Mechanical Failure (22 page)

“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.”

“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-Pong 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.

“C
ALL 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.

“C
ALL FUNCTION
[
ASSERT MINOR VICTORY
]. O
UTPUT STRING:
Y
IELD TO MY INSTRUMENTS
, L
IEUTENANT
R
OGERS
. T
HERE 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.

“C
ALL FUNCTION
[
ISSUE DISTRESS BEACON
]. O
UTPUT STRING:
N
OOOOOOO
.”

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.

“C
ALL 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.