Redshirts

CHAPTER TEN

“Red alert!” said Captain Abernathy, as the Calendrian rebel ship fired its torpedoes at the Intrepid. “Evasive maneuvers! Now!” Dahl, standing at his science post on the bridge, positioned his feet for stability as the ship yawed widely, moving its bulk to avoid the nimble guided projectiles headed for it.

You’ll notice that the Intrepid’s inertial dampeners don’t work as well in crisis situations, Dahl remembered Jenkins telling them. The ship could do hairpin turns and loop-de-loops any other time and you’d never notice. But whenever there’s a dramatic event, there goes your footing.

“They’re still coming right at us!” yelled Ensign Jacobs, at the weapons station, tracking the torpedoes.

Abernathy pounded the button on his chair that opened a broadcast channel. “All hands! Brace for impact!”

Dahl and everyone else on the bridge grabbed on to their stations and braced themselves. This would be a good time for a restraint system, Dahl thought.

There was a far crump as the torpedoes hit the Intrepid. The bridge deck swayed from the impact.

“Damage report!” barked Abernathy.

Decks six through twelve will almost always sustain damages during an attack, Jenkins had said. It’s because these are the decks the show has sets for. They can cut away from the bridge for shots of explosions and crew being flung backward.

“Decks six, seven and nine have sustained heavy damages,” Q’eeng said. “Decks eight and ten have moderate damage.”

“More torpedoes!” cried Jacobs. “Four of them!”

“Countermeasures!” yelled Abernathy. “Fire!”

Why didn’t you use countermeasures in the first place? Dahl thought.

In his head, Jenkins answered. Every battle is designed for maximum drama, he said. This is what happens when the Narrative takes over. Things quit making sense. The laws of physics take a coffee break. People stop thinking logically and start thinking dramatically.

“The Narrative”—Jenkins’ term for when the television show crept into their lives, swept away rationality and physical laws and made people know, do and say things they wouldn’t otherwise. You’ve had it happen to you already, Jenkins had said. A fact you didn’t know before just pops into your head. You make a decision or take an action you wouldn’t otherwise make. It’s like an irresistible impulse because it is an irresistible impulse—your will isn’t your own, you’re just a pawn for a writer to move around.

On the view screen, three orange blossoms burned brightly as the Intrepid’s countermeasures took out torpedoes.

Three, not four, Dahl thought. Because having one get through will be more dramatic.

“One’s still heading our way!” Jacobs said. “It’s going to hit!”

There was a violent bang as the torpedo smacked against the hull several decks below the bridge. Jacobs screamed as his weapons station exploded in a shower of sparks, flinging him backward to the deck of the bridge.

Something will explode on the bridge, Jenkins said. That’s where the camera spends nearly all its time. There has to be damage there, whether it makes sense or not.

“Reroute weapons controls!” yelled Abernathy.

“Rerouted!” said Kerensky. “I have them.”

“Fire!” Abernathy said. “Full spread!”

Kerensky smashed his fingers into the buttons of his station. The view screen lit up as pulse beams and neutrino missiles blasted toward the Calendrian rebel, exploding in a constellation of impacts seconds later.

“Direct hits!” Kerensky said, looking at his station for information. “It looks like we cracked their engine core, Captain. We’ve got about a minute before she blows.”

“Get us out of here, Kerensky,” Abernathy said, and then turned to Q’eeng. “Additional damages?”

“Deck twelve heavily damaged,” Q’eeng said.

The door to the bridge opened and Chief Engineer West came through. “And our engines are banged up pretty good,” he said, as though he would have been able to hear Abernathy and Q’eeng’s conversation, through a door, while red alert sirens were blaring. “We’re lucky we didn’t crack our own core, Captain.”

“How long until it’s repaired?” Abernathy asked.

Just long enough to introduce a plot complication, Dahl thought.

“Ten hours would be pushing it,” West said.

“Damn it!” Abernathy said, pounding his chair again. “We’re supposed to be escorting the Calendrian pontifex’s ship to the peace talks by then.”

“Clearly there are those among the rebels still opposed to the talks,” Q’eeng said, looking toward the view screen. In it, the rebel ship blew up impressively.

“Yes, clearly,” Abernathy said. “But they were the ones who asked for the talks to begin with. Why jeopardize them now? And why attack us?” He looked off, grimly.

Every once in a while Abernathy or one of the other officers will say something dramatic, or rhetorical, or leading, and then he and everyone else will be quiet for a few seconds, Jenkins told them. That’s a lead-out to a commercial break. When that happens, the Narrative goes away. Watch what they do next.

