The Henderson Helios: A Sci-Fi Adventure Novella

by Beatrice Crowl

  Halcyore waited until all Sev Tech had disappeared before turning to us. When he spoke, his voice was calm. “Deepest apologies for this lapse, ladies. I hope you’ll accept this gift card for your unpleasant shopping experience.”

  A uniformed employee shouldered her way through Halcyore’s soldiers to present a card to me and Myka. It was made of ancient paper, and the word “STUFF” was manually scrawled across one side. Using ink. What a fucking weirdo.

  Halcyore rested his arms on top of the tank. “Now, what can we help you with today?”

  My mind had shorted out when I had a gun to my head, so words just weren’t a thing for me. Fortunately, Myka had kept her cool. “We need security wire cutters and a rental room for a short time.” She held up their handcuffs. “We’re taking care of this.”

  “Of course! Of course! You there, give them what they need!” he shouted at another employee as his soldiers withdrew to wherever they’d come from. “I heard about the solar engine at the expo earlier.” He twisted a finger in his ear. “I remember when you were working on it.”

  Halcyore knew me? “I…how did you know?”

  “Oh, the engineering world talks, and you were consulting with many people. I was excited to see what you would come up with.”

  Before I could feel good about myself, Myka had to ruin everything. “The design is actually the property of Cadinoff, as agreed to in a contract by Elly Henderson.”

  Halcyore shrugged. “You two have fun working that out, then. If you’ll excuse me, this tank is starting to chafe.”

  He rumbled away with his tank, vanishing to wherever his soldiers went. I wish I could say I was formulating a counterplan to Myka’s impending backstab as an employee approached to do Halcyore’s bidding, but I wasn’t. I’d hit a numb point, overwhelmed by the adrenaline rush of the entire night and dazed by Halcyore’s appearance. I tugged my mind to the present: Freeing myself from Myka. The likely knife in the back. I’d gotten complacent with her during the night, but I knew who she was. I knew what was coming.

  If I were sensible, I’d have snatched some tool to defend myself. Maybe one of those pointy things used to poke through aluminum sheeting. But I wasn’t sensible, and so I just let Myka lead me to into the line of fire.

  Halcyore’s had workrooms in back, rented by the hour. Handy for people who didn’t have space for their project. I’d used them before I got my shop going. A dinged, marked-up table sat along the far wall beside a display offering machinery rentals as well as person support. LED posters provided common measurement conversions and other basic information. Myka pulled out one of the chairs to sit. I took the other.

  Securing our freedom didn’t take long. These cuffs were only a pain because they required a specific tool to open. Tool in hand, the cuffs popped open as if they’d been waiting for us to get with the program. I massaged my newly unencumbered wrist. Bruises had already formed in its wake, smattering my wrist down to my hand. The meat of my palm had a gnarly red scrape from when I’d been supporting Myka’s weight while dangling on the side of the building. My right hand would out of commission for a while.

  Myka and I were both completely silent. Awkwardly silent. Would the backstab be literal? Did she have a knife? Or was she going to let the Cadinoff mercs outside grab me? She’d stationed them there after all. I could try a back exit, but no doubt they had that covered.

  I rubbed the back of my neck behind the ears. The scruff. Where a mother dog would grab an unruly puppy to give it a good shake. My muscles were tense.

  The chair squeaked as I stood. “Myka—”

  “You’re my weakness.”

  Her hand was around her wrist. She didn’t look at me.

  “Not on the official file, of course. But in reality. It’s you. And I want to leave Cadinoff. I think I have for a while now.” She shook her head, as if at herself. “Since you came along.”

  I didn’t know people were talking literally when they said shit about hearts skipping beats. Turned out, that’s a thing that hearts did.

  “Every day I’m surrounded by people wearing masks. People trying to hurt or control other people. Everybody has an angle or a hidden motive or something. A ladder to climb. But you’re just a real person. Someone who doesn’t do any of that. You’re an actual, decent person. And I like that.”

  I scratched at the back of my neck.

