"Nothing. Just hurry up, alright? We're going to hopefully plug in here in a few minutes and we don't need any unnecessary meetings with cooks. I'm pretty sure we just met the head chef in the hallway here and I'd rather not do that again."

"Roger, Rogers," McSchmidt said, then t.i.ttered like a schoolboy.

"Never say that again." Rogers clicked the microphone off.

Just as Rogers was about to knock on the door again, the door creaked. Well, something creaked. The door slid open like every other door on the ship, and Rogers realized that the gothic design had merely been really, really elaborate paint.

The door opened to reveal what appeared to be a very simple cubicle setup. In fact, it seemed almost dated. Pale lights washed over the labyrinthine half-height walls that separated faux-pine desks, and the whole office had a sort of subdued, uncomfortable quiet about it. The person who had opened the door, a starman first cla.s.s, greeted them with a smile and a salute for the admiral, who returned it.

"Welcome to Communications!" she said.

Rogers took a deep breath. He really hoped this was going to work.

"We need to get to the mainframe room," Rogers said. "My droid here is going to perform a critical system update after we're done inspecting."

"That sounds perfectly reasonable," the starman-whose nametag said Plinkett-said.

"Great," Rogers said, sighing in relief.

"But I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

"What?" Rogers said. "Why? You just said it was perfectly reasonable. I have the admiral of the fleet standing right next to me."

"If you needed a.s.sistance," Plinkett said, "you should have called the helpline. We would have logged your problem, issued you a ticket, asked you to reboot your computer, and then filed it away in a long line of support tickets that haven't been serviced."

Rogers looked at the admiral for support, but he still seemed a little addled from the encounter in the hallway. What was his problem? One moment, he was saving their skins; the next, he was useless without a podium and note cards.

"That's absurd," Rogers said. "Why would I file a support ticket for physically coming down here and inspecting the mainframe?"

"I didn't write the rules," Plinkett said. She paused and c.o.c.ked her head. "In fact, I'm not sure anyone wrote the rules."

Rogers was not a violent man. Fighting, among other things, scared him. But right now, if he had had access to a weapon, he might have chosen to use it. Or at least hand it to someone else and ask them to please use it for him once he stepped out of the room.

Just as he was about to continue considering being violent, Deet started talking.

"Incoming message!" Deet said, loud enough for everyone in the cavernous IT center to hear. Heads started popping up from cubicles like groundhogs whose tunnels had been flooded. "Incoming message!"

"From who?" Rogers asked in a hushed whisper. "What are you doing?"

"Incoming message from all connected computer terminals! This is a Status One Alert!" Deet went on, his eyes flashing. "Information-processing terminals connected to the main network will not reboot."

"What?" Plinkett said, her eyes wide. "That's impossible."

"More incoming messages!" Deet said, his voice now getting louder, approaching the volume of his noise jamming. "Multiple hardware failures are being experienced along multiple terminal streams throughout all decks aboard the Flagship!"

"I'm not getting any of this," said a tech, who was looking down at his monitors. "n.o.body put in a ticket for hardware failures."

"More incoming messages!" Deet shouted. "The ticket system has been taken offline by worms!"

"Bugs," Rogers whispered.

"Bugs!" Deet corrected.

"Has anyone tried rebooting?" someone cried helplessly from the back corner of the room.

"He says they won't reboot!"

"I have the ticket system up right here," the skeptical tech said. "Guys, everything looks fine."

The admiral, somehow catching on, pointed at the tech who had spoken. "Arrest that man!"

"What?" The tech's eyes snapped up. "Why? What did I do?"

"He's in leagues with the worms!" the admiral yelled.

"Bugs," Rogers whispered.

A pair of MPs burst through the door and dragged the poor man out. In the chaos, Rogers noticed Deet scooting his way slowly toward an open power terminal, into which he plugged his extension. Suddenly, people around the room began shouting.

"He's right! The ticket system is down."

"Did you try rebooting?"

"I can't! The reboot b.u.t.ton is gone!"

"Oh G.o.d. Oh G.o.d."

Everyone began moving at once. Stacks of papers appeared without explanation, thrown into the air as people ran for the door. All semblance of military bearing and discipline was abandoned as the entire IT department scrambled over each other to try to get to the door of what they thought must surely be a ship about to explode. Even Plinkett prepared to bolt, but Rogers grabbed her by the arm.

"Stop," he said, "we need your help."

"There is no G.o.d!" she shouted.

"Take it easy. We can fix this for you. We just need to get to the mainframe room."

Plinkett was lost in a mix between hysterical laughter and uncontrolled sobbing. "How can you possibly do that? The ticket system is down."

Deet walked forward, his eyes shining, the fleeing IT personnel parting around him as though he was a tall boulder in the middle of a raging river. He looked down at Plinkett and spoke in a firm, commanding voice.

"Starman First Cla.s.s Plinkett," he said. "Do you know my designation?"

The terrified starman shook her head.

"That's because I don't have one," he said. "I have no name. I am only known as Ticket. I am here to save you."

Plinkett suddenly stopped blubbering and looked at Deet with wide, worshipful eyes.

"You have arrived," she whispered. Then she hiccupped and sneezed at the same time, which really ruined the moment. And Rogers' uniform.

"Come with me," she said, and started walking through the empty IT room back toward the mainframe room.

"I thought droids couldn't lie," Rogers said, leaning over to talk to Deet in a hushed tone.

