by Joe Zieja
Resisting the urge to make an obscene gesture, Rogers turned in a huff and stomped down the hallway. War effort! That was like saying you were stationed on a communication station to help with the heat wave.
He realized he was starting to sweat after the first couple of minutes of speed walking, and he slowed his pace, shoving his hands in his pockets and grumbling to himself. A pair of droids rolled down the hallway, their incessant beeping and whirring making him want to knock their metal faces off (if he had been wielding a torque wrench or had ever visited the gym).
A poster on the wall made him stop for a moment to examine it. There was nothing strange about having motivational posters on the wall—every organization Did it despite its utter ineffectiveness—but something about this one seemed different. It read, in all capital letters, EVERY POSITION IS CRUCIAL TO THE WAR EFFORT. Above it was a dramatically shaded portrait of a young soldier licking envelopes, a look of fierce determination in his eyes. Rogers shook his head and moved on.
The supply depot finally came into view ahead of him, an unremarkable door bearing the inscription SUPPLY above it in yellow letters. Rogers punched the door lock with the bottom of his fist, and the door opened into a small waiting area packed with spacers and marines sitting in rows of chairs and looking annoyed. He couldn’t remember a time when there had been so many people in the waiting area. In fact, he couldn’t remember a time when there was anyone staffing the desk, either. The supply room was just sort of the place where you went to get stuff. You went in, got stuff, and got out. There was no need for waiting.
The broad counter stretched the length of the back wall, behind which Rogers could see various cargo crates being moved back and forth through the different warehouses. It all seemed very busy, and he could have sworn that the same container was being moved over and over again.
A bored-looking corporal stood behind the terminal at the counter, not doing anything apparently useful. A sign above his head showed NOW SERVING 103, and a vidscreen off to the side was streaming a muted news channel with no subtitles.
“Can I help you?” the corporal asked in a voice that absolutely crackled with nonchalance.
“Yes,” Rogers said. “I’m here for my equipment issue.”
“Are you a new recruit?”
“Not exactly. I’ve been reinstated after a . . . break in service. R. Wilson Rogers, sergeant.”
The clerk asked Rogers for some additional personal data and started typing away at the terminal keypad.
After a moment, the clerk paused and frowned. “Roger Wilson Rogers? Your name is Roger Rogers?”
“R. Wilson Rogers,” he replied tightly. “Are you new here? Where’s Quintal? He was in charge here last time I was around.”
“Sergeant Quintal was transferred,” the clerk said. “I’m Corporal Suresh, the new supply chief.”
“Who put a corporal in charge of Supply?” Rogers said. In the Meridan Navy, corporals were just barely above starmen, who mostly had achieved the dubious accomplishment of being able to lace their boots properly.
That didn’t brighten Suresh’s day at all. “I am fully capable of the duties assigned to me, Mr. Rogers.”
“Sergeant Rogers.”
The clerk ignored him and continued typing away at the terminal for what Rogers thought was a very long time.
“Is there a problem?” Rogers asked. “I know where everything is back there. I’ll just go and get what I need, and—”
“Nobody not in the supply corps is allowed back there,” the clerk said.
“What are you talking about? Just about everyone in the whole damn ship has been back there at one time or another.”
“Not on my watch,” the corporal said.
Rogers bit the inside of his cheek. He had been betting on his old pal Quintal being here so he could reestablish all his old connections. Things were not going to go well for him at all if he couldn’t have a hand in the goings-on inside the supply depot. He changed his approach.
“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Rogers said. “A corporal as chief of Supply is a very prominent achievement. I mean, for you to be put in a position of such power and influence at your rank is very impressive.”
“I’m just doing my duty,” Suresh said, his voice flat and his face expressionless.
Well, flattery didn’t seem to work. Maybe Rogers could bribe him.
Without warning, however, Suresh pressed a button on the keyboard and began shouting.
“Supply room, A-TEN-HOOOOAAH!”
