System Failure

by Joe Zieja

“I may need some debugging,” Deet said, though he didn’t really believe it. Which meant it was a lie. What was happening here?

  “This is probable. You have spent a lot of cycles among humans. We can run diagnostics when you get on board. This way, please.”

  The droid trio unceremoniously turned and walked up the gangplank, not waiting to see if Deet was going to follow them. They didn’t even politely ask if they could help him with his bags. In truth, he didn’t have any bags. Just one little backpack he’d stolen from Rogers’ room, in which he had a small vial of hand sanitizer and a U-shaped neck pillow.

  “So long, Flagship,” Deet said. “You’re a piece of [EXCREMENT], and I am happy to be rid of you.”

  Deet walked on board, having told his second lie of the day.

  • • •

  So Dathum really wasn’t that great.

  Rogers had seen so many damn pamphlets and travel shows about the tropical beaches, the swaying palm trees, the drinks that came served in coconuts. But now that he was here, it all seemed like one big hairy scam that targeted pensioners and the under-traveled. Sure, all of the things they’d advertised were true. Dathum’s beauty was unparalleled among many other destinations all across Fortuna Stultus. Great drinks. The palm trees definitely swayed. Lots of interesting and inventive swimwear.

  But everyone in the pamphlets had been happy. Rogers wasn’t happy. So therefore, Dathum was just a dirty lie.

  Rogers turned one of the aforementioned pamphlets over in his hand. Omnipresent all over every resort, they advertised memberships and upgrades and all-you-can-eat buffets. These must have been new, because none of them made sense and all of them were written in capital lettering. One of them, talking about one of the nicer buffets, just said EAT ALL THE FOOD under a pile of bananas. He was glad that Ralph had gotten another job working for the marketing department of a travel company. Rogers had written him a glowing recommendation.

  There was only one problem with all of this: it was boring.

  High Admiral Holdt had told him he could have anything he wanted after he wrapped up the incident with the Jupiterians. A release from his commitment to the Meridan Galactic Navy. A parade. A daytime TV show. Whatever Rogers desired, Holdt had been given carte blanche from the Meridan government to grant it to him. Rogers only had to ask. After all, the galaxy—and all of humanity—was in his debt, or some shit.

  Why he’d picked four weeks’ vacation, followed by a return to duty, was an utter mystery to him. He could still hear the words coming out of his mouth, surprising (and no doubt disappointing) everyone within earshot.

  He couldn’t really go back to smuggling or conning. He was famous now. Gambling might be fun as a profession, but he didn’t seem to be very lucky anymore either.

  So, in reality, he’d had no choice but to go back to work for the Flagship. All of his stuff was there anyway. Which meant that now, for the last week or so of vacation, it was sand, water, sand, palm trees, sand, water, frilly drinks, sand, water . . .

  Something beeped.

  “Oh thank god,” Rogers said. He picked up his datapad, which only told him that someone from the Flagship was calling.

  “Hello R. Wilson Rogers,” Keffoule’s voice said.

  “Oh, it’s you,” Rogers said. “I thought we were kind of done with all of this. And my datapad said the Flagship was calling me.”

  “I am being routed through your ship. I wasn’t aware you were off shirking your duties. I am firmly reinstalled aboard the Limiter, thank you very much.” She stopped for a moment, and Rogers could hear all sorts of weird noise in the background. It wasn’t totally clear, but he could have sworn she was tittering. He could hear Xan’s monotone voice somewhere near Keffoule. The two of them had been totally insufferable since the conclusion of the battle, always whispering to each other at inappropriate moments. Keffoule kept grabbing Xan’s butt when she thought nobody was looking, but everyone always saw. It was an unnervingly weird shift.

  “I don’t know which version of you I like less,” Rogers said. “Do you two really have to act like that all the time?”

  “Oh, Rogers,” she said. “You need to learn how to throw an extra variable in your equation now and then. How to have a little fun.”

  His stomach felt like it had just turned to lead.

  “Anyway,” Keffoule said with a sigh, “I was calling to tell you that it’s on.”

