Rogers stared at him silently for a moment, then shook his head and stood up. The saga of McSchmidt the spy was—

“It’s just that,” McSchmidt said, taking a deep breath, “I never felt like I fit in anywhere, you know?”

Rogers rolled his eyes and knelt back down. He was starting to rethink his policy on violence and/or touching icky things.

“No,” Rogers said, “I don’t know. I seriously cannot relate to you at all.” He looked at McSchmidt for a second, thinking. “You told Tunger that there really was an invasion coming. But you were lying, weren’t you?”

McSchmidt grinned a crooked, weak grin. “Lying through my teeth.”

Rogers looked up at the ceiling and yelled. “Dammit! It’s the not knowing. It’s the not knowing that’s killing me. Are you people invading or not invading? How many THEY'RE ATTACKING US buttons are going to light up? Why would you do something like that?”

“I thought it might create more confusion. It worked, didn’t it?”

“No,” Rogers said, “not really. I mean, the droids were already attacking us at that point, and—”

“I’m glad it worked,” McSchmidt said.

“I just told you—”

“Rogers,” he said, croaking, his voice barely audible. “If this all turns out okay, will you tell Mailn something for me?”

“No,” Rogers said.

“Tell her . . .” His voice trailed off. McSchmidt’s eyelids wilted, and his chest stopped moving.

Rogers waited a moment, then stood up. “Finally,” he said. “Now I wonder—”

“Tell her that—”

“Oh, for the love of everything sacred!” Rogers shouted. “Will you please, please die?”

A disruptor pulse erupting from behind him obliged Rogers’ request. McSchmidt was hit in the chest, and by the resultant configuration of his organic matter, it was very, very clear that he was, in fact, dead.

Rogers spun to find a small detachment of droids, all armed with disruptor rifles, standing in front of him. He stared at them in disbelief, his last bottle of Jasker 120 flashing before his eyes. The droids wordlessly fixed their weapons on him.

“CALL FUNCTION [EXPLOIT TENSE MOMENT AND THEN KILL WITHOUT REMOR—”

Something hit the side of the Flagship. The explosion knocked Rogers off his feet, and he never came down. The gravity generator had been destroyed, and with it, the Awesome. He wasn’t sure if he was feeling a lump in his throat or if it was the nauseating sensation of suddenly shifting to freefall, but he was definitely a little sad about it.

He could hear the clanking of metal all around him as the droids rammed into one another. A few stray disruptor shots made ringing noises as they put burn marks into the walls. It took a moment for Rogers to get his orientation back, but once he did, he saw a flying squadron of droids, looking—if droids could be said to look anything at all—very confused. Most of the disruptor rifles had fallen from their hands, but some of the robots were flying toward Rogers at an alarming speed, their arms warming up for some serious droid fu even as their comrades prepared to fire.