Redshirts

by John Scalzi

“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.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Dahl, where are you going?” Duvall said. She and the others were standing in the middle of the Angeles V space station corridor, watching Dahl unexpectedly split off from the group. “Come on, we’re on shore leave,” she said. “Time to get smashed.”

  “And laid,” Finn said.

  “Smashed and laid,” Duvall said. “Not necessarily in that order.”

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with doing it in that order,” Finn said.

  “See, I bet that’s why you don’t get a lot of second dates,” Duvall said.

  “We’re not talking about me,” Finn reminded her. “We’re talking about Andy. Who’s ditching us.”

  “He is!” Duvall said. “Andy! Don’t you want to get smashed and laid with us?”

  “Oh, I do,” Dahl assured her. “But I need to make a hyperwave first.”

  “You couldn’t have done that on the Intrepid?” Hanson asked.

  “Not this wave, no,” Dahl said.

  Duvall rolled her eyes. “This is about your current obsession, isn’t it,” she said. “I swear, Andy, ever since you got a bug in your ass about Jenkins you’re no fun anymore. Ten whole days of brooding. Lighten up, you moody bastard.”

  Dahl smiled at this. “I’ll be quick, I promise. Where will you guys be?”

  “I’ve got us a suite at the station Hyatt,” Hanson said. “Meet us there. We’ll be the ones quickly losing our sobriety.”

  Finn pointed to Hester. “And in his case, his virginity.”

  “Nice,” Hester said, but then actually grinned.

  “Be there in a few,” Dahl promised.

  “Better be!” Hanson said, and then he and the rest wandered down the corridor, laughing and joking. Dahl watched them go and then headed to the shopping area of the station, looking for a wave station.

  He found one wedged between a coffee shop and a tattoo parlor. It was barely larger than a kiosk and had only three wave terminals in it, one of which was out of service. A drunken crewman of another ship was loudly arguing into one of the others. Dahl took the third.

  “Welcome to
SurfPoint Hyperwave,” the monitor read, and then listed the per-minute cost of opening a wave. A five-minute wave would eat most of his pay for the week, but this was not entirely surprising to Dahl. It took a large amount of energy to open up a tunnel in space/time and connect in real time with another terminal light-years away. Energy cost money.

  Dahl took out the anonymous credit chit he kept on hand for things he didn’t want traced directly to his own credit account and placed it on the payment square. The monitor registered the chit and opened up a “send” panel. Dahl spoke a phone address back at Academy and waited for the connection. He was pretty sure that the person he was calling would be awake and moving about. The Dub U kept all of its ships and stations on Universal Time because otherwise the sheer number of day lengths and time zones would make it impossible for anyone to do anything, but the Academy was in Boston. Dahl couldn’t remember how many time zones behind that was.

  The person on the other end of the line picked up, audio only. “Whoever you are, you’re interrupting my morning jog,” she said.

  Dahl grinned. “Morning, Casey,” he said. “How’s my favorite librarian?”

  “Shit! Andy!” Casey said. A second later the video feed kicked in and Casey Zane popped up, smiling, the USS Constitution behind her.

  “Jogging the Freedom Trail again, I see,” Dahl said.

  “The bricks make it easy to follow,” Casey said. “Where are you?”

  “About three hundred light-years away, and paying for every inch of it on this hyperwave,” Dahl said.

  “Got it,” Casey said. “What do you need?”

  “The Academy Archive would have blueprints of every ship in the fleet, right?” Dahl asked.

  “Sure,” Casey said. “All the ones that the Dub U wants to acknowledge exist, anyway.”

  “Any chance they’d be altered or tampered with?”

  “From the outside? No,” Casey said. “The archives don’t connect to outside computer systems, partly to avoid hacking. All data has to go through a live librarian. That’s job security for you.”

  “I suppose it is,” Dahl said. “Is there any chance I can get you to send me a copy of the Intrepid blueprints?”

  “I don’t think they’re classified, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” Casey said. “Although I might have to redact some information about the computer and weapons systems.”

  “That’s fine,” Dahl said. “I’m not interested in those anyway.”

  “That said, you’re actually on the Intrepid,” Casey said. “You should be able to get the blueprints out of the ship’s database.”

  “I can,” Dahl said. “There have been some changes to a few systems on board and I think it’ll be useful to have the original blueprints for compare and contrast.”

  “Okay,” Casey said. “I’ll do it when I get back to the archives. A couple of hours at least.”

  “That’s fine,” Dahl said. “Also, do me a favor and send it to this address, not my Dub U address.” He recited an alternate address, which he had created anonymously on a public provider while he was at the Academy.

  “You know I have to record the information request,” Casey said. “That includes the address to which I’m sending the information.”

  “I’m not trying to hide from the Dub U,” Dahl said. “No spy stuff, I swear.”

  “Says the man using an anonymous public hyperwave terminal to call one of his best friends, rather than routing it through his own phone,” Casey said.

  “I’m not asking you to commit treason,” Dahl said. “Cross my heart.”

  “All right,” Casey said. “We’re pals and all, but espionage isn’t in my job description.”

  “I owe you one,” Dahl said.

  “You owe me dinner,” Casey said. “The next time you’re in town. The life of an archive librarian isn’t that horribly exciting, you know. I need to live vicariously.”

  “Trust me, at this point I’m seriously considering taking up the life of a librarian myself,” Dahl said.

  “Now you’re just pandering,” Casey said. “I’ll wave you the stuff when I get in the office. Now get off the line before you don’t have any money left.”

  Dahl grinned again. “Later, Casey,” he said.

