“I don’t think it’s you, sir,” Dahl said.
“That’s more than I know,” Fischer said. He motioned them forward and they made their way cautiously to the shuttle bay.
“Anyone else here rated to fly one of these things?” Fischer asked, as they entered the bay.
“I am,” Hester said.
“Good,” Fischer said, and pointed to the shuttle Kerensky had piloted. “Warm her up. I’ll get started on mine. I want all of you to get into that shuttle with him.” He pointed at Hester. “If you see any of those machines coming, don’t wait, take off. I’ll have enough space for Kerensky and Williams. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Hester said.
“Get to it, then,” Fischer said, and ducked into his own shuttle.
“Everything about this mission sucks,” Hester said in their own shuttle, as he banged through the shuttle’s pre-flight sequence. Finn, Duvall and Hanson were strapping themselves in; Dahl kept watch by the hatch, looking for Kerensky and Williams.
“Hester, did you ever tell me that you knew how to fly a shuttle?” Dahl asked, turning to look at Hester.
“Kind of busy now,” Hester said.
“I didn’t know he was rated to fly a shuttle, either,” Finn said, from his seat. His anxiousness was needing a release, and talking seemed like a better idea to him than wetting himself. “And I’ve known him for more than a year.”
“Not something you’d think you’d miss,” Dahl said.
“We weren’t close,” Finn said. “I was mostly just using him for his foot locker.”
Dahl said nothing to this and turned back to the hatch.
“There,” Hester said, and punched a button. The engines thrummed into life. He strapped himself in. “Close that hatch. We’re getting out of here.”
“Not yet,” Dahl said.
“The hell with that,” Hester said. He pressed a button on his control panel to seal the hatch.
Dahl slapped the override at the side of the hatch. “Not yet!” he yelled at Hester.
“What is wrong with you?” Hester yelled back. “Fischer’s got more than enough space for Kerensky and Williams. My vote is for leaving, and since I’m the goddamn pilot, my vote’s the only one that counts!”
“We’re waiting!” Dahl said.
“For fuck’s sake, why?” Hester said.
From his seat, Hanson pointed. “Here they come,” he said.
Dahl looked out the hatch. Kerensky and Williams were hobbling slowly into the shuttle bay, propping each other up. Immediately behind them were the pounding of the machines.
Fischer popped his head out his shuttle hatch and saw Dahl. “Come on!” he said, and ran toward Kerensky and Williams. Dahl leaped out of his shuttle and followed.
“There’s six of them behind us,” Kerensky said, and they came up to the two of them. “We came as fast as we could. Swarming bots—” He collapsed. Dahl grabbed him before he could hit the floor.
“You got him?” Fischer said to Dahl. He nodded. “Get him on your shuttle. Tell your pilot to go. I’ve got Williams. Hurry.” Fischer slung his arm around Williams and dragged him toward his shuttle. Williams turned back to look at Kerensky and Dahl, utterly terrified.
The first of the machines stomped into the shuttle bay.
“Come on, Andy!” Duvall yelled, from the shuttle hatch. Dahl put on a burst of speed and crossed the distance to the shuttle, fairly hurling Kerensky at Duvall and Hanson, who had unlatched himself from his seat as well. They grabbed the lieutenant and dragged him in, Dahl collapsing in afterward.
“Now can we go?” Hester said, rhetorically, because he slapped the hatch button without waiting for a response. The shuttle leaped up from the shuttle bay deck as something slammed into the side and clattered off.
“Harpoon,” Finn said. He had unstrapped himself and was hovering over Hester, looking at a rearview monitor. “It didn’t take.”
The shuttle cleared the bay. “Good riddance,” muttered Hester.
“How’s Kerensky?” Dahl asked Duvall, who was examining Kerensky.
“He’s nonresponsive, but he doesn’t look too bad,” she said, and then turned to Hanson. “Jimmy, get me the medkit, please. It’s on the back of the pilot’s seat.” Hanson went to get it.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Dahl asked.
Duvall looked up briefly. “Told you I’d been ground forces, right? Got medic training then. Spent lots of time patching people up.” She smiled. “Hester’s not the only one with hidden skills.” Hanson came back with the medkit; Duvall cracked it open and got to work.
“Oh, shit,” Finn said, still looking at the monitor.
“What is it?” Dahl said, coming over to Finn.
“The other shuttle,” Finn said. “I’ve got a feed from their cameras. Look.”
Dahl looked. The cameras showed dozens of machines pouring into the shuttle bay, targeting their fire at the shuttle. Above them a dark, shifting cloud hovered.
“The swarm bots,” Finn murmured.
The camera view wobbled and shook and then went blank.
Finn slipped into the co-pilot seat and punched the screen they had just been looking at. “Their shuttle’s been compromised,” he said. “The engines aren’t firing, and it looks like the hull integrity has been breached.”
“We need to go back for them,” Dahl said.
“No,” Hester said. Dahl flared, but Hester turned and looked at him. “Andy, no. If the shuttle’s been breached even a little, those swarming bots are already inside of it. If they’re already inside of it, then Fischer and Williams are already dead.”
“He’s right,” Finn said. “There’s no one to go back for. Even if we did, we couldn’t do anything. The bay is swarming with those things. This shuttle doesn’t have weapons. All we’d be doing is letting the machines get a second shot at us.”
“We were lucky to get out at all,” Hester said, returning to his controls.
Dahl looked back at Kerensky, who was now moaning softly while Duvall and Hanson tended to him.
“I don’t think luck had much to do with it,” he said.
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?”