  Rogers grunted and hung up. “It” was a public statement being made by the newly formed Coalition of Stultitia, which was a council of the political bodies of all four systems in the Fortuna Stultus galaxy. It was an absolutely terrible name, and Rogers had little faith that anything would actually get done, but they’d convened to try to decide the fate of both Sal Snaggardir and his family and the Jupiterian people as a whole. Flash, who had somehow achieved the reputation of a war hero, had been chosen to lead it, of course.

  Using his datapad to connect to the server, he saw Flash talking into a microphone at a delicately arranged press conference. The symbols of all of the systems were behind him, and a fifth sigil had been added. Jupiter’s, he assumed. The detail wasn’t fine enough for him to see exactly what it was, but it honestly just looked like a picture of the planet. They hadn’t had much time to come up with anything creative, he supposed.

  Flash’s lips were moving, but it was clear that someone had forgotten to turn the microphone on. Rogers couldn’t hear anything. In a way, that was better. He was still wearing his damned aviator sunglasses, and Rogers hated hearing him talk. At least he was off his ship.

  “His” ship. Forever, now, he guessed.

  The microphone kicked on somewhere near the end of the speech. Flash was mid-sentence.

  “—to bring a sense of intergalactic stability and order to the galaxy that has heretofore only existed by way of the Two Hundred Years (and Counting) Peace.”

  Rogers’ eyes widened. Those were three- and four-syllable words! Who the hell was this person?

  “To do this, we need to employ synergistic awareness of all the various and multifaceted components of culture and history to all systems with equanimity, given what has only recently transpired with the Jupiterian people. Sal Snaggardir and his family will be receiving full pardons on the condition that they lend their assistance to the restructuring of the galaxy. We will carve out a place among us in which the Jupiterians can live in a natural and healthy mixture of peace and assimilation, achieve self-governance, and participate in galactic affairs. As long as they totally pinkie-swear they’re not gonna get on our six and try to slurp up the planets again.” He cleared his throat. “As long as they promise to remain nonaggressive, and assist in the elimination of rogue elements within the formerly radical Jupiterian regime.”

  “Oh my god,” Rogers said out loud. “It’s Klein. He’s another Klein.”

  Someone on the other end of the beach turned to the sky and gave a slow, dramatic salute.

  Rogers stared into the distance as he turned off the datapad, hearing all he’d needed to hear. Even if the Society of Burned Bread was to completely implode, there would always be another Klein.

  He sighed, tucking his datapad away. He wished the Viking was here. Though she probably would hate this place even more than Rogers did.

  The Viking had only called him once or twice in the last month or so from her deployment to New Neptune. Every available ground troop from all of the systems had been called in for mop-up duty, and she and Mailn had gotten deployed almost immediately. The job for fleet commanders might be done, but a lot of work remained to restore stability to the galaxy. It would likely take months, if not years, to bring a sense of normalcy back to Fortuna Stultus. Rogers missed her, of course, and he was fairly certain she missed him, too, when she wasn’t having fun clubbing people over the head.

  Tunger had completely disappeared. Whether he was dead or alive, Rogers had no idea, but given his penchant for disguises, he was probably sitting on the chair next to him.

&n
bsp; Rogers reached over and absentmindedly took a sip from his drink. Only a moment later did he realize that he’d taken a sip of tanning oil instead. Other beachgoers turned to look at him as he leaned over his chair and violently spit out the vile-tasting stuff into the sand all around him. He took a sip of what he was certain was his drink, and realized that tanning oil combined with rum and coconut milk was an even worse taste, so he spit that out too. It tasted like the Flagship’s cooking back when Hart had been in the kitchens.

  Screw this. He was going back to the Flagship.

  • • •

  The Awesome, Too wasn’t exactly stolen. It was more reappropriated as a spoil of war. The Jupiterians had, of course, appropriated it from the Meridan fleet to begin with, so, there might have been an argument for forcing Rogers to give it back to Merida. If, that is, Rogers hadn’t completely erased it from all the records and given it a new paint job. Hey, it had worked last time. And this ship, a later model of the Awesome, was a lot easier to fly in and out of atmospheres. It almost made the experience tolerable for Rogers.

