“How are things going down there? We’re almost at the mainframe.”

“Move, you fat-bellied sons of whores!” the Viking barked.

“That well, huh?” Rogers asked.

“Rogers,” the Viking said, her voice sounding much closer to the microphone now. “You’re all set for the moment. Good luck.”

“What did you do?” Rogers asked slowly.

The microphone clicked off. Rogers was about to slip it back into his holster when a light came on, indicating he had a message from Tunger.

“Sir,” Tunger said. “We’re still working on a way to, uh, employ all of the chefs, but we just heard that all the kitchens are on fire!”

Rogers thought for a moment. “Is that a metaphor?”

“No,” McSchmidt called back at him. “No, it’s not.”

“I love that woman,” Rogers muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Just hurry up, alright? We’re going to hopefully plug in here in a few minutes and we don’t need any unnecessary meetings with cooks. I’m pretty sure we just met the head chef in the hallway here and I’d rather not do that again.”

“Roger, Rogers,” McSchmidt said, then tittered like a schoolboy.

“Never say that again.” Rogers clicked the microphone off.

Just as Rogers was about to knock on the door again, the door creaked. Well, something creaked. The door slid open like every other door on the ship, and Rogers realized that the gothic design had merely been really, really elaborate paint.

The door opened to reveal what appeared to be a very simple cubicle setup. In fact, it seemed almost dated. Pale lights washed over the labyrinthine half-height walls that separated faux-pine desks, and the whole office had a sort of subdued, uncomfortable quiet about it. The person who had opened the door, a starman first class, greeted them with a smile and a salute for the admiral, who returned it.

“Welcome to Communications!” she said.

Rogers took a deep breath. He really hoped this was going to work.

“We need to get to the mainframe room,” Rogers said. “My droid here is going to perform a critical system update after we’re done inspecting.”

“That sounds perfectly reasonable,” the starman—whose nametag said Plinkett—said.

“Great,” Rogers said, sighing in relief.

“But I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

“What?” Rogers said. “Why? You just said it was perfectly reasonable. I have the admiral of the fleet standing right next to me.”

“If you needed assistance,” Plinkett said, “you should have called the helpline. We would have logged your problem, issued you a ticket, asked you to reboot your computer, and then filed it away in a long line of support tickets that haven’t been serviced.”

Rogers looked at the admiral for support, but he still seemed a little addled from the encounter in the hallway. What was his problem? One moment, he was saving their skins; the next, he was useless without a podium and note cards.

“That’s absurd,” Rogers said. “Why would I file a support ticket for physically coming down here and inspecting the mainframe?”