  “I wasn’t supposed to invite you to the night expo. My mission was to just get the Sev Tech design. But I saw you, and I can’t help it. When I see you, I want to help you. So I invited you to the night expo knowing you’d see the Sev Tech launch. I know I can’t leave Cadinoff. I’m stuck. Like you said. But I want you to have your own design. It’s yours.”

  Her words took a while to settle and process. She was giving it to me. Just like that. No double-cross. No stab in the back.

  No, more. She could’ve done that typical fake-smile shit and “let” me have it. She was being honest about herself. She was offering more. I could tell by how she looked at me with those big, brown eyes. How she moved toward me, tentative, like she was frightened of what she was approaching.

  And then she was in front of me, close enough to be back in handcuffs. She put a hand on my elbow. The same elbow that led to the hand at the back of my neck, and I…

  I thought of it all in that moment. That entire night. The singing and puppies and the anger and yelling and suddenly I was that Dad in the photography shop with my hand gripping the kid’s neck because this was how that started. It started when fucked up people got selfish and let themselves believe they could have a real family—be a decent person. Believed they could settle down with a wife who played the guitar and a kid with a dog. Except that kid would get into my shit and I’d get mad and maybe throw a beer bottle at them and yell. Once they got angry, I’d have to do more and I didn’t want to and—

  She was way too fucking close.

  I started laughing. Awkwardly loud at first, then more natural. That froze her. I stepped away. “I gotta admit, Myka, you’ve really leveled up on your infiltration here. You almost had me convinced.”

  She tensed. “This isn’t a—”

  “Of course it is! Everything is with you.” I smoothed my shirt with shaking hands. My right hand was bleeding, and it left a red streak down my front. “You’re playing the long game now, I’m sure. Weren’t successful getting me on-board by brute kidnapping, now you’re trying to seduce me into the Cadinoff fold.”

  What did they call it? A honey trap. Yeah, Glezos wasn’t above using her attaché like that. This was believable. Much more believable than that Myka wanted…

  Tears welled in Myka’s eyes. Dangerous tears. “I helped you back then.”

  “Oh, right. Of course. Keeping me trapped in your HQ was a big help.”

  “I gave Ryan the information he needed to send in the Corporate Enforcement Agency! I was so mad that Glezos changed the deal.” She was mad now. Mad that I wasn’t buying her shit.

  “I don’t believe you!” I shrugged with the indifference I definitely felt. “Sorry, but I know you’re a liar. Why the fuck would I believe this? Don’t get me wrong, you’re very attractive. I’m absolutely okay with some making out. You won me over there. But this whole, ‘I wanna leave Cadinoff for you’ routine is a bit much.”

  I couldn’t stop my fucking mouth. “You know, I wouldn’t be interested even if you were telling the truth. Because at the end of the day, Myka, you like being the victim, and that’s absolutely disgusting. There’s nothing worse than a person who lets themselves be beat up.” I needed to get out of there.

  Then Myka’s mask was on. The tears, the anger, the frustration—all gone. Buried or never really there in the first place. Now she was just the placid Myka Benton, personal attaché for Adela Glezos.

  I took it. Whatever I could take to hurt her. “You’re not even sad. Looks like I’m right.”

  She turned to the door. Thank the gods.

  “You aren’t gonna wait for
me to take a shit?” For that much-coveted data tab.

  She spoke to the corner. “It’s yours. You won, El.” Her hand hovered at the door control. “Congratulations.”

  Then she was gone.

  Untitled

  I got home safely that night. Or that morning. No Cadinoff goons waiting outside Halcyore’s to spirit me away. No Sev Tech mercs staking out my garage. Safe. Ryan was passed out in his bed, but I was too antsy to do the same. It had been a weird night.

  I set up camp in front of that damn Forward 280. Sev Tech still had my phone, so I’d missed the call back about the alternate cabling. The data tab in my gut was a consolation prize, then.

  Actually, a huge fucking prize. It was my life’s work, sitting comfortably in my gut. Snatched away from the two mega-corps who desperately wanted it.

