Leviathan

by Erik Schubach

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “I've just never seen a human move as fast as you, or see in the dark like you. You stopped a Vampire from blurring, you moved so fast. And when he tried to glamour you, you just shook it off.”

  I sighed. “I've trained and sparred with all sorts of races for over twenty-five years in the Brigade. I've just honed my reflexes by necessity to stop from getting my head torn off in sparring matches with shifters, Elves, and Minotaurs. And I've just got a strong will. That's what the Defense Against Vampires instructor at the academy told me.”

  Before she could inundate me with a million more questions, I mimed zipping her lips and went back to my investigation.

  I sighed as we pulled up at the Jump terminal. I really hated going to the Remnants... the positively ancient and archaic flying wrecks that had been part of the construction force which built the Leviathan over a thousand years. When the names of the captains of those vessels weren't called in the worldwide lottery to be one of the lucky twelve million people to populate the Worldship, they attached their vessels to the hull of the ship.

  They survive by trading services, old tech, or sex to the people on the world for chit tokens or food cards. As they are not technically living on the world, or considered part of her compliment, they are treated as foreigners, their ships outside the purview of our laws. They are tolerated by the powers that be as long as they agree to abide by the laws of the world when they step out of their vessels.

  One rumor is that some of the Remnants are still kept space-worthy by their owners. And another rumor is that minor witches, clairvoyants, and fortune tellers are said to be on the old floating relics. Many people discount that and write it off to the people living on the ancient ships swindling naive people out of chits.

  I locked my bike down outside the terminal, there was always one of the dozen or so Jumper tubes available at the terminals as they weren't the most desirable way to travel between rings, but they were so much faster. As expected, there was no line, so I swallowed as I stepped into the clear tube with the compressed gas thrusters at the top and bottom of it. I really hated free-floating in space in these glorified coffins, with nothing but translucent plastic, spelled against micrometeoroids, between myself and hard vacuum.

  I looked at Graz. “You sure you want to do this?”

  Without waiting for an answer I hit the D-Ring designator and the floor opened up under us. The lower decks shot past, then with a thwump we were shooting through space ballistically down to the receiver port on the D-Ring below us.

  A squeaky voice next to my ear giggled and asked, “Are you seriously closing your eyes? For a Big, you're awfully queasy about things.”

  I had to open my eyes when she trailed off with an awestruck, “Ooooooooh.”

  Then I smiled in wonder as the majesty of the nebula we were flying past at fractional C speed took up my entire view, punctuated by an endless starfield so bright I had to shade my eyes from the bright points of light. There had to be gods, to have created something so beautiful in the universe. I felt so very... small. “Wow.”

  Chapter 4 – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

  When we stepped out onto the deck of the D-Ring, I had to catch myself, there was only point three of a G here and I bounded off the deck a couple inches when I went to stride normally.

  In the Brigade we trained almost daily in both Zero-G and in one point two five G so that we weren't slowed down in any environment on the world in executing our duties as Enforcers. I got my sea legs after a few steps and headed for a mag-tram.

  I looked around the area as I stepped out into the open ring area, the air was heavy with a fog that the atmospheric processors couldn't keep up with, from the smelting plants and ore refinement and resource extraction that occurred in this sector.

  This made me look absently out the horizon of the ring to the trunk of the Leviathan where the spherical structure enclosing the seven-mile wide asteroid at the core of the ship has been mined daily over the past five thousand years. They say all the resources would be exhausted in the next couple thousand years. The output of many metals, gasses, and water is just twenty percent of the levels back in the first days after Exodus.

  The D-Rings were almost purely industrial with virtually no green spaces, and the canal around the center of the ring was an algae bath that provided much of the oxygen for the level. It smelled like the small swamp and bog areas in sections of the B-Rings, and the smell mingled with the smoke from the smelting and extraction plants to produce a uniquely sour odor. The bulk of the food production down here had to be done in enclosed domes.

