John Scalzi - Redshirts

“I don’t think luck had much to do with it,” he said.

“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.