Redshirts (9 page)

“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 drink, 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.

“A voodoo doll,” Dahl said, startling Kerensky back into consciousness. “You think so.”

“Well, no, not literally,” Kerensky said. “Because that’s just
stupid,
isn’t it. But it
feels
like it. It feels like whenever the captain and Q’eeng have an away mission they know is going to be all fucked up they say, ‘Hey, Kerensky, this is a
perfect
away mission for you,’ and then I go off and, like, get my
spleen
punctured. And half the time it’s some stupid thing I have no idea about, right? I’m an astrogator, man. I am a fucking brilliant astrogator. I wanna just …
astrogate
. Right?”

“Why don’t you point that out to the captain and Q’eeng?” Dahl asked.

Kerensky sneered, and his lip quivered at the effort. “Because what the hell am I going to say?” he said, and started making Humpty-Dumpty movements. “‘Oh, I can’t go on this mission, Captain, Commander Q’eeng. Let someone else get stabbed through the eyeball for a change.’” He stopped with the movements and was quiet for a second. “Besides, I don’t know. It seems to make sense at the time, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Dahl said.

“When the captain tells me I’m going to be on an away mission, it’s like some other part of my brain takes over,” Kerensky said. He sounded like he was trying to puzzle through something. “I get all confident and it seems like there’s a perfectly good reason for a goddamn astrogator to take medical samples, or fight killer machines or whatever. Then I get back on the
Intrepid
and I think to myself, ‘What the
fuck
was I just doing?’ Because it doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“I don’t know,” Dahl said again.

Kerensky looked lost in thought for a second, and then waved it all away. “Anyway, fuck it, right?” he said, brightening up. “I lived another day, I’m on shore leave, and I’m with people who saved my life.” He lunged at Dahl again, even more sloppily. “I love you, man. I do. Let’s get another drink and then go find some hookers. I want a blowjob. You want a blowjob?”

“I’ve already got two on order,” Dahl said. “I’m good.”

“Oh, okay,” Kerensky said. “That’s good.” And then he began to snore, his head nestled on Dahl’s shoulder.

Dahl looked up and saw his four friends staring down at him.

“You
all
owe me blowjobs,” he said.

“How about a drink instead,” Finn said.

“Deal,” Dahl said. He glanced down at Kerensky. “What do we do about Sleeping Beauty here?”

“There’s a laundry chute outside,” Hester said, hopefully.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Here are the blueprints to the
Intrepid
that I downloaded from the ship’s database,” Dahl said to Finn and Duvall at midday mess, showing them a printout. He laid down a second printout. “And here are the blueprints I received from the Academy Archive. Notice anything?”

“Nope,” said Finn, after a minute.

“Nope,” said Duvall, shortly thereafter.

Dahl sighed and pointed. “It’s the cargo tunnels,” he said. “We use them to transport cargo throughout the ship, but there’s no reason a human couldn’t go into them. The ship maintenance crew goes into them all the time to physically access ship systems. They’re designed that way so ship maintenance doesn’t get in the way of the rest of the crew.”

“You think Jenkins is in there,” Duvall said.

“Where else is he going to be?” Dahl said. “He only comes out when it suits him; no one ever sees him otherwise. Think how populated this ship is. The only way you can disappear is if you stay in a place other crew don’t usually go.”

“The flaw in this reasoning is that the cargo tunnels are
tunnels,
” Finn said. “And even if people aren’t there, they’re still crawling with those autonomous delivery carts. If he stayed in any one place for long he’d be blocking their traffic or he’d get run over.”

Dahl waggled a finger. “See, that’s what you two aren’t seeing. Look…” He pointed to a square inside the maze of cargo tunnels. “When the carts aren’t delivering something, they have to go somewhere. They’re not hanging out in the corridors. Where they go is to one of these distribution hubs. The hubs are more than large enough for a person to hole up in.”

“As long as there’s not a bunch of carts cluttering it up,” Duvall said.

“Exactly,” Dahl said. “And look. In the blueprints of the
Intrepid
we have on ship, there are six cart distribution areas. But in the ones from the archives, there are seven.” He tapped the seventh distribution hub. “This distribution hub is away from major systems in the ship, which means that maintenance crews have no reason to get near it. It’s as far away as you can be from anyone and still be on the ship. That’s where Jenkins is. The ghost in the machine. That’s where we find him.”

“I don’t see why you don’t ask your boss to make an introduction,” Duvall said. “You said that Jenkins was technically under her anyway.”

“I tried that and got nowhere with it,” Dahl said. “Collins finally told me that Jenkins only appears when he wants to appear and otherwise they leave him alone. He’s helping them keep track of the captain, Q’eeng, and the others. They don’t want to piss him off and leave themselves vulnerable.”

“Speaking of which,” Finn said, and motioned with his head.

Dahl turned around to see Science Officer Q’eeng coming up to him. He started to get up.

Q’eeng waved him back down. “At ease, Ensign.” He noticed the blueprints. “Studying the ship?”

“Just looking for ways to do my job more efficiently,” Dahl said.

“I admire that initiative,” Q’eeng said. “Ensign, we’re about to arrive at the Eskridge system to answer a distress call from a colony there. The reports from the colony are sketchy but I suspect a biological agent may be involved, so I’m assembling a team from your department to accompany me. You’re on it. Meet me in the shuttle bay in half an hour.”

“Yes, sir,” Dahl said. Q’eeng nodded and headed off. He turned back to Duvall and Finn. They were looking at him oddly. “What?” he said.

“An away team with Q’eeng,” Duvall said.

“A sudden, oddly coincidental away team with Q’eeng,” Finn said.

“Let’s try not to be too paranoid,” Dahl said.