“Oh my god,” Admiral Klein said. “We have no intelligence!”

Rogers fought down the nervous urge to vomit and started shouting at the rest of the bridge.

“Bring up the display!”

“Which display, sir?” the troop controlling the display said.

“Any display!” Rogers said. “Just let us see something!”

What had formerly been the very wrong intelligence briefing suddenly changed into a CCTV shot of the zoo deck. Tunger could be seen running around, giggling like a little girl, as he was chased in a circle by a pack of chimps throwing something unsavory.

“This isn’t the display I wanted,” Rogers cried.

“You said to display anything,” the tech yelled back. “I have lots of buttons in front of me, Lieutenant.”

“Display something else!” Rogers said. “Maybe something to do with them attacking us !”

The image changed again.

“That’s a hell of a display,” Klein said.

It was, actually, nothing. Open space. Not a single thing on the screen.

“What is this?” Rogers said.

“It should be where the attack is coming from,” the display tech said. “I took the data from the computer. This is where it’s telling us to look.”

“Never believe computers,” Rogers said. “Slew the camera around. See if you can’t find something.”

“The light’s not going off !” the defensive array technician said.

“Probably because they haven’t finished attacking us,” Rogers said. He stared at the image as the screen moved around, the stars blurring in the background as the outboard camera swopped silently across open space. The whole bridge seemed to be holding its breath.

In fact, the whole bridge was holding its breath. Rogers was surrounded by people going blue in the face.

“Everyone breathe,” he said, and was answered by a huge, collective sigh of relief. “It looks like a false alarm. Maybe there’s something wrong with the—”

Something silver blurred past the viewscreen just before a huge explosion rocked the ship.

I. He wasn’t kidding.

The Military Never Said Anything About War

“What the hell happened?” Rogers said as he picked himself up off the floor. The explosion hadn’t knocked him down, but it was amazing what a full-grown admiral could do with a dive tackle while screaming, “Save me!” That man was just not cut out for combat. The fact that it took Rogers several tries to get to his feet because of his shaking knees told him that he was also probably not cut out for combat.

“Can’t tell you, sir,” the display tech said. “The systems are down. I can’t even get a damage report.”

“Get Communications on the line,” Rogers said.

“I already did. They told me to reboot.”

“The light went off,” the warning tech said, pointing to the THEY’RE ATTACKING US button. “We’re saved!”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Rogers said. “Did anyone else see that thing before we were hit?”

“I saw it,” the Viking said. “Looked like a little ship to me.”