Juliette's Space Race: A Near Future SciFi Thriller Short

by Randal Sloan

  Emily wasn’t fooled. She knew Julie very well, who was, as far as she was concerned, the sister she never had. She knew Julie had been listening from the kitchen. “Sis, you know it’s time to let the fledgling out of the nest to try her wings.”

  Julie was really trying to be patient, something she had learned quickly after dealing with the two special children of theirs. Among their special abilities, her family all had super hearing if they just concentrated on listening to something, and she had indeed been listening to the conversation from the kitchen. She sighed and sent a mental message to Zeke, careful to not let it slip through to Juliette, who sometimes highjacked a message between them. “I know you remember our vision of Juliette and her space race. Do you think this is it? I want to say no because she’s still my baby. I want to protect her, but based on that vision, I don’t dare say no.”

  “Yeah, it might not be this race, but we know it’s coming. This way, I can help her and keep an eye on her. Otherwise she’s liable to try something sneaky. She’s already got Em in on it.”

  Juliette whispered to Emily, “They’re doing the mental talking thing, but they’ve got me locked out. I should have never let them know I could sometimes hear them, but it was so funny I couldn’t help but laugh. They were saying such mushy things.”

  Emily whispered back to her, “Yeah and you still might not have gotten caught, but you laughed into that little mental link that you guys all have and they heard you.”

  Julie looked at her daughter and then at her sister/friend. “You know we can hear you two, you little imps.”

  “So what did you two decide?” Emily asked her, knowing Juliette was about to die waiting for the answer. So she had to throw in, “Do you think chocolate cake for dessert or apple pie?”

  Julie wisely didn’t take the bait. She knew her daughter too. “Juliette, you can do the race, only if you let your dad help with everything, and you don’t try to pull anything behind our backs. Your reputation precedes you, daughter.”

  Juliette’s mom had a lot of experience with her propensity for getting into trouble, which she tended to exercise regularly. But this time, she had no intention of detouring from her path. “Don’t worry, Mom. I know. I promise to keep this serious. Even today flying in space is serious business. Plus, I already know I need Dad’s help, which he can do as my sponsor.”

  “Ok, but you still have to eat your vegetables if you want any of that dessert Em is proposing.”

  Juliette gave her a grimace. “If you would only let me count fries as a vegetable,” she mumbled, knowing her Mom would hear her. But she did eat them and a big piece of chocolate cake too, which brought her smile back.

  She saw her Mom smirking at her and laughed. “I know, Mom,” she sent mentally to her. “I love you too.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Building a Race Ship

  An hour later in the family’s private hangar.

  #

  Zeke looked at his daughter, who was practically bouncing with excitement. He had too much experience with her troublemaking ability to not know there was more. There was no way she hadn’t carried this all the way. “So let me see your design. I know you already know the specs and I know you already have your design done.”

  Juliette laughed and pulled up the full-size VR on her personal AI. “Of course I have it, with the help of the others. This is it,” she flicked the expand icon so that it expanded to take up a large portion of the area in front of them. “We took the corvette class, dropped it down to one-third the size, and took out all the stuff you don’t need. Then we streamlined it so it would be more aerodynamic for the part of the race run in atmosphere. Plus, I bumped up the shields and the power plants to make it super safe and super fast.”

  “So just how do you know what the course will be? They haven’t announced it yet. They could be running it all out in space this year, leaving out the earth part, and you wouldn’t even see any atmosphere.”

  “Really, Dad. You know I could easily find out, just like you did.”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t going to admit it. It wouldn’t have done any good if they’d tried to hide it. Everyone knows the course by now. I need to warn you upfront. With your Uncle Joe on the planning team, there’s to be no trying to get extra favors out of him.”

  To that Juliette nodded, “I know, Dad. I won’t get you or him in trouble. I’ve only done what anyone else could do, and I’ll keep it that way as far as Uncle Joe is concerned. But the ship, it’s our unique baby, and no one will be able to accuse us of copying anything.

  He agreed with her there. That was a huge understatement. He had never seen anything like the ship in front of him. “So what are you doing here?” he asked her, pointing to an unusual section on the ship.

  “That’s the pulse drive,” she told him. “It fires an extra pulse into the field whenever the field degrades more than half a percent. And when you need an extra boost, you hit it and it pushes you temporarily up to one-twenty percent or so. You already do that with the main drive, Dad, when you want an extra burst, but this one doesn’t degrade as fast. And you can hit it again quicker and more often.”

  Zeke looked at his daughter, “That’s brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  “ That’s because you’re not as devious as me. I also might have bribed my younger brother and the rest of the team to help me come up with it.”

  “Ok, we’ll have to test it, but I don’t see why it won’t work. You two have got to apply for the patent on it. It’s going to be all yours too, less Space Tech’s ten percent. I’ll talk to Space Tech Legal and set you up.”

  “Wow, that would be cool. But give Katie and Joey each ten percent too. We all worked on it a lot of days after school.”

  “Yeah, I can see Katie complaining about you hitting the fields constantly with your main drive pushes or something like that.”

