Mechanical Failure (27 page)

“Listen,” Rogers said. “Maybe we can work something out. We don't know that the Thelicosans are coming. So far, all I've heard is rumors. Maybe if we try to piece this fleet back together as a team, rather than you just pushing all of your work onto me, we can fix some of this. I'll get you another exec—”

“No!” Klein screamed, sitting bolt upright. “You can't give me another exec. You know all my secrets. I need
you
, Rogers. I need you to help me through this, or I swear I will have you transferred back to Parivan to work in the salt mines.”

He must have seen the expression on Rogers' face, because he smiled a tiny, tear-soaked smile. “I read personnel files every once in a while, too. No, if we're going to persist in pretending to be things we're not, we're going to do it together.

Rogers grit his teeth. “Alright, Admiral. It's a deal. But I'm not polishing any more buttons or brushing any more uniforms.” He thought for a moment. “Or eating any more Sewer rats. I get to pick from your food supply whenever I want.”

“Fine,” Klein said. “What do you propose we do first?”

Rogers walked around the desk to show the admiral his datapad, on which was displayed a personnel roster of all of the sections of the
Flagship
.

“I have no idea what that is,” the admiral said.

“That doesn't surprise me in the slightest,” Rogers said. “If you're going to run a ship, you're going to have to start paying more attention to where your people are and what they're doing.”

“That's what I have you for,” Klein said.

“And that's why I'm showing you my suggestions,” Rogers said. “For example, you can't have a master engineer running the kitchens if you want anyone to eat anything that isn't going to poison them.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Klein said.

Deet, who had been relatively quiet during the whole exchange, peered into one of the old clocks on the wall and started mimicking the ticking noises.

“Why do you have a rusty old droid following you around, anyway?” Klein asked.

“Hey,” Deet said.

“Deet is my orderly droid,” Rogers said. Droids didn't really
function as personal assistants very often, but it seemed like the most likely explanation for keeping the robot close.

“I've already assigned you an orderly,” Klein said.

“Which brings me back to my point,” Rogers said. “Tunger is an idiot. He's spent his whole career tending to monkeys on the zoo deck. There's absolutely no reason he should be assigned as my assistant.”

“Well, then, why did you request it?” Klein asked, throwing up his hands in exasperation. “Why did
any
of these people request their transfers if they didn't want to be there?”

Rogers paused. “What do you mean?”

“I want to keep everyone happy,” Klein said. “That's why I keep approving anything that anyone sends me—it keeps my job easy. And if someone from the zoo deck wants to work in Supply, or someone from the engineering bay wants to work in the kitchens, why not? It's a broadening experience.”

Rogers thought for a moment. Based on his conversations with everyone on the ship, there was no way that anyone had requested their transfers. Mailn hadn't even been medically qualified to be a pilot, yet they were ready to give her a starfighter and live munitions for no good reason at all.

“How do you get these transfer requests?” Rogers asked.

“They come in through my daily read files,” Klein said.

“Do you read them?”

“No,” Klein said. “I have you read them and approve them. Haven't you been getting any of my messages?”

Rogers chewed on the inside of his lip. Clearly, Klein had no idea where all the transfer requests were coming from, and they probably hadn't come from the personnel themselves. So then, from where?

“Well, we're going to start with moving some of these people back to places where they're actually going to do useful work,” Rogers said. “And the absolute most critical thing you must do first is move Captain Alsinbury to the room directly next to mine.”

Rogers' forehead wasn't sure it could take any more of this. He sat slumped against the wall, his face throbbing with pain. Well, he sat after a fashion. In reality, the Viking had hit him so hard that he'd been knocked back into his stateroom. His body just instinctively curled into a sitting position, he supposed, so it
felt
like he was sitting slumped against the wall.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” the Viking shouted at him from the doorway. “You think I've got nothing better to do than spend my time saluting everyone on the command deck? It'll take me an extra hour every day just to get back and forth between here and the training rooms.”

“It wasn't my idea,” Rogers said, uncurling and trying to find something to grab onto. She'd hit him at such an angle that most of his normal handholds were out of reach, though eventually the ship's inertial drift would get him somewhere. “Klein's signature is on the order.”

“And who was it that suggested to him that his ground commander be moved to the command deck?”

“It makes sense!” Rogers cried. “It makes perfect sense. If there's a war going on, he's going to need his field commanders as close as possible. By you being up here, it's going to cut his duties in half if he needs to ask you about tactical ground stratagem synergy buzzwords!”

“What?”

Rogers knew he was babbling. He took a deep breath. “Just try it out for a while, okay? If it doesn't work out, I'll talk to Klein and see if he can't get you a bunk in the middle of the armory or something.”

“If you don't try to hijack an escape pod before then, you mean?”

Rogers hadn't seen the Viking very much since she'd caught him trying to escape, but the encounters hadn't been pleasant. He'd have to work out a way to get him back into her good graces, but he was pretty sure he wasn't going to have a second opportunity to destroy a batch of ground combat droids anytime soon. That left . . . apologizing? No. He'd start with lying some more first, and see where that took him.

“I told you,” Rogers said, “I wasn't trying to escape. I was performing routine maintenance on the exterior of the
Flagship
. Admiral Klein assigned me; you can go ask him right now if you want.”

“Fine, I
am
going to go ask the admiral right now.”

“You can't go ask the admiral right now!”

