Redshirts

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,”