Inside the restricted bay of the Gorey refinery, Den Nova watched a plume of waste gas drift lazily past a grimy air scrubber that had long since ceased to function. The air was thick with stale fumes and the pungent odor of industrial grease. The walls, once bright orange, had fallen into decay after years of neglect, now only a patchy canvas of grimy browns and unsightly streaks. With a tired head shake and dissatisfaction with the hangar’s condition, he noted the daunting 27 meters that separated him from the center, where the prototype equipment awaited.
Den trudged forward, his thoughts focused on the steady clank of his mag-boots striking the metal floor. The sound provided a comforting rhythm that eased the deep-seated fear of losing contact with the ground, of helplessly drifting into the unknown. Even after three long years of enduring such harsh conditions and zero gravity, he still found it difficult to acclimate.
Stepping away from his anxiety, he took a moment to remind himself of the reasons he endured such conditions. His mind drifted back to the pivotal conversation that had pulled him into this contract. It happened far from this forsaken station, in a pristine office filled with the scent of polished mahogany and the steady gravity of a planet.
“Mr. Nova,” boomed the Prefect, his voice deep and commanding, “you will be pleased to know that I have secured a suitable location for your needs. Soon, we can begin work on the Leonis Kobala Party contract.”
Den’s heart raced, eyes widening with intrigue. “Is it a research center?”
Prefect Ovius stood motionless before the stately office window, hands clasped behind his back as he admired the impressive skyline of Alba Longa, the capital of the Ursae Dynasty. The midday sun cast a warm crimson glow over the city, making the distant glass towers shimmer like jewels. Turning his gaze to the busy air traffic filling the sky, his voice was strangely evasive as he whispered, “Do not worry, Mr. Nova. You will have access to all the state-of-the-art equipment you could desire.”
Turning suddenly with a forceful, militant pivot, the Prefect strode over to the imposing desk at the center of the room. He rifled through a stack of digital tablets, finally producing one that he rudely tossed on top of the contract Den was reviewing. “Furthermore,” he elaborated, “Once you sign the contract, I will assign one of my most valuable officers, Centurion Shreya Aurelia, to assist you. She is an exceptionally skilled fighter pilot, and I am confident her abilities will prove invaluable to your efforts.”
Den glanced down at the dossier, his attention drawn to the image of a striking woman with golden blond hair, a fierce intensity in her expression. He hesitated, gently pushing the tablet aside with measured politeness, then continued to study the contract. “Just to clarify,” he asked cautiously, “are you covering all the expenses?”
“Indeed, Mr. Nova,” the Prefect confirmed, with a hint of thinning patience in his tone. “As long as you can produce a working prototype.” Turning back to face the grand window, he added, “Feel free to take your time reviewing the contract, but I assure you, everything is in order.”
Feeling the weight of urgency pressing down on him from all the fancy decorations cluttering the room and the tall office walls carved with reliefs, Den hurried past the legal jargon. He quickly scrolled to the end of the contract, where he pressed his thumb against the highlighted signature box.
Brushing aside the memory, Den forced himself to focus on the hanger, eyes glancing to the stark letters emblazoned along the deck that read, ‘Caution zero-gravity.’ “Caution,” he scoffed, a hint of bitterness in his voice, “a little late for advice, don’t you think?”
After reaching the prototype engine, Den unbuttoned his well-worn lab coat, grabbed a handful of tools from his belt, and immersed himself in work. The task ahead was undeniably tedious, involving the precise connection of wires, careful soldering of circuit boards, and the meticulous mounting of additional equipment. Yet, he found solace in the monotony. This contract was a golden opportunity to stand at the vanguard of technological innovation, something he had dreamed of since he first gazed at the stars. The late hours hardly bothered him; sleep was a rare luxury when diagrams and complex blueprints danced endlessly through his dreams, like restless ghosts.
Taking a step back, Den examined the prototype with a combination of pride and focus. The machine was a third-generation LAT drive—a bulky, nine-year-old device created by the innovative minds at the Zentro Corporation. This engine powered humanity’s ambitious forays into the cosmos, reverse-engineered from the remnants of alien technology first encountered half a century ago.
As the drive was anchored by one axis and floating a few inches above the deck, Den rotated it like a rotisserie to access the underside. Turning to the nearby table secured to the floor, Den unfastened a piece of equipment sitting on top. The item was called a waveform modulator, and it was his life’s work. Yet it resembled a child’s science fair project—a crude boxy circuit board with tangled wires and cobbled-together components. With careful precision, he mounted the modulator to the prototype engine, tightening bolts and attaching loose connectors.
With a satisfied smile curling at the corners of his mouth, Den tucked the tools back into his belt. As he turned back to the table, he wiped his hands across the white fabric of his lab coat, leaving another streak of black grime. Surveying the disarray spread across the adhesive-coated surface, his fingers settled on a sleek tablet. Connecting the device directly to the waveform modulator using the retractable cable, he rested his fingers on the touch keys fixed to the backside of the tablet and quickly entered the data needed for the efficiency test.