  Plus, Benjamin Brassard had been humiliated, first by Myka then by Halcyore. I broke a smile remembering Myka’s scathing response to him, but the momentary delight turned into an ache when I thought of what came after.

  It didn’t matter. I’d seen through Myka’s plot and secured the data tab. I’d won.

  Ryan found me in the garage the next morning. He was eating a massive breakfast burrito with another one in hand. The kid could eat a banquet.

  “You got in late.” He kicked the 280 before sitting next to me and offering the second burrito. I took it.

  “Ran into some trouble at the expo.”

  Course, then he was curious, so I had to tell the whole story.

  Okay, not the whole story. An abridged version.

  Basically, I left everything related to Myka out of my rendition. That part wasn’t important. What was important was that I had the data tab.

  “So the data tab is still in your stomach?” Ryan gaped at said stomach.

  I pressed on my abdomen. “Probably the intestines now, actually.” I winced at the pressure at my side.

  This led to Ryan discovering the gunshot wound. And my mangled hand. And my janky leg.

  Basic upshot, he insisted I get a doctor to treat everything. I couldn’t afford a hospital, so I called a friend who’d been a medic during the war. She’d patched up my previous gunshot wound. Later that day found me leaning over our quickly de-cluttered kitchen table as she cleaned the injury. She’d already bandaged my right hand and whapped my left leg to make sure it was okay.

  “Hey, Cha, if a person swallowed a data tab, how long would it take to come out the other end?”

  She didn’t pause. “What the fuck type of question is that, El?”

  “Practical question.”

  I could almost hear the shrug. “Couple days, usually. Unless you got a gut condition or something.”

  I hummed in acknowledgment.

  The damn thing came out eventually, and I got the bastard cleaned up and plugged into a computer. Somebody powerful must’ve thought I was pretty okay because the data was good. It was my plans. Everything. My sketches, my notes, my research, my design schematics. I’d gotten everything back.

  Ryan gave me the biggest hug I’d ever gotten. These were also his plans. I’d started the design before he came along, but he was essential for later iterations. Full junior partner. At the end of the day, though, this was my baby—the one thing that would make me somebody among the rich snobs of the Human Engineering Association.

  I found an intellectual property attorney through a friend of a friend. Given the personal notes and extant correspondence included, I apparently had a strong case against Sev Tech. And Cadinoff if they came at me.

  Yeah, of course this was going to court. Sev Tech wouldn’t surrender the design they’d publicly previewed to great fanfare. They’d spend planetfulls of money to claim ownership. They’d offer payoffs, launch PR campaigns to smear me, use arcane legal code or even outright bribery to get the design.

  My attorney was down for battle, though. Not only that, once my dispute hit the news, allies emerged from the metaphorical tangle of cables in the corner. Previous collaborators, researchers I’d consulted, friends who’d seen sketches. I had to forward my comms to a secretarial service, otherwise I’d spend all day answering calls and responding to well-wishers.

  A couple months after the expo—as the legal battle over the patent was gearing up—some friends arranged a celebratory get-together at a place called Offal Paradise. Aproned waiters and a menu full of food I didn’t understand. Would not have been my first choice.

  But there were drinks. So it was okay.

  I took the “guest of honor” spot in the booth, Ryan as my right-hand man and my attorney to the left. A medley of interested parties spilled over to neighboring tables, swamping the high-class restaurant with a gauche party atmosphere. I spotted Jaimie Ewing, a solar scientist that had advised me early on. Coleman Downs, who’d designed some of the first hybrid engines. Even Barbra Nguyen. She was a bar friend who’d giggled over my early sketches. How had she even heard about this?

  All this to say, this was the broadest possible Elly Henderson reunion.

  Across the table, a parts manufacturer and a janitor friend whispered in each other’s ears, flirty giggling at full blast. Beside me, Ryan explained the finer points of engineering to a waste disposal specialist, who struggled to follow through Ryan’s accent. My attorney had gotten side-tracked into a furious disagreement over some recent case that had been in the news. Everybody I cared about, celebrating my accomplishment, enthusiastic for what was to come. I’d only dreamt about something like this and now it was happening.

