Rogers turned to her, ready to make a witty retort, but the words didn’t reach his lips. He thought about what she had just said for a moment and realized that at no point had he thought about ditching the Flagship and getting the hell out of here before any of the real fighting went down. He hadn’t even thought about beer in the last couple of hours or so.

“Yes,” Rogers said slowly. “I’m actually quite sure. I think.” He thought. Dying was kind of permanent, and messy. “Maybe. Look, don’t ask me these hard questions right now, okay? We’ve got bigger things to worry about. I think the first thing we need to do is—”

The up-line dinged.

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

“Where are all these people coming from?” Rogers cried.

The doors opened, but before anyone could say or do anything, Rogers heard Tunger yell.

“Go, Bobo!”

The baboon shrieked and swung full-force toward the door, hissing and spitting the entire way, its bright red bottom like a red-hot blunt instrument of terror. Rogers never even got to see who had called the elevator. By the time the baboon settled down, the hall—possibly the entire ship—was empty.

“Wow,” Rogers said. “Nice work, Tunger.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” Tunger said. He clicked his tongue and Bobo the Baboon walked casually back to stand at Tunger’s side, who scratched behind his ears affectionately.

The doors closed and they began the rest of the journey toward the refuse deck.

“Anyway,” Rogers said, “I think the first thing we need to do is come up with a plan.”

“Your plan is to plan?” McSchmidt said.

Rogers frowned at him. “I’m kind of thinking on my feet here, Thelly, so why don’t you cut me some slack? They teach you anything in spy school about how to stop a legion of droids from commandeering your ship and beginning a slow takeover of the galaxy?”

“They did,” McSchmidt said, “but I blew that class off.”

“Good job,” Rogers said. “What would Napoleon do in this situation?”

“I don’t know,” McSchmidt said. “Form a phalanx?”

“That’s not even the right century,” the Viking said.

“Yeah,” Tunger said. “Napoleon used Russian tanks.”

“What?” the Viking said.

The cabin of the up-line devolved into a heated and almost entirely inaccurate debate on Napoleonic tactics and the use of cavalry in confined marshland, but Rogers let it all fade into the background. There were more important things at stake right now than who had the high ground at Waterloo and if anyone else cared.

Deet sidled up next to him. “I thought you might be interested in a report that just came in.”

Rogers looked at him. “I thought you weren’t connected to the network anymore?”

“I’m not,” Deet said. He produced McSchmidt’s datapad. “But you don’t need to be connected to the network to steal someone’s datapad.”

Rogers chuckled and pointed at Deet. “I think I’m really starting to like you,” Rogers said. “Do you drink beer?”