Redshirts

Collins said. “He’s the one who built the tracking system we use for the captain and the others. The computer system AI sees it as a hack and keeps trying to patch it. So he’s got to keep updating if we want it to keep working.”
    Dahl glanced over at Cassaway. “You said he looked like a yeti.”
    “He does look like a yeti,” Cassaway said. “Either a yeti or Rasputin. I’ve heard him described both ways. Both are accurate.”
    “I think I met him,” Dahl said. “After I went to the bridge to give Q’eeng the Box data about Kerensky’s plague. He came up to me in the corridor.”
    “What did he say to you?” Collins asked.
    “He told me to stay off the bridge,” Dahl said. “And he told me to ‘avoid the narrative.’ What the hell does that mean?”
    Mbeke opened her mouth to speak but Collins got there first. “Jenkins is a brilliant programmer, but he’s also a bit lost in his own world, and life on the Intrepid has hit him harder than most.”
    “By which she means that Jenkins’ wife got killed on an away mission,” Mbeke said.
    “What happened?” Dahl asked.
    “She was shot by a Cirquerian assassin,” Collins said. “The assassin was aiming at the Dub U ambassador to Cirqueria. The captain pushed the ambassador down and Margaret was standing right behind him. Took the bullet in the neck. Dead before she hit the ground. Jenkins chose to at least partly disassociate from reality after that.”
    “So what does he think is happening?” Dahl asked.
    “Why don’t we save that for another time,” Collins said. “You know what’s going on now and why. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you about this earlier, Andy. But now you know. And now you know what to do when either me or Ben suddenly say that we’re going to get coffee.”
    “Hide,” Dahl said.
    “‘Hide’ isn’t a word we like to use,” Cassaway said. “‘Perform alternative tasks’ is the preferred term.”
    “Just not in the storage room,” Mbeke said. “That’s our alternative tasking place.”
    “I’ll just alternatively task behind my work desk, then, shall I,” Dahl said.
    “That’s the spirit,” Mbeke said.
    *   *   *
    At evening mess, Dahl caught up his four friends with what he learned in the lab, and then turned to Finn. “So, did you get the information I asked you for?” he said.
    “I did indeed,” Finn said.
    “Good,” Dahl said.
    “I want to preface this by saying that normally I don’t do this sort of work for free,” Finn said, handing his phone over to Dahl. “Normally something like this would have been a week’s pay. But this shit’s been weirding me out since that away mission. I wanted to see it for myself.”
    “What are the two of you talking about?” Duvall said.
    “I had Finn pull some records for me,” Dahl said. “Medical records, mostly.”
    “Whose?” Duvall asked.
    “Your boyfriend’s,” Finn said.
    Dahl looked up at that. “What?”
    “Duvall’s dating Kerensky,” Finn said.
    “Shut up, Finn, I am not,” Duvall said, and glanced over to Dahl. “After he recovered, Kerensky tracked me down to thank me for saving his life,” she said. “He said that when he first came to in the shuttle, he thought he’d died because an angel was hovering over him.”
    “Oh, God,” Hester said. “Tell me a line like that doesn’t actually work. I might have to kill myself otherwise.”
    “It doesn’t,” Duvall assured him. “Anyway, he asked if he could buy me a drink the next time we had shore leave. I told him I’d think about it.”
    “Boyfriend,” Finn said.
    “I’m going to stab you through the eye now,” Duvall said to Finn, pointing her fork at him.
    “Why did you want Lieutenant Kerensky’s medical records?” Hanson asked.
    “Kerensky was the victim of a plague a week ago,” Dahl said. “He recovered quickly enough to lead an away mission, where he lost consciousness because of a machine attack. He recovered quickly enough from that to hit on Maia sometime today.”
    “To be fair, he still looked like hell,” Duvall said.
    “To be fair, he should probably be dead,” Dahl said. “The Merovian Plague melts people’s flesh right off their bones. Kerensky was about fifteen minutes away from death before he got cured, and he’s leading an away mission a week later? It takes that long to get over a bad cold, much less a flesh-eating bacteria.”
    “So he’s got an awesome immune system,” Duvall said.
    Dahl fixed her with a