. What was happening to him?

“Just forget it,” Rogers said.

Paperweights were the least of his problems. In truth, he was starting to get used to working in zero gravity. He'd have to see if he could steal some bolts and a drill or something. Or maybe a lot of refrigerator magnets and some glue. The old Rogers would have been able to deal with this without a problem. He'd improvise a solution, talk someone into doing something they didn't want to do, have a drink, steal something, and probably make a little money on the way. It would have been easy.

“Oh, and one other thing, sir,” Tunger said, saluting him.

“Stop saluting me. Just stop.”

“Yes, sir,” Tunger said, saluting. “I was in the Uncouth Corkscrew this morning for breakfast—which is why it took me so long to get up here today; all the droids were in line for the power sockets—and I saw Master Sergeant Hart in the kitchen. He wanted me to tell you ‘she's all done.' Do you have any idea what that means?”

“I have no idea what anyone on this ship is talking about,” Rogers said with a scowl. “Maybe he finally made some eggs that don't taste like—”

Wait. Rogers
did
know what he was talking about. He'd seen Hart and his crew working on the
Awesome
a few days ago. Did that mean they were done repairing it? That was fast, especially considering the damage, but Rogers imagined that the
ex-engineers really didn't have a whole lot else to do. That meant Rogers had a ship again!

“No,” Rogers said carefully, some instinct telling him to keep it a secret for now. “I don't know what Hart meant. In fact, I think I'll go ask him about it. I'm a little hungry myself.”

“Just stay away from the Viciously Taunt the Enemy,” Tunger said. “I saw a group of droids headed that way to plug in. They always gum up the works. And they keep putting the lights out.”

Rogers barely heard him. His mind was working furiously as he very quickly considered some things. He suddenly had a ship again, and one that could navigate through Un-Space. He'd just actually contemplated hanging himself, though whether it was because he really couldn't take it anymore or if he just wanted to prove Klein wrong was still up in the air. There might even be a war coming, and that sounded really dangerous. That didn't make the
Flagship
a very good place to be.

There were plenty of places to hide in the Meridan system or any of the other neighboring systems in the galaxy. Criminals did it all the time. Hell, the whole planet of Dathum was practically filled with retired criminals under assumed names—that's why the Meridan government's taxation annex was located there. If the MPF hadn't seized all of the credits from the
Awesome
's data banks, he probably had enough to live for a long time without doing anything so pesky as “work.”

But could he really take the risk? If he got caught, there was no way he could make a deal like this again. If he simply served out his term in the military, he could start again with a clean slate. He just needed to be patient. Bide his time. Endure.

Across the hallway, Klein's door suddenly opened. For once, he wasn't wearing pajamas. In fact, he wasn't wearing anything at all.

“Rogers!” he hissed. “Get in here! My shipment of new buttons came in and I need your opinion on new battle formations.”

The door slammed shut.

“Tunger,” Rogers said after a moment.

“Yes, sir?”

“I'm going to need you to go back to Supply and get me a few things for . . . a special mission the admiral is sending me on. We'll start with enough Sewer rats to last me, oh, a month.”

Rogers felt alive again. The spirit of everything sneaky and mischievous was channeling all of its power through him. He flowed through the
Flagship
as though in a trance, almost like a lucid hallucination, as he bent every situation to his will.

He was In the Zone. And it was awesome.

“You want me to issue you
what
?” Suresh said. He looked a whole lot paler than Rogers remembered him, and both of his hands trembled.

“A hundred and twenty Sewer rats,” Rogers said. He should have known better than to trust Tunger to convince Suresh to give him supplies. “It's for a special mission for Admiral Klein. Top secret stuff.”

“Do you have orders?”

“I can't supply you with orders,” Rogers said. He leaned in for special emphasis on just how secret all of this secret stuff was. “If I were to show you orders, there would be evidence that I was going on a top secret mission. There can be no trace.”

“Where are you going?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I can't tell you that, either.”

“What
can
you tell me?”

Rogers took a deep breath, glanced around again to imply that he was suspicious of spies in the ranks, and whispered. “It's a Foxtrot Alpha Kilo Echo mission.”

Suresh's eyes widened. “A Foxtrot Alpha Kilo Echo mission?”

“That's right. You understand the gravity of the situation now, don't you, Corporal?”

“Not even a little, sir.”

“Good. If you did, Admiral Klein has given me strict orders to kill you. That's why I have to use all these code words. Now, you're aware that every position is critical to the war effort, aren't you?”

Suresh straightened, looking proud—except that the ribbons on his uniform vibrated with his post-cryo tremors. “Of course! All the posters say so.”

“Good. Then you understand that I need those Sewer rats.”

The supply chief hesitated for a moment, frowning. “I'm not sure that makes any sense.”

Rogers banged his hand on the counter, causing Suresh to completely stop moving for the first time since they'd been speaking.

“Sierra Hotel India Tango!” Rogers screamed. “Operation COMPLACENT PLATYPUS commences at twenty-eight hundred hours sharp!”

“I don't know what you're saying!”
Suresh cried, his face twisting into a mask of horror, confusion, and perhaps a little bit of excitement.

“That's because it's classified,” Rogers said again. “I'm running out of time, Suresh. Are you going to give me the foodstuffs I need for a long and arduous journey through enemy territory, from which I may never return, during which my only solace may be that I have standard rations to chew?” Rogers leaned in close. “If not, we
all
might be slurping our soup someday soon.”

Suresh's face hardened. He leaned over, held an arm in the air, and ceremoniously pressed a single key on the keyboard in front of him.

“The STEWs will be delivered to your stateroom. Godspeed, sir.”

“You want me to do
what
with the targeting computer?” Lieutenant Commander Belgrave, the
Flagship's
helmsman, said.

“I want you to shut it down at 1500 hours today for a half hour,” Rogers said. “I need to clean it.”

The targeting computer would have to be shut down if Rogers was going to get out of here without being traced. If they kept the computer on, it wouldn't matter where he entered Un-Space; they'd calculate his trajectory and send a patrol to meet him at his destination. He couldn't have that.

“What do you mean, you need to clean it?” Belgrave looked at him sideways, then narrowed his eyes. “Aren't you the admiral's new executive officer? Don't you have more important stuff to do?”

If you only knew
, Rogers thought. His fingers were permanently stained off-gray from polishing so many buttons.

“We're short on staff,” Rogers said. “I need to go outside the ship to clean it manually. It's got space bugs on the screen and I need to wash them off. If you keep the computer on, the cleaning fluid will short out the system.”

“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.”