After several seconds Abernathy blinked, relaxed his posture and looked at West. “Well, you should probably have your people start fixing those engines, then.” His voice was notably less tense and drama-filled.

“Right,” West said, and went right back out of the door. As he did so he looked around, as if wondering why he felt it necessary to come all the way to the bridge to deliver a piece of information he could have easily offered by phone.

Abernathy turned to Q’eeng. “And, let’s get repair crews to those damaged decks.”

“Will do,” Q’eeng said.

“And while you’re at it, get someone up here to repair the weapons station,” Abernathy said. “And see if we can’t find some power spike dampeners or something. There’s not a damn reason why everything on the bridge has to go up in sparks anytime we have a battle.”

Dahl made a small choking sound at this.

“Is there a problem, Ensign?” Abernathy said, seeing Dahl for what seemed like the first time in all of this.

“No, sir,” Dahl said. “Sorry, sir. A little post-combat nervousness.”

“You’re Dill,” Abernathy said. “From Xenobiology.”

“Dahl, sir,” Dahl said. “That was my former posting, yes.”

“First day on the bridge, then,” Abernathy said.

“It is,” Dahl said.

“Well, don’t worry, it’s not always like this,” Abernathy said. “Sometimes it’s worse.”

“Yes, sir,” Dahl said.

“Okay,” Abernathy said, and then nodded at the prone figure of Jacobs, who was now moaning softly. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and take Jackson here to sick bay. He looks like he could use it.”

“Right away, sir,” Dahl said, and moved to help Jacobs.

“How is he?” Abernathy asked, as Dahl lifted him.

“Banged up,” Dahl said. “But I think he’ll live.”

“Well, good,” Abernathy said. “That’s more than I can say for the last weapons specialist. Or the one before that. Sometimes, Dill, I wonder what the hell is going on with this ship. It’s like it has a goddamned curse.”

“It doesn’t prove anything,” Finn said, after Dahl recounted the events of the attack. The five of them were huddled around a table in the crew lounge, with their drinks.

“How much more proof do you want?” Dahl asked. “It was like going down a checklist. Wonky inertial dampeners? Check. Exploding bridge stations? Check. Damage to decks six through twelve? Check. Meaningful pause before dropping to commercial? Check.”

“No one died,” Hanson pointed out.

“Nobody had to die,” Dahl said. “I think this battle is just an opener. It’s what you have before the first commercial break. It’s the setup for whatever’s supposed to happen next.”

“Like what?” Duvall asked.

“I don’t know,” Dahl said. “I’m not writing this thing.”

“Jenkins would know,” Hester said. “He’s got that collection of ‘episodes.’”

Dahl nodded. Jenkins had splayed out a timeline of the Intrepid that featured glowing hash marks at near regular intervals. Those are where the Narrative intrudes, he said, zooming into one of the hash marks, which in detail branched out like a root structure. It comes and goes, you can see. Each of these smaller events is a scene. They all tie into a narrative arc. Jenkins zoomed out. Six years. Twenty-four major events a year, on average. Plus a couple minor ones. I think those are tie-in novels.

“Not you, now,” Finn complained to Hester, breaking Dahl’s reverie. “It’s bad enough Andy is all wrapped up in this. Now you’re going over to the crazy side, too.”

“Finn, if the shoe fits, I’m going to call it a shoe, all right?” Hester said. “I don’t believe his conclusions, but his knowledge of the details is pretty damn impressive. This last engagement went down like Jenkins said it would. He called the thing right down to the exploding bridge station. Now, maybe we’re not actually being written, and maybe Jenkins is off his medication. But I bet he’s got a good guess where this adventure with that rebel ship takes us.”

“So you’re going to go running to him every time something happens to find out what you should do next?” Finn asked. “If you really want to follow a cult leader, there are better ones than a guy who hasn’t eaten anything but away rations for four years and shits in a portable potty.”

“How do you explain it, then?” Hester asked Finn.

“I don’t,” Finn said. “Look. This is a weird damn ship. We all agree on that. But what you’re trying to do is impose causality on random events, just like everyone else here has been doing.”

“The suspension of the laws of physics isn’t a random event, Finn,” Hester said.

