“Well, he did tell us he was a spy,” Deet said. His extension cable hovered over the port that would allow him to access the mainframe. “Am I going to blow us all up if I try to plug in now?”

“I don’t know,” Rogers said. “Admiral, put down that egg salad sandwich and get over here! Deet’s going to need your authorization codes. I hope.”

Klein gave Rogers a sour look but walked over to where Deet was patiently waiting to either save or destroy the entire fleet.

Rogers looked at Deet for a moment, his heart racing. If they were going to erase the droids’ memories, they would have to start now. But if they plugged in and the droids detonated the bomb, that really wouldn’t matter much, would it?

“Rogers,” crackled the Viking’s voice over the datapad. Something else was in the background.

“Are those . . . disruptor blasts? What’s going on?” Rogers asked.

“The droids are shooting,” the Viking said. “You know. At us.”

He heard the pulsating hum of disruptor rounds being fired, and Mailn shouted something so loud, he could hear it through the Viking’s communication device. Rogers could tell that other marines—thankfully armed—were already on scene.

“How many of the droids have weapons?”

“Lots,” the Viking said. “Look, I can’t really talk right now. Just hurry up and finish this.”

Rogers licked his lips and looked at Deet. “Do it.”

Deet plugged in.

The Flagship didn’t explode.

Things were going well.

“This is going to take me a while,” Deet said, his eyes flashing. He made a few beeping noises. “I can tell right away that there are more failsafes than that bomb. The droids have been manipulating the mainframe; there are several layers of security that I am going to have to work through before I am even able to utilize the admiral’s access codes.”

“Great,” Rogers said, eying the door. Any moment now, droids were going to burst through there and start shooting. They must know by now what they were trying to do. If the marines couldn’t keep them at bay, the first thing they would do is run to the mainframe room and rip Deet’s extension off his body.

“Tunger,” he called into the datapad. “Are you still in Engineering? Do you think you could disarm the bomb?”

“Rogers?” came a different, gruff voice through the pad. “Is that you? What the hell are you up to this time?”

“Hart!” Rogers said. “There’s no time to explain. The droids are taking over the ship and they’ve armed a bomb in the engineering bay. Can you disarm it?”

“That would be classified as an explanation,” Deet chirped. “I guess you had time after all.”

“Shut up,” Rogers barked. “Hart?”

There was silence for a moment on the radio.

“This here?” Hart mumbled. Rogers heard him and Tunger having a short but animated conversation about the danger of stacking boominite containers, and so on. Hart called McSchmidt “McShit,” which Rogers was a little upset he hadn’t thought of much sooner.