"Rogers," the Viking called to them. "There's a lot of these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Are you still alive?"

"For now," Rogers said. "Deet says fifteen minutes."

"Fifteen minutes?" the Viking said. "You don't have ten! They must know you're down there; they're sacrificing units to cover a group's escape. I think they're headed in your direction. Pyaah!"

The transmission was interrupted for a few seconds as the Viking engaged in all sorts of battle yells, metallic crunching noises, and disruptor pulses.

"Rogers," Deet said. "A reading of your vital signs indicates you are either on the verge of having a stroke or are feeling extremely aroused. Are you sure this is the appropriate time for these sorts of feelings?"

"I'm not going to have any vital signs if you don't start saving the ship and stop dedicating processing power to a.n.a.lyze my libido," Rogers said. He was breathing pretty heavily, though. He pulled the datapad closer to his ear, hoping the Viking would make at least a few more noises before she cut off the transmission.

"Hurry up," the Viking called. A small explosion crackled the speakers. "I can't get marines down to the communication deck. They keep tearing panels off the ship and using them to build columns that are getting in our way. Where did they learn how to do that?"

"I have absolutely no idea," Rogers said.

One last shout of rage, and the datapad clicked off. Droids. Coming here. Now. And n.o.body in this room had any weapons-except Deet's droid fu, and that was pretty useless. And boring.

What the h.e.l.l was he supposed to do?

"I have to say," Klein said. "I preferred the old posters."

Rogers turned to find whatever Klein was staring at. A propaganda poster was on the wall of the mainframe room, clearly a piece from Ralph's . . . later artistic period. A rainbow-well, something that resembled a rainbow but was shaped more like a multicolored piece of bacon-was draped across an open-s.p.a.ce background peppered with stars and something that looked like jellybeans. In the middle of the rainbow, a human and a droid flew hand in hand, a jet stream of yellow stars trailing behind them. Underneath were the words I FEEL SO FREE.

"You see what I mean?" Klein said. "No inspiration at all. How is anyone supposed to derive morale from something like that? I bet it was one of those Parivani hippies."

Rogers stared at it for a moment. Something about the picture, aside from making him a little nauseous, tugged at him. What was he forgetting?

"That's it!" he yelled.

"No, it's not," Deet said. "I'm not there. I've managed to disable some of the older droids remotely, but it's only temporary. It'll still take-"

"No," Rogers said. "That's not what I'm talking about." He turned to the admiral. "Klein-where are the controls for the gravity generator on the ship?"

Klein looked at him, frowning. "I'm not telling you. You're just going to hang yourself and leave me all-"

Rogers slapped him in the face.

"I'm not going to kill myself, you idiot!" he screamed, his voice cracking. "I'm going to stop the droids from killing all of us."

Klein rubbed his cheek, tears forming in his eyes. For a brief-very brief-moment, Rogers felt bad for slapping his superior officer. But then he realized that it was probably the most enjoyable thing he'd done in weeks.

"You didn't have to hit me," Klein said. "The gravity generator is on the outside of the ship."

Rogers felt his heart sink. "How did you disable mine, then?"

"Disabling rooms isn't a problem," Klein said. "But you'd have to turn them all off individually, room by room."

"We could split up," Deet said. "Disable them as fast as we can."

"There are too many droids in too many rooms," Rogers said. "Why is the gravity generator outside of the ship?"

Klein shrugged. "Something about generating magnetic fields and all that. You can't even access it from Engineering."

Rogers swore. What was he supposed to do with the generator on the outside of the ship? Grab one of the starfighters, fly out there, and blast it? There wasn't any time to go find one of the pilots-chances were, they were all still flexing in front of their mirrors, anyway-so he'd have to do it himself. But he had no idea how to pilot any attack ship. The Awesome didn't have any weapons on it.

Rogers got a sinking feeling in his stomach as he realized what he had to do.

"Deet," he said, "get as far as you can in the next thirty seconds, and then we're getting out of here."

Deet beeped apprehensively. "Where are we going? We can't go up against all those droids. You faint in combat."

Rogers' face reddened. "I do not faint."

"Yes, you do. I read the report," Deet said. "I'm plugged into the main computer, after all. This video is hilarious."

"Look, it doesn't matter, alright? We're not going to be fighting any droids." Rogers whipped out his datapad. "Hart, are you there?"