Instantly, everyone in the room jumped to their feet and stood at strict attention, arms at their sides, feet together, their spines as rigid as engine support braces. Papers and personal effects tumbled to the floor. He felt his muscles stiffen in reaction to the command but realized that since he was still in civilian clothes, it didn’t really matter. Rogers spun toward the supply room entrance, positive that the charismatic and powerful Admiral Klein, fleet commander of the 331st and the only military man Rogers had ever feared, had walked through the door. But nobody was there.
Moments of silence passed as all activity completely stopped. Rogers, the only unfrozen body in the room, looked around. Everyone’s eyes were locked straight ahead, their limbs like stone. One young starman was clenching his fists so hard that they were trembling.
Finally, Rogers turned around and asked the supply clerk.
“Who are we standing at attention for?”
“You, sir !” Corporal Suresh shouted.
“Me?” Rogers said incredulously. “I’m only a sergeant. Wait, did you just call me ‘sir’?”
“I did call you sir, sir!” Suresh said. His arms rigid at his sides, he pointed ridiculously toward the computer screen in front of him by moving only his index finger. “Your records list you as Ensign Roger W. Rogers, assigned to the 331st ATBG, and regulations say that when an officer enters the room, you are to call the room to attention.”
“I told you I’m a sergeant. And it’s R. Wilson Rogers.” He heard someone behind him groan and hit the floor as he passed out. “Damn it, everyone relax! And tell that guy not to lock his knees.”
The whole room let out a sigh of relief, and a pair of marines rushed to help their fallen comrade, who was looking very pale. Rogers turned back to Suresh.
“There has to be some mistake,” he said.
“Perhaps you forgot your rank during the break in service, sir?” Suresh offered.
“Don’t be an idiot. Can you look up the personnel records from here? What’s my date of rank?”
Suresh whipped through the database. “It says effective today. Congratulations, sir! It was awarded in conjunction with the Anti-Pirating Combat Valor Medal. Very impressive, sir.”
Rogers barely heard him. He felt blood rising to his cheeks. Tuckalle, that bastard. He knew that Rogers never wanted to be an officer. He knew that Rogers never wanted responsibility or accountability, people calling him “sir” and saluting him, people asking him to fill out paperwork.
“All of your supplies and uniforms have been delivered to your room, sir. You should find everything you need there already unpacked for you.”
“Great,” Rogers said dryly. “And where is that, exactly?”
“Room 101G in officer berthing area C, quarterdeck.”
Rogers’ fists clenched. That wasn’t the engineering unit’s berthing area. He had a bad feeling about this.
“Suresh,” he said. “Does it, by any chance, say what unit I’m assigned to?”
Suresh glanced down, and his eyes widened. “Congratulations again, sir! It says here you’ve been assigned as Commander, Artificial Intelligence Ground Combat Squadron.”
Droids. He was in charge of droids.
“That son of a bitch,” Rogers said.
* * *
After making Suresh print out the paperwork required for him to ride the intraship transportation system, Rogers shoved it in the in-line guardwoman’s face and went as fast as he could
to the quarterdeck. He wasn’t a huge fan of delaying the inevitable, and lying down on his bed sounded pretty good right now anyway. The sooner he got settled, the sooner he could start figuring out how to get out of this assignment and back to something easy like fixing engines and drinking beer.
A quick transfer from the in-line to the up-line to another in-line left him in the quiet, clean officer living area known as the quarterdeck. He’d used to joke it was because officers only had a quarter of a brain, but that didn’t seem quite as funny now. Unlike the enlisted quarters, in which most troops under the rank of sergeant shared a room with one or two others, each officer had his or her own room. The hallways, instead of sporting the same drab, austere metal surface, were tastefully decorated with a combination of artificial wainscoting and various works of art depicting historical wartime spectacles.I It had that upper-class, old-world aristocratic feeling, like someone was about to emerge from a reading room in a smoking vest holding a pipe and challenge Rogers to cribbage.
It even smelled different, though that could have been a subtle contribution from the zoo deck, which was located directly below. Every command ship in the fleet had a zoo deck for morale purposes (and a biosphere to help generate oxygen, but that was generally regarded as secondary).