The Viking turned back, her beautiful forehead scrunching down into an I-told-you-so frown/smile/expression. It was a very confusing look, but Rogers couldn't help but love it.

“And why not?”

“Because, ah,” Rogers stumbled through his words. Why was he having such a hard time lying lately? He glanced at the clock. “Because it's 1026 ship time, and he's in the middle of his nap.”

This was, actually, true. Klein had a very particular napping schedule, and woe be unto the man who was near him if he had to skip one for something trivial, like running the most important ship in this sector of the Meridan border. In this particular
case, however, it prevented the admiral from telling the Viking that Rogers had requested that she be moved to the next room.

Deet, who still refused to enter Rogers' room, had been stationed outside his doorway. The Viking had roughly shoved him aside before she'd punched Rogers in the face, causing him to fall on his back. By this point, however, the quirky droid had gotten back to his feet, and Rogers saw a little metal head poke its way into the doorway.

“You know we have a briefing in ten minutes, right?” Deet asked.

“Yes,” Rogers hissed, “thank you very much for interrupting this conversation.”

“Oh,” the Viking said. “I see you've got yourself a new shiny as a pet, too. So, you're a coward
and
a droid lover.” She spat. “How would you like it if I took the thing
you
trained for all your life and tried to automate it?”

Rogers could see something resembling genuine hurt on the Viking's face. It confused him for a moment, as he wasn't really used to seeing anything except rapid vacillations between uncontrollable rage, a desire to shoot things, and a desire to train to shoot things better.

“I already told you I didn't volunteer for the AIGCS. I blew them all up, didn't I?” Rogers tried to edge closer to the doorway, but he was floating. “You're a damn fine commander—at least, that's what all the marines tell me—and I'd never want to see you replaced by a stupid machine.”

“Hey,” Deet said.

The Viking looked at him, narrow-eyed. Her jaw worked slowly, the muscles in her cheeks tensing. Was the Viking being . . . vulnerable? Just the brief pause in the threat of physical violence put Rogers off guard. He struggled for something to say to keep her around.

“I'm having trouble interpreting all of this,” Deet said.

“Shut up for a second,” Rogers barked.

Deet didn't seem to be very interested in shutting up. “Is he
still trying to tell you about how he wasn't escaping from the garbage chute?”

“Don't talk to me,” the Viking said.

“Don't talk to her,” Rogers said.

“You don't talk to me, either!” the Viking shouted, pointing at Rogers. All of the emotion in her face vanished in an instant. “I don't care if we have to share a bunk. I'm not associating with the likes of you.”

“What if Admiral Klein were to order you to share a bunk with me?” Rogers asked before he could stop himself.

“Bah!” the Viking threw up her arms. “If I thought I could reach you, I'd come in there and hit you again. Just stay out of my business!”

She stormed off, leaving only Deet in the doorway. Rogers finally came within push-off distance of his wardrobe, and he shot over to his desk, where he retrieved the Ever-Cool ice pack he'd taken to keeping in his room. He seemed to be getting hit a lot lately. Pressing the ice pack to his forehead, he floated back over to the doorway.

“You really need to learn when to keep your mouth shut,” Rogers said.

“My mouth doesn't move when I talk.”

Rogers sighed. “Couldn't you have just backed me up, there?”

“What data would you like me to back up?”

“That's not what I'm talking about,” Rogers said. He wrapped his salute-repellent sling around his arm, stepped into the hallway, and closed the door behind him. It was just about time to heat up Klein's cheese-and-beet sandwich. Klein had some peculiar tastes, but at least he'd honored his end of the deal and allowed Rogers to sample the goods, which is why Rogers didn't mind continuing to make Klein's food. Kitchen operations were being restored slowly, so it was nice to eat some real food in the meantime.

“I'm saying, couldn't you have told the Viking that I was really going and performing maintenance on the outside of the ship?”

“Droids have a very difficult time lying,” Deet said. “We have to draw on known data to make conclusions. It's called artificial intelligence for a reason.”

“Well, you should practice,” Rogers said. “Because I do it a lot, and I can't have you telling everyone I'm lying every time I need to bend the truth a little to get something done.”

“Have you ever considered employing the truth more often instead?”

“Absolutely not,” Rogers said. “I'm trying to get with Captain Alsinbury, and being my true self isn't going to get me anywhere at all.”

“Get with?”

“You know,” Rogers said. “Ah, you know. Get with. Roll in the hay. Do the horizontal boogie. Almost,
very nearly
reproduce but don't really.”

“I am unable to process nearly everything you just said to me,” Deet said.

“Forget it.”

They came to the admiral's door, but before Rogers could slide his keycard into the slot and get ready to wake what would undoubtedly be a very grumpy, and specifically hungry, admiral, Deet made what sounded like a very important droid noise.

“Do you want to talk to me about something?”

Deet's eyes flashed excitedly, and he beeped. “Yes! Do you speak droid?”

Rogers pointed to the blue-and-gray projection of a large stop sign that was coming out of the holographic generator in Deet's chestplate, which was probably what had given him the clue.

“. . . Yes.”

Deet didn't say anything for a moment. “Joke?”

“Yes. What do you want?”

“I thought I should tell you,” Deet said, his digitized voice sounding, perhaps, a little annoyed, “that my sensors have picked up several strange devices in the admiral's room. They are transmitting
data, but they aren't transmitting any of it to the main network of the ship.”

Rogers raised an eyebrow. “Strange devices? You mean bugs?”