The Viking took a glance back to where the marines were using hoverlifts to move debris into a defensible fort around the remaining boominite containers.

“Not long,” she said. “If you’ve got a master plan, you’d better get a move on it.” She looked at him again. “But right now, that master plan really looks like running away.”

Rogers grabbed her by the shoulders, something he wouldn’t have dared to do just a few days earlier. Through the lens of the VMU, the tinted image of the Viking filled his vision.

“I promise you I’m not going anywhere. I have something else in mind. I need you to hold things down here for just a bit longer.”

The Viking gave him a slow nod. “You got it, metalhead. Are you sure you can do it?”

The scene inside the control room played back in his mind, the sight of that gargantuan goddess exploding through the door, and he felt warm all over. Rogers removed the helmet of his VMU and smiled.

“Right now,” he said, “I can do anything.”

I. Rogers would realize later that there hadn’t been a knife.

The Gravity of the Situation

The feeling of invulnerability faded the first time he dove out of the line of fire as a small platoon of marines met an oncoming group of droids. The second time he was nearly clobbered in the head by an unarmed droid attempting to droid fu him to death, he wasn’t sure he could pee in a straight line anymore. When the rear door to the hangar in which the Awesome was ready for launch opened, revealing a long stream of droid reinforcements, he just about curled up into a ball and waited to die.

In the time it took him to get out of the control room and over to the hangar, the docking bay had turned into a second front. It seemed like every available droid was being funneled into the engineering bay and the surrounding areas. Worse, he had no idea how many droids there were in the inventory, so he couldn’t even be sure that if the marines managed to finish these off, more wouldn’t come afterward. And who knew what else they were doing in the rest of the Flagship at the moment? It all seemed hopeless.

Few marines had fought their way into the hangar as yet, leaving Rogers mostly alone and terrified as he ducked and dodged between ships, making a zigzag pattern across the floor to where the Awesome lay so close to the airlock that would take him out. He could hear the disruptor pulses slamming into the ships all around him; the droids had clearly seen him. From what he could see, Deet and Oh One were still fighting it out in a hail of sparks over in the corner of the bay, and he couldn’t tell who was winning. He’d get no help there, either. Rogers was toast.