Jorz

Kory Mae Design

“Have you taken a look at that design?” Rham Billings asked.

The wiry engineer slowly pulled his attention away from his computer and blinked. “Gonna have to be a little more specific.”

“The Kory Mae,” Rham said.

“That s’posed to be the name of the ship, corporation?” he mumbled, eyes back on his computer sheet.

“You haven’t. Need to. The design could put this shipyard on the map.”

“This place has been on the map a long time.”

“No. I mean, really on the map. Blain. Look at me.”

The man, more a grandfather than partner, looked sideways at him with narrowed eyes. “Rham, I’ve been doing this shit a long time. I’ve seen ’em all.”

“Not this one. Pay attention to me for a change. You only think you run this place, you old coot.”

“You little prick.” Blain did a reasonable job hiding the threatened grin. “What’s so special about this Kory Mae design?”

“Four FTL drives.”

He cackled. “Even the Navy stopped trying to exceed two drives.”

“Do I have your attention now?” Rham asked.

Blain glared at him, pulled off his reading glasses and set them on his desk. “Who has the resources to design a quad-drive? And what makes you think you have the resources to engineer it?”

Rham stood tall. “The engineering is complete. Down to an AI that will run it. It doesn’t come from any government, not even a corporation. Lone designer, but she—”

“You have crap for brains. Lone designer my ass. Go away and stop wasting my time, you runt. I have real work to do.”

“I thought old farts were supposed to disperse.”

“Lone designer. Best labs worked on multi-drives for centuries. All they managed was a poor-excuse for a double. Not gonna happen. Spend your time on real business.”

“Blain—”

“You have bills to pay, doncha? You push the paper. I’ll do your architecting. I’m not going to waste my time looking at any four-engine designs.”

“Quad-FTL. Let me tell you about the designer,” Rham said.

“No.”

Blain began to rise and Rham waved his hand at him. “Sit. Shut up.”

“Two generations of Billings have put their trust in me. I thought generation three did too.”

“If you don’t listen for two minutes, Billings Shipyard will learn how to move forward without the renowned Blain Addair.”

The scarecrow of a man leaned back in his chair crossing his arms. His eyes reminded Rham of a snake’s looking for the best place to strike, but his long nose loomed more vulture-like.

“I own a good chunk of this place. I’m not your lackey.”

“Of course you aren’t. But Kendra and I control sixty percent of the voting shares, and I have her support.”

“With your parents’ votes. I’ll see they won’t go along with this. And I’ll talk sense into that sister of yours, too.”

Rham looked over his shoulder and his sister, hiding around the corner, who gave him a grin. She’d been waiting for the cue to join them. Probably a military term for their strategy.

“Oh, no.” Blain pointed a bony finger at Kendra Billings. “When was the last time you even looked at a design? You’ve been running the frontend of this place so long you couldn’t engineer a toilet seat.”

Rham smiled. The woman walked behind Blain, set her hands on his bony shoulders softly, and massaged them slowly, getting her thumbs into the sunken in spots. She didn’t say anything for a a full minute. The man’s head lolled and he closed his eyes, enjoying the attention. Kendra moved her hands up on his neck and he moaned.

“Blain. Darlin. You’ve always been my sweet puddin.”

“Oh, mannnn,” he whined without opening his eyes. “I’m dead now, aren’t I?”

“We are such a good team,” Kendra whispered. “Been building the best ships, retrofitting, spending twelve-hour days together for three decades. Can’t you sit and listen to your young, best friends for just a few minutes. Huh, sweetie pie? Please?”

“Don’t stop doing that,” he said, hitching a thumb at his shoulder. He didn’t open his eyes. “You have my attention for two minutes.”

“The woman who developed the design has doctorates in physics, engineering, and math.”

Blain thrust a glance over his shoulder. Couldn’t see her, so shot her brother a glare.

“Yeah. Really. I spoke to two of her college thesis advisors. They both said the same thing. The woman’s peculiar, but a genius.

“One called her a technical sociopath. They both said, ‘If she designed it, it’ll work.’ Say they’ve never known anyone who understands it all from theory to mechanics like she does.