  I know many people are assigned duties here, or their families have been here for countless generations and it was all that they knew. It was the people who chose to be here that I didn't understand, but we all have our reasons for the choices we make. I chose to join the Brigade after I went through the university in my Ring. Being a Clinic Child, or CC, I had no family and was raised by the Reproduction Clinic. My genes were selected by some lab tech and I was grown in an artificial womb with the other embryos to keep static Equilibrium of the human population.

  Whenever any race's birth rates were down, the clinics, well, the clinics grew more to keep the world's population at twelve million. So I was born forty-six years ago in the clinic, and the lesser Fae nurses were responsible for giving us 'designations', our names. They were obviously bored or were of the same opinion that we nulls aren't worth their time as they gave me the Shade surname... meaning 'nobody'... since that was what we Clinic Children were, especially us Humans, nobodies. No family, no home, nothing.

  Through my entire childhood I grew up with that knowledge, and told how I only existed to keep a population quota and nothing I did would ever amount to anything. I pushed back and excelled in school, then the university, and then I joined the Brigade to protect people and make a difference, thumbing my nose at those who thought I was just shade.

  Graz saw me staring off across the industrial complex and made an unzipping motion in front of her lips and said, “You've been an Enforcer for twenty-five years? I know all you Big nulls look the same to me, and you only live as long as a sneeze, but even I know you are still just a fledgling.”

  I squinted at her on my shoulder and made a show of re-zipping her lips. “I've always looked young for my age. I may look to be just barely an adult, but I'm a quarter way through my life. It is the bane of my existence, as nobody at Control takes me very seriously, and is why I still ride a beat on a C-Ring.”

  I huffed and started to push through the crowds of people heading home to their quarters. “I don't even know why I'm telling you this. My story isn't any different than anyone else on the world.”

  Then I moved over to help a Faun who had stumbled and dropped the packages she was carrying. “Here, let me help, miss.”

  She looked up at me, her big doe eyes blinking, and she smiled. It looked damn cute on her tawny furred face. I handed her the packages and she said in the soft tones her race was known for, “Thank you, Enforcer.”

  Smiling, I assured her, “No problem at all, have a good night.” She scurried off in leaping bounds, completely at home in the low gravity here. I took a moment to admire her feminine form.

  I glanced over to see Graz studying me carefully like she was trying to figure me out as I grumped out, “What?”

  She pointed at her lips, keeping them shut, and shrugged. Smartass.

  We hopped a crowded mag-tram and I felt a little uncomfortable as everyone gave me a wide berth. And before long we stepped off onto a street closest to the airlock. We headed to the bulkhead and into the winding corridors back to this ring's Bulkhead J and the Skin.

  Unlike where poor Mr. Katan was killed, the lights were all operational here, and there were still a lot of people milling about the corridors near the wide red and white warning stripes around the airlock door.

  I blinked twice and sighed at the nece
ssity. “Mother?”

  She purred out, “Here Knith.”

  “I want to live log this instead of using my suit's systems outside the Skin.”

  “Understood. Hey, buck up, it'll be ok.”

  I snorted. “Ok, I have to admit, you're funny at times.”

  She sounded pleased as she chirped out, “Thank you.”

  Then we stepped through the inner door, which should have been closed. I looked over to see someone had opened the manual control overrides and a bar of metal was holding the release lever down. I sighed and yanked the bar out and threw it on the deck-plates as the inner door closed behind me. I was muttering, “There's a reason its called an airlock and not a hallway.” Ok, was that Graz or Mother who snickered at my bad mood?

  At least they hadn't jury-rigged the outer door, not that they could since there was no manual release for it by necessity. By habit, I checked the series of green hard seal indicators showing that pressure was equalized between the world and the Remnant beyond.

  I looked at the overlay Mother automatically displayed in my peripheral, anticipating my need, and I saw this was a small cluster of remnants that were docked with the larger vessel sealed to the outer skin of the world, airlock to airlock.

