Starship: Unbound

A Chance Meeting

Starship: Unbound

By

William L. Culbertson

The deck underfoot throbbed subtly under his feet. The rumbling tremor of the starship's seven fusion engines had been a steady part of Tak Meller's life for over five years. It was such a trivially mundane fact of life he scarcely noticed. He reached the bank of lift pods at the central axis of the ship and entered one. "Command Deck, please."

"Acknowledged, Captain Meller," came the terse reply of the automatic pod control system.

"They're still at it, you know." The second statement was delivered in the modulated tones of, Odysseus, the starship's control construct.

Meller sighed and scuffed his hand through his brown hair idly noting it was past time for a haircut. "Well, I wouldn't expect anything less. Thank you, Odysseus."

"Is Thaddeus's preaching the reason you are using the pods these days?" Thaddeus White was the leader of the militantly fundamentalist group, The Ascendency of God's Army. As they approached the star system that was their destination, his daily rants had gotten increasingly strident.

"Pretty much." Meller smiled slightly. "When he has the sound system turned up, even the promenade-view passage around hydroponics isn't safe." After a moments reflection, Meller asked, "So what is his topic of the day?" Odysseus had access to all parts of the ship, and given the group's proclivity for trouble on Earth, the Space Service had recommended the crew monitor their shipboard activities closely.

"There's the usual praise for the righteous judgment of God and how the new colony is God's will, but there is a bit of a new twist."

"How so?"

"He is now referring to me, your local starship, as 'this glorious tool of God's creation to subjugate the rest of the galaxy to His mighty word'—and so on. In his speech, the sentence continued on for another two paragraphs or so, but the important part is that now I am a 'glorious tool.'"

The pod continued to glide upward toward the bow of the ship. The starship Odysseus was on it's way to GJ 2238c, a habitable planet around a stable red dwarf star fifteen lightyears from Earth. The Ascendency's goal was to establish New Eden, their version of a paradise to be created far from the corrupting influences of Earthly sin. Meller's job, as captain of the starship, was to see that they got there.

Meller smiled slightly. "Congratulations on the promotion." He shook his head. "Glorious tool," he muttered to himself.

The pod slowed to a stop and the door slid open. For all the comfortably homey decor of Lodge Deck where his personal quarters were, Command Deck was the functionally utilitarian control center of the enormous starship. Meller nodded to Blake and Tussey, the two crew members currently on duty as he sought his command station. The captain's chair was more broadly spacious than his spare frame required, but it pivoted into position as he settled in place giving him easy access to the numerous display panels. "Odysseus, would you please bring up the anomaly list from the last watch?" In the short list that appeared, one item was tagged yellow with a green border to show it had been resolved. "What's the story on engine five?"

"The intake system hit a deposit with an elevated lithium content. The change in fusion rate caused some instability until the elemental diverter compensated."

The cometary ice chunk riding on the bow support frame provided their fuel. It was also an effective shield for the residue of particles of interstellar matter that the magnetic shield could not push out of Odysseus's way as it travelled near the speed of light. "Is it my imagination, or have their been more lithium inclusions than usual?"