“Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs,” McSchmidt barked, tucking his hand in between the buttons of his uniform shirt and looking dramatically off into the distance.

“I’m not asking you to thank me,” Rogers said. “I’m asking you to take a position that is much better for someone like you than tinkering around in the engineering bay where you don’t belong. I mean, didn’t you just ask me if you could do the intelligence brief ? I’m giving you the chance. And it’s a hell of a lot easier than trying to teach a political scientist how to be an engineer.”

McSchmidt looked at him, an icy stare turning his whole face into something resembling a snowman’s. “Political science is the engineering of cultures, peoples—”

“Right,” Rogers said. “I get that. But you’re not engineering any people down here. At least, I hope you aren’t.” He paused. “Are you?”

“Maybe I am,” McSchmidt said, a dastardly smile flashing on his face.

“No, you’re not.”

“No,” McSchmidt agreed, “I’m not.”

“Good. Look, you wanted me to help you not fail miserably. This is the best I can do. If you really want to have an impact on this fleet, you’ll accept the offer and sign the transfer request to become Klein’s intelligence officer.”

Rogers extended the datapad in his hands, but McSchmidt still didn’t take it.

“I’ve spent months building this kingdom,” McSchmidt said. “And you’re asking me to abandon my castle.”

Rogers looked around at the “kingdom.” The boominite containers were still stacked in a way that was almost certain to blow a freighter-sized hole in the side of the Flagship, the few engineers that hadn’t been transferred looked like they all needed to be assigned to null-g rooms, and there was still one of the raccoons Rogers had hidden running around the bay. It had built a nest on top of one of the backup fusion generators, where it was warm, and appeared to have been adopted by Lopez as a sort of mascot.

“Your castle sucks,” Rogers said.

McSchmidt sighed. “My castle sucks.”

The ensign reached out his hand and signed the release order on the datapad, then shook Rogers’ hand.

“Thanks, Rogers,” McSchmidt said. “Maybe you’re not such an evil, conniving, lying, backstabbing, traitorous bastard.”

Rogers grinned, then handed him back the datapad. “I wouldn’t be so quick.”

McSchmidt frowned, looking at the pad. “Why?”

“Because this is your material. Your briefing is in five minutes.”

The former engineering chief’s face distorted into something between surprise and rage, but it lasted only for a moment before he took off at a run.

“It requires more courage to suffer than to die!” Rogers called after him.

Improperganda

The admiral had called a brief hiatus while Rogers had gone to recruit McSchmidt, and as a result the bridge had become a center of confused tension. The admiral didn’t normally just sit in the middle of the bridge and do nothing, and everyone seemed to be doing their best to look extremely busy. Commander Belgrave, the helmsman, was rigorously spinning an old-fashioned ship’s helm back and forth as though fighting a raging storm, and the display tech was switching monitors on and off at random.