Redshirts

CHAPTER FIVE

“I think I’d like to dispense with the bullshit now,” Dahl said to his lab mates.

The four of them were quiet and looked at each other. “All right, you don’t have to fetch us all coffee anymore,” said Mbeke, finally.

“It’s not about the coffee, Fiona,” Dahl said.

“I know,” Mbeke said. “But I thought it was worth a shot.”

“It’s about your away team experience,” Collins said.

“No,” Dahl said. “It’s about my away team experience, and it’s about the fact all of you disappear whenever Q’eeng shows up, and it’s about the way people move away from him whenever he walks down the corridors, and it’s about that fucking box, and it’s about the fact there’s something very wrong with this ship.”

“All right,” Collins said. “Here’s the deal. Some time ago, it was noticed that there was an extremely high correlation between away teams led by or including certain officers, and crewmen dying. The captain. Commander Q’eeng. Chief Engineer West. Medical Chief Hartnell. Lieutenant Kerensky.”

“And not only about crewmen dying,” Trin said.

“Right,” Collins said. “And other things, too.”

“Like if someone died with Kerensky around, everyone else would be safe if they stuck with him,” Dahl said, remembering McGregor.

“Kerensky’s actually only weakly associated with that effect,” Cassaway said.

Dahl turned to Cassaway. “It’s an effect? You have a name for it?”

“It’s the Sacrificial Effect,” Cassaway said. “It’s strongest with Hartnell and Q’eeng. The captain and Kerensky, not so much. And it doesn’t work at all with West. He’s a goddamn death trap.”

“Things are always exploding around him,” Mbeke said. “Not a good sign for a chief engineer.”

“The fact that people die around these officers is so clear and obvious that everyone naturally avoids them,” Collins said. “If they’re walking through the ship, crew members know to look like they’re in the middle of some very important errand for the crew chief or section head. That’s why everyone’s rushing through the halls whenever they’re around.”

“It doesn’t explain how you all know to get coffee or inspect that storage room whenever Q’eeng is on his way.”

“There’s a tracking system,” Trin said.

“A tracking system?” Dahl said, incredulously.

“It’s not that shocking,” Collins said. “We all have phones that give away our locations to the Intrepid’s computer system. I could, as your superior officer, have the computer locate you anywhere on the ship.”

“Q’eeng isn’t your underling,” Dahl said. “Neither is Captain Abernathy.”

“The alert system isn’t strictly legal,” Collins allowed.

“But you all have access to it,” Dahl said.

“They have access to it,” Cassaway said, pointing to Collins and Trin.

“We give you warning when they’re on their way,” Trin said.

“‘I’m going to get some coffee,’” Dahl said. Trin nodded.

“Yes, which only works as long as you two are actually here,” Cassaway said. “If you’re not around, we’re screwed.”

“We can’t have the entire ship on the alert system,” Trin said. “It would be too obvious.”

Cassaway snorted. “As if they’d notice,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Dahl asked.

“It means that the captain, Q’eeng and the others seem oblivious to the fact that most of the ship’s crew go out of their way to avoid them,” Mbeke said. “They’re also oblivious to the fact that they kill off a lot of the crew.”

“How can they be oblivious to that?” Dahl said. “Hasn’t someone told them? Don’t they know the stats?”

Dahl’s four lab mates shared quick glances at each other. “It was pointed out to the captain once,” Collins said. “It didn’t take.”

“What does that mean?” Dahl asked.

“It means that talking to them about the amount of crew they run through is like talking to a brick wall,” Cassaway said.

“Then tell someone else,” Dahl said. “Tell Admiral Comstock.”

“You don’t think that’s been tried?” Cassaway said. “We’ve contacted Fleet. We’ve contacted the Dub U’s Military Bureau of Investigation. We’ve even had people try to go to journalists. Nothing works.”

“There’s no actual evidence of malfeasance or command incompetence, is what we’re told,” Trin said. “Not us, specifically. But whoever complains about it.”

“How many people do you have to lose before it becomes command incompetence?” Dahl asked.

“What we’ve been told,” Collins said, “is that as the flagship of the Dub U, the Intrepid takes on a larger share of sensitive diplomatic, military and research missions than any other ship in the fleet. Because of that, there is commensurate increase of risk, and thus a statistically larger chance crew lives will be lost. It’s part of the risk of such a high-profile posting.”

“In other words, crew deaths are a feature, not a bug,” Cassaway said, dryly.

“And now you know why we just try to avoid them,” Mbeke said.

Dahl thought about this for a moment. “It still doesn’t explain the Box.”

“We don’t have any good explanation for the Box,” Collins said. “No one does. Officially speaking, the Box doesn’t exist.”

“It looks like a microwave, it dings when it’s done and it outputs complete nonsense,” Dahl said. “You have to present its results in person, and it doesn’t matter what you say when you give the data to Q’eeng, just so long as you give him something to fix. I don’t really have to point out all the ways that’s so very fucked up, do I?”

“It’s how it’s been done since before we got here,” Trin said. “It’s what we were told to do by the people who had our jobs before us. We do it because it works.”

