So, he did something just short of being overtly stupid: he put a corporal in charge.

“Tunger,” he said, “you’ve got control. Why don’t you give me a little demonstration of what these battle bots can do?”

The corporal stiffened. “That’s not really my job, sir. I’m here to help you with the administration and organization—”

“Come on,” Rogers said. “Show me the good stuff. Make ’em spin around in circles and shoot each other with paint guns and do karate.”

“The word karate does not appear in my vocabulary,” Oh One said. “Are you referring to droid fu?”

“Shut up for right now. I’m trying to get the corporal to do orderly stuff like order you around with orders. Tunger?”

Tunger’s face was getting red, and he was avoiding meeting Rogers’ gaze.

“It’s just that . . .”

“You have no idea how they work, do you?”

Tunger looked at the floor. “Nur.”

Rogers sighed and stood up. “How long have you worked with droids?”

“Since I was transferred from the zoo deck.”

Well, that explains the boot stain, Rogers thought.

“And that was?”

The corporal hesitated. “Three days ago.”

Rogers grit his teeth. Another bizarre personnel transfer. What would possess Klein to put a zookeeper—if Tunger had even been in that illustrious of a position on the zoo deck—with droids? Rogers supposed dealing with strange creatures might give Tunger a leg up, but Rogers didn’t think these shinies would respond to fish or whistles. Maybe electrical prods, though . . .

“Fine. Fine. Did they tell you anything at all about these droids before you came here?”

Tunger brightened and turned to where a small cabinet was attached to the wall. He opened it with his personal keycard and removed a strange-looking datapad, roughly twice as large as the standard-issue personal datapad that everyone was required to use. He handed it to Rogers with ceremonial seriousness.

“They told me about this, sir,” Tunger said. “It’s the control pad. I tried to play with it a little but it’s not keyed to me; you’ll have to unlock it with your keycard first.”

Rogers held the device as though it was a live grenade with the pin pulled out. In his hands he held the controls for a bunch of shinies, none of whom had any personalities but all of whom had weapons, and he was supposed to somehow train them to fight. Or were they supposed to train him instead? Removing his keycard from the back of his datapad, he swiped it in the slot on the side of the control pad.

The formerly blank screen lit up, and it was a few moments before a complicated control panel came onto the screen. Nothing on it was marked at all, and there was precious little to distinguish one button from the other; small green and red squares dotted the display, looking almost like a new sort of game or an old box of chewing gum, and there was one large orange square button at the bottom.