  “Maybe, but she’s still my best friend, and it was her complaining that made me think of it. About like her mother and the gravity plates. She still tells that story, you know.”

  That brought a smile to Zeke’s face. He remembered the incident very well. They had given Caitlyn a ten percent stake in the gravity technology that he and Julie had invented. That invention, and the power system the two of them had also invented to produce power at basically no cost, had become widely used all over the world. Among other things, everyone slept on an anti-gravity mat or full anti-gravity bed. All air and shuttlecraft used the technology to reduce their fuel cost. So that ten percent stake had been worth a literal fortune. The reasoning was that Julie had gotten the idea of building the first gravity plate because Caitlyn had complained about having to go weightless during a drive test. Of course, they really did it as a wedding present for Caitlyn and Joe, Zeke’s best friend.

  But enough dwelling on the past. He knew Juliette still wasn’t telling him everything. Zeke smiled at his daughter. “Ok, so I can help you with the race, but how do you intend to pay for this ship? You won’t see any money from that patent for months at least and the race is less than a month away. I know you’ve been saving your money but there’s no way you can come close to having enough. Even if all four of our little schemers got in on it.”

  “I could possibly just borrow it against my future winnings, because I intend to win. Or I can get my sponsor for the race to buy it. Maybe my Dad or someone like that. I bet Aunt Caitlyn and Uncle Joe would give me the money too if I asked them.”

  “I’ll do it for you only if you tell me the truth. Why do you want to win this one so badly?” Zeke looked at his daughter intently. He’d learned by now you had to keep making her give details, like peeling the layers of an onion, or you’d always be surprised later.

  “I want to be top on the list for the Space Academy pilots school. I want to be an Explorer, one of those pilots that explores our solar system. Or beyond, as soon as we figure out how to crack the light speed limit. We should be able to do it with our current tech. We’ve ju
st got to figure out how to work the fields to create a safe non-Newtonian bubble.”

  Zeke decided not to even think about that last part. “You know only the top ten percent that graduate are considered for the Explorers, right?” Zeke asked her, already knowing her answer.

  Juliette smiled at that. “Yes, Dad, I know. But I’ll make it. You know me and how I face things; I never give up. Katie, Sam and Joey are going to be my Explorer team and we’re all in this together. This is a worthy goal that you and Mom can accept. We may have to work on Mom a little, but she’ll come around.”

  “Alright then. I guess we’ve got a ship to build. Send the specs to the Space Tech AI and I’ll order the parts. Send the shipyard the order to build the shell.”

  “Already done. All the orders are set up, pending your approval.” Juliette smiled at her dad. “And Dad, we’ve got to lock this hangar down. No one else but you and me, Sam and the others. We’ll need them and you’ll probably have questions for Sam about the pulse drive.”

  Zeke pondered that a second. “Ok. I see where you’re coming from. You really do intend to win.”

  “Yes, I do!” Juliette emphatically told him. She sighed. “You might as well go ahead and tell Mom the rest of it. She’ll pick it out of our brains if you don’t.”

  “Yeah. She would make life unpleasant while she did that, and be even less receptive than she’s going to be now. She’ll probably try to delude herself into thinking you won’t make the program. But I can see already that you will by pure guts and determination. You’re really too much like your Mom.”

  “I like to think I got the best from each of you,” Juliette told him, a little tongue in cheek but she really meant it too.

  “Yeah, I think you did. But you shouldn’t let it go to your head.”

  #

  That night, when Zeke was finally able to spend some time alone with Julie, he told her about their conversation. “Have you had any more visions at all about our daughter?”

  When she shook her head, he went on. “She intends to win this race, and I suspect this is indeed the one we saw in your vision all those years ago. So we can assume she will win. She intends to claim the pilot’s slot at Space Tech Academy that is guaranteed to the winning pilot. She also intends to make Explorer. And I expect she’ll do both. She’s as determined about this as I’ve ever seen her. She’s a lot like you in that. When she sets her mind on something, nothing is going to stop her.”

  Julie stared at him and sighed. “I guess our daughter is growing up. And you’re right—what she wants she usually gets. We can stand in her way and either get pushed aside or skipped over, or we can help and at least be able to keep an eye on her. So I guess we’d better choose the latter.”

  “And there’s more. Sam and their two friends are planning to make it through the Academy ranks to be her Explorer team. I wouldn’t make a bet against any of them either.”

  Julie nodded her agreement. “I wouldn’t either.”

  “There’s one other thing I need to tell you. They’ve been thinking a lot about this. Juliette and her brother have invented a new type of drive that supplements the standard drive to give an extra boost when needed. Pulse drive is what they are calling it. I’m going to talk to Legal tomorrow to get the patent started.” He laughed before going on, “Juliette insisted that Katie and Joey get ten percent each.”

  That brought a smile to Julie’s face. “That brings back memories.”

  She sighed. “I think I’d better let my Dad know what’s coming. He never could tell her no either, and when she gets to the Academy, she’s going to set off all kinds of fireworks.”

