Rogers walked over to Belgrave the helmsman, feeling dizzy and disoriented. He was nearly positive all the blood in his body was in his ears, they were ringing so loudly.

“What about the targeting computer?” he said. “Didn’t that pick up anything?”

Belgrave looked up at him and frowned. “But you told me to turn it off so you could clean—”

“That was days ago!” Rogers cried. “Are you crazy? You’re telling me the targeting computer has been off the whole time?”

“I just didn’t want any space bugs on it,” Belgrave muttered.

“Sweet mother . . .” Rogers said, pulling hard at his beard. “Turn it back on already!”

Belgrave gave him a dirty look before flipping a couple of switches on the computer in front of him. There were a couple of perfunctory beeps and squeaks before the display in front of him came to life, along with an increasingly familiar voice.

“Congratulations on activating your targeting computer! You are entitled to one free lobster dinner—”

“Lobster dinner?” Rogers said.

“Just kidding,” the computer said. “You are entitled to one free balloon to be redeemed at any of the many Snaggardir’s Sundries locations available across the galaxy. Remember: whatever you need, you can Snag It at Snaggardir’s™!”

The targeting display blossomed to life, showing blue dots where the friendly ships were, and a few yellow dots where civilian craft that happened to be transiting the sector were.

“There,” Belgrave said, pointing at a fleeting orange blip on the display. “Something just entered Un-Space, but there’s not enough data for me to tell what it was. It could have been anything.”

“Damn it,” Rogers said.

“We don’t need to know what it was,” the Viking said. “It was the Thellies.”

McSchmidt shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense, ma’am. They don’t behave like that. Why send one ship? Even if they were testing our defenses, it would have been a squadron full of Strikers followed by a larger force. One ship popping out of Un-Space and firing at us isn’t like them at all.”

Rogers frowned. He agreed with McSchmidt, but something about the situation felt wrong. Like he’d seen it before.

“Admiral,” Rogers said, walking over to him. “Aren’t you going to do something?”

Klein looked a little shaken, but he was doing a good job of covering it up, aside from the dive tackle when the blast had hit. He’d recovered and was now sitting in his admiral’s chair, tapping his fingers nervously on the armrest.

“I can’t think of anything to say,” Klein said quietly.

“Maybe instead,” Rogers said, “think about something to do. And if you can’t do that, consider trying to calm everyone down while we figure out what happened. Everyone felt that explosion; they need to know that we’re not about to get torn in half by Thelicosan plasma cannons.”

“We’re about to get torn in half by Thelicosan plasma cannons?” the admiral half shouted.

For some reason, Klein’s words echoed through the PA system. Everyone on the bridge stopped for a moment.