“Perhaps this time will be different,” he whispered under his breath.
The testing process started with a quick flick of his thumb on the touchscreen, which began the countdown timer at the bottom of the screen: 2:00… 1:59… 1:58. He let out a quiet grunt of impatience as he released the tablet to float in midair. Running his fingers through his black hair, he accidentally left three smudge marks on his forehead that looked like racing stripes, highlighting his thinning widow’s peak. Den turned his gaze to the parked ship looming in the hangar.
The Athena-class vessel featured a slim, aerodynamic dagger-shaped frame and center-lined curved wings that extended away from the fuselage like stretched fabric, with the name ‘Von Braun’ stenciled along the hull. The innards of the ship lay strewn across the landing pad, neatly strapped to the deck in organized piles based on their function, reminiscent of the toys he had taken apart as a child.
Den rubbed his goatee, a calming gesture to the myriad technical challenges racing through his mind, as he pondered the necessity of each subsystem. Realizing that less mass means less energy needed to propel a ship through a wormhole, his thoughts drifted back to his childhood. Every time he reassembled those toys, he was left with a handful of extra parts, a humorous conundrum that now seemed advantageous.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
The tablet chimed, snapping him back to the present as he turned his brown eyes toward the screen. The monitor rotated gracefully in free space, displaying the design efficiency results. Leaning closer, he squinted as the data appeared, murmuring the details quietly. “Power regulator output: 1.5%. Waveform increase: 7.5%. Potential total range: 36 light-years.”
He exhaled slowly, disappointment settling in his chest. The original third-generation LAT drive boasted a range of 32 light-years, so seeing only a four-light-year improvement was a bitter letdown. He had been contracted to develop the cutting-edge fourth-generation class of this drive, capable of reaching 40 light-years. Yet, after dedicating three arduous years to this prototype, this meager progress was all he had accomplished. Den’s frustration bubbled to the surface, and he dragged both hands down his face, the weight of failing the Ursae Dynasty pressing heavily upon him. “I will never reach the goal. It’s just not possible,” he muttered.
Turning back to the modulator, Den swapped out a few slotted chips on the board and adjusted the parameters, but the results on the display stayed stubbornly the same. With a frustrated sigh, he let his forehead fall against the edge of the drive, a hollow thump echoing through the space. What he desired was another burst of inspiration, a vivid dream to stir him from his creative stagnation, anything was better than the meager progress he had made so far.
The unmistakable sound of grinding gears signaled the interior airlock’s operation, pulling him out of his thoughts. He turned to see his wife, Shreya, gracefully gliding through the airlock exchange, her movements effortless in the low gravity. Her sea-blue eyes sparkled with warmth as they locked onto his, and slowly, a comforting smile lit up her face, dispelling the shadows of his frustration.
Shreya’s wavy copper-blond hair was artfully arranged in a top knot, elegantly decorated with a string of shimmering pearls that caught the light as she moved. Today, she was a vision of the latest Ursaen-inspired fashion, wearing a stunning white bodycon dress that hugged her figure and featured a halterneck top that highlighted her shoulders. Three intricately braided white bands, delicately trimmed with silver, looped gracefully over her shoulders and wove into an intricate pattern down her back. A lavish embroidered belt cinched her waist, while the sheer skirt attached to it flowed like a whisper of silk with every subtle movement.
In the rigid hierarchy of the Ursae Dynasty, fashion was not merely an aesthetic choice but an obligation tied to reputation and social standings, a culture Shreya thrived in. Den couldn’t help but feel a wave of embarrassment as he looked down at his lab coat, a far cry from her radiant beauty. He hurriedly tried to wipe away the smudges, only making the stains more obvious.
“You look radiant today,” he remarked, a playful wiggle in his eyebrows emphasizing his words.
“Thank you, dear. You look… um… busy,” Shreya replied with a social politeness in her tone that betrayed her expression.
Den chuckled softly, abandoning his grooming efforts. With a sweeping gesture, he directed her attention toward the lockers on the far wall. “I have your nanosuit inside the lockers. Once you’ve changed, I could really use your help.”
With a firm grip on the nearby grab handle, she pivoted gracefully out of the airlock, revealing the full-length white stockings that hugged her legs like a second skin. The absence of footwear left her at the mercy of momentum, a disconcerting habit that Den frowned upon. “How is the progress coming along, dear?” she inquired.
Her southern Ursaen accent rolled off her tongue with a gentle, non-rhotic quality, drawn-out vowels, and a soothing pitch that the upper-class Ursaens often dismissed as slow, lazy, and improper. To him, however, it was as comforting as warm baked pie, charming and undeniably seductive. “Not so good,” he admitted with a dismissive shrug. “I only managed to get a four-light-year increase.”
