by Joe Zieja
“It’s ‘bind,’ ” someone shouted.
Rogers took a long look at Deet, not knowing what to think. He’d sort of always wanted to electrically shock the prototype Froid, but he’d never wanted to actually cause him physical harm. What had gotten into him? He’d endangered everyone in the fleet by going off and pursuing personal interests in the middle of a space battle! What kind of absurdly selfish, inconsiderate person would do such a thing?
“By the way,” Deet asked. “How was your date with—”
“Right!” Rogers yelled, very loudly. “Everyone back to your battle stations. Zaz, Rholos—take the data and form the most nonsensical battle plan you can come up with immediately. Do absolutely nothing that Sun Tzu Jr. tells you to do. Don’t even run it past me—just execute. Good?”
Zaz and Rholos nodded and went into action. It wasn’t long before the dots on the map began to swirl and things—the right things—began to blow up. Their temporary solution of concentrating fire only on the attacking ships had bought them a bit of an edge. It all happened so fast, Rogers didn’t have a chance to start giving orders that didn’t make sense. The ships in his fleet all seemed to know what they were doing—or, rather, not know what they were doing on purpose. This whole nonstrategy thing was getting kind of confusing.
“Sir,” a signal operator yelled from the far corner of the bridge, where signal operators belonged. “We’ve intercepted a retreat order from the Jupiterian commander. They’re bugging out!”
“I don’t see any bugs,” Deet said. “I just ran a scan in my software and I didn’t see any there, either.”
Rogers knew they were fleeing before the signal operator had finished his sentence. He could see the concentration of Jupiterian ships beginning to move rapidly to the very Un-Space point they were trying to prevent the 331st from entering. Without their IFF advantage, the Jupiterians’ odds weren’t very good; the 331st and the Colliders were the numerically superior force by a large margin.
“I can’t believe I’m asking this,” Rholos said, “but, sir—should we pursue?”
Rogers stroked his beard, which seemed to be something one was required to do when making decisions that would kill people. He actually wondered if that is why Meridan dress and appearance expressly prohibited beards—they telegraphed your intent to the enemy.
“No,” Rogers said. “Let them go. It’s more important that we get home, and I don’t want to lose any more ships just being vengeful.”
“Got it, sir.” Rholos offered a sharp salute, not seeming very celebratory at all for having just won their second major space battle. Rogers was two for two! Rholos started talking into her headset. “All forces pull back into formation and prepare to enter Un-Space as soon as it’s clear of enemy forces. We’re going home.”
Home. What a concept.
“Touchdown!” Zaz yelled, his eyes wide and frantic. Three troops who Rogers didn’t recognize upended a giant container of orange liquid over Zaz’s head. Rogers fell back into his chair and tried not to cry.
Home, Sweet . . . Mother of Jesus It’s All Gone to Hell
The rules of physics were difficult to ignore, but when you were in Un-Space, you kind of had to. Rogers was an engineer by trade, but even he didn’t really understand the ins and outs of the strange faster-than-light transportation method. From what he knew, Un-Space had been discovered, not invented. When the Milky Way had collapsed—mostly due to the scientific exploits of careless Jupiterians—some things had gotten moved around that weren’t really supposed to move. The resultant configuration of the solar system had revealed a point in space that wasn’t really a point in space. Nobody really asked any questions; they were just happy that this new door gave them a web of subspace pathways that led exclusively to different areas of the Fortuna Stultus galaxy, which would become humanity’s new home.
And now, traveling through a complicated series of Un-Space pathways to get back to Meridan headquarters on Merida Prime, Rogers wasn’t keen on asking any questions either. He just wanted to put his feet on solid ground for a while and have a drink or twenty.
He also wanted to punch a droid in the face. Unfortunately, even while in Un-Space, one couldn’t ignore the laws of physics completely.
“I feel like you should probably be having this conversation privately,” Commander Belgrave said. “Praise in public, chastise in private, and all that.”
