Military Unintelligence

Rogers’ forehead wasn’t sure it could take any more of this. He sat slumped against the wall, his face throbbing with pain. Well, he sat after a fashion. In reality, the Viking had hit him so hard that he’d been knocked back into his stateroom. His body just instinctively curled into a sitting position, he supposed, so it felt like he was sitting slumped against the wall.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” the Viking shouted at him from the doorway. “You think I’ve got nothing better to do than spend my time saluting everyone on the command deck? It’ll take me an extra hour every day just to get back and forth between here and the training rooms.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Rogers said, uncurling and trying to find something to grab onto. She’d hit him at such an angle that most of his normal handholds were out of reach, though eventually the ship’s inertial drift would get him somewhere. “Klein’s signature is on the order.”

“And who was it that suggested to him that his ground commander be moved to the command deck?”

“It makes sense!” Rogers cried. “It makes perfect sense. If there’s a war going on, he’s going to need his field commanders as close as possible. By you being up here, it’s going to cut his duties in half if he needs to ask you about tactical ground stratagem synergy buzzwords!”

“What?”

Rogers knew he was babbling. He took a deep breath. “Just try it out for a while, okay? If it doesn’t work out, I’ll talk to Klein and see if he can’t get you a bunk in the middle of the armory or something.”

“If you don’t try to hijack an escape pod before then, you mean?”

Rogers hadn’t seen the Viking very much since she’d caught him trying to escape, but the encounters hadn’t been pleasant. He’d have to work out a way to get him back into her good graces, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to have a second opportunity to destroy a batch of ground combat droids anytime soon. That left . . . apologizing? No. He’d start with lying some more first, and see where that took him.

“I told you,” Rogers said, “I wasn’t trying to escape. I was performing routine maintenance on the exterior of the Flagship. Admiral Klein assigned me; you can go ask him right now if you want.”

“Fine, I am going to go ask the admiral right now.”

“You can’t go ask the admiral right now!”

The Viking turned back, her beautiful forehead scrunching down into an I-told-you-so frown/smile/expression. It was a very confusing look, but Rogers couldn’t help but love it.

“And why not?”

“Because, ah,” Rogers stumbled through his words. Why was he having such a hard time lying lately? He glanced at the clock. “Because it’s 1026 ship time, and he’s in the middle of his nap.”