by Joe Zieja
For his own disguise, Rogers, unwilling to shave his beard even when it came down to the fate of humanity, went with a hat.
The only person who hadn’t shown up yet was the Viking.
“Don’t worry,” Mailn said. “She’s coming. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more excited about the possibility of killing people during the entire time I’ve known her. What the heck have you guys been doing since I’ve been gone?”
Rogers shrugged. “A bit of this and a bit of that. You know. Lots of subtlety and charm.”
Mailn looked like she didn’t believe him. “Right.”
The sergeant had barely been in uniform for a few hours before being told to change back into civilian clothes for the mission. Now she was dressed in the exact same outfit she’d been wearing when she’d returned to the ship, bashfully, if a bit indirectly, asking for Rogers’ forgiveness. The more he thought about it, though, if Mailn hadn’t been so incredibly dissatisfied with his terrible command, she wouldn’t have run away to join the pirates. And if she hadn’t run away to join the pirates, she wouldn’t have saved all of them from certain destruction.
In reality, Rogers’ crappy commanding had saved everyone.
“Hey, next I need you to teach me how to jump,” Rogers said.
“Why?” Mailn said. “It’s just ducking in reverse.”
“Exactly!” Rogers yelled. Several people stopped what they were doing to stare at him. He felt his face get a little red.
“Uh, never mind. Hey, here comes the Viking.”
The docking bay seemed smaller with her entrance. She wore utility pants and boots and a loose-fitting T-shirt. Her hair, short enough to not need pulling back while in uniform, looked pretty much the same. Rogers felt his lips tingle and his knees weaken a little at the memory of their last meeting, but he tried not to let it show.
Tried, but failed. In a moment, Mailn was standing him back up again after he’d fainted.
“What in the hell . . . ?” Mailn got out before being silenced by a look from the Viking. She cleared her throat. “Right. Business.”
“Stop screwing around, Rogers,” the Viking said. She looked around. “Where are all the—”
“[CALL FUNCTION: GREET. OUTPUT STRING: GREETINGS.]”
Rogers could be firm in one belief that he would hold until the day he died from liver failure at the ripe old age of forty-seven: he hated droids.
Through one of the hatches that opened to a docking bridge, Rogers saw one of the shinies approaching, accompanied by another shiny on either side. The three of them, walking in a wedge formation, came to a synchronized stop. Rogers noticed that the center droid looked like he’d been finished the same way as the Artificial Intelligence Ground Combat Squadron (AIGCS) models; the metal of its frame was just a bit darker, and its parts looked like they’d been assembled with a bit more care.
“You’re a Froid,” Rogers said, nodding at the newer-looking one. “Why are you talking to me like that?”
The Froid in the center gestured to the droid on his right. “My apologies for the communication error. We are dealing with a very diverse set of issues regarding updating communications protocols within all of our family.”
Rogers shrugged, wondering if these droids had been programmed to understand body language. It felt like so long ago he’d interacted with any droid that wasn’t Deet, so he wasn’t quite sure what they could and couldn’t do. Obviously, even within this group of three there was a disparity of abilities.
“Family?” the Viking barked. “You have to be kidding me.”
“Easy,” Rogers said. As ridiculous as he thought it was, there was no point in fighting with their potential saviors over terms of endearment.
The droids looked at him—or at least he thought they were looking at him—silently for a moment. The Froid in the center finally spoke up.
“We have arrived to accept you onto our ship, and accept the deactivated frames you currently possess as payment.”
“That hasn’t been easy to fulfill, you know,” Rogers said.
That was no lie, either. A vast majority of the droids had not only been deactivated, but destroyed. The rest were scattered in different areas throughout the ship, including the refuse deck, where many of them were heaped in piles that were about as easy to untangle as a basket full of power cables. They were also heavy, being composed entirely out of metal composites, and not exactly stackable.