Dahl threw up his hands. “Then why not use it for everything?” he asked. “It’d save us all a lot of time.”

“It doesn’t work with everything,” Trin said. “It only works for things that are extraordinarily difficult.”

“Like finding a so-called counter-bacterial in six hours,” Dahl said.

“That’s right,” Trin said.

Dahl looked around the room. “It doesn’t bother you that a science lab has a magic box in it?” he asked.

“Of course it bothers us!” Collins said sharply. “I hate the damn thing. But I have to believe it’s not actually magic. We just somehow got hold of a piece of technology so incredibly advanced it looks that way to us. It’s like showing a caveman your phone. He wouldn’t have the first idea how it worked, but he could still use it to make a call.”

“If the phone were like the Box, the only time it would let the caveman make a call would be if he were on fire,” Dahl said.

“It is what it is,” Collins said. “And for some reason we have to do the Kabuki dance of showing off gibberish to make it work. We do it because it does work. We don’t know what to do with the data, but the Intrepid’s computer does. And at the time, in an emergency, that’s enough. We hate it. But we don’t have any choice but to use it.”

“When I came to the Intrepid, I told Q’eeng that at the Academy we had trouble replicating some of the work you guys were doing on the ship,” Dahl said. “Now I know why. It’s because you weren’t actually doing the work.”

“Are you done, Ensign?” Collins said. She was clearly getting tired of the inquisition.

“Why didn’t you just tell me all of this when I came on board?” Dahl said.

“What are we going to say, Andy?” Collins said. “‘Hi, welcome to the Intrepid, avoid the officers because it’s likely you’ll get killed if you’re on an away team with them, and oh, by the way, here’s a magic box we use for impossible things’? That would be a lovely first impression, wouldn’t it?”

“You wouldn’t have believed us,” Cassaway said. “Not until you were here long enough to see some of this shit for yourself.”

“This is nuts,” Dahl said.

“That it is,” Collins said.

“And you have no rational explanation for it?” Dahl asked. “No hypothesis?”

“The rational explanation is what the Dub U told us,” Trin said. “The Intrepid takes on high-risk missions. More people die because of it. The crew has developed superstitions and avoidance strategies to compensate. And we use advanced technologies that we don’t understand but which allow us to complete missions.”

“But you don’t believe it,” Dahl said.

“I don’t like it,” Trin said. “I don’t have any reason not to believe it.”

“It’s saner than what Jenkins thinks,” Mbeke said.

Dahl turned to face Mbeke. “You’ve talked about him before,” he said.

“He’s doing an independent research project,” Collins said.

“On this?” Dahl asked.

“Not exactly,” Collins said. “He’s the one who built the tracking system we use for the captain and the others. The computer system AI sees it as a hack and keeps trying to patch it. So he’s got to keep updating if we want it to keep working.”

Dahl glanced over at Cassaway. “You said he looked like a yeti.”

“He does look like a yeti,” Cassaway said. “Either a yeti or Rasputin. I’ve heard him described both ways. Both are accurate.”

“I think I met him,” Dahl said. “After I went to the bridge to give Q’eeng the Box data about Kerensky’s plague. He came up to me in the corridor.”

“What did he say to you?” Collins asked.

“He told me to stay off the bridge,” Dahl said. “And he told me to ‘avoid the narrative.’ What the hell does that mean?”

Mbeke opened her mouth to speak but Collins got there first. “Jenkins is a brilliant programmer, but he’s also a bit lost in his own world, and life on the Intrepid has hit him harder than most.”

“By which she means that Jenkins’ wife got killed on an away mission,” Mbeke said.

“What happened?” Dahl asked.

“She was shot by a Cirquerian assassin,” Collins said. “The assassin was aiming at the Dub U ambassador to Cirqueria. The captain pushed the ambassador down and Margaret was standing right behind him. Took the bullet in the neck. Dead before she hit the ground. Jenkins chose to at least partly disassociate from reality after that.”

“So what does he think is happening?” Dahl asked.

“Why don’t we save that for another time,” Collins said. “You know what’s going on now and why. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you about this earlier, Andy. But now you know. And now you know what to do when either me or Ben suddenly say that we’re going to get coffee.”

“Hide,” Dahl said.

“‘Hide’ isn’t a word we like to use,” Cassaway said. “‘Perform alternative tasks’ is the preferred term.”

“Just not in the storage room,” Mbeke said. “That’s our alternative tasking place.”

“I’ll just alternatively task behind my work desk, then, shall I,” Dahl said.

“That’s the spirit,” Mbeke said.

At evening mess, Dahl caught up his four friends with what he learned in the lab, and then turned to Finn. “So, did you get the information I asked you for?” he said.

“I did indeed,” Finn said.

“Good,” Dahl said.

“I want to preface this by saying that normally I don’t do this sort of work for free,” Finn said, handing his phone over to Dahl. “Normally something like this would have been a week’s pay. But this shit’s been weirding me out since that away mission. I wanted to see it for myself.”

“What are the two of you talking about?” Duvall said.

“I had Finn pull some records for me,” Dahl said. “Medical records, mostly.”

