Mechanical Failure (42 page)

“I gave them a surprise before we left,” Deet said. “I scrambled the ship's maps for this area. They'll be walking around in circles.”

“Nice going,” Rogers said. “Now how do we get out of here?”

“I don't know,” Deet said. “I scrambled the maps. Were you listening to me at all?”

Rogers groaned as they began to work their way frantically through the narrow, empty hallways, turning the other direction whenever they heard the loud clanking noises of droids nearby. He quickly lost all sense of direction. After a minute or so of turns, he probably couldn't have found his way back to the mainframe room if he'd tried. One particularly harrowed communications troop was actually walking in a box pattern in the middle of one of the hallways, going absolutely nowhere and muttering to himself incoherently.

“We're going to end up like that guy,” Rogers said as they passed him and turned down a corridor he was simultaneously sure he'd seen three times before and had also never seen. “Didn't you think to make a backup map?”

“I'm sorry,” Deet said, “I can only execute one
EXPLETIVE
stroke of absolute
EXPLETIVE
genius at any given moment. What have
you
done today?”

Rogers spared him an annoyed grunt but kept walking. “If I ever find the person who designed this place, I'm going to—”

“Rogers,” Klein said suddenly. He stopped in the middle of the hallway. “There's something I have to do.” Turning away, he began to jog down the hallway. “I need to get to the public address system. I'll see you later!”

“Hey!” Rogers said. “Where are you going, you idiot? You couldn't
find your way out of a parking lot! Come back!
A speech isn't going to work!  
”

But Klein was already gone, having turned a corner. Rogers shook his head. As long as they didn't need his access codes again, good riddance. He was tired of babysitting, anyway. What was all that babbling about duty and heroics?

They walked through the hallways silently, careful not to alert any nearby droids. After what seemed like half an hour, they ended up at the in-line, which was blessedly free of any metallic resistance or nattering admirals.

“They must already be at the mainframe,” Rogers said.

“That's unlikely,” Deet said. “I changed the mainframe location on the map so that it was in the kitchens.”

“But the kitchens are all on fire,” Rogers said.

“Exactly.”

Thankfully, the in-line was still in operation. Rogers was sure the droids would have shut it down, but perhaps he'd overestimated their ability to mess with the ship. They zoomed through the belly of the
Flagship
, Rogers tapping his foot nervously, until they came to the deck where the engineering bay was located. The in-line dinged, and for a moment that stretched out in time, the doors slowly opened.

“Get ready,” Rogers said.

The doors opened to reveal exactly no one in the hallway. It kind of seemed like a letdown.

“For what?” Deet said.

“I don't know,” Rogers said as he exited the car and jogged down to the entrance to the Pit. “I just felt dramatic. Leave me alone.”

He and Deet burst through the large cargo doors into the Pit to find the entire engineering staff working like bees, so far unmolested by droids. Hoverlifts zoomed back and forth across the floors as the crews desperately tried to undo all the potential damage done by stacking explosive containers like morons.

“Rogers!” someone called.

“Lopez,” Rogers said, jogging over to where Lopez was busy directing the entire Pit crew. She passed a datapad to a starman, who trotted off. “No droids yet?”

“Not yet,” she said. “But that won't last for long. Captain Alsinbury sent a message that there was a squadron of them on their way down here and that we should expect a fight.”

“Damn it,” Rogers said. “How soon?”

“She didn't say. But she's sending reinforcements as soon as she can.”

“Good luck,” he said. “Where's Hart?”

Lopez pointed to the far end of the Pit, which connected to the engineering docking bay. There was a small room that bridged the gap between the two areas that looked like the top of an old-fashioned air-traffic control tower, a dodecahedron with windows on every side.

“He's in there trying to get the cranes to move your ship to the right place and open the hatch so you can launch.” She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. “What are you planning?”

“They might still be listening,” Rogers said. “Let's just say I'm about to fire the head chef.”

