The Henderson Helios: A Sci-Fi Adventure Novella

by Beatrice Crowl

  She was gonna make this difficult. “Mabella, did you work here, in this building, last year?”

  “I got this job three months ago. I assure you, I know how to handle people asking to see the regional Vice-President of Cadinoff.” She was not amused by me or my luxury mechanic’s jumpsuit.

  “If you’d been here a year ago, you would have been treated to the raid that the Corporate Enforcement Agency threw here. They busted in those doors with guns blazing to rescue me from floor twenty-four, where I was being held like a fucking princess in a tower. And you wanna know what I was doing in that tower, Mabella? I was designing a fucking amazing engine for your boss, the Vice-President. She lost those plans. I have them. And I. Want. To give. Them to. Her.”

  Mabella’s eyes widened.

  “So call Glezos.”

  The younger woman nodded and tapped at a comm. She cocked her head in that tell-tale way people had when listening to an ear comm. After a few words, she looked up as if having just witnessed a miracle.

  “She says to go on up to her office.”

  “Thought she might.”

  I had already begun walking when Mabella called out the floor number. I waved her off. Knew the damn thing already.

  I had a plan. A loony plan, yeah, but a plan that felt right in my heart. I had learned something important these past months: Those design plans weren’t making me happy. Why hold onto something that wasn’t making me happy? Especially when it was worth a gold mine?

  Adela Glezos’s office was the top floor. The whole thing. Her office. Ridiculous. As the elevator reached the top, it paused for the identity scan before the doors opened. The security was strict, and there was probably an insta-death programmed for any unauthorized visitors.

  Glezos’ office was as bizarre as I remembered. Holographic wildlife roamed the open space, and an expanse of shifting green and blue tiles pulsed across the landscape. Solid gray tiles formed a path straight to her desk at the floor-to-ceiling window. Instead of the city, the window played a vid of female weightlifter straining to raise an osmium door. A long-necked creature lazily swayed its head to my right, competing for attention with a white, furry bear on my left. The gray road took me through a suite of furniture appropriate for an apartment—sofa, chairs, end tables. There was even a little kitchen—standalone counters, a range, an oven, and a sink.

  That’s where Myka was—in the kitchen surrounded by jumbo bottles of cooking oil. She didn’t look up, all her focus on pouring oil from a jumbo bottle to a mere large bottle without a funnel. A series of empty large bottles suggested her goal was to fill them all.

  My heart skipped, but my pace was steady as I walked to meet Glezos, herself, at the big desk. Glezos was a power woman. It was her brand, even if it was a few decades out of fashion. Shoulder pads, big hair, loud voice, the biggest fucking cigar I’d even seen. She’d be a parody except she was real and she was real serious.

  “You’ve fucked my rabbit in front of me, Henderson. Give me the run-around, then come here like some big Peace Day Fairy. What the fuck are you tooting at?”

  Fucked her rabbit? Where did she get this stuff?

  Myka didn’t register any awareness of me. Didn’t look at me. Didn’t change her expression. Just kept moving oil from a huge bottle to a less-huge bottle. Never wavered. How could she? She was in her owner’s lair here. Wavering would…fuck her rabbit?

  “Glezos.” I sat, willing myself not to get sidetracked by how comfortable the chairs were. “I don’t like talking to you so I’m gonna cut to the chase. I want to sell you full ownership of the plans for the solar engine. All yours. The plans, the designs, the credit. My name doesn’t need to be anywhere on it. What do you think?”

  Glezos bit her cigar in half, then spit it on the floor. A small robot overlaid with a raccoon hologram zoomed to clean it up. “I think it’s a fucking trap, is what. What’s your fucking game, Henderson?”

  “I don’t play games.” I held up my handset to prove my point. “Got everything you need here. I can send it over on your word. Once I do, I wipe everything from my systems, and it’s out of my hands.”

  “The price?”

  “My price is whatever Myka Benton’s debt is.”

  Myka spilled the oil. Or at least, I assumed she did from the noise. I couldn’t spare a look because I was busy doing that macho woman stare-down thing. Glezos crossed her eyes at me.

  “You’re fucking with me.”

  “Too high? Too low? What’s the problem here, Glezos? I thought you were a businesswoman.”

  Glezos threw the other half of the cigar on the desk. It skipped off the surface to land in my lap. I brushed it to the floor. The raccoon scurried back out.

  “You’re buying my personal assistant?”

  “No, I’m paying her debt.”

  “Why the fuck would you do that?”

  Maybe I could kill Glezos with a brain aneurysm here in the smoothest corporate assassination on record. I’d be a legend. “Listen, Glezos, I don’t ask why you surround yourself with zoo animals and stock your office with fifty-liter buckets of lube. How ‘bout you not pry into my business?”

  She laughed. Glezos laughs were guttural and obscene. I’d need a shower after sitting through it.

  But it was good she had a sense of humor about herself.

  “That’s a fuck in the peehole. Fine.” She tapped her desk and pulled over a display. “Push those buttons, and I’ll have someone do the paperwork.”

