Creation (2 page)

Sam rubbed his eyes. Focusing for so long on a screen not two feet away made him bleary. The smell of stale air, recirculated too many times through the same worn-out filters, left a flinty taste in his mouth. He took a swig of water and turned to his travel companion. “Why Lud? Why not Dr. Williams? If I made it that far in my studies, you can bet I’d take advantage of the title.”

Days of sitting next to Lud made for oddly shaped conversations.

Lud, who’d been half dozing in the stretched-out seat, opened his eyes. “Where we’re headed, it’s best not to make too much of titles. Make sure your boss knows your worth, but keep it quiet from any competitor. Those making claims about themselves always have an ulterior motive.”

Lud adjusted his arms in the oversized space garment and closed his eyes once more. But Sam couldn’t face another round of
Leviathan
history from his work pad. “A man your size, though—wouldn’t that say more about your expertise than any title?”

The grunt of irritation would have shut Sam up a few days earlier. But he’d been woken out of a sound sleep by Lud so many times, at that point, that he felt entitled to ask his own questions.

“I suppose,” Lud said. “Energy is everything. It’s practically a slogan. And it takes a lot of energy to keep this body functional. But someone who knows how to pull engines out of a ship that crash-landed on some barren asteroid and make them work on another ship? Well, that kind of thing doesn’t go unnoticed. I do what I can to keep the legends down to a minimum.”

Sam snickered. “I’m traveling with a legend?”

Lud shifted to his side, presenting the back of his space suit to Sam. “One that wouldn’t mind getting a few more hours of sleep. Check your watch. You’ll want to adjust your internal body clock. It’s a little confusing the first time off Earth.”

The corner of the information pad displayed, in small numbers, 2:35 a.m.

* * *

S
tudying
the transparent screen for the fifth straight day, Sam began to see his error in taking the job, even if it did get him off Earth. The complexity of
Leviathan
’s operating system, the unknown military override software, and the lack of information about the computer’s problem gave him a headache. Too much curiosity coupled with just enough knowledge made him the perfect mark. Perhaps his father had been right all along. He really didn’t know what he was getting into. But if getting him out to the edge of the solar system had been a con, what was the payoff? Sam shook his head in an attempt to quiet his father’s imagined condemnations.

I have to focus on what I know. What makes me qualified?

As a junior technician for SpaceBuild, he’d dealt with spaceship operating systems on a daily basis. Entering preexisting programs into the maze of electronic impulses that made up the machine, however, didn’t inspire confidence. How exactly the long, perfectly smooth cylinder that was the heart of
Leviathan
’s central computer managed to create and sustain the operating system needed to maintain life in space, he had no idea.

The holographic image of the placement program had assured him he possessed all the necessary skills to repair
Leviathan
’s central brain. But looking over the ship’s history, from original schematics to the military’s attempt at a system override, one thing became abundantly clear: the hologram lied.

I still have time. Study. Fill this empty brain with everything in this information pad. The answer on how to fix this hopelessly complex computer must be in there somewhere.

Sam tapped a timeline at the top of the information pad. For twenty-eight years,
Leviathan
had shuttled pods from Earth to Europa and acted as a space outpost for the colonists of the newly terraformed moon.
Leviathan
’s success hadn’t gone unnoticed. Among the pile of documents, Sam found information that had been kept from the people of Earth. Not long after the first colonists established the early outposts, tensions erupted on the Moons of Jupiter. There were too many new societies with too much money and not enough solar energy. Or at least not enough for their growing demand.

Earth’s military had taken over
Leviathan
as part of an attempt to develop a makeshift fleet of ships capable of keeping the peace. At twenty-eight years of age, the ship would still be in her prime, and her size made her ideal as a mobile spaceport for the small, heavily armed peacekeeping force. Specifics of what the military had done to the operating system, what kind of action she’d seen, and where the ship had ended up were redacted from the document.

The timeline on the info pad listed a thirty-five-year period of “whereabouts unknown” for
Leviathan
once the military had finished with her. Information on where she’d been found, who had purchased her, and what she’d been used for over the last twenty years didn’t provide any useful answers. Whoever was stranded out in the old ship hadn’t bothered with paperwork. But then, old derelicts seldom carried documentation. A contract to terraform the minor planet Chariklo had been linked to the timeline.

The final entry was a current flyer listing abandoned spaceships available for purchase in the Kuiper Belt. A dark, semifocused picture of the grand ship sitting among a dozen other smaller ships accompanied the flyer. Surprisingly little information regarding her condition, or really even proof that it was the
Leviathan
, accompanied the flyer. Pirates weren’t picky when it came to buying spaceships. And detailing the baggage that came with the ship wouldn’t help in its sale—especially if that baggage included people.

The Kuiper Belt seemed a fitting end to a star freighter that had gotten no recognition. The biggest chunk of rock and ice that made up the belt had once been considered a planet but had been stripped of that title. Energy that far from the sun would be priceless. The solar transfer array barely made it out that far. Terraforming might be possible, though Sam couldn’t imagine who would think that would be a good idea. He was heading to the outskirts of the solar system to fix a hundred-year-old computer that he didn’t understand.

