John Scalzi - Redshirts

“You didn’t say any of this when we met with Jenkins,” Dahl said.

“I was going to,” Finn said. “But then you were all ‘let’s hear what he has to say,’ and there was no point .”

Dahl frowned, irritated.

“Look, I’m not disagreeing there’s something off here,” Finn said. “There is. We all know it. But maybe that’s because this whole ship is on some sort of insanity feedback loop. It’s been feeding on itself for years now. In a situation like that, if you’re looking for patterns to connect unlikely events, you’re going to find them. It doesn’t help there’s someone like Jenkins, who is crazy but just coherent enough to whip up an explanation that makes some sort of messed-up sense in hindsight. Then he goes rogue and starts tracking the officers for the rest of the crew, which just feeds the insanity. And into this comes Andy, who is trained to believe this sort of mumbo jumbo.”

“What does that mean?” Dahl said, stiffening.

“It means you spent years in a seminary, neck-deep in mysticism,” Finn said. “And not just run-of-the-mill human mysticism but genuinely alien mysticism. You stretched your mind out there, my friend, just wide enough to fit Jenkins’ nut-brained theory.” He put up his hands, sensing Dahl’s irritation. “I like you, Andy, don’t get me wrong. I think you’re a good guy. But I think your history here is working against you. And I think whether you know it or not, you’re leading our pals here into genuinely bugshit territory.”

“Speaking of personal history, that’s the thing that creeped me out most about Jenkins,” Duvall said.

“That he knows about us?” asked Hanson.

“I mean how much he knew about each of us,” Duvall said. “And what he thought it meant.”

You’re all extras, but you’re glorified extras, Jenkins had told them. Your average extra exists just to get killed off, so he or she doesn’t have a backstory. But each of you do. He pointed to each in turn. You were a novitiate to an alien religion. You’re a scoundrel who’s made enemies across the fleet. You’re the son of one of the richest men in the universe. You left your last ship after having an altercation with your superior officer, and you’re sleeping with Kerensky now.

“You’re just pissed he told the rest of us that you were boinking Kerensky,” Hester said. “Especially after you had already blown him off in front of us.”

Duvall rolled her eyes. “I have needs,” she said.

“He’s had three STDs in his recent history,” Finn said.

“I had him get a new round of shots, trust me,” Duvall said, and then looked over at Dahl. “And anyway, don’t get on me for scratching an itch. None of you were exactly stepping up.”

“Hey, I was in sick bay when you started with Kerensky,” Dahl said. “Don’t blame me.”

Duvall smirked at that. “And it wasn’t that part that bothered me, anyway,” she said. “It was the other part.”

You’re not just going to get killed off, Kerensky told them. It’s not enough for a television audience just to kill off some poor random bastard every episode. Every once in a while they have to make it seem like a real person is dying. So they take a smaller character, build them up long enough for the audience to care about them, and then snap them off. That’s you guys. Because you come with backstories . Y ou’re probably going to have an entire episode devoted to your death.

“More complete bullshit,” Finn said.

“Easy for you to say,” Hester said. “I’m the only one of us without an interesting backstory. I’ve got nothing. The next away team I’m on, I’m fucking doomed .”

Finn pointed at Hester and looked at Dahl. “See, this is what I’m talking about right here. You’ve overwhelmed a weak and febrile mind.”

Dahl smiled at this. “And you’re the lone voice of sanity.”

“Yes!” Finn said. “I want you to think about what it means when I am the person in a group who is making the case for reality. I’m the least responsible person I know. I resent having to be the voice of reason. I resent it a lot.”

“‘Weak and febrile,’” Hester muttered.

“You were the one calling a shoe a shoe,” Finn said.

Duvall’s phone pinged and she stepped away for a moment. When she returned, she was pale. “All right,” she said. “That was altogether too damned coincidental for my tastes.”

Dahl frowned. “What is it?”

“That was Kerensky,” she said. “I’m wanted for a senior officer briefing.”

“What for?” Hanson asked.

“When the Intrepid was attacked by that rebel ship, our engines got knocked out, so they sent another ship to escort the Calendrian pontifex’s ship to the peace talks,” Duvall said. “That ship just attacked the pontifex’s ship and crippled it.”

“What ship is it?” Dahl asked.

“The Nantes, ” Duvall said. “The last ship I was stationed on.”

“Trust me, Andy,” Finn said, walking with Dahl toward Duvall’s barracks. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“You don’t know that,” Dahl said.

“I do know that,” Finn said.

“Yeah?” Dahl asked. “How?”

“When I saw her just after she came out of her briefing, she said to me, ‘If I see Andy, I swear to God I’m going to break his nose,’” Finn said. Dahl smiled.

The two of them reached Duvall’s barracks and entered the room, which was empty except for Duvall, sitting on her bunk.

“Maia,” Dahl began.

“Andy,” Duvall said, stood, and punched Dahl in the face. Dahl collapsed to the deck, holding his nose.

“I told you,” Finn said to Dahl, on the deck. He looked over to Duvall. “I did tell him.”

“I thought you were kidding!” Dahl said from the deck.

“Surprise,” Finn said.

Dahl pulled his hand back from his face to see if there was any blood on it; there wasn’t. “What was that for?” he asked Duvall.

“It’s for your conspiracy theories,” Duvall said.

“They’re not my theories,” Dahl said. “They’re Jenkins’ theories.”

“For Christ’s sake, it doesn’t matter who thought up the fucking things!” Duvall snapped. “I’m in that goddamned meeting today, telling them what I know about the Nantes, and all the time I’m doing that I’m thinking, ‘This is it, this is the episode where I die.’ And then I look over at Kerensky, and he’s making cow eyes at me, like we’re married instead of just screwing. And then I know I’m doomed, because if that son of a bitch has a crush on me, it makes it perfect if I get killed off. Because then he can be sad at the end of the episode.”

“It doesn’t have to work that way, Maia,” Dahl said, and started to get up. She pushed him back down.

“Shut up, Andy,” she said. “Just shut up. You’re not getting it. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to work that way. What matters is now I’m buying into your paranoia. Now some part of my brain is thinking about buying it on an away mission. It’s thinking about it all the time. It’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop. And you fucking did it to me. Thank you so very much.” Duvall sat down on her bunk, pissed.

“I’m sorry,” Dahl said, after a minute.

“Sorry,” Duvall said, and laughed a small laugh. “Jesus, Andy.”

“What went on in the officer briefing?” Finn asked.

“I briefed them about the Nantes and its crew,” Duvall said. “The Calendrian rebels have a spy or turncoat in the crew, someone who could hack into the weapons systems and fire on the pontifex’s ship, and then shut down communications. We’ve heard nothing from the Nantes since the attack.”