“I’ve been researching the papers she’s published the last fifteen years—those that aren’t marked top secret—hundreds of them. Really. There’s a bunch. Oh. Should mention she’s only in her thirties. I’m pretty bright. But I can’t even figure out the titles of many of her papers.”

“I never believed you were particularly bright,” Blain mumbled, his chin practically on his chest.

Kendra squeezed a tendon in his neck and he smiled between a grimace.

“Pookie, sweety, shush and listen. I’m convinced she’s for real.”

“What design lab does she work for?” Blain asked.

“No lab,” Rham said.

“Where does she teach?”

“She isn’t teaching. Well, she guest lectures, on worlds all over.”

Blain looked up, one eye open. “What’s she doing?”

“She’s an independent pilot,” Rham answered.

“Space trash? I thought you were serious there for a moment.”

“We are,” the two said together.

“She’s coming to meet with us Friday,” Kendra continued. “We’d like you to join us.”

“Insane,” Blain snapped.

He started to stand but Kendra held him down. He squirmed, but she held fast.

“Consider what it’d mean to be the engineering firm that integrated the first quad-FTL-drive,” Rham said. The rasp in his voice showed the effort to stay patient wore thin.

“The first to blow up trying, you mean. Make a crater out of Houston, again.”

“If the science doesn’t stand up, we’ll walk away, no harm done,” Kendra said.

Blain’s expression softened but he shook his head. Kendra moved her hands from his shoulders to the back of his head and continued the massage. He moaned. Rham winked at his sister.

After a pause, Blain took a deep breath and blew it out noisily. “Friday, huh? Not a lot of time. I’ll have to pull people off every project to do an evaluation by Friday. We’re talking delays. No harm, huh? You’ll see the harm when you miss your incentive points.”

“We’ll absorb it in the schedules,” Rham said. “If not, it’s still worth it.”

“You’re both crazy.”

“It’s just a meeting,” Kendra purred.

“The science doesn’t work.”

“So far it hasn’t,” Rham said.

“Indulge us?” Kendra asked.

“I won’t be changing my mind.”

Kendra wrapped her hands teasingly around his throat.

“Can’t I talk you out of this insanity?”

Rham shook his head.

Blain harrumphed. “Let me go. I gotta call people off real work.”

~

“Hey, kid,” Rham snapped. “Janitorial staff uses the back entrance. And you can’t bring your dog to work with you.” He whirled around. “Where is that woman? Thirty minutes late. Couldn’t she call? Got thirteen engineers sitting in a conference room when they could be engaged on projects.”

“Let me show you—” Kendra told the scraggly waif who had just walked in. Kendra motioned for the soiled, threadbare, blue jumpsuit-clad tot to follow her.

“I’m not—”

Blain walked into the foyer shouting, using his normal expletives, but punching them with rare emotion. “Where’s that freaking moron who thinks she knows more than the combined engineers of a thousand labs?”

“That freaking moron would be me,” the lad Kendra was trying to whisk away said.

Her white-muzzled canine companion sat hard with a grunt, and leaned against the tiny woman’s leg. The Labrador looked up at her with big brown-opal eyes. The woman looked down and smiled at the hound, and gave her a quick head scratch.

The three engineers froze and gaped at the queer pair in front of them. The woman—though it was fairly impossible to tell she was female, or more than fourteen—wore her hair as though it was cut by a meat grinder. Her twenty-year-old overalls displayed skin at the knees and hips, with more stains than the average mechanic’s rag.

It appeared she even had a smudge of poly-silicate on her cheek. It was impossible to determine what color her deck shoes were originally. Chunks of the rubber that kept the top glued to the sole were missing. The ancient dog was the only clean, neat looking thing about the pair. “Sorry I’m late. Toni Tegaris.” She held out her hand to Kendra.

“Dr. Tegaris?” Kendra asked, her eyes round. Her throat clearly closed in on her. But she stepped forward to take the woman’s hand, hesitating as though being caught in a practical joke. She looked out the front glass. Maybe expecting someone with a camera.

“Prefer Toni. Get tagged as captain, mostly, except when I’m explaining something to some Ivy Leaguer. Only hear doctor when I get cornered to speak.” The woman winked.

