“Found one,” Rogers said as he came back through the door, nearly tripping on coiled-up sheets and a sleeping engineer. Neither Deet nor Hart responded; they were far too engrossed in moving ships. Through the other windows, Rogers saw the boominite containers moving rapidly into their proper, cryogenically sealed storage bays.

And then, on the other side of the bay, he saw them being moved back to their original, incorrectly stacked position by a team of droids nonchalantly operating a second fleet of hoverlifts.

“Droids!” he shouted.

“I’m right here,” Deet said.

“No,” Rogers said, rapping him on the shoulder—and immediately regretting it. “Other droids. The want-to-kill-us kind.”

Hart and Deet turned to see the droids moving the containers back to a position in which they could, say, destroy the entire ship. All at once, the humans and the droids seemed to notice each other’s presence, dropping what they were holding and reaching for weapons. Or, in the humans’ case, diving behind hard, metal things to prevent them from being killed by those weapons. Engineers weren’t very good fighters.

“Deet,” Rogers said, “how close is my ship to being ready? I need you to open the escape pod hatch on the commissary deck when you can, too, the one nearest to the AGG.”

“Just a few more minutes,” Deet said. He wasn’t ducking for cover, but droids’ bodies weren’t really made for ducking. “One of the hoverlifts got stuck and I had to replace it. But it should be ready soon.”

Rogers, who had thrown himself to the—very cushy—floor with everyone else, crawled over to where Hart was still standing, battering at the controls. Some of the troops who had been napping were scrambling for the door, not wanting to be trapped in such a small room with a squadron of weapon-wielding droids outside.

“Hart,” Rogers shouted, though it wasn’t even really that noisy out there, “get out of here. Go help the Pit crew escape if you can. Deet and I will take care of the ship. Thanks for the help.”

Hart gave him a long look, frowning. His face was sweaty and pale, but his hands were steady. Many of the troops on this ship had never seen combat, never been under incredible amounts of stress. But Master Sergeant Hart . . . He’d supervised Rogers.

“Whatever you’ve got planned,” Hart said, holding out his hand, “I hope it’s not really, really stupid.”

Rogers shook his hand. “It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

Hart nodded and made his exit, diving behind whatever cover he could find as he made his way across the engineering bay and back toward the rest of the troops, who had mounted a unique counteroffensive by using remote-controlled hoverlifts and ramming them into droids. It wasn’t going to do much. If the droids hadn’t been concentrating half their forces trying to reconstruct a bomb, they would have overtaken the small force of engineers easily.

All the rest of the napping troops had made their way out of the control room, leaving Rogers and Deet alone.