It didn't take long for Rogers and O'Brien to travel back to Capital City on Earth Gamma. As instructed by Commander Roderick, Rogers kept radio silence and made no stops until he was approaching the city. Once he started to see the city from his windows, he cracked open communications and began protocol for delivering prisoners. He typed in his log and quickly delivered it and waited for a response. It took only minutes for them to get a response.

  "Capital Command to transport sixty-five."

  "Transport sixty-five, Captain Rogers responding," Rogers replied, "We are five minutes out and are carrying multiple prisoners for transport from one of the techless colonies."

  "You are breaking regulations!" the other side informed him, "You are to send all logs out as you are taking off, not when you're arriving!"

  "Unless," Rogers continued, aware of the full regulation, "You are ordered to do so by a superior officer."

  There was a long pause.

  "Commander Anders will not be happy about this." The voice retorted.

  "The man who gave me these orders outranks Commander Anders." Rogers added. He loved playing that card as much as he possibly could, just rub it in their faces: my friend outranks yours. "So unless you want to be reprimanded by that Commander, I suggest you process my invoice and prepare to receive prisoners."

  There was another long pause.

  "Please bring prisoners to gate seven."

  "Thank you," Rogers replied, "Have a nice day!"

  The old man flipped off communications, and couldn't help but chuckle as he did so. At his age, he was determined to get his laughs wherever he could find them. For him life was getting too short to care what others thought about him. He was practically untouchable at this point. Unless he shot Anders with a blaster in front of dozens of witnesses, he couldn't get into trouble if he tried.

  "You're just having too much fun with that," O'Brien said, almost ready to roll her eyes at how childish the Captain was being.

  "When you eventually get to my age," Rogers replied, "You begin to enjoy the little things. I just can't help but enjoy reminding everyone that my friend Ben outranks Anders because he took a bathroom break before the ceremony, which caused him to be late and promoted last. Wasn't Ben's fault, as new ranks are handed out in alphabetical order. So all Anders had to do was show up on time and breathe and he would have been the higher ranking officer in the system. Yet he chose to take a leak, ended up showing up late, and because of that Ben was promoted first."

  "That's it?" O'Brien said, looking rather surprised, "Roderick outranks him because he took a piss?"

  "I know," Rogers said as he laughed again, "Ain't it great?"

  "I had no idea," O'Brien admitted. It was clear that Anders went to great length to hide the real reason why Roderick outranked him.

  "If he wants to confront who was responsible for that blunder, all Anders has to do is consult a mirror, "Rogers continued, "He'll get no sympathy from me, and I'll remind him of it as often as I can."

  "Must be nice to have friends in high places," O'Brien said, surprised that one of his former rookies was the highest ranking Patrolman in the system, "How did he get the rank of Commander so quickly?"

  "That's classified," Rogers answered, "I'm not allowed to talk about it."

  A few moments later, Rogers easily landed the shuttle at the loading bay he was instructed to connect to. Once the ship had landed, Rogers could tell there was going to be an issue as many officers were waiting them for him. Many more than was needed to take five prisoners off his hands.

  "Is that Commander Anders?" O'Brien asked, pointing out the side of her window. "He doesn't look impressed."

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  "He never looks impressed," Rogers replied, "Just let me do all the talking. You're just a rookie following orders."

  "Yes, Captain," O'Brien said, eager to stay out of it.

  The side door opened and Rogers slowly strolled off the ship and walked up to Commander Anders and greeted him with a half assed salute. As O'Brien had observed; Anders didn't look very impressed. As he had indicated earlier, but Rogers really didn't give a rat's ass.

  "Commander," Rogers said as he saluted, "No need for the big welcome. This is just a routine prisoner transfer."

  "If this transfer is so routine," Commander Anders started, "Why didn't you follow protocol as instructed in the Patrol guidelines for transporting anything?'

  "Because I was following orders," Captain Rogers answered as he passed the manifest and a copy of his orders over to the Commander. "I am allowed to ignore protocol of ordered to do so by a superior officer."

