“Pretty busy around here,” Lopez said as they passed by a wall of crates and entered into the spaceship maintenance section of the Pit. This was an area reserved mostly for starfighters and small transport craft, stuff that was small enough to be moved from the docking bays if they were damaged. Most of the complicated work on larger ships was done in the docking bays themselves or even outside the ship using Vacuum Mobility Units.

“Pretty busy?” Rogers asked. “How? There was never anything going on. We repaired burnt-out engines and replaced parts every time one of the fighter pilots ran his ship into something on patrol, but it was always pretty calm.”

“Yeah,” Lopez said, “but you didn’t have McSchmidt and a legion of droids breathing down your neck, telling you to put this there and put that here. I feel like all I ever do is move stuff around.”

Rogers shook his head. “Where did all the droids even come from?”

“It’s the war,” Lopez said.

“There is no war!” Rogers said, throwing up his hands.

“It’s the war that’s coming, then,” Lopez said. “People said the MPF wasn’t professional enough to take on the Thellies, so Klein started making changes. More rules, more droids. Less alcohol. It’s a different fleet.”

“And you believe it?”

Lopez shrugged. “What am I supposed to believe? The intelligence reports go to Klein, not the engineering crew, but I hear it from the fighter jocks every once in a while. They’ve been going out on patrol more often too. Another reason we’re pretty busy.”

Rogers rubbed his beard. Maybe there was something going on with Thelicosa. Admiral Klein wasn’t one to scare easy; he was a Real Military Man, if there was such a thing. If Klein thought war was coming, maybe it was true.

“But that doesn’t mean we have to have a bunch of shinies running everything,” Rogers said.

Lopez ducked her head, looking around. “You shouldn’t say that word.”

“Shinies?”

“Shh!” She shoved him, hard, sending him stumbling back, and he felt a flash of indignation. Only the Viking was allowed to push him around like that.

Oh, the Viking. Captain Alsinbury. If only . . .

“The droids don’t like it, and you’ll find yourself getting paperwork dropped on you if they hear you throwing it around like that. You’ll have to go to counseling.”

“Counseling?”

“Yeah,” Lopez said. “Racial reeducation counseling.”

Rogers balled up his fists. “They’re droids. They don’t have a race.”

“Tell that to the counselors. They’re droids, though, so they probably won’t agree with you.”

As they were about to leave the maintenance area and head over to where the barbeque pit used to be—which was now just a bunch of filing cabinets and posters—Rogers caught sight of a ship at the far back.

“Hey,” he said. “That’s my ship!”

Lopez stopped and looked, squinting. “Your ship?”

“Yeah,” Rogers said. “That’s the Awesome.”

“That’s a stupid name for a ship. Looks a whole lot like an MPF cargo speeder to me,” Lopez said slowly. “Have I seen that ship before?”