"Yeah," Hart called back. It sounded quiet on his end. "Your boy Tunger took off, though; don't know where he went. Mumbled something about his children. We think we're almost through disabling this bomb, but even if we do, there's still the problem of having a bunch of boominite containers stacked in one place. One stray disruptor shot and this ship goes boom."

"Alright," Rogers said. "When you sent a message the other day that 'she's all done,' did you mean the Awesome?"

"No," Hart barked back, "I meant the G.o.d-d.a.m.n biscuits I was making. Yes, I meant the Awesome was done! Why?"

"I need to get in it. We'll be there as soon as we can. Can you help me get it to the closest hatch?"

"Meet you in hatch control," Hart said. "Lopez, it's your show. Don't-" He cut off.

Rogers put his datapad in his holster. "Alright. Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here before the droids show up on the communication deck.

"Droids on the communication deck!" someone shouted over the public address system. A disruptor pulse rang over the speakers, and the voice went silent.

"Can nothing go right?" Rogers wailed as they made a hasty exit.

They raced through the confusing maze that was the communications deck, the halls eerily silent. Wherever the droids were, they weren't in this area yet.

"Where are they all?" Rogers asked out loud.

"I gave them a surprise before we left," Deet said. "I scrambled the ship's maps for this area. They'll be walking around in circles."

"Nice going," Rogers said. "Now how do we get out of here?"

"I don't know," Deet said. "I scrambled the maps. Were you listening to me at all?"

Rogers groaned as they began to work their way frantically through the narrow, empty hallways, turning the other direction whenever they heard the loud clanking noises of droids nearby. He quickly lost all sense of direction. After a minute or so of turns, he probably couldn't have found his way back to the mainframe room if he'd tried. One particularly harrowed communications troop was actually walking in a box pattern in the middle of one of the hallways, going absolutely nowhere and muttering to himself incoherently.

"We're going to end up like that guy," Rogers said as they pa.s.sed him and turned down a corridor he was simultaneously sure he'd seen three times before and had also never seen. "Didn't you think to make a backup map?"

"I'm sorry," Deet said, "I can only execute one EXPLETIVE stroke of absolute EXPLETIVE genius at any given moment. What have you done today?"

Rogers spared him an annoyed grunt but kept walking. "If I ever find the person who designed this place, I'm going to-"

"Rogers," Klein said suddenly. He stopped in the middle of the hallway. "There's something I have to do." Turning away, he began to jog down the hallway. "I need to get to the public address system. I'll see you later!"

"Hey!" Rogers said. "Where are you going, you idiot? You couldn't find your way out of a parking lot! Come back! A speech isn't going to work!"

But Klein was already gone, having turned a corner. Rogers shook his head. As long as they didn't need his access codes again, good riddance. He was tired of babysitting, anyway. What was all that babbling about duty and heroics?

They walked through the hallways silently, careful not to alert any nearby droids. After what seemed like half an hour, they ended up at the in-line, which was blessedly free of any metallic resistance or nattering admirals.

"They must already be at the mainframe," Rogers said.

"That's unlikely," Deet said. "I changed the mainframe location on the map so that it was in the kitchens."

"But the kitchens are all on fire," Rogers said.

"Exactly."

Thankfully, the in-line was still in operation. Rogers was sure the droids would have shut it down, but perhaps he'd overestimated their ability to mess with the ship. They zoomed through the belly of the Flagship, Rogers tapping his foot nervously, until they came to the deck where the engineering bay was located. The in-line dinged, and for a moment that stretched out in time, the doors slowly opened.

"Get ready," Rogers said.

The doors opened to reveal exactly no one in the hallway. It kind of seemed like a letdown.

"For what?" Deet said.

"I don't know," Rogers said as he exited the car and jogged down to the entrance to the Pit. "I just felt dramatic. Leave me alone."

He and Deet burst through the large cargo doors into the Pit to find the entire engineering staff working like bees, so far unmolested by droids. Hoverlifts zoomed back and forth across the floors as the crews desperately tried to undo all the potential damage done by stacking explosive containers like morons.

"Rogers!" someone called.

"Lopez," Rogers said, jogging over to where Lopez was busy directing the entire Pit crew. She pa.s.sed a datapad to a starman, who trotted off. "No droids yet?"

"Not yet," she said. "But that won't last for long. Captain Alsinbury sent a message that there was a squadron of them on their way down here and that we should expect a fight."

"d.a.m.n it," Rogers said. "How soon?"