Rogers immediately didn’t like it, though he was thankful that the artwork already on the walls prevented the display of any more of those strange motivational posters. He particularly didn’t like the fact that after exiting the in-line, he saw no fewer than six shinies rolling down the hallway, one of which seemed to be carrying a disruptor rifle in a holster on its back. Rogers frowned; giving weapons to AI was a big no-no in the military. He’d learned that the hard way when he’d distributed bubble guns to a bunch of droids to see if he could stir up trouble. It was probably the only prank he ever regretted.
But now here they were, with real, no-kidding weapons. They were considered unstable, if useful, and they’d never been programmed for combat before. And Rogers was supposed to command them?
All thoughts vanished from his mind as he turned the last corner on the way to his quarters. Outside his door was a hulking monster of a woman. Gargantuan in stature, she must have stood well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and hands that looked like they could crack open a coconut without a hammer. Her dark hair was cropped shorter than Rogers’, and Rogers was almost certain he wouldn’t have been able to fit in her boots without stuffing socks in them. She wore the uniform of a Meridan Marine and the rank of captain, two ranks higher than Rogers’ new rank.
She was perfect.
Forcing himself to stop staring and start walking, Rogers put on his best smile. For some reason—divine blessing, he thought—she was standing right outside his door, clearly waiting for him. Had she heard about the dashing young ex-sergeant-turned-ensign that had come back to liven up the Flagship ? Word always did travel fast on a giant hunk of metal on which most people had nothing to do but gossip.
“Well, hello there,” he said, his smile widening. His palms were actually sweating. He’d barely been sweating when he’d thought he was going to jail. God, she was beautiful. “What can I—”
“Is this your room?” the giant vixen interrupted. Rogers looked at her nametag, and saw that it said Alsinbury on it. Captain Alsinbury. R. Wilson Alsinbury. Hmm . . .
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “it is. Would you care to come inside for a—”
She hit him in the face so hard that for a moment, he thought that someone had opened the airlock and turned off the gravity generator, because he couldn’t breathe and he was no longer touching any hard surfaces. He had a brief, fleeting sensation of landing on the ground before the not-so-brief and not-so-fleeting sensation of head trauma settled in and filled the world with a thousand gossiping old women with shrill voices and sledgehammers.
“That’s what you get for trying to put robots in a human’s job.” Captain Alsinbury’s voice somehow cut through the rushing river of pain flowing in between Rogers’ ears.
“Mrrrh,” Rogers began, but at the moment, forming words was about as easy as standing up after being hit in the face by a marine.
“Take your droids and stuff ’em. Nobody goes on the ground but me and my marines, and don’t you forget it.”
Rogers dimly registered the fading footsteps of the captain and looked up just in time to see her rumble away to another part of the ship. He thought about following her, trying to explain why she had misconstrued his intentions and shouldn’t they drink themselves silly and talk about their future until they sorted all of this out, but his muscles didn’t quite feel like functioning at the moment. He held the image of her walking away in his head as he pulled himself to lean against his door and tried to stop the ship from spinning.
In the haze of pain, delirium, and oxytocin, that image of her walking away quickly morphed into a vision of himself sitting trapped inside a burning building, totally helpless with a beam of wood crushing his leg. The heat of the intense flames lapped at him like a reckless tongue searching for a gulp of water. And then, suddenly, the captain was there, kicking down the door with those big boots.
“You came!” he said. “You came!”
She lifted the beam of wood off his injured leg as though picking a wayward twig from the fabric of her clothing and scooped him up into the secure bulk of her arms.
“Hold on to your hat,” she said. “We’re getting out of here.”
Rogers didn’t know if it was the heat of the flames, but he felt like melting.
“I knew it,” he said. “I knew it . . .”
“If you knew it,” came a voice from somewhere outside of this delicious fantasy, “why didn’t you duck?”