“I’m not really sure I care how you feel,” Rogers said. “Don’t you need a nap or something after actually piloting the ship for the first time in a decade?”
“I haven’t been the helmsman for a decade,” Belgrave said, his mouth thin.
“Are you sure? Because it feels like it.” Rogers turned to Deet. “What could have possibly been so important as to pull you away from following my orders?”
Deet seemed to consider for a moment, then beeped. “Considering the [EXCREMENT] quality of your orders, I can think of approximately one thousand four hundred and—”
“Deet,” Rogers warned.
“What? You asked.”
The bridge still buzzed with activity, albeit at a lower level of stress and panic. Most of the combat systems and communication desks were empty, since that stuff tended to not work properly in Un-Space, but troops coordinated repairs, shifts, and rearmament. All of it was still terribly unfamiliar to everyone, so it was mostly a ship-wide combination of people who didn’t know what they were doing and people who didn’t know what they were doing but who were pretending they did.
“What were you doing when you were down at the IT desk ignoring my orders?”
“I was searching the greater Meridan information network, since the jamming had been lifted. I had questions that I wanted answered.”
Rogers frowned. “I didn’t know droids could be curious.”
“Neither did I,” Deet said. “But apparently I am. Very curious.”
“About what?”
“About all the things I told you before, Rogers,” Deet said. “About where I came from, why I’m different.”
Rogers leaned back in his chair a little bit, and someone came up to him holding a datapad that required his signature. Looking at it—something that he was positive ex-Admiral Klein never did, since cooks kept ending up on munitions duty—he saw that it was a request for . . . pudding. It didn’t even really have any context. It simply said Can I have pudding? with a line for Rogers’ signature.
“Did you eat your meat?” Rogers asked the troop, who silently bowed his head and turned away.
“How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?” Rogers yelled after him.
“Anyway,” Rogers said, wondering if this was the level of decision making that had caused Klein to go insane/chronically stupid. “We talked about this, Deet. I said that we had a job to do and that you could go research your origins, or whatever, after we were finished.”
“But what if we never finish?” Deet asked. “What if you lead all of us into a fiery, miserable death?”
Belgrave cleared his throat.
“I am not going to lead us all into a fiery, miserable death,” Rogers said. “We’re going to go home to Admiral Holdt, and he’s going to lead us all into a fiery, miserable death.”
Belgrave cleared his throat again.
“Get a glass of water,” Rogers said. “Deet, if we all die, it’s not really going to matter, is it? Do you see what I’m getting at here?”
“No,” Deet said.
“I’m saying that there are more important things going on right now than figuring out your operating system version number.”
“What are you talking about?” Deet said. “It’s version sixteen point two point three point five, beta.”
Putting a hand on his forehead, Rogers tried to force his brain to stop functioning.
“Listen to me,” Rogers said. “I need you to—”
“Sir!” someone shouted. Turning, Rogers saw an older man approaching the command platform who clearly had
not read any of the instructions regarding dress and appearance. He had a full beard that was more suited to a caveman than a corporal, a pair of glasses that looked like they might have been salvaged from spare telescope parts, and, most bizarrely, three eyebrows. The man handed Rogers a datapad and saluted, his also non-standard-issue floppy hat flopping to one side floppily.
“Can I not get five minutes to yell at a robot around here?” Rogers muttered, looking at the datapad. Another request, this time for the zoo deck. Someone wanted to have “open time,” where all the animals would be allowed to roam freely around the ship. The reasoning cited something about all of the animals having a sense of community with the rest of the crew.
“No, Tunger,” Rogers said, passing the datapad back.
“Aw, but sir,” Tunger said, removing the beard, eyebrows, hat, and glasses. Where had he gotten all of these disguises? “We’re all one big family, aren’t we?”
“One big family with a distinct lack of claw marks on our faces. There are lions down there, Tunger.”
“They’re friendly!”