  “Yeah, since he’s in charge of them, he should warn the Explorers about what’s coming. Not that they’ll believe him.”

  “I expect that they’ll learn the hard way. Very quickly!”

  #

  The parts came in over the next several days. It took the shipyard a little longer to build the shell, but it was ready within the week. Zeke had it delivered by space tug and he personally directed it to where he wanted it to rest. Next came the power units and he also supervised the crew of techs that installed them. He had to look twice to verify the power ratings were correct, but they were. Juliette didn’t do anything by halves. It was double what one would usually see in a ship that size. Of course, it was a racing ship, even though it was just above the lower limits in the specs for the race. He expected those would be rewritten anyway after Juliette got through with them. Most of the other race ships were double the size of hers, but he bet they didn’t have power plants as big as she had chosen. As everyone knew, the field generators were the real limit to the speed a ship could obtain, and those had to match specific requirements set by the race specs.

  No one else had a pulse drive or anything like it, but he knew it was entirely legal within the rules, since it only supplied energy to the field generators. He suspected Julie would have one on her corvette attack ship sooner and not later, and by the next year, he knew, everyone would have one.

  Every day after school Juliette and the rest of the team came down to work on the ship with him. Together they installed the field generators for first the drives, then the shield generators, and finally Juliette’s pulse drive. Zeke noticed the specs were again more than double what he would have expected for it, but he just shook his head. He had a sneaking suspicion there was something there she wasn’t telling him, but he knew he would never get it out of her. When she wanted to hide something in that head of hers, there was no finding it or even picking it out mentally. Not even Julie could get it out, something she was really good at.

  By the end of the second week they had all the big stuff done and were moving quickly to finalize the installations. Soon they would be ready for the maiden voyage.

  Zeke was amazed at how well his daughter and her team worked together. All of them were able to do their part and often they would, by collaboration, accomplish a task faster and better than any one of them could have done alone. He suspected Juliette and Sam would at times use their silent communication to coordinate from opposite ends of the ship. Each was able to do a lot on his or her own, but when something wasn’t working right, they quickly pulled together as a team to work out the problem. Which led them to the current issue. Zeke thought he knew the answer, but he wanted to wait and see what they tried. If they couldn’t figure it out, he would step in to tell them what he thought was wrong.

  The issue was with the control cables. Using Joey’s brilliantly inspired solution, they had cut considerable distance off the total run. And when they checked each cable individually, it seemed to be correctly installed. But the AI insisted that it had a control fault and would not continue to initialize the ship’s systems. Katie was of the opinion that they still had a bad cable and somehow had missed it. Sam was certain that they had a defective interface in the control system. Since it was his idea, Joey was devastated and was determined that it was something about the control runs themselves that was causing the fault.

  Juliette had been listening to each of their suggestions, and was now obviously thinking about it. Suddenly she laughed out loud and looked at the others. “It’s the sum of the parts,” she told them. Zeke couldn’t help but smile. She had it!

  Most of the group looked confused, but they were used to one of the team surprising them all. Then Sam grinned. “Of course. The interface has in its setup the information designating the combined load of all the control runs. But we forgot to change that designation, and the AI is confused because it thinks it should have more load to match what the interface is telling it. But because of the shorter distance due to Joey here, the load is actually less than it would otherwise be. So we just need to tweak the interface.”

  While they worked to make the fix, Zeke couldn’t resist sending Julie a mental message. “These guys are amazing!” He went on to describe the issue and what they had done to resolve it. “It took me nearly a whole day to figure out a similar issue the firs
t time I saw it. These guys got it in a couple of hours. They are going to make an amazing Explorer team. Just think what they’ll be able to do after they’ve all had their training.”

  Julie could feel just how impressed Zeke was about it. It wasn’t the first time the group had surprised them. It was like they were the perfect combination of talent, inspiration, and pure determination. That got her to thinking about the pulse drive. There was something there that she was missing; she could almost see it. What had they been trying to do? She needed to think outside the expectations she had regarding its purpose, and then she saw it. It might work, but something was missing. She dug out the specs and started looking.

  #

  Juliette was really stressed when they finally stopped working for the day. They were really, really close to getting everything finished, but then the issue with the AI not accepting the control runs had come up. It had cost them a couple of hours to figure out the problem and then another hour to determine exactly what to do to fix it. They had decided to stop after that and reconvene the next day. They were really getting close to finishing the installations and then they had the testing to complete. After that would be the fine tuning and she was anxiously waiting until they could get to that point. Then she would finally be able to fly her ship!

  At least it was now in sight. The result of it all was that she needed to unwind, so she had gone off to the spot where she often went to relax, and invoked her other passion — painting. It was in a secluded spot, only accessible from a maintenance tunnel, and it overlooked the large public park. Space Tech had added the park a few years ago when they had replaced a much smaller module that was previously used for the common area.

  The common area was also in the new larger module, and it was always busy no matter the time of day. The park, however, was a favorite of the long-term residents of the station for a different reason. It was a quiet, peaceful place to unwind and for many of those living there, it was a chance to feel like they were back on earth for just a little while.