“I was held up. Never know how long it’ll take to get docking protocols. The port was backed up. Thankfully I made up some time on the flight to Houston. I’ve got to get back to Philadelphia by three. I know that doesn’t give us much time.”

The dog struggled to stand. The tiny woman helped it before stepping forward and extending her hand to Rham. He shook it without saying anything. He realized his mouth hung open and closed it, and peered over at his sister.

“Where the hell’s the rest of ya?” Blain demanded.

“I didn’t bring anyone else,” Toni said.

“I meant—” He waved a hand from her grimy shoes to her mussed hair. “Shouldn’t you be chaperoned by your parents?”

Kendra’s face shaded gray. Rham closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest.

The woman’s face turned a little icy, but she looked back to Rham and Kendra. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to clean up before flying down.”

As they had studied her, Toni’s eyes tracked up and down Kendra, as though memorizing every detail so she could duplicate the image on a canvas the next day. She rubbed her hands down her dirty jumpsuit as though she was trying to rub something icky off.

“That’s a right sharp suit, Mrs. Billings. Wish I could dress like that in my line of work. I’m crawling into conduits as often as sitting in a bridge.” Toni cleared her throat. “I was helping my engineer with an issue so we could drop out of FTL. Everything’s always an emergency.” The woman gripped a clump of her clothes. “My time on-planet is a little short.”

“Ms.”

“Excuse me?” Toni said.

“Ms. Billings. Rham and I are brother and sister.”

“Sure and fine,” Blain interrupted. “You said they said she was odd, not a freak.”

“Blain!” both of the Billings shouted.

“I take it you’re the engineer I have to convince that four drives are possible,” Toni said.

“You’re not going to do any convincing here.” The man crossed his arms and tilted his head back. His lips were drawn together as though he’d bitten into something rancid.

“Since you went to school when energy meant splitting the atom, I can see the leap could be a little hard for you.”

The old man’s face turned a shade of plum.

“Did they even have schools back then?” She appeared to be enjoying herself.

“You snot.”

The short little woman laughed. “Is that the best you can do?”

“You insolent—”

“Blain,” Kendra hissed.

“You walk in here looking like that and expect to be taken seriously? You don’t even look competent to drive a hover.”

“Small minds are always closed,” she said.

“I’m reasonable and sane—four FTL drives is neither.”

“So, you couldn’t understand my design.”

“You call it a design. I call it an incomprehensible mishmash.”

“Good thing you don’t have to understand it, just follow schematics and put it in a frame.”

“I’m not gonna follow any design that comes from a flee-bitten, midget-size, grease-monkey,” Blain shouted.

“Enough,” Rham shouted over his chief engineer. He raised his hands in a surrender pose as he turned to face their guest. “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here.” He turned back to Blain, thrusting his hands to his sides. “I think you need to go to the docks and check how your project is coming along.”

The engineer glared at Rham a very long moment before ripping around and walking away. They all watched him until he passed through a door and slammed it closed behind him.

Toni chortled. Rham and Kendra looked at her blankly.

“Molly. Get back here.” The old Labrador stiffly limped her way back from the office she was investigating. She looked up at her human indignantly.

“This began a lot like I expected,” Toni said. Her grin changed her face. She actually had very pretty features. Rham tried to picture her cleaned up. That was impossible.

“I only have hours to answer your questions. Wanna get started?”

Rham looked at his sister, wondering if it was wise to let their engineers meet her. The two had to jump to catch up with the woman, who sped past them for the group of faces peering from a conference room door down the hall.

“You waiting to hear about the Kory Mae?” she shouted at the group.

The excited geeks answered affirmatively, and she plowed into the swarm of scientists who rattled off questions over each other.

She answered non-stop as she worked to network her computer with the three twenty-foot plas-sheets that covered the conference room walls.

She displayed portions of her design on each and moved back and forth between them and animation-boards to demonstrate concepts with simple drawings that had the engineers bellowing with satisfied ahhhs, and shouting back follow-up questions.

Rham and Kendra stood in the hall looking in, a little dumbfounded at how differently the younger engineers responded to the strange looking space captain.

“This is gonna be a coup,” Rham said softly to his sister, trying to follow Toni’s current recitation.

Kendra bit her lip. “If we live through it.”

~