“Oh,” Rogers said. Why was he sweating so much? “Well, are we ready?”

“Ready to lay down and die!” she barked. Rogers took a step back and felt his foot come off the floor, weightless. He stumbled forward again back into gravity, but the Viking didn’t seem to notice.

“I’ve got a bunch of cooks trying to shoot things with guns. You ever seen a cook try to shoot something?”

Rogers shook his head silently.

“It looks like apes flinging shit at each other in the zoo,” Captain Alsinbury said. “And it does about as much damn good in combat.”

“That doesn’t sound very good at all,” Rogers said. “Does that usually make for a good day?”

The Viking chuckled, a low rumble that sent all sorts of sensations to all sorts of places in Rogers’ body.

“It makes for a pretty shitty day,” she said. “But at least today I don’t have to do it with combat droids training in the next room!”

She let out a belly laugh and slapped him on the arm, nearly knocking him back into zero gravity. Rogers’ teeth clacked together noisily, but he withstood the blow—cherished it, let it sink into every fiber of his being—as best as he could.

“Trust me,” Rogers said, feeling a little bit of the tension bleed out of him. “You’re not nearly as glad as I am.”

For a moment, those words echoed in Rogers’ head as a falsehood. Had he been better off as the AIGCS commander? All he had to do was hang out with a bunch of stupid droids all day and pretend to train them. He’d been an ensign, too, and nobody expects anything out of an ensign except a repeated exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Now where was he? On the command deck, as a lieutenant, working for the admiral. Maybe droids hadn’t been so bad after all.

“What’s the matter?” the Viking asked. “You look like you just licked a plasma converter. Are you a cook?”

Whatever he was about to say was obliterated by the loudspeaker’s call.

“Lieutenant Rogers, please report to the bridge immediately.”

“I forgot you were the new exec,” the Viking said. She gave him what might have been considered a grin. “Nice knowing you.”

She hit him on the forehead with the palm of her hand and snickered as she walked away. Rogers turned and watched her go, watched her consume the hallway with her presence, wanted himself to be consumed by her. Their conversation had gone well. Surprisingly well. Not happily-ever-after well, but at least he no longer felt that he was about to be crushed under her boot (without asking for it). It might have really gone somewhere, had she stuck around for a few more minutes and given Rogers some time to really kick his charm into gear.

But that damn loudspeaker, this damn job had gotten in the way. Everything on this ship was always getting in the way of everything else. He was sick of it.