  Once I hit the control, the huge bolts retracted and the gears turned, releasing the door seals as it slid up into its frame. And I glanced inside the positively archaic corridor beyond, its inner airlock door held open like the one on the world had been, as people hustled about. Something was playing over the ship's intercom. Music I wasn't familiar with. It had a hard edge to it like the stuff they played at the taverns in the Human districts.

  I caught the beat and found that whatever it was, had a good hook to it, even though the vocals were in some form of archaic English, which was the root language of Ship Common. “Mother, what is that?” I pointed to the air. I listened to the words, glad now that Old English was a requirement at the university.

  She said flatly, “Music.”

  “I know that. I mean what is it? I'm not familiar with this style. I like it.”

  She responded like I was off my rocker for liking it, “It is from the anthropological records of Old Earth, from the twentieth century, some of the first magnetic media archives later converted to digital. The style is called rock, and the title is “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”.”

  I smirked at that as I looked farther into what could only be described as a den for the unsavory characters of the world. “Apropos. Considering.” The title words sang out with the hook I found I liked. Was this really from the twentieth century? That was what, eight or nine hundred thousand years ago, and it still made me tap my fingers on my leg to the beat? I guess music is one of those timeless mediums, and the words spoke to me.

  With a couple of motions of my fingers in the virtual display, I moved this section of the anthropological music section to my personal playlist. It reminded me of the rebellious Irontown Clank music I grew up with.

  I found myself smiling as I made my way down the corridor. Past an obviously drunk or chemically impaired couple of humans, the men were in a sloppy lip-lock until they saw my uniform and scurried into a cabin with strings of beads obscuring the doorway.

  We were on the right deck, and by the bulkhead markings, I was just a few cabins away from the owner of this ancient wreck. I hesitated at one door that had a sign for an oracle. What were the odds Madame Zoe was a charlatan? Clairvoyance was a really rare form of witchery.

  When an older woman, possibly a hundred eighty or ninety with honest to goodness spectacles slid the mechanical door open to look at me expectantly, I swallowed and moved quickly down the corridor. Had she known I had hesitated by her door? I looked back to see her just watching me.

  Charlatan or not, clairvoyants unnerved me.

  Then I took a second to square my eyes on an impromptu map of the Remnant cluster painted on the wall with interactive paint so that I'd have a record of it I could look at later. I almost snorted as I started to move and the red X that said 'you are here' changed to 'now you are here' as I moved and the X moved. Clever.

  I rolled my eyes at the flashing lights by the lift at the end of the corridor, with a big blinking arrow pointing down with 'Brothel' glowing in nice big letters. This really was where the dregs of society made a home, wasn't it? But a part of me kind of liked it in a rebellious sort of way. They knew who they were and weren't ashamed to show it.

  Ah, here we were A1, captain's quarters. Graz was pointing at the door just in case I was some sort of incompetent nitwit or something. I gave her a warning glare and she ignored me, just sifting her dust to my shoulder as she kicked her feet nonchalantly.

  I looked around and then banged on the metal door, noting Graz was sort of shying away from the unpainted surface as she held on tightly to my helmet. My eyes widened, was the ship's bulkheads made of iron or steel?

  A moment later the door slid up to reveal a stocky middle-aged man of maybe a hundred, with a rugged look and salt and pepper beard that matched his shoulder-length hair. I noted he wore a severely outdated exoskeleton, telling me he likely left the D-Ring where he was stealing free rotation for gravity to deal in the upper Rings of the Stacks.

  That or as a deterrent against any unsavory who thought they could make off with all the wondrous stuff I could see covering the walls behind him. Trinkets and gadgets and things that looked so antique I wouldn't even be able to guess as to what they might be.

  His gruff voice was exactly what I had expected as he asked in false courtesy while keeping his arm barred across the gap of the doorway. “Ah, Enforcer. What brings you to the Underhill today?”

