“Lieutenant Rogers, report to the bridge immediately.”

He was never going to get anywhere with her. His love life was ruined. His drinking life was ruined. All of his lives were ruined.

It just wasn’t worth it anymore.

“Okay,” Rogers said, looping the sheet around his neck. He squatted against the wall, ready to jump. “Okay. Three, two . . .”

He hesitated. His knees shook.

“One, two . . . ” Wait. Was he counting forward or backward? Was there some kind of protocol for killing yourself ? Should he even be counting at all? What good was counting?

“This is stupid,” he said aloud, and reached to untie the sheet from around his neck. Dying seemed like an awful lot of work for relatively ambiguous gain, anyway. At that moment, though, someone rang the buzzer on the other side of the door. This caused his pet cat—who he’d named Cadet—to spring from the nearby nightstand and sink his claws firmly into Rogers’ leg.

Rogers jumped.

The rope went taut around his throat, and for a moment, Rogers thought it was all over despite his ambivalent intentions. Instead of breaking his neck, however, the elasticity of the sheets reached its maximum, and, like someone bungee-jumping in space, Rogers flew back at the wall, squashed Cadet between his chest and the wall, and received another bite for the trouble. Despite being a little relieved to have his neck in one piece, in a small way, Rogers was angry at being outsmarted by Klein. Apparently, it was impossible for someone to hang themselves in zero-g.

The buzzer sounded again.

“I’m coming!” Rogers shouted, finally freeing himself of the improvised noose. He leapt toward the door and absorbed the impact with his legs, grabbing into part of the doorframe to steady himself while he made sure he was in the proper orientation to the rest of the ship. He’d fallen out the doorframe more than once by entering the gravity-bound section of the Flagship sideways.

“Good morning, sir!” Tunger said cheerily as the door opened. He saluted Rogers, and so did the next four enlisted troops that walked by.

“Where have you been?” Rogers asked. He stepped into the hallway—there was something disconcerting about floating while the person you were talking to was firmly in place—and closed the door behind him.

“What do you mean?” Tunger asked.

Rogers saluted a passing lieutenant commander. “I mean, the last time I saw you was three days ago.”

“Oh, right,” Tunger said, saluting Rogers again for some reason. “I was getting that stuff from Supply that you asked for to help you secure your stuff in your new quarters.”

“And it took you three days?”

“There was an inspection going on and everything was stacked wrong. They put the big stuff all the way in front, so there was no way to get to the small stuff in back. That and they sealed up the entire supply chamber in cryo-wrap on accident. Including Suresh.”

“They froze the supply chief ?” Rogers asked as he returned the salutes of two corporals heading toward the bridge.