  Anders took the paper work from Rogers, and quickly looked over it. Right at the bottom of the listed orders was the signature that he didn't want to see; the signature of the only person in the whole solar system that outranked him. After two years, looking at that signature still infuriated him. There was nothing he could do about it, and he was reminded it of it at the bottom of the form where Roderick had scratched down a message in the comments box:

Don't even think about it, Anders.

- Ben

  Anders took a deep breath and then handed the paper work back to Rogers. His face was flushing a bit but he was doing his best to maintain control. He looked like he wanted to toss Rogers into the brig with the prisoners. Rogers could tell he wanted to do something, but his hands were tied.

  "Do it," Rogers dared him, "Give Benny the excuse he needs to report you to Home World Alpha, and knock you down a few ranks. Then you can start taking orders from me."

  "I bet you'd get a kick out of that," Anders said to the old man.

  "There are not enough toilets in this building for you to clean that would satisfy my contempt for your sorry ass." Rogers spit back at the Commander, "But if you'll excuse me, I have a job to do... Sir."

  Anders face now looked like it was reaching a boiling point, but he took a deep breath and remained calm, "Carry on, Captain."

  Rogers didn't respond but instead gave another half assed salute and then walked away, to join O'Brien who was already unloading the prisoners.

  "He looked furious," the rookie said as she watched Anders and his people walk away, "Was that all about you and Roderick?"

  "No," Rogers said, looking back at them as well, "There's something else going on here that is bugging him more than I ever could, something big."

  As they were walking the prisoners to processing, he could tell there were people talking more than usual. This led him to believe something big had happened and he was going to have to find out what it was. As the clerks at processing were going through the paper work, Rogers turned him his charm and ability to small talk up to get the details.

  "What's going on around here?" he politely asked, "Things seem really tense around here and it's not even payday."

  The clerk took a deep breath. "We're getting word there was a blaster fight downtown earlier today."

  Rogers had a confused look on his face. "Here in the city?"

  "Yeah, right here." The clerk confirmed, "Your former partner was right in the thick of it. She was fired at by a few people but she managed to disarm and arrest one of them during the scuffle."

  "How did the blasters beat the grid?" O'Brien asked.

  "We're not sure," the clerk answered, "But the knowledge that the grid is failing to stop blasters has everyone nervous. The bad guys can fire back."

  "That would make anyone nervous," Rogers said, as he was old enough to remember the days before the grid was completed. It was like the old west, and like the techless colonies. People drawing on one another to settle disputes or shoot back at Patrol Officers who tried to break things up. It was a mess especially in such a highly populated area. The grid saved a lot of lives since it was built. If someone found a way around it, they could lose a lot of good people faster than they could replace them. It would be anarchy.

  Rogers used the com panel on his arm to send a message to his old rookie, Sergeant Star: Just heard about the blaster fight, are you all right?

  A few moments later, he got a reply from Amanda: I'm fine, just on my way to process an interesting piece of tech.

  Rogers took a deep breath and sighed. He always worried about her despite the fact that she was more capable of taking care of herself than anyone else, even Roderick. He typed out another message in to his com panel out of habit being the older one around: Top brass is freaking out. Watch your six.

  Rogers waited again for another few minutes before getting another reply from Starr: I figured they would be. I'll be alright, take care.

  Rogers looked at the message and could tell exactly what she was thinking. Whatever was going on with the grid, she was going to take it on like a ram on a hill top and anyone who got in her way was going to be knocking heads with her, even Anders if he wasn't careful.

  "Is everything okay," O'Brien asked as she could tell he was distracted.

  "It's all good," Rogers replied as he tapped the glass where the clerk was still working, "While I'm young, I'll be retired before you're done at this pace."

  "You should already be retired," the clerk shot back at him.

  "True," Rogers said, grinning, "But then again I would miss busting your balls every chance I got. Move things along here."