“Please,” Deet said, “no more chef references. I really don't have the processing power to deal with your
MALE BOVINE EXCREMENT.
”

Rogers ignored him. “Are there any spare VMUs in there?”

Lopez was already walking away, shouting at one of the younger engineering troops with the colorful language that only a senior enlisted member could manage.

“Look for yourself !” she said. “. . . Sir.”

Rogers rolled his eyes and started the long run across the Pit to the control room. He could see Hart inside, his face shiny with sweat, as he worked the controls. From the outside, Rogers could see that there was something a little off about the room; it seemed to be packed to the brim with pillows and blankets. In
fact, when he went to open the door, he found he couldn't; the door, an old lock-and-hinge type, got stuck on the corner of a pillow.

“Damn it!” Hart called from inside, his voice muffled by the walls. And the pillows. “Hang on.”

Hart stopped what he was doing and turned around to bend over, vanishing from Rogers' view. Different sleeping paraphernalia flew upward, including what appeared to be a very unfriendly-looking teddy bear with fangs and a purple jacket. After a moment, the door swung open.

“Sorry,” Hart said as he finished clearing a path for Rogers and Deet to enter. The room looked much bigger on the inside, the illusion supported by a high ceiling, and every window seemed to have a control panel under it that jutted out from the wall like an awning at hip-height. Underneath, Rogers definitely saw people sleeping.

“Nap room?” Rogers asked.

“Sort of,” Hart said. “Ever since we've been taking shifts working on the bomb removal, people are coming in here for a break.”

Rogers frowned. “That was like . . . thirty minutes ago. What kind of shift work is that?”

Hart ignored him. “Come over here,” he said, gesturing to the console he'd been working at. “It's like a god-damn block puzzle over in the bay where your ship is stored. I managed to get it into the loading section, but there are a dozen other ships blocking the way. It'll be another few minutes.”

“Fine,” Rogers said. “I'm going to need a VMU. Is there a storage locker nearby that might have some spares?”

“Yeah,” Hart said. “It's in the My Ass room. Let me pull one out for you.”

“No need to get testy,” Rogers said.

“First I'm repairing your ship, now I'm moving it around the belly of the
Flagship
. I'm like your god-damn valet parking assistant.”

Hart's speech degenerated into old-man grumbling as he
worked furiously at the controls. Through the windows that opened out into the docking bay, Rogers could see an automated ship-movement system involving cranes, hoverlifts, and conveyor belts moving ships all around like giant pieces of cargo. At the very end of this bizarre conga line, Rogers could see the
Awesome
, looking as good as new.

“Fine,” Rogers said. “I'll find one myself. Deet, hang tight and see if you can't plug in and help Hart move this along a little quicker before your metal brethren get here.”

“Aye aye,
LOWER EXTREMITY ORIFICE.
”

“My god,” Rogers said as he left the room, “it's like I'm
not
trying to save this whole fleet.”

It only took a few minutes for Rogers to find a VMU with full air reserves that fit him; the engineering crew, particularly the maintainers, were always working outside the ship. By the time he got back, sweating from lugging the thing across the Pit, he could immediately see that things were going a lot faster in the docking bay. The
Awesome
, however, was still a few minutes away from being ready to launch.

“Found one,” Rogers said as he came back through the door, nearly tripping on coiled-up sheets and a sleeping engineer. Neither Deet nor Hart responded; they were far too engrossed in moving ships. Through the other windows, Rogers saw the boominite containers moving rapidly into their proper, cryogenically sealed storage bays.

And then, on the other side of the bay, he saw them being moved back to their original, incorrectly stacked position by a team of droids nonchalantly operating a second fleet of hoverlifts.

“Droids!” he shouted.

“I'm right here,” Deet said.

“No,” Rogers said, rapping him on the shoulder—and immediately regretting it. “
Other
droids. The
want-to-kill-us kind
.”