“And you’re a physicist now?” Finn countered, and looked around. “People, we’re on a goddamned spaceship. Can any of us really explain how the thing works? We encounter all types of alien life on planets we’ve just discovered. Should we be surprised we don’t understand it? We’re part of a civilization that spans light-years. That’s inherently weird if you give it any thought. It’s all inherently unlikely.”

“You didn’t say any of this when we met with Jenkins,” Dahl said.

“I was going to,” Finn said. “But then you were all ‘let’s hear what he has to say,’ and there was no point.”

Dahl frowned, irritated.

“Look, I’m not disagreeing there’s something off here,” Finn said. “There is. We all know it. But maybe that’s because this whole ship is on some sort of insanity feedback loop. It’s been feeding on itself for years now. In a situation like that, if you’re looking for patterns to connect unlikely events, you’re going to find them. It doesn’t help there’s someone like Jenkins, who is crazy but just coherent enough to whip up an explanation that makes some sort of messed-up sense in hindsight. Then he goes rogue and starts tracking the officers for the rest of the crew, which just feeds the insanity. And into this comes Andy, who is trained to believe this sort of mumbo jumbo.”

“What does that mean?” Dahl said, stiffening.

“It means you spent years in a seminary, neck-deep in mysticism,” Finn said. “And not just run-of-the-mill human mysticism but genuinely alien mysticism. You stretched your mind out there, my friend, just wide enough to fit Jenkins’ nut-brained theory.” He put up his hands, sensing Dahl’s irritation. “I like you, Andy, don’t get me wrong. I think you’re a good guy. But I think your history here is working against you. And I think whether you know it or not, you’re leading our pals here into genuinely bugshit territory.”

“Speaking of personal history, that’s the thing that creeped me out most about Jenkins,” Duvall said.

“That he knows about us?” asked Hanson.

“I mean how much he knew about each of us,” Duvall said. “And what he thought it meant.”

You’re all extras, but you’re glorified extras, Jenkins had told them. Your average extra exists just to get killed off, so he or she doesn’t have a backstory. But each of you do. He pointed to each in turn. You were a novitiate to an alien religion. You’re a scoundrel who’s made enemies across the fleet. You’re the son of one of the richest men in the universe. You left your last ship after having an altercation with your superior officer, and you’re sleeping with Kerensky now.

“You’re just pissed he told the rest of us that you were boinking Kerensky,” Hester said. “Especially after you had already blown him off in front of us.”

Duvall rolled her eyes. “I have needs,” she said.

“He’s had three STDs in his recent history,” Finn said.

“I had him get a new round of shots, trust me,” Duvall said, and then looked over at Dahl. “And anyway, don’t get on me for scratching an itch. None of you were exactly stepping up.”

“Hey, I was in sick bay when you started with Kerensky,” Dahl said. “Don’t blame me.”

Duvall smirked at that. “And it wasn’t that part that bothered me, anyway,” she said. “It was the other part.”

You’re not just going to get killed off, Kerensky told them. It’s not enough for a television audience just to kill off some poor random bastard every episode. Every once in a while they have to make it seem like a real person is dying. So they take a smaller character, build them up long enough for the audience to care about them, and then snap them off. That’s you guys. Because you come with backstories. You’re probably going to have an entire episode devoted to your death.

“More complete bullshit,” Finn said.

“Easy for you to say,” Hester said. “I’m the only one of us without an interesting backstory. I’ve got nothing. The next away team I’m on, I’m fucking doomed.”

Finn pointed at Hester and looked at Dahl. “See, this is what I’m talking about right here. You’ve overwhelmed a weak and febrile mind.”

Dahl smiled at this. “And you’re the lone voice of sanity.”

“Yes!” Finn said. “I want you to think about what it means when I am the person in a group who is making the case for reality. I’m the least responsible person I know. I resent having to be the voice of reason. I resent it a lot.”

“‘Weak and febrile,’” Hester muttered.

“You were the one calling a shoe a shoe,” Finn said.

Duvall’s phone pinged and she stepped away for a moment. When she returned, she was pale. “All right,” she said. “That was altogether too damned coincidental for my tastes.”

Dahl frowned. “What is it?”

“That was Kerensky,” she said. “I’m wanted for a senior officer briefing.”

“What for?” Hanson asked.

“When the Intrepid was attacked by that rebel ship, our engines got knocked out, so they sent another ship to escort the Calendrian pontifex’s ship to the peace talks,” Duvall said. “That ship just attacked the pontifex’s ship and crippled it.”

“What ship is it?” Dahl asked.

“The Nantes,” Duvall said. “The last ship I was stationed on.”