by Jason Hutt
Nick nodded and sidled slowly over to Max. He watched as Max wormed his way into the exposed maintenance crawlspace. Once he was in there, Max was wedged in the cramped space in what looked to be a fairly uncomfortable position.
Nick gave him a wry smile, “So, what’s the point of having a maintenance robot if you never let it do maintenance?”
“You’re doing a great job channeling my ex-wife. Try making your tone of voice a little more acidic,” Max said. He turned on a utility light and the beam illuminated a maze of pipes and hoses, shiny canisters, dirt-stained wiring, and a few odd bits of duct tape. “Reggie is running some diagnostics on the gas analyzer. I figure while he’s doing that I can do this. Besides, time for me to change out some filters in this anyway. And it gives me something to do so I don’t have to sit around watching movies with you.”
“Mind if I help?” Nick asked, crouching down next to him.
“Not really room for two sets of hands in here,” Max said, “But you’re free to watch. Call up the schematic and follow along.”
Nick tapped a button on the wall, “Schematic. Air scrubber. Uh, Port Air Scrubber.”
A holographic image appeared in the corridor just in front of Nick. The three dimensional projection was the same maze of hoses, canisters, and wires that Max was now elbow deep in.
“Highlight filters,” Nick commanded. Four points were highlighted yellow on the projection. “Show access.”
The projection started moving and a listing of steps appeared immediately to the right.
“Audio?” The computer asked.
“Please don’t,” Max said, grunting as he tried to pull apart a connection.
“No,” Nick responded. The animation of the maintenance procedure proceeded at an almost dizzying speed, theoretically giving Nick an overview of what Max was doing. Nick could have slowed it down, sped it up, or stopped at any given step, but he wasn’t really interested in what he was watching. He sat next to Max and watched him methodically pull apart various connection points, inspect the ends of each, check for any other signs of damage, and ultimately move on to the next part.
Max disconnected a hose and the connector on the end of it was corroded and worn. Flakes of metal came off as Max ran his fingers over the end of the connector. The black rubber seal around the edge was tattered and torn. Max wormed his way back out and handed the part to Nick.
“Go make another one for me, will you?” Max asked. “You can get the part number from the computer.”
Nick nodded and headed to the small engineering room that separated his quarters from Max’s. He stood before the replicator and called up the holographic schematic of the air scrubber. He found the part number and commanded the replicator to make another. Within five minutes, the new part had been printed and he dropped the old one in the recycle bin.
Max continued checking connections for another twenty minutes before Nick spoke again, “So how did you lose your daughter?”
Max looked at Nick blankly for a moment before the question sank in. He frowned, the creases on his forehead deepening slightly. “Nick, this is not Zen and the art of spaceship maintenance. You are not my psychotherapist. You’ve already gotten more out of me than your last two predecessors did in over two months on the job. Let’s talk about something else.”
Nick nodded. Max took a moment to look at where he was in disassembling the scrubber. After taking a moment to scrutinize what connectors were currently disconnected, Max dived in again, pulling things apart.
“All right,” Max said, breaking the silence, “Tell me why you’re afraid to face your father. What’d you take from him that made you set off halfway across explored space and take up on a rig shuttling back and forth for the benefit of the armpit of humanity?”
Nick hesitated a moment as he eyed Max uncertainly.
“It’s nothing, just stupid stuff.”
“Bullshit, kid,” Max said, “Stupid disagreements don’t get you out here trying to sabotage my operation just so you can get fired. What are you running from?”
Nick watched as Max disconnected a small cylindrical piece, threw it in his toolbox, pulled a clean one out of the box, and installed it. Nick took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“My father is, well, he’s the Vice President of Research and Development for the Conglomerate.”
Max disconnected another small cylinder and threw it in his toolbox. He stopped for a moment and looked Nick in the eye.
“Christ, kid,” Max said, wiping at his hands with a rag, “Vice President of Research and Development? Wish you would’ve told me that in the interview.”
“You never would have hired me,” Nick said, meeting Max’s piercing stare.
“Damn right,” Max said, “Do you have any idea what people back on Dust would have done to you if they’d known you were the son of a high ranking official in the Conglomerate? You think you had it rough when you were being questioned by those cops in Windy City? If I had turned you in and they had discovered that little nugget, I don’t think you would’ve ever seen the light of day again.”
“I don’t see it, Max. Dust is no threat to the Conglomerate.”
“Do you remember the park, Nick? Do you remember what you saw there?” Max said.
Nick thought for a moment and shrugged.
“Nothing remarkable. Just people going about their lives.”
“All right, true enough. What didn’t you see? What do you see every day on the news broadcasts that you didn’t see there?”
“Poverty, hunger, unhappiness.”
Max again locked eyes with the young man, “Who do you think provided all the food we ate there? Who do you think built the homes? Hell, who made that park?”
“I don’t know. The Republic? The Conglomerate?” Nick responded, “Who normally provides that stuff?”
