Redshirts

half hours later there was a small, quiet ding, the humming sound emanating from the Box’s carousel engine stopped and the light went off.
    “Now what?” Dahl said, staring at the Box, to no one in particular.
    “Check your work tablet,” Trin said, not looking up from his own work. He was the only one besides Dahl still in the lab.
    Dahl grabbed his work tablet and powered up the screen. On it was a rotating picture of a complex organic molecule and beside that, a long scrolling column of data. Dahl tried to read it.
    “It’s giving me gibberish,” he said, after a minute. “Long streaming columns of it.”
    “You’re fine,” Trin said. He set down his own work and walked over to Dahl. “Now, listen closely. Here’s what you do next. First, you’re going to take your work tablet to the bridge, where Q’eeng is.”
    “Why?” Dahl said. “I could just mail the data to him.”
    Trin shook his head. “It’s not how this works.”
    “Wh—” Dahl began, but Trin held up his hand.
    “Shut up for a minute and just listen, okay?” Trin said. “I know it doesn’t make sense, and it’s stupid, but this is the way it’s got to be done. Take your tablet to Q’eeng. Show him the data on it. And then once he’s looking at it, you say, ‘We got most of it, but the protein coat is giving us a problem.’ Then point to whatever data is scrolling by at the time.”
    “‘Protein coat’?” Dahl said.
    “It doesn’t have to be the protein coat,” Trin said. “You can say whatever you like. Enzyme transcription errors. RNA replication is buggy. I personally go with protein coat because it’s easy to say. The point is, you need to say everything is almost perfect but one thing still needs to be done. And that’s when you gesture toward the data.”
    “What’ll that do?” Dahl asked.
    “It will give Q’eeng an excuse to furrow his brow, stare at the data for a minute and then tell you that you’ve overlooked some basic thing, which he will solve,” Trin said. “At which point you have the option of saying 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.