“The last thing my team needs is to get stoned,” said Conan. There were literally a hundred ways to mix marijuana into a pizza. Skip’s specialty was infusing it into butter and olive oil, which kept the pungent taste from ruining the tart flavor of a fresh tomato sauce.

“You uniforms are all alike, always stressed out, pills only. But you come back for the house special when the devils are gone,” said Skip. “Got any new footage?”

“Already left it at the dead drop,” she said. “You’ll have to wait till you get back Stateside to see it.”

“If that day ever comes.”

“It will,” she assured him and herself.

He handed her a blister pack of red-and-black polka-dot pills. “Ladybugs. For dessert.”

“Thanks, brother,” said Conan.

“I have to head back; I left Sharon up there,” said Skip, and he waved a quick goodbye.

As Skip went back upstairs, Conan nodded at Nicks and Finn. “You know what to do. I’ll stand guard at the door.”

She drew a stubby matte-black Mossberg riot shotgun, Honolulu Police issue, cracked open the storeroom door, and poked it through. With her other hand, she picked up a slice of pizza.

Nicks and Finn moved aside some drums of flour and pulled up the grate on the basement floor that covered the sewage feed. They wrestled with the pipe’s fitting and then dropped a yellow-striped tube ringed with tracks into the pipe. The Versatrax 300 had once been used by the Honolulu sanitation department for sewer-pipe inspections, but the block of nanoplex explosive duct-taped to it now gave the sewer-bot another capability. In military parlance, it was a VBIED, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.

Voices were raised upstairs. Quiet footsteps followed, and Conan pulled back into the room.

“Is it in?” hissed Conan. “Someone else is here. Quit dicking around.”

“Bot’s in, and inbound toward target,” said Nicks. She sat cross-legged and could have been meditating but for the viz glasses and control gloves she wore to guide the Versatrax through the sewer system.

A girl’s loud voice upstairs made them all wince. Skip’s daughter, yelling at some customer.

“Just got red light from the command detonator,” said Nicks. “Timer is set.”

“I don’t like it,” said Finn. “We should just hit ’em now. Take out a sector commander, at least.”

“No, they’ve got dignitaries coming in from Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo, remember? Hit the targets from off-island and we make sure the outside world knows we are still in the fight,” said Nicks.

“Whatever,” said Finn, pulling another slice of pizza from the plate. “Just get the little bot there first.”

“Roger that,” said Nicks, her hands still guiding the bot from afar, waving in the air as if she were playing patty-cake with an invisible child. “But first I need you to feed me a slice.”

“What am I, your parent? Feed yourself,” said Finn.

“I can’t. I take my hands off the controls and our little surprise goes up someone’s toilet,” said Nicks. “And I know I can’t trust an animal like you not to eat it all before we get done.”

They quieted at a girl’s scream. Skip’s daughter, but clearly scared this time. They looked to see what Conan’s orders were.

“Shit,” said Finn. “She’s gone upstairs.”

Laughter echoed through the corridor. It had not been a good day aboard the Zumwalt, so Mike saw no reason for this kind of screwing around.

One of the fire-suppression bots had detonated its retardant payload in the wardroom during the 0200 meal. “It looks like a herd of elephants had an orgy in there,” a sailor had said, brushing past him.

Then there was the bigger problem this morning. The ship was supposed to be testing out the Navy’s new ODIS-E (Objective Data Integration System — Enhanced) program, a replacement for the prewar ATHENA, but from what he could see, all the system had done was blow out a power coupling.

The devastated look on his son’s face had said it all. If the ship’s captain couldn’t contain his disappointment, then this setback meant something ominous. What were they thinking, naming a ship’s control system after a story about a Greek guy lost at sea for ten years? Nobody knew their history anymore, and apparently nobody knew network engineering either. Mike’s bigger concern was the coupling. Spare parts were in short supply, and they couldn’t just order another one from the Chinese manufacturer.

In the corridor, Mike stepped out of sight and listened. He heard deep laughter, the kind that’s amplified by a thick gut. A woman’s voice, angry, followed:

“You should be apologizing for much more than that,” the woman shouted. “If you don’t attach this shielding here and here, then I’m going to be the least of your headaches.”

It was Dr. Li.

“You need to understand that nothing you know about gunpowder or cannonballs or whatever you did a long time ago is relevant now,” she said. “If you don’t shield the power cables, the energy they release, which is mostly —”

“Stop right there, lady,” said one of the crew. “We get it. That’s why we put some shielding there already. If you want it changed, you put it in the work-order system and we’ll get to it. Your job ain’t the only one that matters. Besides, who’s going to verify your, uh, work?”

“Verify my work? What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“Yeah, well, to make sure it’s done right. That it can be trusted, you know. Or maybe you already got it checked out with Beijing?” More laughter. “This might not be good enough for you, but it’s the goddamn best America can do right now. Next rail shipment isn’t coming into Oakland until, oh, next week? So as of now, it’s good enough.”

Mike couldn’t place the voice. Whoever it was talked with a faint slur, as if he used a jawbone-implanted hearing device. Time to see who.

Mike stepped around the corner and cleared his throat.

“I’m hearing a lot of laughter today. Something funny?” he said. “Share it with me. Not much makes me laugh lately.”

“No worries, Chief,” said Parker, a petty officer second class in his thirties. “We got this handled; we’re just fixing some of the shielding on the ray gun.”

“Rail gun,” said Vern.

“Whatever you wanna call this Star Wars shit, lady,” said Parker.

Mike eyed the sailor. In his midthirties, Parker was clearly taking advantage of the Navy’s free hormone-enhancement therapy. His skin was drawn and dry, but his neck and biceps were frighteningly thick, like a bodybuilder who was five months pregnant. Mike shook his head in disappointment. The Mentor Crew was supposed to guide the new generation of wartime sailors but also to remediate new noncommissioned officers like Parker. The Stonefish strikes had cut down the ranks of the Navy’s enlisted leaders, and the wave of promotions to fill the gaps had elevated far too many men and women who were not up to snuff. Mike could see why Parker had topped out just below Mike’s own old rank. Becoming a chief petty officer required more than just time in service; you also had to be able to make it past a selection board of your peers.

“Her name is Dr. Li,” said Mike to Parker. “You will address your betters by their titles.” He turned to Vern.

“You getting what you need, Dr. Li?” Mike said, drawing out the Doctor.

“We need more shielding on the power cables before we can run the live-fire test,” said Vern.

Mike looked at her and then turned to Parker. He stepped up so he was chest to chest with the sailor, unfazed by the younger man’s bulk. As big as Parker was, he lacked Mike’s ability to intimidate.

“Well, Parker here, he’s concerned about America and her fleet,” said Mike, speaking to Vern but looking the sailor directly in the eye, daring him to disagree. “So seeing that you are a fellow American — hell, a civilian working her ass off to help arm said fleet — Parker just volunteered to weld it in for you, since working with metal seems to be something he’s got a passion for,” said Mike, a backhanded compliment for a sailor who spent too much time in the weight room.