  “Later, Andy,” she said, and disconnected.

  * * *

  There was a guest in the suite when Dahl got there.

  “Andy, you know Lieutenant Kerensky,” Duvall said, in a curiously neutral tone of voice. She and Hester were on either side of Kerensky, who had an arm around each of them. They seemed to be propping him up.

  “Sir,” Dahl said.

  “Andy!” Kerensky said, slurringly. He disengaged from Duvall and Hester, took two stumbling steps and clapped Dahl on the shoulder with the hand that was not holding his drink. “We are on shore leave! We leave rank behind us. To you, right now, I am just Anatoly. Go on, say it.”

  “Anatoly,” Dahl said.

  “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Kerensky said. He drained his drink. “I appear to be out of a drink,” he said, and wandered off. Dahl raised an eyebrow at Duvall and Hester.

  “He spotted us just before we entered the hotel and attached himself like a leech,” Duvall said.

  “A drunken leech,” Hester said. “He was blasted before we got here.”

  “A drunken horny leech,” Duvall said. “The reason he has his arm around my shoulder is so he can grope my tit. Lieutenant or not, I’m about to kick his ass.”

  “Right now the plan is to get him drunk enough to pass out before he attempts to molest Duvall,” Hester said. “Then we dump him down a laundry chute.”

  “Shit, here he comes again,” Duvall said. Kerensky was indeed stumbling back toward the trio. His progress was more lateral than forward. He stopped to get his bearings.

  “Why don’t you leave him to me,” Dahl said.

  “Seriously?” Duvall said.

  “Sure, I’ll baby-sit him until he passes out,” Dahl said.

  “Man, I owe you a blowjob,” Duvall said.

  “What?” Dahl said.

  “What?” Hester said.

  “Sorry,” Duvall said. “In ground forces, when someone does you a favor you tell them you owe them a sex act. If it’s a little thing, it’s a handjob. Medium, blowjob. Big favor, you owe them a fuck. Force of habit. It’s just an expression.”

  “Got it,” Dahl said.

  “No actual blowjob forthcoming,” Duvall said. “To be clear.”

  “It’s the thought that counts,” Dahl said, and turned to Hester. “What about you? You want to owe me a blowjob, too?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Hester said.

  “What’s this I hear about blowjobs?” Kerensky said, finally wobbling up.

  “Okay, yes, one owed,” Hester said.

  “Excellent,” Dahl said. “See the two of you later, then.” Hester and Duvall backed away precipitately.

  “Where are they going?” Kerensky asked, blinking slowly.

  “They’re planning a birthday party,” Dahl said. “Why don’t you have a seat, sir.” He motioned to one of the couches in the suite.

  “Anatoly,” Kerensky said. “God, I hate it when people use rank on shore leave.” He fell heavily onto the couch, miraculously not spilling his drink. “We’re all brothers in the service, you know? Well, except those of us who are sisters.” He peered around, looking for Duvall. “I like your friend.”

  “I know,” Dahl said, also sitting.

  “She saved my life, you know,” Kerensky said. “She’s an angel. You think she likes me?”

  “No,” Dahl said.

  “Why not?” Kerensky blithered, hurt. “Does she like women or something?”

  “She’s married to her job,” Dahl said.

  “Oh, well, married,” Kerensky said, apparently not hearing the rest of what Dahl said. He drank some more.

  “You mind if I ask you a question?” Dahl said.

  With the hand not holding his d
rink, Kerensky made little waving motions as if to say, Go ahead.

  “How do you heal so quickly?” Dahl asked.

  “What do you mean?” Kerensky asked.

  “Remember when you got the Merovian Plague?”

  “Of course,” Kerensky said. “I almost died.”

  “I know,” Dahl said. “But then a week later you were leading the away team I was on.”

  “Well, I got better, you see,” Kerensky said. “They found a cure.”

  “Yes,” Dahl said. “I was the one who brought the cure to Commander Q’eeng.”

  “That was you?” Kerensky said, and then lunged at Dahl, enveloping him in a bear hug. Kerensky’s drink slopped up the side of the glass and deposited itself down the back of Dahl’s neck. “You saved my life too! This room is filled with people who saved my life. I love you all.” Kerensky started weeping.

  “You’re welcome,” Dahl said, prying the sobbing lieutenant off his body as delicately as he could. He was aware of everyone else in the room studiously ignoring what was happening on the couch. “My point was, even with a cure, you healed quickly. And then you were seriously injured on the away mission I was on. And yet a couple of days later you were fine.”

  “Oh, well, you know, modern medicine is really good,” Kerensky said. “Plus, I’ve always been a fast healer. It’s a family thing. We’ve got stories about one of my ancestors, in the Great Patriotic War? He was in Stalingrad. Took, like, twenty shots from Nazi bullets and still kept coming at them. He was unreal, man. So I inherited that gene, maybe.” He looked down at his drink. “I know I had more drink than this,” he said.

  “It’s a good thing you heal so fast, considering how often you get hurt,” Dahl ventured.

  “I know!” Kerensky said, suddenly and forcefully. “Thank you! No one else notices! I mean, what the hell is up with that? I’m not stupid, or clumsy, or anything. But every time I go on an away mission I get all fucked up. Do you know how many times I’ve been, like, shot?”

  “Three times in the last three years,” Dahl said.

  “Yes!” Kerensky said. “Plus all the other shit that happens to me. You know what it is. Fucking captain and Q’eeng have a voodoo doll of me, or something.” He sat there, brooding, and then showed every sign of being about to drift into sleep.