And Rogers had been a powerful prince in a vast kingdom of debauchery. As an engineer, he’d spent most of his time in rooms that officers rarely wanted to go, and as a sergeant, he had just the right amount of clout without all that annoying “responsibility” that came with being an officer or senior enlisted. What would be so bad about revisiting his old stomping grounds for a while?

“You’re sure you could get me back into my old unit?”

“If they don’t scuttle the ships when they find out you’re coming back, yes.”

Another stint in the military. It didn’t seem so bad. And what was his alternative?

“Tucky,” he said, “what’s the maximum sentence for, ah, reckless vigilantism?”

“Five years,” Tucky said.

Rogers stood up and saluted.

Speedbumps

The unnatural smoothness of Un-Space travel came abruptly to an end as the warning lights went off inside the transport shuttle and the normal rules of physics came back into play. Rogers shook his head as his body got used to its own g-forces again and stood up. Out the port-side window of the small, cramped shuttle he could see the 331st Anti-Thelicosan Buffer Group in all of its relatively obscure glory. The ships, arrayed in a rainbow pattern at the very edge of the Meridan system, looked vigilantly toward Thelicosan territory, awaiting—quite futilely, he was sure—the next attack.

Futile, he thought, for two reasons. One, the attack wasn’t coming. The Two Hundred Years’ (and Counting) Peace was pretty ironclad, thanks to all the legal treaties and checks-and-balances placed on the several signatories. And two, if the attack did come, it wouldn’t matter much. Thelicosa was a powerful human system—most had resettled there from their colony on Mars, which had made all of them pretty rough around the edges—and the 331st wasn’t called the “Speedbumps” for nothing.

At the center of the formation was the aptly-if-uncreatively named MPS Flagship, the control center of the whole group, like a giant flower surrounded by the buzzing insects that were the fighter patrol. Various heavy gunships, cargo transports, medical ships, and other specialty craft lay splayed out in space over the long crescent that made up the 331st. The shuttle in which Rogers was riding made an easy turn, fired up its conventional engines, and zoomed toward the Flagship.

“She’s a beaut, isn’t she?” Rogers asked the pilot as he leaned in the slightly raised gangway connecting the cockpit with the passenger bay.

“She’s a warship,” came the terse reply. “Take your seat and fasten your seatbelt, please.”

“Oh, come on,” Rogers said. “You’re docking with a massive warship that has a magnetic hook. I’d create more turbulence by jumping up and down.”

“Please don’t jump up and down.”

Rogers stopped jumping up and down and rolled his eyes. The pilot had been like an ice cube since the moment he’d stepped aboard. Pilots in general were always a little screwy, but this was the first he’d met that didn’t want to talk your ear off. Cockpits got lonely.