  I felt the corner of my lips twitch involuntarily, trying to smile at the ship's name. Underhill was the legendary home of the Fairy folk, the Fae, where they hid from the humans back on Earth before they revealed themselves to offer aid in constructing the Worldship. And in exchange for solving some of the problems that the humans still didn't have a solution for, they bartered guaranteed free passage with the Exodus launch.

  Again I thought it was apropos.

  I thought of how things must have been when all the races had agreed to a lottery, and how the Fae were tricky in their negotiations. Humans thought they were being the tricky ones when the Fae had agreed for the other races to just two million souls and giving ten million seats to the humans who numbered almost thirty billion on Old Earth at the time.

  The humans thought the other races would have similar lotteries to see which people would leave Earth on the Leviathan, leaving the rest behind. But it was us Humans who learned that every Fae had an angle, they never spoke plainly, and used truth as a weapon to deceive. All of the other races of preternatural, including all of the Fae, had just shy of the two million souls, so the entirety of all their races were saved.

  Then the Fae Unseelie Winter Queen, Mab, sold the remaining seats to the richest or most politically powerful of the human families who didn't win in the lotteries. And not for money, but for their power and influence in the shape of favors. Favors those influential families were still paying off all these generations later here on the world. Never ever ever put yourself in a position of owing a Fae a favor, and never ever ever thank them, as they will see it as you admitting to being in their debt.

  I asked, “Mac?”

  He nodded and pointed out, “You are aware that you aren't on the world now, Enforcer? Your jurisdiction ended back at the Skin there.” He nudged his chin down the corridor to the airlock.

  I had to smile at the sly man and said, “Enforcer Knith Shade, and I'm not here for you, just some information.”

  He looked at my shoulder and prompted, “This one your prisoner?”

  Graz mimed unzipping her lips and squeaked out, “You wish, you old space fart. I'm helping the Big here.”

  “You owe me three transducers for the bum lot you pawned off on me last time, you winged rat.”

  “Buyer be
ware. You paid me under market value that last four times, so you got what I gave.”

  I cleared my throat and they stopped discussing things I'm sure I shouldn't be privy to. The man looked me up and down and said flatly, “Information isn't free.”

  I sighed and pulled this month's meal card out of a pouch on my belt. I lived at and ate at the Brigade barracks so I never used my ration card. “It's full.”

  He snatched it out of my fingers like he thought I'd change my mind, and as he pocketed it he moved aside, ushering me into his eclectic wonderland of amazing items. “By all means, Knith, come on in. You're not an Enforcer here in Underhill. And I'm not calling you Shade, it means...” I held a hand up nodding as I moved past. I was well aware of what it meant.

  I moved up to one of the bulkheads to look at the hundreds of items hanging from hooks as Graz flew down to perch on the back of what looked to be a comfortable, overstuffed leather chair. Taking only one down-stroke of her moth-like wings to make the journey in the low gravity, like she had done it a thousand times. Hell, maybe she had. She probably dealt with Mac's father and countless generations before him.

  I was lifting what looked to be some sort of circuit tester with ports all along the front while Mac was studying my face as he said, “You break it you bought it.” Then he took it from my hands and brought it to his mouth and blew into it and it made music, as he cupped it in his hands to make few notes as he slid his mouth along it. “It's called a harmon-ka. From Old Earth. Very rare. You like?”

  Mother was correcting him in my ear. “The proper name is harmonica. It is similar to the modern photonic slide flutes of...” I huffed and she stopped.

  He caught my interaction then pointed at my eyes where he probably saw the heads up flickering in my retinas. “Off.”

  I nodded and said sweetly to the air, “Goodbye, Mother.”

  “Knith, don't you dare shut off the feed. This...”

  I tapped the privacy mode icon on the virtual control pad in front of my eyes and my entire scanning and observation system powered down, and my connection to Control and Mother shifted to standby. She was going to give me a good what for when I activated the feed again, she hated being ignored, and that made some part of me smile. She never got upset when Kahn or the others put her in visual mode only. I actually liked talking to her, when she wasn't being so bossy and overbearing like this.