Hart and Deet turned to see the droids moving the containers back to a position in which they could, say, destroy the entire
ship. All at once, the humans and the droids seemed to notice each other's presence, dropping what they were holding and reaching for weapons. Or, in the humans' case, diving behind hard, metal things to prevent them from being killed by those weapons. Engineers weren't very good fighters.

“Deet,” Rogers said, “how close is my ship to being ready? I need you to open the escape pod hatch on the commissary deck when you can, too, the one nearest to the AGG.”

“Just a few more minutes,” Deet said. He wasn't ducking for cover, but droids' bodies weren't really made for ducking. “One of the hoverlifts got stuck and I had to replace it. But it should be ready soon.”

Rogers, who had thrown himself to the—very cushy—floor with everyone else, crawled over to where Hart was still standing, battering at the controls. Some of the troops who had been napping were scrambling for the door, not wanting to be trapped in such a small room with a squadron of weapon-wielding droids outside.

“Hart,” Rogers shouted, though it wasn't even really that noisy out there, “get out of here. Go help the Pit crew escape if you can. Deet and I will take care of the ship. Thanks for the help.”

Hart gave him a long look, frowning. His face was sweaty and pale, but his hands were steady. Many of the troops on this ship had never seen combat, never been under incredible amounts of stress. But Master Sergeant Hart . . . He'd supervised Rogers.

“Whatever you've got planned,” Hart said, holding out his hand, “I hope it's not really, really stupid.”

Rogers shook his hand. “It's the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life.”

Hart nodded and made his exit, diving behind whatever cover he could find as he made his way across the engineering bay and back toward the rest of the troops, who had mounted a unique counteroffensive by using remote-controlled hoverlifts and ramming them into droids. It wasn't going to do much. If the droids
hadn't been concentrating half their forces trying to reconstruct a bomb, they would have overtaken the small force of engineers easily.

All the rest of the napping troops had made their way out of the control room, leaving Rogers and Deet alone.

And that's when Rogers started to get naked.

“Perhaps I have misunderstood something about human response to stress,” Deet said, “but this doesn't seem like a typical rational response.”

“I'm not freaking out,” Rogers said, pulling his shirt over his head and starting to tug himself into the tight-fitting VMU. “I'm getting ready. Just keep moving stuff around and stop staring at my ass.”

Deet made a couple of beeping noises and then a noise that sounded an awful lot like a camera clicking.

“Did . . . did you just take a picture of me?”

“No,” Deet said, going back to focusing on the console.

Rogers gave him a dirty look and finished putting on the rest of the VMU. Holding his helmet in his hand, he turned once more to survey the battle going on outside. The droids were moving in very rapidly on the dug-in engineers, some of whom had found small disruptor pistols somewhere and had begun returning fire. Hart delivered a spinning back kick to the face of one of the droids and, from what Rogers could tell, snapped his own tibia in half.

“What are you doing now?” Deet asked as Rogers started scratching on a piece of paper he found in the control room. Rogers always had a thing for doing calculations on paper, and luckily, so had someone else in the control room. Actually, as he looked at the paper, he realized that someone had a thing for drawing naked pictures of other crew members. But at least he was able to do what he needed to do.

“Math,” Rogers said. “I don't have time to explain. How's the ship?”

“I have completed the rearranging of ships in the docking bay,” Deet said. “The
Awesome
is ready for launch. The air lock will open automatically when you get close. I've also opened the bay to the hatch near the escape pods on the commissary deck as you requested.”

“Great,” Rogers said. “You stay here and help. I'm going to—”

Turning around, Rogers saw a droid standing in the doorway. A sleek, off-gray Froid with a disruptor rifle in his hand and psycho-badger face paint.

“Oh shit.”

“Oh One, actually,” the droid said.

Rogers thought he was going to have to change his clothes again.

He could see battle scars on the droid now, likely from the incident in the training room that he'd caused. At that moment, however, Rogers couldn't decide if that mistake had been the best or the worst thing he'd ever done. And, really, that decision should have been pretty low on his list of priorities.