Sam couldn’t remember a single ship coming back from that far out, which only added to the mystery. He searched back through the information packet, wondering how they intended to get him home after this little adventure. Even assuming he could get the ship thinking and feeling again, the energy required to get her back to the inner planets would be massive.

Lud shook Sam out of his contemplations then pointed at the small window. “Look out there. That little pebble is Deimos.”

Pebble
all too aptly described the hurtling rock surrounded by spacecraft of various sizes and configurations, all vying for a place to dock. Sam closed his eyes and leaned away from the window, certain a crash was imminent in all the chaos.

Lud chuckled. “A week in space with nothing within a million miles will do that to your eyes. Don’t look so panicked. We won’t even be stepping foot on that rock. The big rotating docking bay off to the left of Deimos is where we’re headed.”

* * *

T
he gloom
that had clouded Sam’s thoughts lifted as he set foot on the floating transfer station. Optimism floated in the air as if pumped from the recirculation system. But then, breathing in anything other than the poorly scrubbed stench of his fellow travelers, as he had done for the last week, couldn’t help but brighten his mood.

Lud attempted to restrain his voice to interior use, but its increased volume over what he’d used in the spaceship added to Sam’s sense of ease. “We want to avoid the big transports. Keep your eyes out for a small, disreputable docking bay. Something that looks like you’ll catch some strange space flu just by walking in the gate.”

Free of conventional gravity, the walkway bent up behind them and arched up as they moved forward. In a flash of insight, Sam understood the futility of a hamster wheel, which kept the animal perpetually at the bottom. Lights guided the way, branching off to the side as a spoke of the monster wheel came into view overhead. His mind struggled with the sight of people turning to walk up what he’d considered rounded walls then walking away over his head down the shaft toward the center of the station.

Even more confusing were the holes in the floor. Instead of falling in, people tilted down the arched ramps toward the waiting transport ships.

Lud’s arm clamped around Sam’s waist as his legs buckled from vertigo. “You get used to it. Best if you don’t eat anything, though.”

Half of the rotating spaceport, the half they’d landed on, was filled with commercial liners headed to the Moons of Jupiter or Saturn. But as the large bays full of well-appointed craft gave way to smaller regional ones, Sam could make out, around the next radial arm, travelers who hugged their dusty, worn space attire tight to their bodies. No longer well lit, the bays held many dark corners filled with people more likely to offer an illegal transaction than transport.

Lud pulled Sam by the arm down to one of the smaller loading bays. “We may be in luck. Wait here a moment.”

Sam had trouble seeing anything lucky about where they were headed. Lud casually leaned against a wall, pulling his long, thick space jacket up to his chin.

It took a minute or two for someone to stop near Lud and mimic his stance. Sam couldn’t make out the muffled tones of the conversation. The oddity of Lud’s quiet voice made the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck stand on end.

Lud pulled a wad of Earth banknotes from his pocket. The stranger never lowered the hood of his black cloak, but his nod was unmistakable.

Questions flooded Sam’s mind, but a quiet look from his normally boisterous companion was enough of a clue for the younger man to remain silent and inconspicuous.

As they left the rotating spaceport, the artificial gravity let go of its hold. Sam floated behind Lud down the narrow central corridor of the ship. Small compartments, meant for no more than two people, lined the walls. Lud made a sharp turn into one of them, pulling Sam along with him. The oddity of floating weightless made securing the harness around his body a challenge, but following Lud’s example, Sam strapped himself to the contoured chair.

Lud let out a deep breath as he secured the door to the cabin. “It’s relatively private in here, but watch what you say. The captain is an associate of mine. His home base is a little rock called Chiron. If there’s a pirate base in the solar system, it’d be Chiron. From there, we should be able to secure transport to the space junkyard of the Kuiper Belt.”

The big man’s smile calmed Sam’s frayed nerves. “Get some rest, and finish reading up on
Leviathan
. Oh, and don’t trust anyone out here.”

Sam’s gaze moved on to the pointless effort of deciphering what little information the military had declassified regarding their attempted override. His mind, however, played back the strange set of events that represented his life.

People always talked as though there were choices in life. There were no choices. Not really. All the successful businesses, good jobs, and qualified employees had moved off Earth to planets where the need and pay were the greatest, leaving behind once-great companies, like SpaceBuild, who hired mediocre junior technicians like Sam. Not that he listed
junior technician
as his occupation on his résumé. Or the fact that he had been fired. But then, digging for the truth behind the résumé was the job of the placement agency. Apparently, even computer-generated placement programs were the bottom of the barrel on Earth. With food, living arrangements, and pay, at least he’d be taken care of for as long as he could con Xavier—the person who’d signed the job-offer letter—into believing Sam knew what he was doing.

His eyes glazed over as they traced the sentences on the screen without his brain recording the words.
Why couldn’t they develop a computer screen to zap the information into my brain?

The dimly lit small compartment, the lack of gravity, and no reference to the passing of time created what the information packet had referred to as space-delirium. The recommended regularly spaced meals proved hard for Sam to digest. His stomach needed some frame of reference regarding which way to send the food. Even focusing on Lud made him queasy. How could such a hulk of human flesh endure this with apparent ease? Sam did his best to sleep as much as possible.