“Only?” she smiled, her eyes twinkling with encouragement. “Bless your heart, but you’re far too hard on yourself. You’re making progress. Just give it time.”
“Uh-huh,” Den mumbled, rolling his eyes slowly. “Three years isn’t enough time?”
“You can’t rush greatness.”
The corner of his lip twitched into a smirk as he followed her calculating gaze toward the lockers. With a sinking feeling that she was about to dive across the bay, unaided, he quickly offered an alternative. “There are spare mag-boots just inside,” he said, tilting his head toward the airlock.
“That’s all right. I’ll manage with null-auth,” Shreya replied, her confidence solid.
Den groaned under his breath, “I hate no-authority maneuvers. One of these days, you’re going to miss your mark and float right through the shielding and into space. Please, for the sake of my sanity, use the mag-boots.”
“I’ll be fine,” she reassured him. “Besides, I recall it was you who once got stuck in midair.” She touched her chin thoughtfully, as if recalling a fond memory. “Who was it that had to pull you down from the rafters again?”
Den sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Not this again.”
“How long were you floating up there anyway?” she pressed.
His gaze shifted to the floor. “I don’t know. It wasn’t that long.”
“It was at least an hour or two, right?” she prodded, her smile widening.
“Yeah, yeah, something like that,” he conceded, gesturing toward his mag-boots, which were firmly locked to the deck. “But as you can see, that won’t happen again. So, we don’t have to bring it up… ever.”
Shreya chuckled softly to herself, then refocused on the lockers, carefully calculating her angle as she pushed off from the bulkhead with one foot. She drifted gracefully across the hangar, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. The sheer fabric of her skirt rippled and corkscrewed around her legs, giving her the appearance of an exotic sea creature effortlessly gliding through water.
Den sighed, his concerns ignored. Extracting two calibration tools from beneath his laboratory coat, he returned to the intricate task of adjusting the drive system. As he carefully adjusted the power regulator, each tweak was met with a steady glance at the floating monitor, watching for any signs of fluctuation.
Meanwhile, Shreya swung her arms to generate torque and rotated her body, landing gracefully against the lockers with her legs absorbing the impact. With perfect timing, she slipped her foot into a strap built into the floor and opened the thin metal door. “What about adjustments to the power regulator?” she inquired.
“I’m trying that now,” Den replied. “I’m fairly sure I can double the draw of the waveform modulator without overloading the fusion reactor.”
As Shreya unzipped the back of her dress, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of skin, Den’s ability to concentrate waned. His eyes lingered on his wife as she slipped the dress over her head, the fabric gliding along her body like water. Because his wife color-coordinated the days of the week with specific colored undergarments, a warm smile appeared on his lips when he saw the powder blue lace-trimmed underwear. Blue was associated with Wednesday, which they dubbed ‘movie night,’ but he knew it more affectionately as ‘intimacy night.’
Shreya carefully fitted the dress over a wire frame tucked inside the locker before retrieving her nanosuit. She slid her long, smooth legs into the skin-tight fabric, wiggling her body to help the suit slide over her hips. As her chest undulated effortlessly in the weightless environment, Den’s eyes widened, and his heart pounded faster, secretly thanking Newton’s first law for providing him with such a captivating view.
As the orange running lights of the hangar flickered across her delicate skin, he caught the inviting scent of sandalwood drifting from her direction. The aroma transported him back to their honeymoon aboard the Tranquil Moon. He fondly remembered how they had rented out the entire viewing deck of the luxurious Lynx-class liner, marveling at the beauty of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse. Together, they basked under the curved glass dome, wrapped in each other’s arms and the vulnerability of their birthday suits.
Bleeding into his daydream, bright red lights flashed in his peripheral vision, jolting him back to the present. Den quickly wiped a droplet of drool from his lips and focused on the monitor hovering beside him. A persistent alarm blared, accompanied by a flashing red warning on the screen, indicating a dangerous misalignment.
The piercing sound startled Shreya, drawing her attention to Den. “What’s that alarm?” she yelled.
“Nothing!” he replied quickly, the tone of his conviction faltering as he frantically made adjustments to the prototype.
“Uh-huh,” she teased, crossing her arms playfully, “was I distracting you?”
“Nope, nope! Everything is under control,” Den sheepishly lied.
Question for the Comments: Den is working on the most advanced engine in the Dynasty, but he’s currently being defeated by a white dress and some sandalwood scent. Have you ever had a "Den moment" where you were so distracted you nearly caused a literal or metaphorical alarm to go off?
I’m updating every single day, so make sure to Follow the story to see if Den can actually get his head back in the game before Kai and Parri arrive.
If you're enjoying this look into the "targets" of our heist, please consider leaving a Rating. Every bit of support helps me keep up the daily pace!
In this battle of Science vs. Romance, who is actually winning?