Rogers hadn’t done any of this himself, of course, but Master Sergeant Hart had told him all of these problems in great detail, over and over again, via messages on his datapad during the course of the last few hours. Rogers was going to miss Hart if they all died in a man-made black hole.
“We understand that difficulties abound in all facets of this mission and its particulars. We hope that our mutual agreement can ease these difficulties.”
Rogers squinted at the droid. Was this thing actually talking down to him? It certainly sounded like it.
“Once you pick us up, my logistics team will reach out and direct you to a hangar where another one of your ships can pick up the crates that have the droids we were able to salvage in them.”
The droid turned his head sideways a bit. “And if this does not happen?”
“Well then you have us sitting on one of your ships, don’t you?”
A small beep came from the Froid. “This is acceptable.”
Nothing about any of this is acceptable, Rogers thought.
He turned and looked at his crew, the badly disguised entertainment equipment servicers, in whose hands rested the fate of humanity. Everyone looked a good mixture of nervous and unreasonably confident. And, even weirder, everyone seemed to be looking for him to lead the way.
“Well isn’t this one big [EXPLETIVE] party.”
Rogers whirled to see Deet coming from the entrance to the up-line. He was carrying an old, battered backpack that Rogers was sure was not standard Meridan issue. In fact, it looked as though it had instead been cobbled together from pieces of Meridan-issue bedding.
“Deet!” Rogers yelled. “I thought I told you to stay on the bridge.”
“Yeah, well,” Deet said. “I ignored you.”
Rogers grumbled. “What else is new?”
He still had no idea what the droids were all about, what they were capable of, what their real goals were other than to expand their family by grabbing humanity by the short hairs. The last thing he needed was for the only droid he could trust—at least most of the time—to be influenced by these unknowns.
“Why are you carrying a backpack?”
Deet shrugged—poorly, since his shoulder joints didn’t really work that way—and gestured toward the droids with his free hand.
“You made a promise.”
“I made a what?”
“A promise,” Deet said. “Generally recognized as a statement of future intent that indicates a specific course of action.”
“I know what a promise is, Deet,” Rogers said. “I’m wondering what promise I made you.”
Deet beeped. “You promised that when all of this was over, I could go figure all of this out.” He pointed at the three droids who were waiting patiently—could droids be patient?—for Rogers’ crew. “I want to go figure all of this out.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rogers said, bristling. “I said no such thing.”
Deet played back an audio recording in which Rogers did indeed say such a thing.
“Fine,” Rogers said. “I did say such a thing. But I was very clear that you wouldn’t be going anywhere until this was all over, wasn’t I?” Rogers gestured to the crack team of misfits that was about to charge into the heart of the enemy. “Does this look like it’s all over to you?”
Deet seemed to take a moment to process Rogers’ argument. He looked at the loading hatch, looked at the crew about to go storming into Snaggardir’s HQ, and then back at Rogers.
“Yes, it does,” Deet said.
“Very funny,”
Rogers said. “We’re going to do fine, Deet.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant that it’s over either way. If you don’t have some grandiose task for me to accomplish while you’re all sacrificing yourselves for the good of mankind, then what use is there to me staying on the ship? I’m either about to become very compressed space dust like the rest of you, or you’re going to save the day and you’re all going to go back to your relatively uninteresting lives.”
Rogers looked at him blankly. “Deet, do you remember that long conversation we had maybe twenty minutes ago on the bridge? You are my official deputy on this ship. When I am gone, you are in charge. When we are done disabling the Galaxy Eater, it’s your job to help Krell and Thrumeaux lead the assault on Snaggardir’s forces so that we can end this.”
“But I don’t know the first thing about space combat!” Deet whined.
“Oh, wow!” Rogers said, maybe a little too loudly. “Doesn’t it feel really bad when everyone around you is telling you that you have huge responsibilities no matter how many times you explain in great detail how you are mentally, emotionally, and physically unable to perform the duties required by those responsibilities and now they want to promote you to fucking admiral?”