“Do you think they would spend the resources to make sure folks on Dust lived comfortably when people on other worlds are fighting, protesting, rising up like they are?” Max asked, “How many times do you have to be told that the Republic and the Conglomerate gave up on Dust a long time ago?”
“Then where did it all come from? How has that place managed to thrive when so many other places are falling apart?” Nick asked.
“They did it all on their own, Nick. They grow their own food. They take care of their own there,” Max said, “They did it all with the help of Sinclair. He’s responsible for almost all of that. He engineered the crops, he created equipment that could survive the environment, he’s created that way of life. He is almost single-handedly responsible for turning Dust from a dying husk to a thriving community. And no one there wants anyone in the Republic or the Conglomerate to know anything about it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Nick protested, “If they knew what was going on there, I can’t imagine them not celebrating it. If Sinclair can create thriving crops and food in this place, he could do it anywhere.”
“And if the Conglomerate found out about this place, they would shut it down immediately, lock Aldous up for illegally modifying local wildlife, and tear apart this colony faster than you or I could blink. They’d claim patent violations left and right, shutting down any production or farming. They’d claim patent rights over the seeds in the soil and the gaskets on the augers. Every dime that Sinclair earns is a dime stolen from their pockets or so they would have you believe,” Max said.
“I don’t believe that, Max.”
“It’s all about profit, Nick,” Max said, “The Conglomerate is twice the size of any other corporation in the Republic. They make more money in a year then almost every planet in the Republic save for Earth. They use that money to control the Republic. They control the trade. They control the prices. They control the people. The breakthroughs on Dust would be a very clear threat to that control.
“And don’t think Dust is the only colony that’s like this. There’re other places, other worlds, where people have gotten wise to the Conglomerate�
��s ways. You’ve seen it yourself on the news. Those food riots on Canis One weren’t just about people being hungry. Who do you think convinced the Republic to stop colonizing new worlds? The Conglomerate did. And they did it because their influence is already being subverted in places like Dust. Keep expanding and they lose more of their grip on society.”
Nick nodded, but he couldn’t believe it. He had seen the greed of his father firsthand, but that didn’t condemn the entire company. He stood in the corridor silently, staring blankly at the opposite wall as thoughts swam through his head.
Max eyed him for a minute before continuing his work.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Max said, “Why did you run away from your father? If he really is a Vice President for the Conglomerate, you should be spending your nights sleeping on a bed made of money.”
Nick took a seat on the floor and leaned his back against the wall. He pulled the data crystal out of his pocket and held it up. The lights in the corridor refracted through it casting a rainbow of light on the floor in front of him.
“See this crystal, Max?”
Max looked up with a grunt.
“It holds every record I could find on his computer, records of the experiments he authorized, of the human testing he authorized. Records that show he is responsible for the deaths of thousands all in the name of profit. The only thing he’s ever cared about is making a goddamn dollar. To think, I used to look up to him.”
“Pretty serious claims.”
“Aren’t you the one who just said the Conglomerate would shutdown everything on Dust for profit?” Nick asked.
“And aren’t you the one who had trouble believing a corporation would do something like that? Tell me, Nick, where’s the truth here? Is your father the outlier? The one bad apple in an otherwise good company. Or is your father just a reflection of the values of that company?”
“My father authorized human trials of some kind of serum. He’s responsible for the incident on Nanuk,” Nick said, “And he did it all against the advice of those under him. I’ve seen the memos. He did it.”
“And I would bet that any other manager in that company would have made the same decision,” Max said.
“But it was my father that did it and I hate him for it.”
“Did you ever talk to him about it? Stand up to him? Find out what he really did?” Max said as he started to reconnect some of the hoses he had taken off.
Nick shook his head. “No…I couldn’t stand to even look at him.”
“Well, you’re going to have to soon. You can’t run from this, from him, forever.”
“And I bet I don’t live beyond that day,” Nick said, “He’ll see to it.”
Max laughed. “Being a little melodramatic aren’t you? I don’t think I’ve ever met a man your age who didn’t hold some kind of grudge against his father. Isn’t it possible that maybe you’re overstating things a bit?”
“We’ll see soon, won’t we?”
Max looked away from the scrubber and looked Nick in the eye. He chewed on the inside of his lower lip for a moment as he looked over the kid. After another minute, Nick carefully put the crystal back in his pocket.
Max asked, “Does he know you have the data?”
“I think so,” Nick said, nodding his head, “He sent me a message the day we left Nexus. Made it sound like he knew.”
“So give it back and walk away, Nick. Close that chapter in your life. Don’t worry about him; get on with your own life. Do the things that you think are important. Be the good person you wanted him to be.”
Nick nodded but didn’t respond. He stared at the wall opposite him. It wouldn’t be that simple, he thought. His father wouldn’t let it be that simple. His father would want him to know the consequences of his actions. That was one of his favorite phrases. It was something Nick heard more and more of as he grew up.
Max crawled out of the small maintenance area and reinstalled the panel that covered the air scrubber.
“Activate Port Air Scrubber.”
A few soft clicks were audible as the device restarted.
