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 s.p.a.ce battle in front of them. "If I ever see him again I"m going to kick his a.s.s."
"Focus," Dahl said. "We need to get to the Intrepid without dying."
"Do you think Paulson"s son is in Hester"s old body?" Kerensky said.
"What?" Dahl said.
"Do you think the switch worked?" Kerensky asked, glancing at Dahl.
Dahl looked back at the body on the stretcher. "I don"t know," he said. "Maybe?"
""Maybe" works for me," Kerensky said, stopped the shuttle"s evasive maneuvers and jammed it as fast as it would go, straight toward the Intrepid. All around them Forshan s.p.a.cecraft fired missiles, beams and projectiles. The Intrepid lit up like a Christmas tree, firing all available weapons to shoot down missiles and disable beams and projectile weapons on the Forshan s.p.a.cecraft.
"This is a bad idea," Dahl said to Kerensky, who was grimly staring forward, keeping the Intrepid squarely in his sights.
"We"re going to live or die," Kerensky said. "Why f.u.c.k around?"
"I liked you better before you were a fatalist," Dahl said.
A missile erupted starboard, knocking the shuttle off its course. The shuttle"s inertial dampeners flickered, hurling Hester, Duvall and Hanson around the rear of the shuttle.
"Don"t fly into missiles!" Duvall shouted.
"Blame the writer!" Kerensky shot back.
"That"s a s.h.i.tty excuse!" Duvall said. The shuttle rocked again as another missile scored a near miss.
The shuttle ran through the gauntlet of ships, breaking through toward the Intrepid.
"The shuttle bay is aft," Dahl said. "We"re not aimed at aft."
"Here"s where we find out just how hot a shuttle pilot that writer thinks I am," Kerensky said, and threw the shuttle into a reverse Fibonacci spiral, over the top of the Intrepid. Dahl groaned as the Intrepid wheeled and grew in the view screen. Missiles vibrated the shuttle as they zoomed by, narrowly missing the arcing shuttle. Dahl was certain they were going to smash against the Intrepid"s hull, and then they were in the shuttle bay, slamming into the deck. The shuttle screeched violently and something fell off of it outside.
Kerensky whooped and shut down the engines. "That"s good television," he said.
"I"m never flying with you again," Duvall said, from the back of the shuttle.
"There"s no time to waste," Kerensky said, changing his demeanor so suddenly that Dahl had no doubt he"d just been gripped by the Narrative. "We"ve got to get Hester to sick bay. Dahl, you"re with me on the left side of the stretcher. Duvall, Hanson, take the right. Let"s run, people."
Dahl unbuckled and scrambled over to the stretcher, unexpectedly giddy. Kerensky had used Hester"s name while under the influence of the Narrative.
As they raced through the corridors with the stretcher, they heard the booms and thumps of the Intrepid under attack.
"Now that we"re on board, all those ships are attacking the Intrepid," Kerensky said. "We need to hurry." The ship shook again, more severely.
"Took you long enough," Medical Officer Hartnell said, as the four of them wheeled the stretcher into sick bay. "Any longer and there wouldn"t be a sick bay left. Or any other part of the ship."
"Can"t we bug out?" Dahl heard himself say, as they maneuvered the stretcher.
"Engines have been disabled in the attack," Hartnell said. "Nowhere to run. If we don"t get this message out of him fast, we"re all dead. Lift!" They lifted Hester"s body and put it onto a medical table. Hartnell flicked at his tablet and Hester"s body stiffened.
"There, he"s in stasis," Hartnell said. "He"ll be stable until all of this is done." He looked at his medical tablet and frowned. "What the h.e.l.l are all these fractures and brain trauma?" he said.
"It was a rough shuttle ride," Kerensky said.
Hartnell looked at Kerensky as if he were going to say something, but then the entire ship lurched, throwing everyone but Hester to the deck.
"Oh, that"s not good," Duvall said.
Hartnell"s phone activated. "This is the captain," Abernathy said through the phone. "What"s the status of the carrier?"
"Crewman Hester"s alive and in stasis," Hartnell said. "I"m about to take a sample of the invasive cells to start the decoding process."
There was another violent shudder to the ship. "You"re going to need to work faster than that," Abernathy said. "We"re taking hits we can"t keep taking. We need that decoded now."
"Now isn"t going to work," Hartnell said. "How much time can you give me?"
Another shudder, and the lights flickered. "I can give you ten minutes," Abernathy said. "Try not to use them all." The captain disconnected.
Hartnell looked at them all. "We"re f.u.c.ked," he said.
Dahl couldn"t help smiling crazily at that. Pretty sure he wasn"t in the Narrative when he said that, he thought.
