Redshirts

pants.”
    “Sorry about that,” Dahl said.
    “Not that it matters anyway,” Kerensky said. “I’m your good-luck charm, remember? We’ll make it through this part just fine.”
    “Hopefully the rest of it, too,” Dahl said.
    “If this plan of yours works,” Kerensky said. “How will we know that it’s worked?”
    “When we revive Hester, and he’s Hester,” Dahl said.
    A sensor beeped. “Transition in ten seconds,” Kerensky said. “So we won’t know until we’re back on the Intrepid .”
    “Probably,” Dahl said.
    “Probably?” Kerensky said.
    “I thought of one way we might know if the transfer didn’t take,” Dahl said.
    “How?” Kerensky asked.
    The shuttle jammed itself into the ragged edge between the accretion disk and the Schwartzchild radius and transitioned instantly.
    In the view screen the planet Forshan loomed large, and above it a dozen ships, including the Intrepid, were locked in battle.
    Every single sensor on the shuttle flashed to red and began to blare.
    One of the nearby starships sparkled, sending a clutch of missiles toward the shuttle.
    “When we come through, it might look like this, ” Dahl said.
    Kerensky screamed, and Dahl then felt ill as Kerensky plunged the shuttle into evasive maneuvers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
    “Five missiles coming,” Dahl said, fighting the sickness in his stomach from the shuttle’s dive to read the co-pilot’s panel.
    “I know,” Kerensky said.
    “Engines minimal,” Dahl said. “We burned them coming through.”
    “I know, ” Kerensky said.
    “Defense options?” Dahl asked.
    “It’s a shuttle, ” Kerensky said. “I’m doing them.” He corkscrewed the shuttle violently. The missiles changed course to follow, spreading out from their original configuration.
    A message popped up on Dahl’s screen. “Three missiles locked,” he said. “Impact in six seconds.”
    Kerensky looked up, as if toward the heavens. “Goddamn it, I’m a featured character ! Do something!”
    A beam of light lanced from the Intrepid, vaporizing the nearest missile. Kerensky yanked the shuttle over to avoid the explosion and debris. The Intrepid ’s pulse beam touched the four other missiles, turning them into atoms.
    “Holy shit, that worked, ” Kerensky said.
    “If only you knew before, right?” Dahl said, amazed himself.
    The shuttle’s phone activated. “Kerensky, come in,” it said. It was Abernathy on the other end.
    “Kerensky here,” he said.
    “Not a lot of time here,” Abernathy said. “Do you have the carrier?”
    The carrier? Dahl thought—and then remembered that Hester carried in his body invasive cells whose DNA was a coded message detailing the final will and testament of the leader of the Forshan’s rightward schism—which if unlocked could end the religious wars on Forshan—which would not be convenient to any number of leaders on either side of the conflict—which was why all those ships were out there: to bring the shuttle down.
    Then Dahl remembered that until that very second, absolutely none of that was true.
    But it was now.
    “We have the carrier,” Kerensky said. “Crewman Hester. Yes. But he’s awfully sick, Captain. We’re barely keeping him alive.”
    A panel on Dahl’s co-pilot screen flashed. “Three new missiles away!” he said to Kerensky, who spun the shuttle into new evasive maneuvers.
    “Kerensky, this is Chief Medical Officer Hartnell,” a new voice said. “Crewman Hester’s immune system is fighting those cells and losing. If you don’t get him to the ship now, they’re going to kill him, and then the cells will die too.”
    “We’re being fired on,” Kerensky said. “It makes travel difficult.”
    A new pulse beam flickered out of the Intrepid, vaporizing the three new missiles.
    “You worry about getting to the Intrepid, Kerensky,” Abernathy said. “We’ll worry about the missiles. Abernathy out.”
    “‘The carrier’?” Duvall said, from the back of the shuttle. “He’s got cells in his body with an encoded message in his DNA? That doesn’t even make sense!”
    “Nick Weinstein had to write the episode really quickly,” Dahl said. “Cut him a break.”
    “He also wrote this ?” Kerensky said, motioning out the view screens to the space battle in front of them. “If I ever see him again I’m going to kick his ass.”
    “Focus,” Dahl said. “We need to get to the Intrepid without dying.”
    “Do you think Paulson’s son is in Hester’s old