“I can’t be sure,” Deet said. “The signal itself doesn’t tell me anything about the nature of the device.”

Rogers scratched his beard. “What are they hidden in?”

“There are several hidden in the posters around the room, but there are others in various places as well.” Deet beeped, and his head swiveled toward the DEFEND THE BRIDGE poster across the hallway. “I’ve detected similar emissions from other posters around the ship.”

The propaganda posters. Not only were they inane, annoying, and omnipresent, but they were being used to spy on people. Rogers might have thought it was Klein’s security system, if not for the fact that Rogers wasn’t confident that Klein knew how to spy on anyone.

Opening the door, Rogers and Deet stepped inside, Rogers feeling suddenly very uncomfortable in this room. If there were bugs in the room, why were they listening to Klein? First, who in their right mind would want to listen to the ramblings of a Toastmasters graduate as he wrote yet another speech? Second, where was the data being transmitted? It had to be somewhere on the Flagship; he was sure of that. Rogers knew a thing or two about listening devices, and there was no way they’d be able to transmit their information all the way to, for example, the Thelicosan fleet. If there was a spy in their midst, the data would have to go to him or her first, and then they’d have to figure out a way to encrypt it and send it back home on a secure channel.

And, after all that trouble, all they’d get would be a fifty-five-year-old man yelling:

“Rogers, I’m waiting for my sandwich!”

“Hey,” Rogers said as the door closed behind him, “don’t bark at me. I’m not your scullery maid.”

“I’m just keeping up appearances,” Klein said as he scribbled away at his desk. Today he was referencing historical war speeches and trying to find ways to integrate them into the next conference call he would have with the 331st ship captains. That way he wouldn’t have to talk about serious things, like keeping them all alive in the case of an invasion.

Going through the motions of preparing the sandwich—cheese on top, beets on bottom, god-damn you, and cut the crust off !—Rogers frowned, which reminded him that he’d been punched in the face. He knew he had to figure out a way to make the Viking not hate him again, but, in a strange way, that felt less important at the moment than figuring out who was listening in on Klein’s conversations.

That stopped him mid–cheese-slicing. What was happening to him? Now that he knew he was quite possibly the most powerful man in the 331st, he almost felt responsible for these people! Damn Deet for ever making that clear to him. He would have been just as happy had he gotten into the Awesome and cruised away forever.

Except he knew he wouldn’t have.

“Here you are,” Rogers said, handing Klein one sandwich and taking a bite of the one he’d made for himself. Not eating SEWR rats all the time had already dramatically improved his life. “You know we have an intelligence briefing in ten minutes, right?” Rogers asked, picking a crumb out of his beard.