Mechanical Failure (39 page)

Rogers sighed. “Fine. But it's going to be really hard to convince him to come along with all the, uh, bugs.”

“Bugs,” Deet said. “Right. I think I can help with that.”

Someone who wasn't paying attention attempted to salute Rogers, noticing the sling too late. She—a starman third class—stood there, frozen in the hallway with her arm up, unsure of what to do. Rogers gave her an apologetic shrug.

“I hope you're as brilliant as you think you are,” Rogers said, his hand on the door control, “because if I have to listen to one
more string of buzzwords, I am going to go light a match in the engineering bay.”

Admiral Klein's face leapt out of nowhere as the door slid open.

“Gah!” Rogers cried, jumping back.

“Rogers!” Klein said. “Where have you been? Do you have any idea what I've been going through up here?” He looked at Rogers' sling. “Agoraphobia acting up again?”

“Yes, sir,” Rogers said, his heart slowly going down to a normal rate. “Why were you standing so close to the door like that?”

“I was trying to see if I could open it with my mind,” Klein said as though it should have been very simple. He turned around and motioned for Rogers to follow him into the room. “I've got all of these new posters around here that say that I can open my mind and open new doors or something. I don't understand them. Did you ever talk to Ralph?”

Rogers stopped as soon as he stepped into the room, his mouth open. All of the propaganda posters—every single one—had been replaced, somehow, though Rogers was almost certain that Klein and his execs were the only ones that entered Klein's stateroom. Rogers immediately realized why Klein had been trying to open doors with his mind; there was a poster of a giant bleeding eyeball surrounded by pastel rainbows which said exactly that:
YOU CAN OPEN DOORS WITH YOUR MIND
.

“As a matter of fact,” Rogers said, closing the door behind him, “I did talk to Ralph. He was charming.”

Deet was hurriedly walking around the room, his metallic legs clanking against the floor. Rogers assumed he was setting up some sort of sophisticated net of interference transmitters to jam the listening devices posted all over the room. How many were there? Was it really safe to try and do this here? The up-line was an option, but he also wanted to avoid being ambushed by any more haircutting personnel.

“Did Ralph answer your questions?”

“Uh, no, sir,” Rogers said. “But I found my answer somewhere else. Which is exactly what I came here to talk to you about.”

“You mean you're not here to make me a sandwich?” he asked.

“No,” Rogers said. “I'm not here to make you a sandwich, but—”

“Didn't we talk about priorities, Rogers? If I'm going to run this fleet, I can't do it on an empty stomach.”

“You're not running this fleet,” Rogers said though clenched teeth. “You abandoned the fleet in the middle of an attack and gave command over to an ex-sergeant engineer. If you're trying to keep up appearances, you're not going to do a very good job of it if you keep disappearing when people need you the most.”

“Look, Lieutenant,” Klein said, sitting back in his chair. “If you're going to berate a superior officer and you want him to stop interrupting you, it's probably better that you put something in his mouth. Like a sandwich.”

Throwing his hands up in the air and giving a wordless shout, Rogers walked over to the small kitchenette inside Klein's stateroom, slapped some mayonnaise onto two pieces of bread and stuck them together. He put the improvised sandwich on a plate and handed it to the whining admiral.

“There,” he said. “Sandwich. Now I really need to—”

“What kind of sandwich is this?” Klein asked, turning it over in his hands. “There's nothing on it.”

“It's a phantom sandwich,” Rogers said. “New craze. Very popular on Parivan.”

Klein took a suspicious bite. “Bunch of crazy Parivani hippies will do anything if it's weird.”

Rogers sighed. “Now can I talk to you?”

The admiral didn't answer, since his mouth was full of a fake bite of the fake sandwich. He simply waved Rogers on and took a sip of water.

Rogers turned around to find Deet ostensibly practicing his droid fu in the corner. At least, that's what it looked like for all Rogers could tell. Deet's arms were moving in a blur and not
accomplishing anything, which was pretty similar to what Rogers had seen before.

“Are we safe to talk?” Rogers asked.