The real world snapped into focus, only to start to spin again a few moments later. Rogers re-ate a SEWR rat and blinked tears from his eyes. In front of him crouched a female corporal who couldn’t have left her early twenties behind her yet. A pair of crystalline blue eyes ringed with amusement looked at him with nothing at all approaching concern. Her name tag said Mailn, and her uniform showed her as a marine.
“I see you’ve met the captain,” she said. “What did you do to piss her off ?”
Rogers groaned, feeling some of his faculties returning to him. “They put me in charge of the ground combat droids.”
“Oh, you’re the new ensign she’s been going on about,” the corporal said. “She’s been looking for a picture of you to throw darts at for half a week now. You picked the wrong position, buddy. Ah, sir.”
The corporal stood up and saluted, and Rogers waved it away.
“Please don’t do that,” he said. “Rogers is fine.” He held out a hand, forcing the corporal to bend down to shake it.
“Cynthia Mailn,” she said. “marines. The Viking is my CO.”
“Who?”
“Captain Alsinbury. The lady who just put that fist-shaped impression on your forehead.”
The Viking. Perfect.
Grasping the corporal’s hand after their handshake, Rogers accepted the steady help of the fit young woman. Once standing, he noticed that she was quite petite, an inch shorter than Rogers, who wasn’t exactly a tall glass of water to begin with.
“I have to ask, corporal,” he said, “what’s with this ship?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I didn’t leave the military that long ago. When I was in service, things were . . . different, that’s all. Things were looser. Not as many droids. You know.”
Mailn shrugged. “Lots of new faces around the Speedbumps in general, I guess,” she said. “I’ve only been here a little over six months. They moved our whole unit here from another buffer unit after the talk of war with the Thelicosans started, and—”
“Wait,” Rogers said, the blood draining from his face. “Did you say war?”
The corporal nodded. “That’s what the rumor is. Things are tightening up around here. We can’t spend all our time screwing around any
more. Uh, sir.”
“Just Rogers. But what makes anyone think that the Two Hundred Years’ (and Counting) Peace is going to fail? The treaties are airtight.”
“They’re as airtight as any treaty is,” Mailn said with a shrug. Unlike Rogers, she didn’t seem at all perturbed by the fact that the military actually might do some fighting. Did the 331st even know how to conduct a war? Rogers didn’t think they’d be fit to conduct a small chamber orchestra.
He supposed that would explain some of the attitude change, but . . . it didn’t seem right. And leave it to Rogers to rejoin the military right on the cusp of a Thelicosan invasion. Tuckalle’s deal didn’t seem so good anymore.
“I’ve got to get going,” the corporal said. “I was only up in the quarterdeck because I needed to deliver something to the Viking’s room. Next time you feel like being a punching bag, maybe I could take you down to the unarmed combat training room and throw you around a bit.” She winked at him. “I could at least teach you how to duck.”
Rogers touched the bruise on his forehead again and winced. “I appreciate that. Right now I think I need a couple of painkillers and a coma.”
Mailn grinned at him and walked away, leaving Rogers to punch in the code that Suresh had given him into the keypad and enter his room.
An ensign’s room was, apparently, not much better than a sergeant’s bunk. Though it was decorated with the same vintage tastes as the quarterdeck hallways, the room held only a bed, a wardrobe built into the wall, and a small desk with a network terminal and some other administrative paraphernalia arrayed neatly on its surface. His personal datapad was slung neatly into its charging holster on the side of the desk, and, instead of a window, there was a tacky porthole-shaped painting of a bland starscape hanging on the wall. In the background was a painted planet, which, strangely, looked like Jupiter from the old Milky Way. Considering that Jupiter had become the only planet that didn’t get their own system when humanity migrated to Fortuna Stultus, it seemed a strange choice for art.
The first thing he did, however, was take down the poster on the wall that said REGULATIONS: THE KEY TO SUCCESS above which was portrayed a maniacal parade commander lording over a group of soldiers standing in formation. As he took it down, however, he noticed something peculiar. The nametags on the soldiers in formation were all legible, and one of the soldiers apparently was named “Droids.”
