The Henderson Helios
A Sci-fi Adventure Novella
BEATRICE CROWL
The Henderson Helios
Beatrice Crowl
Swell Creative Works
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Copyright © 2021 by Beatrice Crowl
Cover Design – Creative Paramita
May 2021. US Edition. All rights reserved.
Not part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters and events in this publication are fictions, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
It Starts with an Engine
No Fucking Way
The Dumbest Thing I've Ever Done
I Don't Believe in Authentic Earth Lemurs
Untitled
The Smartest Thing I've Ever Done
It Ends with an Engine
It Starts with an Engine
Cigarette ash dropped onto the engine block. I grumbled and brushed it off with an oily rag. This old engine had enough problems. No use piling ash on top of the damn thing. Not yet, anyway.
A blonde woman poked her head through the door to my workshop, waggling her fingers to get my attention. I didn’t look up at her.
“Um…Elly? I think I’m gonna go now.” The blonde—what was her name again?—pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “I had fun last night.”
I’d been way too drunk to remember last night. I did remember the woman though. Just, everything was out of order and a little blurry, like a dream. A good dream. I needed to stop bringing them home with me. It made the morning-after extra awkward.
I nodded and glanced up. Okay, she was hot. Not my usual type, but I could see what the appeal had been at the time. Now, what was her name?
“Maybe I could call you or….” The yet to be identified woman trailed off.
And here was the awkward part. I exhaled a stream of smoke. “I don’t think we need to make any more of things than they are, okay?”
The woman—Kiley? Kacey? Katrina? —stepped back, recoiling. “Fine, then. I’ll just go.” She turned. “Bye, I guess.”
I waved a distracted hand but kept my gaze on the engine in front of me. As soon as the nameless blonde left, Ryan entered with a beer in each hand. He’d probably been waiting outside for the inevitable dismissal.
He kicked the engine on his way over. “Why do you do that every time?” He passed me the sweating bottle and pulled up a chair. “It’s shitty.”
“Better than the alternative.”
“What? Being nice to women you sleep with? Would that really be so hard?” His Eldroon accent jangled my ears.
He was constantly on my ass about this shit. I rolled my eyes. “If I’m nice, then they think we’re dating. If they think we’re dating, it’s harder to convince them we’re not.”
“Or you could—crazy thought here—date someone.”
I glared at him before taking a swig of the beer. “Don’t be fucking ridiculous, Ryan.”
“I’ve been your apprentice for two years now, and I’ve never seen you in a relationship. Maybe it’d be good for you. Cheer you up a little.”
“What would cheer me up is getting this 280 working.”
A friend of mine, Hapsie, had found the thing in his junkyard and had given me the heads up. A Solar Forward Model 280 from half a century ago, pre-war antique. He didn’t know the provenance of the piece. He’d said it had just appeared as he’d walked outside one morning, but he figured I’d be able to do something with the relic. Now, two weeks later, his faith in me wasn’t paying out. I couldn’t even get the damn thing running, much less upgrade it in any way. The hunk of metal sat idle in my workshop, taunting me daily.
“It’s the fuel flow.” Ryan sank back in the chair, looking pensive as only a teenage boy could.
“I know it’s the fuel flow.” I whacked the side of the engine with a heavy spanner. Nothing happened. “I need to replace the alternate cabling, but they don’t make the size to fit this thing anymore.”
“It’s just a dumb ol’ machine anyway. Why not work on something newer?”
I sighed and stepped backwards to collapse in my chair—the squeaky one, not the wiggly one, keeping my gaze on my obsolete opponent. Ryan was a good kid. War orphan. Had shown up digging through my dumpster for scrap a couple years ago. I could’ve chased him off, but I let him stick around instead. I could use someone to fetch me things, and at least he’d get some mechanical training. Would help him last longer than if he were on the streets. Especially with that fucking Eldroon accent.
Eldroon was the butthole of the La Diyor megacity. Or maybe it was the colon. During colonial planning, Eldroon had just been the area beyond the budget-slum Back 40 district that was used for waste dumping and chemical runoff. Nobody was supposed to live there. But given a couple hundred years, you had enough stubborn dummies who wandered out there for “freedom” and built little homes to form a proper community of sorts. Eldroon folks kept to themselves, usually, though a few meandered into the Back 40 on occasion. Most…well, let’s be real: a handful of generations living in the center of a toxic waste zone? Not great for much of anything in terms of normal human development.
Ryan was bright, though. Fucking hard to understand. He sounded like his mouth was full of marbles and spit, but incomprehensible accents didn’t mean a person was stupid. Just meant it was harder for them to prove their smarts to people.
In any case, Ryan had spent enough time in Eldroon to pick up the accent before waltzing back
