He smirked, knowing. Smug. “But what if we could get rid of that entirely? What if we tried something completely different?”
My fingertips tingled, and my stomach began to flip. Something about this pitch was off. Not right. Very wrong.
“Sev Tech, tonight, will transform how we do space travel. Renewable. Waste-less. Zero risk.” He nodded at the crowd’s excited murmuring. “That’s right, zero. How?” He placed a hand on the cover in an obscene caress. “Over 100,000 person-hours, a decade of trial and error, the combined skill of fifty premier engineers and scientists. We harness the most powerful source of energy in our universe.”
Before him bloomed a holographic display of the primary sun, Helios I.
Solar power. They were using fucking solar power.
When Brassard peeled back the cover with a flourish, I already knew what would be revealed. Intricately designed solar modules coated plastonamium solar cells, miniaturized to fold a million per square centimeter. The entire photovoltaic system a concave blossom designed to move around the outside of the ship so as to ensure it was always facing the nearest star. It sucked in solar power, transformed via external circuits with offshoot batteries holding varying capacities depending on size and cost. It was clever and ambitious and demonstrably better than anything we had up till now, surpassing the current limitations of solar powered flight by its novel miniaturization process that allowed for astoundingly massive amounts of input. It was, truly, going to revolutionize space travel.
I knew all this because it was my design. Stolen by Cadinoff. Then stolen by Sev Tech, it seemed.
My cheeks heated as the audience cooed over my engine. My engine.
My final project at Becker had involved a hybrid solar/fusion engine. At that point, the tech was only good enough for small propulsion. Mini drones. Uncrewed stuff. And long trips were out of the question. Too many limits, not enough oomph.
That design was my entire life after I graduated. Yeah, I had a shop and did repairs for people, but all the money I made was poured back into getting a fully-solar engine assembled. During the war, I sidetracked a bit to help the Colonials with that new fusion drive, but it was to get the money for more work on my actual, real project. I’d already called it the Henderson Helios. Damn right I was gonna be one of those assholes who named an invention after myself. It wasn’t ego, it was pride.
Okay, a little bit of ego.
A year ago, Myka Benton had approached me with an offer that I couldn’t refuse. Resources. Not just money but a full team. Cadinoff wanted to help me see this project to completion. In exchange, they wanted half-ownership on patent and ensuing profits.
I took it. They gave me everything. Everything. An entire floor in Glezos’ headquarters. I ate, slept, lived that project for over a month and a half. Maybe more. Honestly, my memories from then all ran together ‘cause I had been so focused on the damn engine. Once I had a team instead of a scattered network of collaborators, things fell into place so quickly. We were getting close.
I should’ve known it was too good to be true. Even from the beginning, Glezos had Myka Benton looking over my shoulder every day, hectoring me with questions or thoughts. I couldn’t get a break from her incessant interference. She was the portent of things to come.
One day, word came down that the deal had changed. They were gonna take ninety-ten on the patent and profits, and my name would become a byline on the design. They had reeled me in, shackled me, then fucked me over. When I refused the new terms, they refused to let me leave. Literally. Guards appeared at the exits, and I was forced to keep working.
That was a fucked up couple weeks. Yeah, I worked. Under duress. Looking back, I should have just stopped, but this project was the most important thing to me. I was sucked into it. Hyperfocused. I had needed to finish it as surely as I needed oxygen to breath. I figured I’d find a way to keep ownership of it once everything was complete.
Didn’t get a chance. Ryan called the Corporate Enforcement Agency in when Cadinoff stopped letting me call him. The CEA goons usually didn’t do much actual enforcing. They received too much money from the corporations to bother. But Ryan pestered them enough that they got off their asses and stepped in. Ryan had come, himself, to “rescue” me. Great kid.
I was extracted from the headquarters, Cadinoff got a slap on the wrist for kidnapping me, and in the turmoil of the rescue, I had no idea what had happened with the project. The plans, the research, the work. Per the initial agreement, I’d brought everything with me to Cadinoff. No backups. Dumb, I know, but I had tunnel-vision. I had assumed that Cadinoff still had everything, but what if a Sev Tech corporate spy had been inside the project? Maybe they took advantage of the chaos to steal everything away.
And then a year later, Sev Tech presented it to the world as if it were their fucking idea.
No. Nope. No, this was my engine. My work. My life. It didn’t belong to Brassard or Sev Tech or Cadinoff. It was mine.
And I’d find a way to make the world know that.
No Fucking Way
I needed to establish ownership of the solar engine plans. I could only do that if I could get a copy of those plans. Even when I had handed everything over to Cadinoff, my fingerprints were all over it, nice and smudgy. The early drafts? Named after women I’d slept with. Draft #46? An