Deet's arms slowly wound down, clicking wildly. “Oh, that,” he said. “I've set up a noise jamming net. Let me activate it and then you're free to say whatever you'd like. Are you ready?”

“Ready.”

Rogers was expecting Deet to turn on some sort of force field or at least make a beeping noise and wave his arms a little to show that something happened. Instead, the loudest noise Rogers had ever heard started coming out of Deet's body. It wasn't quite like a scream, and it wasn't quite like a siren. It was something in between having your spine ripped out with fishhooks and finding out that all the beer lights were gone.

“Go ahead!” Deet shouted over the noise.

Rogers supposed it made sense; it would be hard to pick up what he and Klein were saying if they talked close enough to hear each other. Rogers had just never quite heard this interpretation of noise jamming before.

“I'm not sure how long I can keep this up,” Deet shouted over his incredibly, incredibly annoying noise. “I may kill myself.”

“I may kill you,” Rogers muttered.

Klein, surprisingly, considering his earlier response to stress, seemed unconcerned. He slowly put down his sandwich and looked at Rogers.

“Lieutenant,” he said, loudly, though his face showed no effort from shouting. “What the hell is your droid doing and how do we make him stop doing it?”

“Admiral,” Rogers said, moving closer. The only way they could hear each other was if they kept their faces about three inches away from each other, and Rogers could smell a distinct and unpleasant mixture of mayonnaise and aftershave. “I need you to listen. The entire fleet is in jeopardy and we need your help.”

Klein didn't interrupt him as Rogers related absolutely
everything he knew about the droids, their impending takeover, and the role that Klein must play for their counterattack to work properly. When he finished, Rogers was out of breath and his ears were ringing.

“Alright,” Klein said.

Rogers blinked. “Really? That's it? You'll do it?”

Klein shook his head. “No, but it sounds like a perfect job for my executive officer.”

For a moment, Rogers thought he was about to go In the Zone again. That moment when something snapped inside of him, and all of a sudden he became a different person, someone who could move effortlessly through any social situation, steal a watch off a man for whom time was as important as blood, and make a horse think it was a zebra with a little paint. Then he realized that, no, it wasn't Zone time at all. It was the point at which one becomes so frustrated, so annoyed, so desperately
done
with it all that murder suddenly looks like a viable option.

But, since Rogers wasn't very good with violence, he instead reached forward, grabbed the Toastmasters certificate off the wall, and threw it to the floor. He followed with a sweeping arm gesture that knocked just about every notepad and book off the admiral's desk. For good measure, he made one of those really dramatic, wordless roar sounds.

Klein's reaction was much as he anticipated.

“What have you done?”
the admiral shrieked, jumping out of his chair and putting his hands on the sides of his head.

“Do you see this?” Rogers said, gesturing grandly. “This is what's going to happen to your fleet if you don't take the huge amounts of
stupid
out of your ears and set it aside for ten minutes. I need
your
codes to erase the droids' memories, and that means I need
your
biometrics to come with me to the communications bay with Deet so we can stop these over-technical tin cans from taking over the ship and waging an unexpectedly sentient war against humanity
with our own ships  
!”

Klein looked like he was about to hyperventilate. He made several feeble attempts to bend down and pick up a pen to start writing something but couldn't seem to figure out what to write. For a moment, he stood up straight, put his hand on his heart, and took a deep breath to begin a pep talk, but his chest deflated like a balloon.

“Now, are you coming to the mainframe room, or should I just go find the nearest AIGCS droid and call him a shiny?”

“You really shouldn't say racist things.”

“Klein!”

“Alright,” the admiral said. “Alright. Let's go. But I want a real sandwich first. I might be dumb, but I am not dumb enough to fall for such a stupid trick as a phantom sandwich.”

“This is really good,” Klein said as he munched two pieces of bread with a thin layer of mayonnaise in between them. “Really excellent, Rogers. What did you say it was called again?”

“Ghost sandwich,” Rogers said. He pulled his datapad from his pocket and pressed a couple of buttons. “How are things going with you two?”

