Tunger at least had the grace to look ashamed at his prolonged absence. “I was busy,” he said.

“Doing what?”

“Playing around in the zoo deck.” Tunger looked up from the floor. “The chimps need me! And they’re so cute ! And they let me talk to them in whutuver vurce aie wunt!”

McSchmidt was starting to look like he wanted to make like a chimp and throw poop at Tunger, though Rogers didn’t know what he was so upset about. Rogers supposed if he had been interrupted in the middle of one of those dark, conspiratorial conversations where everything was all dramatic, he might have been a little bit upset as well.

“I don’t know,” Tunger said. He shuffled his feet. “I was starting to like being your orderly, I guess. I got to do important stuff, like talk to important people and give you bad news.”

Rogers put a hand on his shoulder, feeling a little awkward. “Those chimps need you,” he said. “And the Flagship needs someone competent working in the zoo deck. What would happen if people didn’t have a place to go and feed the ducks after work?”

“The ducks would get hungry,” Tunger agreed.

“Well, yeah,” Rogers said, “that’s not really what I meant, but sure.”

“And the rabbits would have nobody to talk to.”

Rogers just let that one go.

“I guess you’re right,” Tunger said. “Maybe that is where I belong. But if you ever need anything, you’ll promise to come and get me, right? Like if you need things, you know, put into a particular order or anything?”

“Of course,” Rogers said. “You’ll be the first person I call.”

Tunger smiled and walked away, and for the first time Rogers noticed that he had a small golden lion tamarin attached to his back. The monkey reached up a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture.

Rogers shook his head and turned back to McSchmidt. “As for you,” he said, “I wouldn’t worry too much about it yet. It’s just one day of data, and you and I both know that there’s something funny about it. We haven’t received any corroborating intel from Merida Prime or any of the other outlying stations that are keeping tabs on the Thelicosans. We can’t just all go crazy over a change in formation, can we?”

“No,” McSchmidt said, shaking his head. Some of the tension seemed to leave his body. “No, you’re right.”

Rogers clapped him on the back. “Right. Now, if all of a sudden they start grouping their ships in the shape of the words ‘Die, Merida!’ then we know we’re in trouble.”

They shared a good laugh over that.

The briefing screen displayed an array of enemy ships that had been carefully arranged to spell “Die, Merida.”

“Now, that’s just ridiculous,” Rogers said.

“Are they trying to pick a fight?” the Viking asked. “What happened to the element of surprise and all that? They must know we’re looking at them.”

“Of course they know we’re looking at them,” Rogers said, still staring at the screen. “We’re always looking at them. They’re looking at us. They’re looking at us looking at them.”