Just before his vision started to blur, his lungs burning, he saw the airlock door slam shut.

Rogers gasped as he took off his helmet, writhing on the floor like a fish out of water. He’d made it. He was breathing. He was going to need to wash this VMU with bleach.

Crawling over to the exit, Rogers finally found the strength to stand and, listening intently for any activity on the other side, opened the door.

The escape pods on the commissary deck were located far aft on the Flagship, a good distance away from the kitchens, but Rogers could immediately tell that the Viking and her marines had done the job. The whole place reeked of stale smoke and burnt metal. The floor was wet, the fire suppression systems having kicked off and doused the whole deck, likely frying the electronics of the droids’ network as well.

If anyone had panicked and tried to escape, they hadn’t done it here, likely deterred by the chaos and fire. The corridor was empty.

Except, that was, for McSchmidt.

Rogers’ first instinct was to kill the bastard, but, from what he could tell, the droids had already done a good enough job of that. The Thelicosan spy was slumped against the wall, a disruptor wound in the upper part of his chest. One of his legs was bent in the wrong direction, and, strangely, it appeared that someone had made a chalk outline around him.

One of McSchmidt’s eyes was open, and he very creepily appeared to be staring at Rogers. In fact, if Rogers didn’t know any better, he would have thought . . .

“Rogers,” McSchmidt muttered.

Rogers squealed like a little girl.

“McSchmidt!” he said once he’d recovered himself and wondered how effective bleach would be in cleaning a VMU. He walked over to the injured man and knelt down next to him.

“You really screwed things up,” Rogers said. For some reason, even though he had every right to want to reach out and throttle the spy, it didn’t seem like the right thing to do. For one, it was kind of overkill—McSchmidt’s wounds were clearly mortal. Also, Rogers didn’t like touching icky things.

“I know,” McSchmidt said, his voice very froglike. He swallowed, then coughed. “You would have done the same thing.”

Rogers reeled. “What? No, I wouldn’t have done the same thing. You almost killed everyone on the ship.” He thought for a moment. “In fact, I’m still not entirely sure you haven’t.”

“I thought I’d be a hero,” McSchmidt said, looking up at the ceiling. “I thought I’d be welcomed with a parade or something back in Thelicosa. It was a convenient thing, you know, having the droids do all my work for me. I’m an opportunist, you see.”

“No,” Rogers said. “You’re a bastard. Look, how much of this death speech am I going to have to hear? There are other things going on right now.”

McSchmidt slowly closed his eyes and sighed, then lay still.