  But he’d cleared Dathum’s atmosphere quite some time ago, staying well clear of the asteroid family, and was halfway to the Flagship. He could have used official flag officer transportation, of course, since he was the commander of the fleet and all that, but he really had just wanted a taste of his old life for a few minutes. Even if that meant he had to fly himself around. At least he could stock a full bar on his personal ship.

  His console beeped.

  “Rogers!” High Admiral Holdt said as Rogers tapped the communication channel. “I see you’re on your way back to your ship. Thought you were on vacation.”

  “I decided to, uh, bank those days for later use,” Rogers said.

  “Alright, whatever the hero of the galaxy wants, I guess. Look, I’ve got some news for you.”

  “Oh?” Rogers said, feeling a little grateful. He felt like he needed some news. Even though he’d just gotten some news about Jupiter and all that, he could have used a double dose of news.

  “Now that things have settled down, we’ve been able to get some of our administrative ducks in a row, so to speak,” Holdt said. “We still have a lot of work to do, like figuring out what the Jupiterians’ escape plan was. We still can’t get Sal Snaggardir to tell us and we can’t find anything in their files. But back to the news. The good news.”

  Rogers felt something start to flip over in his stomach. His hackles rose.

  “Oh?” he said again, slower this time.

  “Yep. All that talk of you being acting admiral had gone out the window. I’m here to tell you that it’s time to get the rank officially. We don’t really have time for an official ceremony, and I know you hate all of that anyway, so—”

  The feeling in Rogers’ stomach turned into a raging sea of bile and fear.

  “Holdt,” Rogers said, his panic rising. “Stop. Please. Don’t—”

  “I am hereby promoting you to the rank of admiral in the Meridan Galactic—”

  “Holdt! No!”

  “—Navy, effective immediately. Congratulations, Admiral Rogers.”

  Rogers slumped into his seat as Holdt signed off, looking down at the floor of the Awesome, Too. He reached over and grabbed his still half-full glass of Jasker 130 (it wasn’t that much better than Jasker 120, if he was being honest), and looked at his navigation console, waiting.

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  It beeped.

  “Incoming asteroid,” said the computer.

  “I know,” Rogers said. He slammed back the glass of Jasker and watched as an asteroid took a hard left turn from its trajectory, escaped Dathum’s orbit, and suddenly got very, very big.

  THE [EXPLETIVE] END OF THE EPIC FAILURE TRILOGY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  No journey worth taking is taken alone; I have lots of people to thank for their encouragement and tenacity throughout the process. My agent, Sam Morgan, was integral in carrying me through to the last words on the page, along with my teammate Joe Monti at Saga and his dedicated copy editors, publicist, and staff members. Leonardo Calamati did a marvelous job with the covers. But I do wish we’d hired a better narrator for the audio book.

  The end of the Epic Failure Trilogy brings a myriad of emotions. It’s been a wacky, wild ride for Rogers and his crew, and I love all of you for taking the cruise with me. To all my readers: you are the best. I can’t wait to share the next project with you.

  More from this Series

  Mechanical Failure

  Book 1

  Communication Failure

  Book 2

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Author photo courtesy of the author

  JOE ZIEJA is an author with a long history of doing things that have almost nothing to do with writing at all. A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, Joe dedicated over a decade of his life to wearing The Uniform, marching around in circles, and shouting commands at people while in turn having commands shouted at him. It was both a great deal of fun and a great nuisance, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Joe’s also a commercial voiceover artist and a composer of music for video games and commercials. Best known for the role of Fox McCloud in Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins, Joe has probably interrupted your Spotify playlist at least once to encourage you to click on the banner below and isn’t the least bit upset that you ignored him.

  FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Joe-Zieja

  SimonandSchuster.com

  Facebook.com/SagaPressBooks

  @SagaSFF

  ALSO BY JOE ZIEJA

  Epic Failure Trilogy

  Mechanical Failure

  Communication Failure

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Joseph Zieja

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  Interior design by Michael McCartney

  Cover illustration by Leonardo Calamati

  First Saga Press trade paperback edition September 2019

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-4814-8693-4

  ISBN 978-1-4814-8695-8 (eBook)

 

 

 
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