Their little pocket of the docking bay went eerily silent. Rogers could hear his own labored breathing, and maybe a sob, echo in the metallic cavity of the room. The three droids looked unimpressed. Everyone else just looked sort of embarrassed.
“I believe this is called ‘projecting,’ ” Deet said.
“No,” Rogers said, totally not crying. “Projecting is what you do out of your chest cavity during briefings. This is worse.”
He gestured grandly all around him. “This is the military.”
For a moment, Rogers thought that Deet was going to argue with him. He couldn’t exactly read Deet’s body language, but there was just some sense of droid intuition that he’d picked up over what seemed like an eternity dealing with Deet. Then, abruptly, Deet turned and began walking away, the backpack sliding down until it was supported by the crook of his elbow. What had he been taking with him, anyway?
“Besides, Deet,” Rogers said, clearing his throat. “There’s more to this than just me. You’re technically classified as a piece of inventory in the Meridan military. You can’t just wander off the ship. Every time you went someplace, you’d trigger every alarm system they have for stolen goods.”
“I am not inventory,” Deet said. “I am—”
“Yes, you are, Deet. We’ve gone over this.”
“And what I am trying to tell you, if you weren’t being so [EXPLETIVE] rude, is that I am not in the inventory. Don’t you remember Suresh saying he couldn’t find me?” Deet beeped. “I checked the database. According to MGN records, I was disposed of. I don’t exist.”
Rogers rolled his eyes. “For all the lessons Belgrave has been giving you on being human, I can’t believe you still don’t get this.” Rogers took a step forward, though what physical intimidation he thought he could impose on a droid, he had no idea. “This has nothing to do with whether or not you ‘exist’ in the Meridan databases. So you can walk off the ship. Fine. But that’s not what we need right now, Deet. We don’t need you to go plugging into computers and figuring out what Sal Snaggardir’s underwear size is. Now is not the time for personal shit, Deet!”
The anger building up inside Rogers caused his body to shake. For something that was supposed to be intelligent, Deet sure could be a goddamn moron sometimes.
“Now get back on the bridge, get up on the command platform, and do your damn job. Which I guess is my damn job. But I’ll be busy.”
Deet stared at him wordlessly for a moment, his blue glowing eyes flickering. Rogers worried that the three droids would take Deet forcibly if Rogers didn’t let him go, but Rogers needed someone on the bridge who could conduct the assault portion of the plan. Belgrave sure as hell wasn’t going to do it.
“Fine,” Deet said finally. “I’ll fight your stupid [EXPLETIVE] war. But if we all die, and I never get to go find myself, I am going to be so [EXPLETIVE] [URINATED].”
Everyone snickered like a bunch of schoolboys.
“Shut up!” Deet yelled. “You are all making me so [URINATED] already!”
The snickers turned into outright laughter. Deet started to run away, which, considering his body was composed of mismatched parts, didn’t make anything better.
“I hate you!” Deet yelled as he disappeared from sight. “I hate you all! You don’t understand me, and it [URINATES] me right off! Oh [RELIGIOUS CONDEMNATION] I hate this [EXPLETIVE] profanity generator!”
“Don’t urinate on the way to the bridge!” Rogers called, wiping tears from his face. His abs hurt. This told him that, first, he hadn’t laughed in quite a while, and second, he also hadn’t done a sit-up in a while.
When he turned back to the three droids who were, presumably, going to escort them onto their ship, he couldn’t help but feel like they didn’t find any of this quite as funny. It wasn’t because of their metallic nonpersonalities, but because they were all pointing weapons at the place where Deet used to be.
“Hey!” Rogers said. “What gives?”
The droids didn’t answer him, but after a moment, they put their weapons down. The Viking had her hand on her hip where a pistol might normally have been, but they were all unarmed for this mission, so she’d just ended up grabbing her belt and tugging, which was something that Rogers aspired to one day do himself, if she ever let him.