The crackling voice of McSchmidt came back at him through the datapad. “Lots of cooks in the kitchen,” he said. “We think we have a good idea about how to keep them busy. We're heading to engineering now.”

“Are you sure that's a good idea?”

“Uf curse it is!” Tunger's voice came through. “We're a team!”

“Shut up!” McSchmidt barked. Rogers thought he heard the sound of someone being slapped in the face, then the howling of a monkey, the high-pitched scream of someone absolutely terrified of said monkey, and then the transmission cut out.

“I hope they know what they're doing,” Rogers muttered. He switched communication channels, and Mailn's voice came through.

“What do you want?” she asked. She sounded irritated.

“Just checking in,” Rogers said. “Is everything okay? You don't sound too happy.”

“Because I'm friggin busy,” she said, “and some boob is calling me to check up on me. How would it feel if someone was breathing down your neck every ten seconds of every day?”

Rogers paused. “. . . Normal?”

“Ugh,” Mailn said, and the transmission went out.

They exited the up-line onto the communications deck, which was mostly an unnavigable maze of hallways leading to various offices, server rooms, and one Popsicle stand that had been shut down during Rogers' leave of absence from the military. As the electronic nerve center of the
Flagship
and the entire 331st, the communications deck was a huge, important, incredibly complex section of the ship. Rogers had always avoided it like the plague; Communications was the red-headed stepchild of Engineering. The personnel were also notorious for being teetotalers, which was one step above politician in Rogers' book.

He pulled up a map of the comm deck on his datapad and tried to figure out how the hell to get to the IT center that connected to the mainframe room. The whole layout of the deck literally looked like someone had crumpled up a long piece of string and thrown it on the floor. It was nearly impossible to figure out which way led to which room.

“I can't make heads or tails of this stupid map. Deet, can I short-burst transmit this thing to you so you can use your, uh, droid powers to automatically navigate us to the IT desk?”

“What do I look like, an
EXPLETIVE
tour guide?”

“No,” Rogers said, “you look like a piece of machinery specifically built to help humans with tasks. And I thought your profanity generator got fixed?”

“E
XPLETIVE
you.”

“Right. I'm sending this to you now.”

After a couple of button presses, Deet's eyes flashed and he
beeped a couple of times, and Rogers waited impatiently for him to finish whatever processing he needed to do. For an automated life form, he certainly was slow.

Klein had finished his sandwich and was licking his fingers contentedly as they marched down the hallway in the direction that Rogers guessed was the IT desk. The hallways were almost ridiculously narrow, so much so that as a couple of pale, beady-eyed comm troops passed, everyone had to turn sideways just to avoid grinding up against each other. Even they, however, looked just a bit less uptight than Rogers was used to seeing folks on the
Flagship
since he'd returned. It was amazing what some real food and some fluorescent pictures of farm animals riding on the backs of rocket ships could do. Rogers wondered how Ralph was doing; if he'd gone through all the tainted coffee, he'd probably be crashing pretty hard right now.

“This way,” Deet said suddenly, turning down an unmarked corridor and running smack into a sleek gray droid that Rogers hadn't thought he'd see again.

“What are you doing here?” the droid—the Froid—asked. It was Oh One, former second-in-command of the recently disbanded AIGCS. Rogers hadn't seen him since he'd nearly torn the training deck apart. He was easily recognizable due to the painted badger pattern on his face.

“It's, uh, I . . .” Rogers stammered.

Oh One looked at Deet, and his eyes flashed. For a moment, Rogers thought there would be another droid fu contest, but neither of them moved to slap each other. Rogers started to sweat; did Oh One know about Barber Bot's attempt on Rogers' life? Had he ordered it, perhaps? Obviously, he would know by now that Barber Bot had failed.

“This location is not in concordance with your essential duties as executive officer to Admiral Klein,” Oh One said. “It seems highly irregular that you would be present here.”

“Um,” Rogers said. His knees started to shake. A droid armed
with a welding torch and a butcher knife was one thing; he knew that Oh One had a deadly disruptor rifle hidden in his chest and knew how to use it. Where was that big orange button when he needed it?