Creation Read Free

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