“Ensign Rogers,” the computerized—and thankfully mostly intelligible—voice of his personal terminal called to him. “You have an appointment on the commissary deck in fifteen minutes. Ensign Rogers, you have an appointment on the commissary deck in fifteen minutes.”

Looking at the clock, Rogers had discovered that he’d slept for almost an entire day, which didn’t surprise him, considering all he’d gone through. It was 0815 ship time; the inspection droid must have scheduled the haircut appointment by tapping directly into the data streams.

“Ignore it,” he told the computer. “What’s next?”

“Artificial Intelligence Combat Unit, 1000 hours ship time. Training deck, room 654.”

“Great.”

Muscle memory kicked in again as Rogers went through his room, showered, and dressed. It was an exercise he’d repeated every day for ten years, though he wasn’t used to doing it so early in the morning. Normally, he reported to the engineering bay at around 1100, after which everyone would sort of sit around and stare at the beer light until it turned on at around noon. Now that there was no beer light, however, he had no idea what the hell he’d do for the rest of the day.

Since he was blowing off his haircut, he had plenty of time to head to one of the ship’s mess halls and get some breakfast. A quick exchange of up-line and in-line left him on the commissary deck, where troops could spend their hard-earned credits, go bowling, or participate in one of many other forms of recreation and capitalism.

Somehow, before he even got to the commissary deck, he knew it would be deserted. The harrowing fact that there was no longer a beer light—at least not in officers’ quarters—still haunted him like the knowledge that a loved one was dead, never to be seen again. Rogers fondly remembered the glow of the beer light waking him up late in the afternoon on days when the previous night had been particularly good.

Rogers’ intuition was right. The commissary deck, normally the center of all activity on the Flagship, now consisted of troops walking from the up-line to the mess halls and back again, like some sort of twisted soldier feeding lot. There was no joy in their faces, only the crushing weight of daily routine and the doldrums of a regimented lifestyle. That and, bizarrely, something that Rogers may have confused with devotion to duty.

The mess halls were scattered all over the commissary deck to break up the massive crew of the Flagship. It didn’t work; everyone usually figured out which were the good ones pretty quickly and went there instead. They had each been unofficially named after combat maneuvers, which served a dual purpose of being easier to remember than “Mess Hall A” and making all of the eateries sound like bizarre old-world taverns. Rogers’ favorite was the Uncouth Corkscrew, mostly because he liked ambiguous double entendres, but if the lines were too long, he’d settle for the Peek and Shoot or the Up and Over. Under no circumstances would he ever eat at the Kamikaze or the Frantically Run Away.