Rogers thought back to their battle with the corrupted droids and watching Tunger ride the back of said friendly lion into battle.
“No.”
“I never get to have any fun!” Tunger shouted as he stormed off. “I’m not allowed to talk the way I want to talk, be the spy I want to be, no beards, no animal family time . . .”
The corporal vanished, an unintelligible list of complaints echoing as he exited the bridge and the door closed behind him.
“Captain Rogers,” Belgrave said. “Maybe I can lend a hand here.”
“I am nearly positive that you can’t,” Rogers said.
“Have we talked about empathy yet, Deet?” Belgrave asked.
“No,” Rogers said, interrupting them. “No. Stop. Look, he still doesn’t even have a handle on telling good jokes and his philosophy is basically that of a pretentious thirteen-year-old with abandonment issues. If you’re going to keep teaching him the finer points of being human, at least finish one thing before moving on to something else.”
As was typical of this pair, Rogers apparently popped out of existence while they prattled.
“What is empathy?” Deet asked. “I am able to find the definition of this term, but unable to process it in a way that makes sense for my circuits.”
Belgrave leaned back in his chair, his face settling into the familiar but totally inaccurate expression of a sage pedagogue. He steepled his fingers, a gesture that Rogers thought was equal parts awkward and ridiculous. Who had made that the signature pose for lecturing people?
“Empathy is like a flower,” Belgrave began.
“Oh, yeah,” Rogers said. “Let’s use a simile to describe something to a droid that takes everything literally.” He grabbed his own datapad to see if there was anything that he needed to take care of. His message queue mostly consisted of inane and unimportant requests that would have been better handled by the lowest possible person on the chain of command. One thing Klein had had right was that he never answered his own messages. Maybe Rogers needed an exec. Deet could do this stuff.
“Do you mean empathy is photosynthetic and pollinated by bees?” Deet asked.
Maybe Rogers needed a human exec.
“Told you so,” Rogers said.
“Let me start again,” Belgrave said, looking perhaps slightly less confident than he had a few moments earlier. “Empathy is the ability to repeatedly ask other people how they are feeling.”
Rogers looked up. “That’s not empathy.”
Deet paused for a moment, then looked at Rogers. “How are you feeling, Rogers?”
“That is definitely not empathy,” he said again.
Instead of acknowledging Rogers, Deet turned to Belgrave. “Did I do it? Did I do empathy?”
“We’ll work on it,” Belgrave said.
“No, you won’t,” Rogers said. “Because that’s not empathy. You’re not doing anything except annoying me, which you were proficient in long before taking emotional health advice from the helmsman.”
Belgrave, finally reintroducing Rogers into his reality, bristled at the comment.
“Sir, I feel like disparaging a man based on his position in the crew is unbecoming of a flag officer.”
“What’s a flag officer?” Deet said. “Did someone promote the space semaphore guy?”
Rogers put his datapad down and pressed his palms against his temples. “No. Both of you please stop talking.”
They both stopped talking, and Rogers immediately realized that he had asked Deet to come to the command platform for the express purpose of talking. Their idiocy was forcing him to contradict himself, which he did enough already without their help. He took a deep breath.
“Did you at least learn anything that might help us out?” Rogers asked.
“Well,” Deet said, “I only have access to the same things that any Meridan government official has access to. I could do better if I was on Merida Prime and hardwired to something in Meridan headquarters.”
“So you found nothing interesting while everyone around us was dying,” Rogers said.
“That’s not what I said. Just because I have access to the same information as everyone else doesn’t mean that I can’t use it better.” Deet’s center compartment opened up a bit, revealing what he’d started calling his “naughty bytes,” which Rogers had to admit was kind of funny. Inside was a small holographic projector, useful for displaying slideshows or rude gestures that couldn’t be accomplished with robot hands.
“I started cross-referencing public information about Snaggardir’s and historical records about the downfall of Jupiter and the War of Musical Chairs.”
