Wait. Rogers did know what he was talking about. He’d seen Hart and his crew working on the Awesome a few days ago. Did that mean they were done repairing it? That was fast, especially considering the damage, but Rogers imagined that the ex-engineers really didn’t have a whole lot else to do. That meant Rogers had a ship again!

“No,” Rogers said carefully, some instinct telling him to keep it a secret for now. “I don’t know what Hart meant. In fact, I think I’ll go ask him about it. I’m a little hungry myself.”

“Just stay away from the Viciously Taunt the Enemy,” Tunger said. “I saw a group of droids headed that way to plug in. They always gum up the works. And they keep putting the lights out.”

Rogers barely heard him. His mind was working furiously as he very quickly considered some things. He suddenly had a ship again, and one that could navigate through Un-Space. He’d just actually contemplated hanging himself, though whether it was because he really couldn’t take it anymore or if he just wanted to prove Klein wrong was still up in the air. There might even be a war coming, and that sounded really dangerous. That didn’t make the Flagship a very good place to be.

There were plenty of places to hide in the Meridan system or any of the other neighboring systems in the galaxy. Criminals did it all the time. Hell, the whole planet of Dathum was practically filled with retired criminals under assumed names—that’s why the Meridan government’s taxation annex was located there. If the MPF hadn’t seized all of the credits from the Awesome’s data banks, he probably had enough to live for a long time without doing anything so pesky as “work.”

But could he really take the risk? If he got caught, there was no way he could make a deal like this again. If he simply served out his term in the military, he could start again with a clean slate. He just needed to be patient. Bide his time. Endure.

Across the hallway, Klein’s door suddenly opened.

“Rogers!” he hissed. “Get in here! My shipment of new buttons came in and I need your opinion on new battle formations.”

The door slammed shut.

“Tunger,” Rogers said after a moment.

“Yes, sir?”

“I’m going to need you to go back to Supply and get me a few things for . . . a special mission the admiral is sending me on. We’ll start with enough Sewer rats to last me, oh, a month.”

Rogers felt alive again. The spirit of everything sneaky and mischievous was channeling all of its power through him. He flowed through the Flagship as though in a trance, almost like a lucid hallucination, as he bent every situation to his will.

He was In the Zone. And it was awesome.

“You want me to issue you what?” Suresh said. He looked a whole lot paler than Rogers remembered him, and both of his hands trembled.