Even the orangutan that was loping across the hangar had little chance of survival.

Rogers stopped. He had seen a lot of strange things in the last couple of weeks. He’d learned the best way to make his bed in zero gravity. He’d even gone a lengthy amount of time without drinking.

But none of that, absolutely none of it, prepared him to see Corporal Tunger riding on the back of a lion, wearing a cape.

“What the hell are you doing, Tunger?” Rogers cried, standing up.

The lion reared, and Tunger, who had painted his face in swirls of random colors, gave him a grin.

“Keeping things orderly, sir. Hyaah!”

Tunger put his heels to the lion, who gave a mighty roar and charged into the oncoming horde of droids. He was followed by just about every animal Rogers had ever seen on the zoo deck and some he hadn’t even known were down there. The animals crashed into the droid reinforcements, sending metallic bodies scattering everywhere and giving Rogers a clear path to the Awesome.

Rogers ran for it.

He could hear battle all around him, feel the waves of near misses as disruptor pulses flashed by him. R. Wilson Rogers was running through the center of the apocalypse, dodging death at every turn, wondering every moment whether his next step would be his last. He kept his attention on the Awesome as he weaved around the other ships in the enormous docking bay, praying silently that whatever astral, omnipotent being there was out there would take time off from balancing his karma checkbook to save him from certain destruction.

Seeing the ramp leading into the belly of the Awesome open before him, he dove. Time slowed as he floated through the air, screaming wordlessly, and landed in his ship. Rogers turned around, not believing he was still alive, wondering what kind of massive chaos he’d just made it through.

The hangar was empty. All the fighting had moved to the Pit.

“Oh,” Rogers said to nobody at all.

Straightening his VMU and walking through his ship to the cockpit with the utmost poise and dignity, Rogers went through the startup sequence as fast as he could. Hart and his crew had done a nice job on the outside, but they hadn’t bothered to clean anything up on the inside; shattered glass was still on the floor, the sticky remnants of the most expensive Scotch in the galaxy making sucking noises against his boots.

The engines fired to life, sending a shudder through the ship, and Rogers felt the Awesome automatically lift off into a moderate hover. The controls felt responsive, fresh. Hart and his crew had definitely done well.

“Alright, baby,” Rogers said, giving the console an affectionate pat, “here we go.”

Rogers pushed the controls forward. The first massive door of the airlock opened as the Awesome approached its proximity sensors, and soon, Rogers was staring at open space for the first time in what felt like a long, long time.