“I don’t like this,” she said under her breath.
“Neither do I,” Rogers said. “But we’re stuck with what we’ve got for now.”
“We are equipped with cochlear amplifiers, and can hear everything all of you are saying,” the lead droid, Pete, said. “There is no use in whispering.”
“Well, thanks for the update, Pete,” Rogers said. “Look, it’s going to make it tough for us to trust you if you’re pointing weapons at our deputy commander, though I can’t say I haven’t wanted to shoot him once or twice.”
“We have difficulty dealing with anomalies,” Pete said. His voice seemed to have modulated to a lower pitch, giving it a deadly edge that wasn’t there before. Was Deet sure he wanted to go along with these guys?
Rogers sighed, looking around at the group. He felt less nervous, for some reason.
“Are we all ready?”
A mixture of nods and affirmations bubbled up from the group. Nobody else looked nervous. Why were they taking him along, again?
“Okay,” Rogers said. “Let’s get this over with.”
He gestured to the droids to lead the way, who did nothing remotely like leading the way. Another gesture produced similar lackluster results.
“Pete, pay attention,” Rogers said. “I’m trying to tell you to escort us onto your ship.”
Pete looked at him. “I am unable to ascertain why you did not simply state this desire.”
Rogers felt like punching the droid in his face, but he, unlike Hart, understood physics. “I am stating it now!”
The trip to the droid’s ship took an eternity. A dark cloud of silence and nerves followed them as they walked through the docking hatch, across the bridge, and onto the waiting vessel, which, according to the database, was called the Endgame. This seemed both a highly appropriate and inappropriate name for a cargo runner, which was what it was. According to the droids, the Endgame had been a Snaggardir’s cargo vessel that had been leased to a surrogate New Neptunian delivery company. It was Spartan, as most New Neptunian things were, which Rogers always thought was another word for boring.
As the docking hatch disengaged, he noticed that the ship was kind of empty. Eerily empty. As in literally the only creatures on the ship were Rogers’ team and the three droids.
“What gives?” Rogers said. “No family?”
“Did you expect little droid babies to be running around?” Mailn asked. Rogers elbowed her in the ribs.
“Pro
duction has not yet been perfected,” Pete said, and offered no further explanation.
“Well, thanks for turning on the oxygen for us,” Rogers said. “Is there a place we can talk and plan while you’re shuttling us into the mouth of the lion?”
“We are not going to a zoo, Captain Rogers. We are going to Snaggardir’s headquarters.”
“Of course,” Rogers said. “My mistake.”
Pete led them to a room located just below the main cockpit area, which was barely big enough to fit the five of them. The Endgame wasn’t built for much of a crew, and its former occupants likely had had very few needs for a conference room. When they were finally all together, Pete stood directly outside and faced into the room, not moving or speaking. Rogers pressed a button, and the door slid closed in his face.
“God, they are just so weird,” Rogers said.
Everyone looked like they agreed with him.
“Okay,” Rogers said. “Let’s go over it one more time. Tunger, if you would, please.”
Tunger, whose whole demeanor had changed, stood up and smiled at everyone warmly.
“Well, hello all you beautiful people. So glad to see you.”
Rogers sighed. “I miss the old Tunger.”
Plugging his datapad into one of the terminals in the room, the ex-zookeeper managed to get one of the large displays functioning within a few seconds. A map of the Snaggardir HQ building appeared.
“Alright,” Tunger said brightly, pointing at the map. “Here is where we’re all going to die, everyone.”
• • •
It was the longest Un-Space trip that Rogers had ever experienced. Moving through Un-Space didn’t exactly take time, in the normal sense of the word, but time still felt like it passed to everyone who was experiencing the journey. Rogers always compared the experience to spelunkingI while being turned inside out.II In this case, however, it was more than the space/time shift that was making his stomach do strange and uncomfortable things.