"She didn't say. But she's sending reinforcements as soon as she can."

"Good luck," he said. "Where's Hart?"

Lopez pointed to the far end of the Pit, which connected to the engineering docking bay. There was a small room that bridged the gap between the two areas that looked like the top of an old-fashioned air-traffic control tower, a dodecahedron with windows on every side.

"He's in there trying to get the cranes to move your ship to the right place and open the hatch so you can launch." She looked at him, her eyes narrowing. "What are you planning?"

"They might still be listening," Rogers said. "Let's just say I'm about to fire the head chef."

"Please," Deet said, "no more chef references. I really don't have the processing power to deal with your MALE BOVINE EXCREMENT."

Rogers ignored him. "Are there any spare VMUs in there?"

Lopez was already walking away, shouting at one of the younger engineering troops with the colorful language that only a senior enlisted member could manage.

"Look for yourself!" she said. ". . . Sir."

Rogers rolled his eyes and started the long run across the Pit to the control room. He could see Hart inside, his face shiny with sweat, as he worked the controls. From the outside, Rogers could see that there was something a little off about the room; it seemed to be packed to the brim with pillows and blankets. In fact, when he went to open the door, he found he couldn't; the door, an old lock-and-hinge type, got stuck on the corner of a pillow.

"d.a.m.n it!" Hart called from inside, his voice m.u.f.fled by the walls. And the pillows. "Hang on."

Hart stopped what he was doing and turned around to bend over, vanishing from Rogers' view. Different sleeping paraphernalia flew upward, including what appeared to be a very unfriendly-looking teddy bear with fangs and a purple jacket. After a moment, the door swung open.

"Sorry," Hart said as he finished clearing a path for Rogers and Deet to enter. The room looked much bigger on the inside, the illusion supported by a high ceiling, and every window seemed to have a control panel under it that jutted out from the wall like an awning at hip-height. Underneath, Rogers definitely saw people sleeping.

"Nap room?" Rogers asked.

"Sort of," Hart said. "Ever since we've been taking shifts working on the bomb removal, people are coming in here for a break."

Rogers frowned. "That was like . . . thirty minutes ago. What kind of shift work is that?"

Hart ignored him. "Come over here," he said, gesturing to the console he'd been working at. "It's like a G.o.d-d.a.m.n block puzzle over in the bay where your ship is stored. I managed to get it into the loading section, but there are a dozen other ships blocking the way. It'll be another few minutes."

"Fine," Rogers said. "I'm going to need a VMU. Is there a storage locker nearby that might have some spares?"

"Yeah," Hart said. "It's in the My a.s.s room. Let me pull one out for you."

"No need to get testy," Rogers said.

"First I'm repairing your ship, now I'm moving it around the belly of the Flagship. I'm like your G.o.d-d.a.m.n valet parking a.s.sistant."

Hart's speech degenerated into old-man grumbling as he worked furiously at the controls. Through the windows that opened out into the docking bay, Rogers could see an automated ship-movement system involving cranes, hoverlifts, and conveyor belts moving ships all around like giant pieces of cargo. At the very end of this bizarre conga line, Rogers could see the Awesome, looking as good as new.

"Fine," Rogers said. "I'll find one myself. Deet, hang tight and see if you can't plug in and help Hart move this along a little quicker before your metal brethren get here."

"Aye aye, LOWER EXTREMITY ORIFICE."

"My G.o.d," Rogers said as he left the room, "it's like I'm not trying to save this whole fleet."

It only took a few minutes for Rogers to find a VMU with full air reserves that fit him; the engineering crew, particularly the maintainers, were always working outside the ship. By the time he got back, sweating from lugging the thing across the Pit, he could immediately see that things were going a lot faster in the docking bay. The Awesome, however, was still a few minutes away from being ready to launch.

"Found one," Rogers said as he came back through the door, nearly tripping on coiled-up sheets and a sleeping engineer. Neither Deet nor Hart responded; they were far too engrossed in moving ships. Through the other windows, Rogers saw the boominite containers moving rapidly into their proper, cryogenically sealed storage bays.

And then, on the other side of the bay, he saw them being moved back to their original, incorrectly stacked position by a team of droids nonchalantly operating a second fleet of hoverlifts.

"Droids!" he shouted.

"I'm right here," Deet said.

"No," Rogers said, rapping him on the shoulder-and immediately regretting it. "Other droids. The want-to-kill-us kind."