  “Nope. I had a lawyer draw up a contract.” I swiped it over to her public receptacle. “Sign it. Then I push buttons.”

  Glezos’s eyes glazed over as the contract popped up on her screen. She quickly swiped it over to her legal department. “I like a woman who prepares before dumping a load.”

  “Well, I love to dump a load on you, Glezos.” I looked over at Myka, finally, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were wide, oil covering her hands as she stared at the counter. She’d stopped moving entirely. Like a robot waiting for a command.

  It Ends with an Engine

  The Solar Forward Model 280 still wasn’t working.

  Not that staring at it would do anything.

  I’d spent hours at Glezos’s headquarters, and then I walked away with nothing. No money. No revolutionary design. Nothing. And somehow, I didn’t feel bad about it.

  There’d be new designs. New ways to earn money. I’d held to my principles, and I’d helped Myka. That filled a little well of satisfaction in my gut that I usually filled with alcohol. This felt better. A lot better.

  I had to face Ryan when I got home. He was not happy—his exact words were: “You didn’t think to fucking ask me before handing my firstborn over to Glezos?” He’d get over it. I still needed to contact that attorney and tell her to drop the case. Later, though. First, I allowed myself to feel the victory. ‘Cause, yeah, it was a victory.

  My cigarette ash fell onto the defunct 280 engine as I heard footsteps behind me. I expected a customer later—Mx. Mottershead with a noisy atmo-skipper, and I turned to tease them about being early only to see Myka. She stood at the threshold of my garage like she’d done the day we first met—when she’d offered everything Cadinoff had to offer.

  Now her hands were shoved into her pockets, and her expression was uncertain. “Hey.”

  I didn’t know the etiquette for talking to the woman you had feelings for whose contract you just paid off by giving up your life’s work. I covered by wiping my hands on a rag. Mechanic trick.

  “Hey, I didn’t buy you.” Okay, that was a weird thing to blurt out. “I mean, I didn’t pay your debt to ‘get’ you or anything.” To be fair, this was a weird conversation to have. “You can do whatever you want. You’re not beholden to me.”

  I’d expected Myka would disappear for greener pastures, somewhere with puppies. Yeah, it’d be great if she didn’t, but I’d blown it at Halcyore’s. Wasn’t any coming back from that.

  Or at least, I’d thought there wasn’
t any come back from that.

  She nodded, only half-listening while idly assessing the state of my garage. “I don’t have anywhere to go, actually.”

  I wiped my hands again. “Family?”

  “None to speak of anymore.” Her heels were out of place on this dirty floor. “I’m supposed to give these clothes back to them once I get something else to wear.”

  “They want your clothes?”

  “And I don’t have any money.” She smoothed a wrinkle on her suit jacket. “I guess I thought I could borrow some clothes from you?”

  They were taking the fucking clothes off her back? And then ditching her on the street with no money! “I’m sorry. I didn’t think they’d cast you out like that.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No! No, that shit isn’t okay.” Nothing these corporations did was okay. My victory turned to regret. I hadn’t thought this through. What had I sent her into?

  She stepped into the garage. “I don’t mind being here with you.” She bit her bottom lip. “If you don’t mind me being here.”

  When had she gotten so close? I could reach out and touch her more easily than I could touch that damn 280. She glowed with the setting sun behind her, tantalizing.

  “You’re not mad about Halcyore’s?” My voice was rougher than I’d like.

  “I was. But I got over it yesterday.”

  “What happened yesterday?”

  “The woman I’ve fancied for over a year did a crazy and, honestly, stupid thing to loose me from my employer. It’s hard to stay mad after that.”

  I had so many questions, I didn’t know where to start. Her brown eyes were scared and pleading, but also happy and hopeful, all at the same time. A big mix of expectations and fears that matched my own emotional mix.

  I grabbed a question at random. “Where did you learn to sing like that?”

  She brightened with a laugh. “My dad worked at the on-site daycare. I helped him when I was younger. You learn real quick how to keep kids entertained.”

  “Oh.” She had a dad. Why hadn’t I thought about Myka having a dad? I knew so little about her.

  I must’ve tensed up because she pulled a data tab from her pocket and held it out. “Before I left, I copied over the Cadinoff files on you and on me. So you could see what I knew about you and you could see more about me. They’re abbreviated—I was rushing, but it gives the essentials.” She looked down when I grabbed the tab. “It’s only fair.”

  “Not sure how I feel about rifling through files like that.”

  “Then you don’t have to. Just, if you want.” She rocked on her feet with a lingering uncertainty. “So it’s okay if I stay here? For a little while. Until I can find a job.”

  I hadn’t actually answered her on that, had I? “Yeah. Yeah, as long as you need. I’m the reason you’re out of a home, so least I can do.”

  We were like two kids at a school dance. I cringed even as I couldn’t snap out of the nerves that gripped me.

  “Oh!” Myka rummaged through another pocket in the lining of her jacket. When she found what she was looking for she presented it with a broad smile.

  Dusty and unassuming, yet shining like a treasure, she offered the alternate cabling that would fix that damned Solar Forward 280.