Rogers nodded. Now that they knew that the omnipresent company was actually the center of the Jupiterian resistance—and had been for nearly two centuries—they might be able to deduce some other information about who they were, where they were, and what they wanted.
“And?” Rogers asked.
Images started to come out of Deet’s naughty bytes, projecting a few faces that swirled around the Snaggardir company logo—which, Rogers realized, was literally a planet with an empty chair on top of it. Maybe that should have been a clue.
“This is the current board of directors of Snaggardir’s,” Deet said.
Four profiles floated in the air. Rogers didn’t recognize any of them.
“Seems like a small board,” Rogers said.
“The board is segmented into major and minor members. There are only four on the major board, and then there are an additional seven on the minor board. Almost everyone is somehow in the Snaggardir family, either by blood or by marriage. Sal Snaggardir is the boss.”
A face came to the front that was the picture of shrewdness: balding and thin, with piercing eyes and an unconvincing smile. Rogers felt like he might inhabit the house at the end of the street that nobody was ever supposed to go near, the one into which all soccer balls disappeared forever.
“Sara Alshazari is the communications manager,” Deet said, displaying a severe-looking woman in her mid-forties. Rogers felt like he’d heard the name somewhere before, but wasn’t sure. There were a lot of Saras in the galaxy.
“This is Gerd Szinder,” Deet began. “He’s director of sales, but his record has nothing to do with sales at all. He was an officer in the Thelicosan army before he got kicked out.”
Rogers frowned. “Kicked out? Did he not know his calculus or something?”
“I haven’t been able to figure that out yet,” Deet said. “It’s not publicly available information. Before that, however, he was fairly decorated, but not a top performer. This person, on the other hand . . . I can’t find out any information about him at all.”
A face that resembled a hard-boiled egg came to the forefront of the display. “This is Dr. Mattic. He’s a technology expert who worked for different companies all over the galaxy for most of his life.”
“Does he have a fi
rst name?” Rogers asked.
“Not that I can tell,” Deet said. “It’s pretty strange; every document simply refers to him as ‘doctor’ or Dr. Mattic. From his list of accomplishments, it’s possible he got his first doctorate in technology at birth. If he’s been active in the scientific community for so long, there should be records, but there’s nothing.”
Rogers leaned back and thought for a moment, looking at the faces. Given their previous occupations, it wasn’t hard to figure out who did what for the revolution. But what could he do with this information? Honestly, it wasn’t very in depth; most of this had probably already been deduced or discovered by the teams of analysts working for Holdt at headquarters. Sure, it was nice to know, but it wasn’t going to help Rogers bust through any more blockades.
“Anything else?” Rogers asked. “You were down there for a long time.”
“From what I can tell, the Snaggardirs are an offshoot of the original Jupiterian family that had a major part to play in the terraforming technology that collapsed the Milky Way.”
Rogers’ eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
The colonization of the other planets of the solar system had been instrumental in beginning its collapse. Some of the scientific aspects had been obfuscated—many say by the Jupiterian scientists who wanted to erase the part they played in the collapse—but there seemed to be no doubt that experimental terraforming technology had started the chain reaction. Rogers knew there was more to the story; he’d have to do some reading later. Up until now, it had just been ancient history.
“Okay. What else?” Rogers said.
Deet was quiet.
“That’s it? That’s all you found?”
“I discovered that Snaggardir’s secret nacho cheese recipe isn’t very secret. It was stolen from a movie theater in—”
“I cannot even begin to tell you how much I don’t care about nacho cheese,” Rogers said.
“Lots of people care about it,” Deet said quickly. “It was one of the biggest lawsuits Snaggardir ever went through, and there were huge jalapeño farms that—”
Rogers held up a hand, and the images coming out of Deet vanished. The droid hung his head a little bit, a distinctly human expression that made Rogers realize that Deet was at least a tiny bit ashamed of what he’d done. Was empathy that far from regret? Rogers made a mental note to absolutely not ask this question out loud.
