Redshirts

something like ‘Of course!’ or ‘Amazing!’ or, if you really want to kiss his ass, ‘We never would have solved that in a million years, Commander Q’eeng.’ He likes that. He won’t acknowledge that he likes it. But he likes it.”

Dahl opened his mouth, but Trin held up his hand again. “Or you can do what the rest of us do, which is to get the hell off the bridge as soon as you possibly can,” Trin said. “Give him the data, point out the one error, let him solve it, get your tablet back and get out of there. Don’t call attention to yourself. Don’t say or do anything clever. Show up, do your job, get out of there. It’s the smartest thing you can do.” Trin walked back over to his work.

“None of this makes the slightest bit of sense,” Dahl said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Trin agreed. “I already told you it didn’t.”

“Are any of you going to bother to explain any of this to me?” Dahl asked.

“Maybe someday,” Trin said, sitting down at his workstation. “But not right now. Right now, you have to race to get that data to the bridge and to Q’eeng. Your six hours is just about up. Hurry.”

* * *

Dahl burst out of the Xenobiology Laboratory door and immediately collided with someone else, falling to the ground and dropping his tablet. He picked himself up and looked around for his tablet. It was being held by the person with whom he collided, Finn.

“No one should ever be in that much of a rush,” Finn said.

Dahl snatched back the tablet. “You don’t have someone about to liquefy if you don’t get to the bridge in ten minutes,” Dahl said, heading in the direction of the bridge.

“That’s very dramatic,” Finn said, matching Dahl’s pace.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Dahl asked him.

“I do,” Finn said. “The bridge. I’m delivering a manifest for my boss to Captain Abernathy.”

“Doesn’t anyone just send messages on this ship?” Dahl asked.

“Here on the Intrepid, they like the personal touch,” Finn said.

“Do you think that’s really it?” Dahl asked. He weaved past a clot of crewmen.

“Why do you ask?” Finn said.

Dahl shrugged. “It’s not important,” he said.

“I like this ship,” Finn said. “This is my sixth posting. Every other ship I’ve been on the officers had a stick up their ass about procedure and protocol. This one is so relaxed it’s like being on a cruise ship. Hell, my boss ducks the captain at every possible opportunity.”

Dahl stopped suddenly, forcing Finn to sway to avoid colliding with him a second time. “He ducks the captain,” he said.

“It’s like he’s psychic about it,” Finn said. “One second, he’s there telling a story about a night with a Gordusian ambisexual, and the next he’s off getting coffee. As soon as he steps out of the room, there’s the captain.”

“You’re serious about this,” Dahl said.

“Why do you think I’m the one delivering messages?” Finn said.

Dahl shook his head and started off again. Finn followed.

The bridge was sleek and well-appointed and reminded Dahl of the lobby of some of the nicer skyscrapers he had been to.

“Ensign Dahl,” Chief Science Officer Q’eeng said, spotting him from his workstation. “I see you like cutting it close with your assignments.”

“We worked as fast as we could,” Dahl said. He walked over to Q’eeng and presented the tablet with the scrolling data and the rotating molecule. Q’eeng took it and studied it silently. After a minute, he looked up at Dahl and cleared his throat.

“Sorry, sir,” Dahl said, remembering his line. “We got ninety-nine percent there, but then we had a problem. With, uh, the protein coat.” After a second he pointed to the screen, at the gibberish flying by.

“It’s always the protein coat with your lab, isn’t it,” Q’eeng murmured, perusing the screen again.

“Yes, sir,” Dahl said.

“Next time, remember to more closely examine the relationship between the peptide bonds,” Q’eeng said, and punched his fingers at the tablet. “You’ll find the solution to your problem is staring you right in the face.” He turned the tablet toward Dahl. The rotating molecule had stopped rotating and several of its bonds were now highlighted in blinking red. Nothing had otherwise changed with the molecule.

“That’s amazing, sir,” Dahl said. “I don’t know how we missed it.”

“Yes, well,” Q’eeng said, and then tapped at the screen again. The data flew off Dahl’s tablet and onto Q’eeng’s workstation. “Fortunately we may have just enough time to get this improved solution to the matter synthesizer to save Kerensky.” Q’eeng jabbed the tablet back at Dahl. “Thank you, Ensign, that will be all.”

Dahl opened his mouth, intending to say something more. Q’eeng looked up at him, quizzically. Then the image of Trin popped into Dahl’s brain.

Show up, do your job, get out of there. It’s the smartest thing you can do.

So Dahl nodded and got out of there.

Finn caught up with him outside the bridge a moment later. “Well, that was a complete waste of my time,” Finn said. “I like that.”

“There’s something seriously wrong with this ship,” Dahl said.

“Trust me, there isn’t a damn thing wrong with this ship,” Finn said. “This is your first posting. You lack perspective. Take it from an old pro. This is as good as it gets.”

“I’m not sure you’re a reliable—” Dahl said, and then stopped as a hairy wraith appeared before him and Finn. The wraith glared at them both and then jabbed a finger into Dahl’s chest.

“You,” the wraith said, jabbing the finger deeper. “You just got lucky in there. You don’t know how lucky you were. Listen to me, Dahl. Stay off the bridge. Avoid the Narrative. The next time you’re going to get sucked in for sure. And then it’s all over for you.” The wraith glanced over to Finn. “You too, goldbrick. You’re fodder for sure.”

“Who are you and what medications aren’t you taking?” Finn said.

The wraith sneered at Finn. “Don’t think I’m going to warn either of you again,” he said. “Listen to me or don’t. But if you don’t, you’ll be dead. And then where will you be? Dead, that’s where. It’s up to you now.” The wraith stomped off and took an abrupt turn into a cargo tunnel.

“What the hell was that?” Finn asked. “A yeti?”

Dahl looked back at Finn but didn’t answer. He ran down the corridor and slapped open the access panel to the cargo tunnel.

The corridor was empty.

Finn came up behind Dahl. “Remind me what you were saying about this place,” he said.

“There’s something seriously wrong with this ship,” Dahl repeated.

“Yeah,” Finn said. “I think you might be right.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“Come on! We’re almost to the shuttles!” yelled Lieutenant Kerensky, and Dahl had one giggling, mad second to reflect on how good Kerensky looked for having been such a recent plague victim. Then he, like Hester and everyone else on the away team, sprinted crazily down the space station corridor, trying to outrun the mechanized death behind them.

The space station was not a Universal Union station; it was an independent commercial station that may or may not have been strictly legally licensed but that nonetheless sent out on the hyperwave an open, repeating distress signal, with a second, encoded signal hidden within it. The Intrepid responded to the first, sending two shuttles with away teams to the station. It had decoded the hidden signal while the away teams were there.

It said, Stay away—the machines are out of control.

Dahl’s away team had figured out that one before the message was decoded, when one of the machines