“Reggie, status?” Max asked.
“The gas analyzer appears to be working nominally,” Reggie’s voice came back to them over the intercom.
“CO2 levels?”
“Still above normal,” Reggie responded, “And rising slightly.”
Max cursed and scratched the back of his head.
“What are you thinking?” Nick asked.
“I’m thinking that with three full days left in this trip we can’t just let the carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. At this rate, we have about a day before it’ll become a problem.”
“So you’ve got backups, right? Something else that can get the air cleaned up?”
“Sure,” Max said, “But I don’t like mysteries on my ship. Everything that occurs on a ship is explainable; there is no such thing as an unexplained event. Something has to be driving the levels up.”
“So what could it be?” Nick asked.
“Computer,” Max said, “Scan for vital signs on-board. How many people are you picking up?”
After a slight pause, the computer responded, “Only two life forms detected, both currently in the crew quarters section.”
Max frowned. “Well, that rules out a stowaway.”
“You know,” Nick said, “I heard a strange thump in the cargo bay last night during inspection. I thought it was just my imagination.”
“Only way to fool the scan would be with some pretty thick shielding,” Max said.
“What about those containers? Are they thick enough to do it?”
Max thought for a moment.
“It’s possible. Those cases are sealed, though, and Sinclair would’ve told me if we were transporting something biological,” Max answered, “Let’s take apart the starboard scrubber and then we’ll do a sweep of the bay. All three of us. We’ll have a look at those containers, but I don’t think they’re it. Like I said, Sinclair would’ve told me.”
***
Nick reclined in the co-pilot’s seat, half asleep, entirely exhausted and listened to Max and Reggie go back and forth on the carbon dioxide issue. The three of them had been attacking the problem all day. Max and Nick had completed the same overhaul of the starboard scrubber.
When that yielded no results, the three of them did a slow meticulous search of the cargo bay. They started with the containers but could find no openings in the cases that could emit any gases. The seals on the containers appeared to be airtight.
Then they searched the rest of the hold, inch by inch, looking for any traces of a stowaway. Max had admitted that this was an unlikely cause for the spike. One extra body on-board was unlikely to cause elevated carbon dioxide levels.
After they completed the sweep, they did a check of some of the plumbing for the environmental systems. Carbon dioxide collected by the scrubbers was routed to a water generator that took the oxygen from the carbon dioxide and combined it with hydrogen to make water. They found no leak though, no unexpected source.
Max had grown more frustrated as the day went on.
“Reggie,” Max said scratching his forehead as he leaned forward on the pilot’s console, “What possibilities are left over?”
Reggie stood in the back of the cockpit, almost invisible due to the low light levels. Only one green power indicator on his chest revealed his presence.
“We have eliminated the most likely candidates,” Reggie intoned, “A concentrated source would be needed to cause the rise of CO2 levels that we are seeing, a tank of the gas perhaps.”
Max frowned and rubbed a lump on his forehead that he suffered when he bumped his head on the edge of a container.
“Nobody’s used tanks of CO2 on-board spaceships in over 500 years, Reggie,” Max said, “I don’t think that’s what Sinclair has in those crates. What else you got?”
Reggie spoke through some unlikely causes – off-gassing from the containers, sublimati
on of a dry ice deposit – but could come up with nothing that seemed plausible.
“Increase the air scrubbers to full capacity, Reggie, and activate the backup system,” Max ordered. Reggie nodded and left. Max let out a frustrated sigh.
“You need to relax,” Nick admitted.
Max immediately gave him a stern look. “I told you earlier that nothing happens on this ship without me understanding how or why. Mysteries are for books and movies, not for interstellar spaceships.”
Nick nodded and turned his attention to the stars outside the cockpit window. They both sat there in silence for the next ten minutes. Max finally leaned back in his pilot’s seat and propped his feet on the console.
“Giving up?” Nick asked.
“If I sleep on it, something’ll come to me.”
Max gave Nick a sympathetic look.
“What?” Nick asked.
“This situation with your father is pretty tough. You should’ve talked to someone about it,” Max said, “No need to go it alone.”
Nick nodded. “I know, but it’s not something I can trust just anyone with.”
“It took guts to tell me all that this afternoon. I don’t know what to tell you though. The good guys don’t always win.”
Nick grimaced, “I know that. I just wish I could do something about it.”
Nick sat there a moment more, but then got up and stretched. There was no more to be done and Nick decided he might as well hit his bunk. He gave Max a nod and headed to the hatch. He placed his right hand on the frame to steady himself as he stretched when Max spoke again.
“My daughter was ten, Nick,” Max said as he continued to stare at the stars, “She was spending a day around a hangar with me, just enjoying some time at work with Dad. A cargo hauler’s proximity sensors failed. It ran over her with a full load. She died in minutes.”
Nick stood there, speechless. Before he could think of anything to say, Max started again.
“I held her broken body in my arms and cried over her until the medics arrived. There was nothing that could have been done. Accidents happen, I was told. Not my fault, I was told.”