"Andy," Hanson said. "The Box."
"s.h.i.t," Dahl said. "The Box."
"What"s a Box?" Hartnell said.
"Take a sample and give it to me," Dahl said to Hartnell.
"Why?" Hartnell asked.
"I"ll take it to Xen.o.biology and run it there," Dahl said.
"We"ve got the same equipment here-" Hartnell said.
Dahl looked over to Kerensky for help. "Just do it, Hartnell," Kerensky said. "Before you get us all killed."
Hartnell frowned but took his sampler and jammed it into Hester"s arm, then took out the sample container and gave it to Dahl. "Here. Now someone please tell me what this is about."
"Andy," Hanson said. "To get to Xen.o.biology from here you"ll need to go through deck six."
"Right," Dahl said, and turned to Kerensky. "Come with me, please."
"Who"s going to tell me what"s going on?" Hartnell said, and then Dahl and Kerensky were out the door, into the corridor.
"What"s with deck six?" Kerensky asked as they ran.
"It has a tendency to blow up when we"re attacked," Dahl said. "Like right now."
"You"re using me as a good-luck charm again, aren"t you?" Kerensky said.
"Not exactly," Dahl said.
Deck six was exploding and on fire.
"The corridors are blocked!" Kerensky said, over the noise.
"Come on," Dahl said, and slapped open an access door to the cargo tunnels. There was a gust as the heated air of deck six blew into the opened door. Kerensky went through and Dahl shut the access door as something erupted in the hall.
"This way," Dahl said, and the two fished their way around the cargo carts to an access door on the other side of the deck and then back into the main corridors.
Lieutenant Collins did not look happy to see Dahl.
"What are you doing here?" she said. Dahl ignored her and went to the storage room, pulling out the Box.
"Hey, you can"t be using that around Kerensky," Collins said, moving toward Dahl.
"If she tries to come near me, take her out," Dahl said to Kerensky.
"Got it," Kerensky said. Collins abruptly stopped.
"Take her tablet," Dahl said. Kerensky did.
"How much time?" Dahl asked. He set the Box on an induction pad.
"Seven minutes," Kerensky said.
"That"ll work," Dahl said, slipped the sample into the Box and pressed the green b.u.t.ton. He walked over to Kerensky, took Collins" tablet, signed her off and signed into his own account.
"Now what?" Kerensky said.
"We wait," Dahl said.
"For how long?" Kerensky said.
"As long as dramatically appropriate," Dahl said.
Kerensky peered at the Box. "So this was the thing that kept me from turning into mush when I got the Merovian Plague?"
"That"s it," Dahl said.
"Ridiculous," Kerensky said.
Collins looked at Kerensky, gaping. "You know?" she said. "You"re not supposed to know."
"At this point, I know a lot more than you," Kerensky said.
The Box pinged and the tablet was flooded with data. Dahl barely glanced at it. "We"re good," he said. "Back to sick bay." They ran out of Xen.o.biology, back to the access corridors to return to deck six.
"Almost there," Kerensky said, as they emerged out of the access corridors into the fires of deck six.
The ship rocked violently and the main corridor of deck six collapsed onto Dahl, crushing him and slicing a jagged shard of metal through his liver. Dahl stared at it for a moment and then looked at Kerensky.
"You had to say "almost there,"" he whispered, the words dribbling out between drips of blood.
"Oh, G.o.d, Dahl," Kerensky said, and started trying to move debris off of him.
"Stop," Dahl said. Kerensky ignored him. "Stop," he said again, more forcefully. Kerensky stopped. Dahl pushed the tablet, still in his hands, to Kerensky. "No time. Take the results. Feed them into the sick bay computer. Don"t let Hartnell argue. When the sick bay computer has the data, the Narrative will take over. It will be done. But get there. Hurry."
"Dahl-" Kerensky said.
"This is why I brought you with me," Dahl said. "Because I knew whatever happened to me, you"d make it back. Now go. Save the day, Kerensky. Save the day."
Kerensky nodded, took the tablet, and ran.
Dahl lay there, pinned through the liver, and in his final moments of consciousness tried to focus on the fact that Hester would live, the ship would be saved and his friends would make it through the rest of their lives without being savaged by the Narrative. And all it needed was one more dramatic death of an extra. His dramatic death.
It"s a fair trade, he thought, trying to reconcile himself to how it all played out. A fair trade. Saved his friends. Saved Matthew Paulson. Saved the Intrepid. A fair trade.
But as everything went gray and slid into black, a final thought bubbled up from the bottom of what was left of him.
Screw this, I want to live, it said.
But then everything went to black anyway.