“Did Ralph answer your questions?”

“Uh, no, sir,” Rogers said. “But I found my answer somewhere else. Which is exactly what I came here to talk to you about.”

“You mean you’re not here to make me a sandwich?” he asked.

“No,” Rogers said. “I’m not here to make you a sandwich, but—”

“Didn’t we talk about priorities, Rogers? If I’m going to run this fleet, I can’t do it on an empty stomach.”

“You’re not running this fleet,” Rogers said though clenched teeth. “You abandoned the fleet in the middle of an attack and gave command over to an ex-sergeant engineer. If you’re trying to keep up appearances, you’re not going to do a very good job of it if you keep disappearing when people need you the most.”

“Look, Lieutenant,” Klein said, sitting back in his chair. “If you’re going to berate a superior officer and you want him to stop interrupting you, it’s probably better that you put something in his mouth. Like a sandwich.”

Throwing his hands up in the air and giving a wordless shout, Rogers walked over to the small kitchenette inside Klein’s stateroom, slapped some mayonnaise onto two pieces of bread and stuck them together. He put the improvised sandwich on a plate and handed it to the whining admiral.

“There,” he said. “Sandwich. Now I really need to—”

“What kind of sandwich is this?” Klein asked, turning it over in his hands. “There’s nothing on it.”

“It’s a phantom sandwich,” Rogers said. “New craze. Very popular on Parivan.”

Klein took a suspicious bite. “Bunch of crazy Parivani hippies will do anything if it’s weird.”

Rogers sighed. “Now can I talk to you?”

The admiral didn’t answer, since his mouth was full of a fake bite of the fake sandwich. He simply waved Rogers on and took a sip of water.

Rogers turned around to find Deet ostensibly practicing his droid fu in the corner. At least, that’s what it looked like for all Rogers could tell. Deet’s arms were moving in a blur and not accomplishing anything, which was pretty similar to what Rogers had seen before.

“Are we safe to talk?” Rogers asked.

Deet’s arms slowly wound down, clicking wildly. “Oh, that,” he said. “I’ve set up a noise jamming net. Let me activate it and then you’re free to say whatever you’d like. Are you ready?”

“Ready.”

Rogers was expecting Deet to turn on some sort of force field or at least make a beeping noise and wave his arms a little to show that something happened. Instead, the loudest noise Rogers had ever heard started coming out of Deet’s body. It wasn’t quite like a scream, and it wasn’t quite like a siren. It was something in between having your spine ripped out with fishhooks and finding out that all the beer lights were gone.

“Go ahead!” Deet shouted over the noise.

Rogers supposed it made sense; it would be hard to pick up what he and Klein were saying if they talked close enough to hear each other. Rogers had just never quite heard this interpretation of noise jamming before.