“Let’s not get crazy here,” Rogers said. “McSchmidt let us know that there wasn’t an invasion coming. Maybe we can return the favor by not killing him yet. If what he says is true, then we have bigger problems to worry about than what the best way to choke him is.”

The tension melted. Well, no, no it didn’t, really. Everyone just sort of looked at each other like they wanted to kill each other but at this point in time also realized it was not in their best interests. Then again, the Viking always looked like she wanted to kill someone, so maybe that was just the way her face was constructed. Her beautiful, beautiful face.

Rogers shook his head and turned to Deet. “You’re positive that they can’t hear us in here?”

Deet beeped. “From the data I collected, the surveillance net they’ve implanted is very wide, but they had trouble collecting anything on moving objects. The last information I saw, they were considering stationing droids as operators, but preliminary research through human behavioral schemes revealed that a very unique hat was necessary to make this sort of deception convincing. They were so far unable to discover where to obtain such hats.”

“Well, that’s good news, at least,” Rogers sad. “But what’s the point of observing us and all that if they’re just going to blow up the ship?”

“It seems as if the bomb is a failsafe,” Deet said. “If the takeover—and I’m pretty sure it’s a takeover—fails, they can destroy the Flagship, rewrite the records so it looks like the accident was caused by some idiot in engineering who kept stacking boominite containers—”

“Oh, come on,” McSchmidt said.

“—and possibly try again on another ship. It’s possible that similar devices have been installed in other ships in the fleet as well.”

“Great,” Rogers said. “That’s just great. The whole fleet rigged to explode if a bunch of robots don’t take it over. Any idea what their goal is? How did they decide to do this?”

“I was unable to discover this information,” Deet said. “I did, however, discover what protocol 162 was.”

“And?”

“Let me see if I can translate the code properly,” Deet said. He beeped a few times, his eyes flashing. After a moment, the beeping settled. “If I could make an approximation into human language, I would say that protocol 162 is the surreptitious execution of selected organics who are either a threat to the overall plan or who really annoy you.”

The up-line dinged as it came to the command deck, and a voice crackled through the speakers.

“Next strp, cmmd dk. Exit on your rfltght.”

The door opened to reveal a small party of marines waiting anxiously to get on the up-line, probably to go get something to eat. But the inside of the car was the only place they could talk without using a whole slew of ridiculous metaphors.

Rogers and his companions looked out blankly into the expectant faces of the marines. For a moment, nobody spoke.