“Whose?” Duvall asked.

“Your boyfriend’s,” Finn said.

Dahl looked up at that. “What?”

“Duvall’s dating Kerensky,” Finn said.

“Shut up, Finn, I am not,” Duvall said, and glanced over to Dahl. “After he recovered, Kerensky tracked me down to thank me for saving his life,” she said. “He said that when he first came to in the shuttle, he thought he’d died because an angel was hovering over him.”

“Oh, God,” Hester said. “Tell me a line like that doesn’t actually work. I might have to kill myself otherwise.”

“It doesn’t,” Duvall assured him. “Anyway, he asked if he could buy me a drink the next time we had shore leave. I told him I’d think about it.”

“Boyfriend,” Finn said.

“I’m going to stab you through the eye now,” Duvall said to Finn, pointing her fork at him.

“Why did you want Lieutenant Kerensky’s medical records?” Hanson asked.

“Kerensky was the victim of a plague a week ago,” Dahl said. “He recovered quickly enough to lead an away mission, where he lost consciousness because of a machine attack. He recovered quickly enough from that to hit on Maia sometime today.”

“To be fair, he still looked like hell,” Duvall said.

“To be fair, he should probably be dead,” Dahl said. “The Merovian Plague melts people’s flesh right off their bones. Kerensky was about fifteen minutes away from death before he got cured, and he’s leading an away mission a week later? It takes that long to get over a bad cold, much less a flesh-eating bacteria.”

“So he’s got an awesome immune system,” Duvall said.

Dahl fixed her with a look and flipped Finn’s phone to her. “In the past three years, Kerensky’s been shot three times, caught a deadly disease four times, has been crushed under a rock pile, injured in a shuttle crash, suffered burns when his bridge control panel blew up in his face, experienced partial atmospheric decompression, suffered from induced mental instability, been bitten by two venomous animals and had the control of his body taken over by an alien parasite. That’s before the recent plague and this away mission.”

“He’s also contracted three STDs,” Duvall said, scrolling through the file.

“Enjoy your drink with him,” Finn said.

“I think I’ll ask for penicillin on the rocks,” Duvall said. She handed the phone back to Dahl. “So you’re saying there’s no way he could be walking around right now.”

“Forget the fact that he should be dead,” Dahl said. “There’s no way he could be alive and sane after all this. The man should be a poster boy for post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“They have therapies to compensate for that,” Duvall said.

“Yeah, but not for this many times,” Dahl said. “This is seventeen major injuries or trauma in three years. That’s one every two months. He should be in a constant fetal position by now. As it is, it’s like he has just enough time to recover before he gets the shit kicked out of him again. He’s unreal.”

“Is there a point to this,” Duvall said, “or are you just jealous of his physical abilities?”

“The point is there’s something weird about this ship,” Dahl said, scrolling through more data. “My commanding officer and lab mates fed me a bunch of nonsense about it today, with the away teams and Kerensky and everything else. But I’m not buying it.”

“Why not?” Duvall asked.

“Because I don’t think they were buying it either,” Dahl said. “And because it doesn’t explain away something like this.” He frowned and looked over at Finn. “You couldn’t find anything on Jenkins?”

“You’re talking about the yeti you and I encountered,” Finn said.

“Yeah,” Dahl said.

“There’s nothing on him in the computer system,” Finn said.

“We didn’t imagine him,” Dahl said.

“No, we didn’t,” Finn agreed. “He’s just not in the system. But then if he’s the programming god your lab mates suggest he is, and he’s currently actively hacking into the computer system, I don’t think it should be entirely surprising he’s not in the system, do you?”

“I think we need to find him,” Dahl said.

“Why?” Finn asked.

“Because I think he knows something that no one else wants to talk about,” Dahl said.

“Your friends in your lab say he’s crazy,” Hester pointed out.

“I don’t think they’re actually his friends,” said Hanson.

Everyone turned to him. “What do you mean?” said Hester.

Hanson shrugged. “They said the reason they didn’t tell him about what was going on is that he wouldn’t have believed it before he had experienced some of it himself. Maybe that’s right. But it’s also true that if he didn’t know what was going on, he wouldn’t be able to do what they do: avoid Commander Q’eeng and the other officers, and manage not to get on away team rosters. Think about it, guys: all five of us were on the same away team at one time, on a ship with thousands of crew. What do we all have in common?”

“We’re the new guys,” Duvall said.

Hanson nodded. “And none of us were told any of this by our crewmates until now, when it couldn’t be avoided anymore.”

“You think the reason they didn’t tell us wasn’t because we didn’t know enough to believe them,” Dahl said. “You think it was because that way, if someone had to die, it would be us, not them.”

“It’s just a theory,” Hanson said.

Hester looked at Hanson admiringly. “I didn’t think you were that cynical,” Hester said.

Hanson shrugged again. “When you’re the heir to the third largest fortune in the history of the universe, you learn to question people’s motivations,” he said.

“We need to find Jenkins,” Dahl said again. “We need to know what he knows.”

“How do you suggest we do that?” Duvall asked.

“I think we start with the cargo tunnels,” Dahl said.