  But all I saw when I closed my eyes was Myka’s adoring smile as she cuddled a puppy in a shitty holographic field. Myka strumming the guitar and making up a song on the spot to entertain a bunch of kids. Myka’s glare of put-out annoyance as she climbed the side of a building in a skirt and athletic shoes. Myka’s wide-eyed startlement as a lemur ogled our make-out session.

  And then the tears in those beautiful eyes as I unleashed the most vicious words I could think of. The tense posture of her back as she left. The moment her mask came back on, and I lost the best parts of her—the real parts. Her detached voice telling me I’d won.

  If I had won, why the fuck was I so miserable?

  * * * *

  That night wasn’t restful, and not just because of the drinking. Sleep had been elusive since the expo. The dreams were too unsettling. They weren’t all Myka dreams. Dad played a feature role in many with my mom as a supporting cast member. I also dreamed of Ryan getting hurt in so many different ways: getting crushed in a massive engine, overdosing on something in the Melkov district, being firebombed by Core forces, tripping over my dirty laundry and breaking his neck. I even dreamed of Benjamin Brassard stomping on my face over and over.

  So basically, I stopped sleeping.

  That 280 hung out in the garage, heavy and burdensome as my dreams. I couldn’t do anything with it. Not now. It was a heap of junk, waiting for me to take mercy on it and scrap it for parts. What had I been thinking, taking on this ancient machine?

  Ryan kicked the 280 on the way to sit next to me. His step was bouncy, and he was trying—and failing—to hide a big smile.

  “Got some good news.”

  I couldn’t look at him and his happiness. I was an awful parent. I exhaled smoke and waited.

  “I got accepted to Becker.” He spread his arms in a flourish with a toothy grin.

  Not a surprise, but it was great news. The kid was sharp, and my alumnus cred surely helped give him a boost. But it was impressive when my street trash ass got into Becker, it’s impressive when his does too.

  Even knowing this, all I could muster was a meager smile. “Knew you would.”

  His shoulders sagged, but there was more frustration on his face than disappointment. “Okay, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re sulking. All the time.” He flailed his arms in a gangly teenage way. “You haven’t cracked a real smile in weeks. You’re not bringing women home, which—I’m
okay with, but it’s weird for you. You’re moping, and I don’t know why! We have our engine! The Human Engineering Association is noticing you, I’ve spoken to more elite engineers these past few months than I have in my entire life, and you’re moping!”

  “I am not.” Well… “I saw on a talk show that parents shouldn’t burden their kids with their problems.” Being friends with your kids just confused things.

  Ryan gave me one of those looks usually reserved for when I was real drunk and not making any sense. “I know you’re technically my legal guardian, but El, I’m not your kid and you’re not my mom. Come on, now.”

  The shot shattered my heart.

  Ryan sat and stole a cigarette. I didn’t protest. “At most, I think of you as a grouchy aunt.”

  “I’m not grouchy.”

  He was right, though, about the adoption. I’d filed the legal guardianship paperwork when I’d take him on as an apprentice because it kept the Child Protection Force— the Kiddie Patrol—away. The Kiddie Patrol had started up to provide social services to the needy children in the Back 40, but they’d swiftly been coopted into grabbing up “unclaimed” street kids to send off to the manufacturing colonies. The pretense had been it was a career opportunity for deprived youth, but everybody in the Back 40 knew it was just a one-way ticket to a short, meager life among manufacturing bots. The companies probably paid the Kiddie Patrol good money for the labor. In any case, an official adoption kept them from snatching Ryan from me. So the paperwork was there. But he wasn’t my kid.

  “Yeah, you are.” He lit up and inhaled like a delinquent. His Eldroon accent became more pronounced. “I got a mom and dad. They were shit. That’s why I left.”

  “I thought you were a war orphan.” One of many thanks to last decade’s conflict. But thinking on it, that was just part of the elaborate backstory I’d constructed for him. I’d assumed he was a war orphan who had ended up in Eldroon, somehow, before migrating to the Back 40. A bright kid from Eldroon had just seemed so unlikely.