It was then that Rogers realized he’d barely noticed entering freefall at all. He’d spent a good portion of his recent life in zero gravity, thanks to Klein. And so, Rogers realized he had nothing to fear from the droids at all. Because he was a space ballerina.

He bounced off the walls, bounced off the backs of droids, swung around using their legs. More droids crashed into each other, inspiring droid fu fratricide during the last seconds of their battery life. Rogers spun through the air, feeling like he was inventing a new martial art that was way cooler than any other. The droids couldn’t hit him. They could barely figure out which direction was which.

Then, miraculously, a chorus of “low battery” warnings rang through the corridor. It was the most glorious music Rogers had ever heard. He stopped his bouncing around and simply floated, staring at the droids becoming just flying chunks of metal one by one. Soon, he was the curator of a very strange floating droid graveyard.

It was over.

Finally over.

“Valiant troops of the 331st ATBG!” a voice over the public address system rang out. “This is your admiral speaking. You are about to face an enemy that is as clever as it is deadly. Before you enter into combat in the very halls in which you live and work, you must remember that the Meridan armed forces do not bow to . . . Why am I floating?”

Rogers leaned over and switched off McSchmidt’s datapad.

Finally, finally over.

Captain Rogers

Rogers stood in the middle of the bridge, watching everyone around him work. The crew had adapted to moving in zero gravity pretty well once they’d broken out their emergency magnetic boots and stopped trying to put ketchup on their food. The bridge hadn’t been the site of any of the battles with the droids, so it looked more or less like it had beforehand.

Except Rogers was running the show.

Rogers keyed in the communications code for the engineering bay. “Hart,” he said. “You there?”

“What do you want?” Hart asked.

“How are the preparations for the admiral’s ship going? And the repairs on the gravity generator?”

Hart didn’t answer him for a moment—he was too busy barking at one of his troops. When he finished his colorful encouragement, Rogers could hear him punching at some computer terminal or other.

“Admiral Klein should be ready to go in a few minutes. He can make his way down to the docking platform. Took us a while to find a pilot, though. Not many people for hire this far out in the system. The gravity generator—not there, you god-damn moron! There! The gravity generator will be done in another week or so. We need to wait on some parts to come in now that our comms have been restored.”

“Good work,” Rogers said.

“Don’t give me that shit,” Hart said. “Just because you’re a captain now doesn’t mean I need your god-damn approval. You’re still just a bad card player.”