"I've been studying," Deet said. "Plus, the IT guys had some neat old movies in the database that I watched while I was plugged in over there for a few seconds. I learned a thing or two about dramatics."

They made their way back to a door in the rear of the IT center, where Plinkett punched in a code, spoke a pa.s.sphrase that Rogers didn't understand, and motioned for them to move inside. The mainframe room was, strangely, about a quarter of the size of the IT room, probably because technology had shrunk processing power to the nano scale several hundred years before. In fact, most of the mainframe room was actually taken up by a picnic table, on which still rested the hastily abandoned basket of a doubtless still-hungry IT troop.

"Here we are," she said. She turned to Deet. "Please. Please, let us reboot again."

"I won't let you down," Deet said.

"Alright," Rogers said, tapping on the datapad to let the others know what was going on. "We're ready. Let's do this."

"Uh, sir?" Tunger said over the datapad. He sounded a little dazed.

"What is it?"

"It's McSchmidt," Tunger said.

"What about McSchmidt?"

"Well," Tunger said, "I'm not really sure I understood the subtext, but right after he armed the bomb in the engineering bay, he ran toward the escape pods, screaming 'Ha, ha, ha, there is an invasion coming!'"

ORDER: A-222FR-02134-K.

Serial: A-222FR-02134-K Distribution: DBS//DSS//DAK//DFR//BB//CLOSED NETWORK A66 Cla.s.sification: Special Protocol Required Summary: Issue of Orders Order: Whoever armed the bomb in the engineering bay, report to me immediately for reprogramming. If it was one of the units currently studying human humor mechanisms, this would be cla.s.sified as not funny.

Order: Everyone else, please see the nearest surviving AIGCS member for weapons distribution. Plans are being accelerated.

Order Submitted By: F-GC-001 The German-Irish Inflammation Conflagration "That son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Rogers screamed into the datapad. "Mailn, Alsinbury, did you hear that?"

"I'll strangle that . . ." The Viking's speech degenerated into a nonsensical, if colorful, string of obscenities.

"Well, he did tell us he was a spy," Deet said. His extension cable hovered over the port that would allow him to access the mainframe. "Am I going to blow us all up if I try to plug in now?"

"I don't know," Rogers said. "Admiral, put down that egg salad sandwich and get over here! Deet's going to need your authorization codes. I hope."

Klein gave Rogers a sour look but walked over to where Deet was patiently waiting to either save or destroy the entire fleet.

Rogers looked at Deet for a moment, his heart racing. If they were going to erase the droids' memories, they would have to start now. But if they plugged in and the droids detonated the bomb, that really wouldn't matter much, would it?

"Rogers," crackled the Viking's voice over the datapad. Something else was in the background.

"Are those . . . disruptor blasts? What's going on?" Rogers asked.

"The droids are shooting," the Viking said. "You know. At us."

He heard the pulsating hum of disruptor rounds being fired, and Mailn shouted something so loud, he could hear it through the Viking's communication device. Rogers could tell that other marines-thankfully armed-were already on scene.

"How many of the droids have weapons?"

"Lots," the Viking said. "Look, I can't really talk right now. Just hurry up and finish this."

Rogers licked his lips and looked at Deet. "Do it."

Deet plugged in.

The Flagship didn't explode.

Things were going well.

"This is going to take me a while," Deet said, his eyes flashing. He made a few beeping noises. "I can tell right away that there are more failsafes than that bomb. The droids have been manipulating the mainframe; there are several layers of security that I am going to have to work through before I am even able to utilize the admiral's access codes."

"Great," Rogers said, eying the door. Any moment now, droids were going to burst through there and start shooting. They must know by now what they were trying to do. If the marines couldn't keep them at bay, the first thing they would do is run to the mainframe room and rip Deet's extension off his body.

"Tunger," he called into the datapad. "Are you still in Engineering? Do you think you could disarm the bomb?"

"Rogers?" came a different, gruff voice through the pad. "Is that you? What the h.e.l.l are you up to this time?"

"Hart!" Rogers said. "There's no time to explain. The droids are taking over the ship and they've armed a bomb in the engineering bay. Can you disarm it?"

"That would be cla.s.sified as an explanation," Deet chirped. "I guess you had time after all."

"Shut up," Rogers barked. "Hart?"

There was silence for a moment on the radio.

"This here?" Hart mumbled. Rogers heard him and Tunger having a short but animated conversation about the danger of stacking boominite containers, and so on. Hart called McSchmidt "Mcs.h.i.t," which Rogers was a little upset he hadn't thought of much sooner.

"I'm an engineer, not EOD," Hart said. "I don't like explosives. But Lopez's here, and I have some other crew that crossed over. We'll see what we can do. Get that monkey out of my face!"

The datapad clicked off. Rogers looked at the door again. Were the marines going to be able to subdue the droids? If they did, would the droids just set off the bomb?

Rogers paced back and forth in the tiny mainframe room, which didn't exactly give him a lot of pacing s.p.a.ce. What was the point of having a whole room dedicated to mainframes that were barely bigger than personal terminals?

"How much longer?" he asked.

"Fifteen, twenty minutes," Deet said. "I'm having to burrow through several layers of security, and I can't tell if any of this is linked to the bomb. I'm going slower than I normally would."

Rogers made a frustrated noise, but before he could continue being useless in this situation, the datapad beeped on again.