  “This is the part, right?”

  Seeing that stupid, obsolete part sparked the biggest feeling explosion I’d ever experienced. Bigger than when Ryan had run through active fire to save me. The realization that by giving up my life’s work I’d gotten so much more than I gave. Glezos didn’t even know how much I’d gotten the better in that trade.

  ‘Cause I gave up a design, but I got this beautiful woman who would stop to think of the stupidest, the most trivial thing in the world while being cut loose from the employer that had managed her life to that point. For me.

  The alternate cabling clanged to the floor as I swept Myka up for a kiss. No need for handcuffs this time. There was no way I’d let her go.

  * * * *

  Six months later

  I was at that “freeform doodling” stage of inspiration. It’s further along than the “disregard hygiene and camp out on the sofa watching the vidstream” stage. And less smelly. My design table, previously long-buried by maintenance crap, was now clear and full of swirly-cues and three-dimensional boxes that I’d sketched while waiting for my brain to give me my next big idea. You know, since the solar engine was out of my hands.

  I tilted my chair onto its back legs and stared at the ceiling.

  The garage was too quiet nowadays with Ryan off at Becker. I had cut my customer list to accommodate the reduction in personnel, and then I had cut it more to account for the hours I gave to design. Used to be, this would’ve put me out on the street, but now Myka’s salary was enough to keep us afloat.

  Okay, it was enough for a fucking mansion in the Wilton Hillside. This was a point of contention between us. I was down for a bigger place here in the Back 40, but Myka wanted to hang out with the rich assholes in Hightower. We were probably gonna compromise on Spark Lakes, the well-off but not ostentatious neighborhood. Neither of us would be completely satisfied, but at least the dissatisfaction would be distributed equally.

  Contract workers of Myka’s status bounced when they fell. After unshackling from Cadinoff, Myka had gotten a job at Mayha Inc the following week. Mayha was the big information broker, so Myka did informational analysis or something like that. If I were an all-powerful god, Myka wouldn’t be working for another mega-corp. But I wasn’t a controlling asshole, and she could take whatever job she wanted. Not everybody had to abide by my contrarian principles.

  This doodling wasn’t working. I switched the display to one of my favorite engineering vids—Kichiro Walton assembling an old Yearspan engine over the course of a day using only authentic parts. I’d watched this a million times, but I was always dazzled with Walton’s brilliance. Maybe some of that brilliance would rub off on me.

  I was distracted by a movement on the exterior cam. Myka was home early.

  Only seconds passed between her appearance on camera and her presence beside me. She pulled up an extra seat—the one that jiggles on a busted leg—and flashed one of those perfect Myka smiles.

  I paused Walton. “What’s up?” If anything, Myka was more likely to work late. She wasn’t the coming home early sort.

  “Just wanted to see you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Here I am.”

  “I have a present for you.”

  Oh shit. Was it an anniversary? Or some gift exchange holiday? She was born on Relga 2, and they had some weird holidays—

  She put a hand to my knee. “It’s a ‘just because’ present.”

  I exhaled with relief. “Okay.”

  She pulled out a data tab. I tried to guess what this was, but my mind was blank. Something about Ryan? Or my parents? Or maybe some engineering project somewhere? Myka worked in information, this could be anything.

  “Go on.” She nodded at the tab port on my design table.

  I plugged it in and waited the second required for the contents to appear.

  Then, schematics. Notes. Research papers. Scribbles and a strange design labeled with a woman’s name and one scrawled with Ryan’s itchy handwriting—

  “This is my engine.” The Henderson Helios. I’d given it up for her, but now it was here. Why? “I don’t understand.”

  Myka looked at the design over my shoulder. “When I took the Mayha job, I made my employment contingent on the acquisition of these solar engine plans.”

  I was usually quick to grasp things, but this right here? Wasn’t sinking in.

  “It’s not fully yours.” Myka spoke quickly. “Mayha is getting half ownership and profits. But they won’t lock down the design, your name will be on it, and you’ll have a big corporation to fight for that in court.”

  I sputtered in an unflattering way. “How?”

  “Corporate espionage. You don’t want to know the details.”


  I ushered myself past it. Gift horses and mouths. “Myka, this is…I don’t…” What were words? “I don’t have anything to give you. This is a lot.”

  Understatement. This was my dream project. The one I’d been trying swerve from, leaving it as “the one that got away”. And she’d set this up back when she’d gotten the Mayha job? We still hadn’t been certain about a relationship then. Working out the kinks and all.

  Dammit, Myka, why did you keep being decent?

  She scooted onto my lap and blocked me from the table, her weight settling against me. Automatically, I gripped her thighs and back. I had to crane my neck to see her when she grinned. “I have an idea of how you can repay me.”

  Her mouth was against my ear, breath teasing down my neck. Her touch was a hairsbreadth away, and I pulled her closer still until her breasts pressed against mine. Thank the gods Ryan was gone. I whispered in her ear. “Anything.”

  Her hand trailed down my side as she nipped at my earlobe. “Get me a puppy.”

  Then we didn’t talk for a while.

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