Redshirts

group. “Come on, we’re on shore leave,” she said. “Time to get smashed.”
    “And laid,” Finn said.
    “Smashed and laid,” Duvall said. “Not necessarily in that order.”
    “Not that there’s anything wrong with doing it in that order,” Finn said.
    “See, I bet that’s why you don’t get a lot of second dates,” Duvall said.
    “We’re not talking about me, ” Finn reminded her. “We’re talking about Andy. Who’s ditching us.”
    “He is!” Duvall said. “Andy! Don’t you want to get smashed and laid with us?”
    “Oh, I do,” Dahl assured her. “But I need to make a hyperwave first.”
    “You couldn’t have done that on the Intrepid ?” Hanson asked.
    “Not this wave, no,” Dahl said.
    Duvall rolled her eyes. “This is about your current obsession, isn’t it,” she said. “I swear, Andy, ever since you got a bug in your ass about Jenkins you’re no fun anymore. Ten whole days of brooding. Lighten up, you moody bastard.”
    Dahl smiled at this. “I’ll be quick, I promise. Where will you guys be?”
    “I’ve got us a suite at the station Hyatt,” Hanson said. “Meet us there. We’ll be the ones quickly losing our sobriety.”
    Finn pointed to Hester. “And in his case, his virginity.”
    “Nice,” Hester said, but then actually grinned.
    “Be there in a few,” Dahl promised.
    “Better be!” Hanson said, and then he and the rest wandered down the corridor, laughing and joking. Dahl watched them go and then headed to the shopping area of the station, looking for a wave station.
    He found one wedged between a coffee shop and a tattoo parlor. It was barely larger than a kiosk and had only three wave terminals in it, one of which was out of service. A drunken crewman of another ship was loudly arguing into one of the others. Dahl took the third.
    “Welcome to SurfPoint Hyperwave,” the monitor read, and then listed the per-minute cost of opening a wave. A five-minute wave would eat most of his pay for the week, but this was not entirely surprising to Dahl. It took a large amount of energy to open up a tunnel in space/time and connect in real time with another terminal light-years away. Energy cost money.
    Dahl took out the anonymous credit chit he kept on hand for things he didn’t want traced directly to his own credit account and placed it on the payment square. The monitor registered the chit and opened up a “send” panel. Dahl spoke a phone address back at Academy and waited for the connection. He was pretty sure that the person he was calling would be awake and moving about. The Dub U kept all of its ships and stations on Universal Time because otherwise the sheer number of day lengths and time zones would make it impossible for anyone to do anything, but the Academy was in Boston. Dahl couldn’t remember how many time zones behind that was.
    The person on the other end of the line picked up, audio only. “Whoever you are, you’re interrupting my morning jog,” she said.
    Dahl grinned. “Morning, Casey,” he said. “How’s my favorite librarian?”
    “Shit! Andy!” Casey said. A second later the video feed kicked in and Casey Zane popped up, smiling, the USS Constitution behind her.
    “Jogging the Freedom Trail again, I see,” Dahl said.
    “The bricks make it easy to follow,” Casey said. “Where are you?”
    “About three hundred light-years away, and paying for every inch of it on this hyperwave,” Dahl said.
    “Got it,” Casey said. “What do you need?”
    “The Academy Archive would have blueprints of every ship in the fleet, right?” Dahl asked.
    “Sure,” Casey said. “All the ones that the Dub U wants to acknowledge exist, anyway.”
    “Any chance they’d be altered or tampered with?”
    “From the outside? No,” Casey said. “The archives don’t connect to outside computer systems, partly to avoid hacking. All data has to go through a live librarian. That’s job security for you.”
    “I suppose it is,” Dahl said. “Is there any chance I can get you to send me a copy of the Intrepid blueprints?”
    “I don’t think they’re classified, so it shouldn’t be a problem,” Casey said. “Although I might have to redact some information about the computer and weapons systems.”
    “That’s fine,” Dahl said. “I’m not interested in those anyway.”
    “That said, you’re actually on the Intrepid, ” Casey said. “You should be able to get the blueprints out of the ship’s database.”
    “I can,”