Hart frowned at him. “My boys and I just spent a lot of our free time fixing that ship, Rogers, and now you just want to throw it away?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Rogers said. “I’m saying that there’s no room in any of the other docking bays, and the engineering folks keep failing their inspections because there’s a random ship in the middle of the maintenance bay. By not doing me this favor, you’re directly contributing to the failure of the engineering crew to be prepared for—”

“Cram it, Rogers,” Hart said. “Don’t pull your bullshit on me. If you’re trying to run away, I’ll move your damn ship.”

“Right,” Rogers said. “Thanks.”

Oh, Chute

“Well, Cadet,” Rogers said, petting his unexpected feline friend on the head. “I guess this is good-bye.”

Cadet showed his concern for Rogers’ departure by turning over gracefully to allow Rogers to rub his belly exactly one time before scratching him. Rogers pushed the cat away, which, in a zero-gravity room, was a lot more fun. Cadet seemed to think so too, as he curled into a ball to do a somersault before latching his claws onto a floating fake palm tree, quickly forgetting that Rogers existed.

Rogers licked his lips, though his dry mouth didn’t do much to moisten them. This wasn’t exactly an easy or safe plan—jump out the garbage chute, use the VMU to rendezvous with the awkwardly docked Awesome, and then make a random Un-Space jump while the targeting computer was hopefully shut down. It was a lot of risk, but the prize was freedom.

The buzzer sounded, and Rogers sailed smoothly to the door and opened it.

“I’m here, sir,” Tunger said, saluting. Rogers returned the salute, hoping it was the last one he’d ever have to perform.

“It took you long enough.” Rogers exited the room and took a moment to readjust to normal gravity.

“Nobody uses laundry bins anymore,” Tunger said, gesturing to the large wheeled cart he’d pulled to the side of Rogers’ door. “I had to pull this out of the museum.”

“The Flagship has a museum?” Rogers said, perplexed. “And someone put a laundry bin in it?

“Not as an exhibit,” Tunger said. “It was just the laundry bin. And yes, the museum was installed to replace the shuffleboard and Ping-Pong arena on the commissary deck. I’m surprised you hadn’t visited yet.”

“I hate shuffleboard,” Rogers said. Even so, he felt a little stab of loss at the demolition of one of the Flagship’s famous game rooms. What happened to the laser tag arena and the trampoline room, then? What good was a battle group’s flagship without a trampoline room?

“What do you need this for, anyway?” Tunger asked as Rogers took the cart from him and wheeled it so that its widest side was flush against the doorway to his room. It was just about the heaviest laundry cart that Rogers had ever moved, but it yielded to his bulging muscles soon enough.