Tales Of The Rocket Patrol 3

Chapter 2

     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.