Weekly Drabble #368: Prototype (Patreon)

This week's prompt is 'larger than any before' from MintBerry Crunch, I mean CringeBerry Sauce. It immediately put me in mind of the storm we'd seen in the Great Barrier, so that led to another entry in the Beyond the Wall series.

Enjoy!

~

Prototype:

“What do you think?” Kat asked excitedly as she led Caleb onto the upper levels of the hangar, gesturing to the small ship resting there. For the last year and a half, she’d been working on some super-secret project for her firm. She hadn’t said much beyond the bounds of what she was allowed to disclose, but she’d dropped some hints. It was practically all she could talk about and when she’d told him she’d gotten permission to show him what they were working on – provided he signed an NDA – he’d accepted immediately.

Caleb had once said that Kataleya was always set to eleven. She was high-energy in everything she did, whether it had been their competitions for grades and class placings, her Heritagist beliefs or her dedication to her work. It was those beliefs that had cost her her scholarship, a possible future with the navy and closed off many doors. When she’d gotten a job at Fortuneseeker Shipwrights, he’d been glad for her. Caleb and Kat were both prodigies, but while Kat’s head was in the clouds, her feet had always been on the ground. Caleb wanted, more than almost anything, to fly.

What he saw in the bay made him fall in love.

It was a sleek, marbled black arrowhead about half again as long as a standard corvette-class ship. A long primary drive core was flanked by the trailing tips of its wings, giving the impression of a bird of prey diving upon its target. It was beautiful, and he said as much.

“Just wait,” Kat promised, taking him by the hand. “Let me show you the rest.”

~

Caleb knew he was like a little boy at Christmas again, but every part of the ship was beautiful. It wasn’t a luxury yacht or racing sloop. Some thought had been given to aesthetics, but not much. Inside, its decking and bulkheads were a flat grey. Access panels were clearly visible and not hidden for cosmetic purposes. To Caleb, there was a purity in its functionality that complemented, not detracted, from its beauty.

He’d never seen a ship quite like this one. “Fortuneseeker brought a historical influence to the design,” Kat told him. “They had all the basic groundwork done before bringing me onto the project. I was able to open a few doors for them and help sort out the final kinks before we moved onto construction.”

Other than answering Caleb’s many questions, Kat barely spoke as she showed him around, letting him uncover the ship’s secrets for himself, and it was full of secrets. “Kat,” Caleb finally asked as he replaced a wall mounting over a system that very people could have recognized. “What is this ship?”

“Don’t you know?” she asked, practically quivering where she stood with anticipation for his answer. “You can see it, can’t you?”

“I can,” he admitted. He pointed back to the panel he’d just closed. “That’s a Feyn-Gold conversion matrix. It’s even got the modifications I developed for the system. I never published that design.”

“You sent it to me,” Kat answered. “I ran it by our engineering team. Don’t worry; I never told them it came from you.” The use of conversion matrices was strictly regulated by Solar law. Feyn-Gold systems weren’t yet legal for civilian use without strict licensing and oversight. Technically, he shouldn’t have been doing anything with a conversion matrix, let alone one as controversial as a Feyn-Gold – especially as a member of the SIF.

If he shouldn’t have been messing with them, then Fortuneseeker definitely should not have been. Despite its reputation, it was still too small and too unproven a company to be granted dispensation for secure technologies, especially with a known Heritagist working for them.

The Truth for Human Heritage and History movement had existed for centuries, but in the last few generations had become more vocal and influential. They’d been formed after the infamous ‘Freudian Speech’ of then-Solar President Kaitland Tailmore. Widely dismissed as conspiracy theorists and agitators, their central tenet was that the truth of humanity’s existence over the last thousand years was being concealed and hidden from them. Depending on who you talked to, the nature of that truth could vary wildly, but the core faction of the Heritage movement, including Kataleya, believed that humanity had once been greater then they were now. They pointed to ancient discoveries on moons and asteroids, corrupt and degraded historical archives, and used hearsay and slips of the tongue as proof of their theories.

Kat wasn’t as extreme in her beliefs as some of the more fringe elements of the Heritagists were, but she was vocal about hers and always willing to argue it, whether it was someone outside the movement or within it. At university, she’d clashed with professors, students and the campus’s own Truth for Human Heritage and History group. She was adamant that not only had humanity been greater than what they were now, but that there was a deliberate effort to keep that truth from the populace that originated right from the Solar government itself.

No setting below an eleven. The university couldn’t expel her just for being a Heritagist, but they had built up a case against her until they could. Caleb had always believed that was unfair. They’d called her a ‘disruptive influence’, but she’d been no more disruptive than any other particularly opinionated member of campus. He’d wanted to testify for her during her expulsion hearings, but she’d realized the writing was on the wall and made him promise not to. Nothing anybody said was going to save her, and he’d only taint himself by association if he did.

He regretted not doing so, but she’d told him that she’d never forgive him if he fucked up his life for her sake. So he’d gone on to join the Solar Inclusionary Fleet, living his dream (or close enough to it) and helping drive humanity forward, while she fell into near-total obscurity. Two paths diverged in a wood....

But over the last year and a half, she’d been happier than he’d ever seen her. This project had given her a new spark. He’d always looked forward to her messages, and even more so as she practically bounced across the screen. Now it was his turn. “Kat...” he slowly said. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

“I don’t know what you think it is,” she replied, biting her lip. Her eyes glinted with the spark of the lie. “Why don’t you tell me?” She wanted him to say it.

“I think...” Caleb ran a finger along the ship’s bulkhead, over the reinforced power shunt lines that would pull in energy striking the vessel’s black marble hull and consume it. He looked at the highly-modified shield systems, their geometry and systems designed to repel anything that touched them, at the repulsor field projectors that could shove even the fastest-moving projectile away from the hull, or be set to let the sleek arrowhead plow through matter and energy fields like an icebreaker, at all the other systems, upgrades and modifications that were meant to make this ship survive conditions that no other vessel could.

“...I think this ship is intended to go beyond the Wall.”

“She is,” Kat breathed. “I can’t tell you who commissioned us, but they wanted us to make her to go where no one ever has. Fortuneseeker has been working on the design for ten years and brought me in once they were ready to lay the keel down. Every bit of tech we’ve ever talked about is in her, Cal. She’s almost ready to fly. She just needs a pilot.”

He lifted his head. “You don’t mean...”

“Yeah,” the woman teased. “I do.” She stepped closer, taking his hand and lifting it to her face. Her eyes, always bright, shone up at him like he imagined stars would. “We want you to fly it.”

Caleb took her head in his hands and kissed her. Kat put her arms around him. When they finally broke apart, breathless and flushed, she held his eyes. “So...” she asked, her voice still toying and playful. “Is that a yes?”