by Randal Sloan
Contents
Chapter One - Getting the Go Ahead
Chapter Two - Building a Race Ship
Chapter Three - Fly Girl, Fly
Chapter Four - Nana
Chapter Five - The Competition
Chapter Six - Final Prep and a New Team Member
Chapter Seven - The Race
CHAPTER ONE
Getting the Go Ahead
Space Tech Station, Space Ball court in the Randolph-Caldwell family module
#
Juliette Caldwell, 16 year old daughter of Space Tech CEO Julie Randolph-Caldwell, was intently watching her brother as they prepared for the next point in their game of space ball. She was playing on a team with her best friend Katie. Both of the very pretty girls had their long blond hair pulled back so that it would be out of their way. Both were very athletic and they had their opposition at match point. If they could pull this off, it would make the third win for the week and Juliette and Katie would have bragging rights for the rest of the week.
Opposing them in the game was the team consisting of Juliette’s younger brother Sam and his best friend Joey. While Juliette looked just like her mother, Sam looked more like his father Zeke and he was also very athletic. Making it more difficult for her team, it had been Sam’s turn to choose the configuration of the court for this game. He had come up with a modification to the court that would give him an advantage because that modification emphasized his strengths, especially his speed and agility.
Joey, Juliette and Sam’s first cousin, was playing opposite Katie. He sometimes had a propensity to be lazy, but having to keep up in this game had caused him to greatly improve himself over the last couple of years. He also had a knack for being in exactly the right spot at the right time. The combinations of the two teams made for a very interesting game.
Juliette, her brother, and both their friends all lived on Space Tech Station, a huge space station orbiting the earth. Space Tech had built the original station many years ago but it had greatly increased it in size over the last few years. When Juliette’s mom and dad had invented the gravity plates that were used everywhere in the space station, it had made it possible for people to live permanently on the station, and when the children had been born, it was all they knew. But to them it was a good life, a life full of opportunity and things other kids might only dream about.
Which brought them to the game they were playing. Space ball was a game that could only be played on Space Tech station because it used a varying gravity field to make it extremely challenging. The kids that lived on Space Tech Space Station, the Space kids as they were called, all played the game. Certain areas of the court were at a full gravity while other areas would be at zero gravity or anything in between. Balls could be played off any surface and could be caught, thrown or kicked. The object was to get the ball into one of the goals on the opponent’s end of the court. In Sam’s version of the game, the gravity was controlled by an AI and would vary in a random pattern each time they started a game. But to Juliette and her brother, since they were playing in the court in the family module where no one else could see them, they could play with all their abilities, making the game child’s play.
They both carried within their bodies nanites that enabled them to do special things. Although other people were receiving medical treatments using nanites, the nanites the two of them had were very different from the other nanites. Both Juliette and her brother Sam had inherited their nanites from their mother and father and the nanites from their parents were very special. Long before they were born, their mother, Julie, was the first human being to be treated with nanites. But that was only part of what made them special. Julie and Zeke had been caught in an explosion involving a school project they had built. Their system manipulated the subspace interface to generate energy and would later become the basis for the power units that the whole world now used. That same event had injured the two of them and led to Julie sharing her nanites with Zeke to save his life. But because of the explosion, their nanites had somehow absorbed the ability to communicate through the subspace interface, and in addition, the nanites had been reprogrammed with Zeke’s AI code which had been running in the device at the time of the explosion.
The result of it all was the nanites gave them amazing physical abilities, and both parents could do things no one else could do. They had passed those same nanites and abilities on to Juliette and her brother and the combinations from the two parents worked much like a child would inherit genetic traits from two parents. Besides amazing quickness and hand-to-eye coordination from both parents, Juliette had inherited her father’s ability to tweak the superconducting electromagnetic fields that were present everywhere in Space Tech, from the gravity plates to the power generators, to the Space Tech ship engines and shields. Sam, like her mother, was field blind, as Juliette liked to call him, but he had inherited his mother’s ability to do physical things beyond that which anyone else could do, not even their father, and to do math and science at a level that no one else could.
To make their nanites even more amazing, they gave the whole family the ability to communicate thoughts with one another just by directing a thought to the family member they wanted it to go to. Much to the chagrin of the children, both parents could find anyone in the family just by thinking of the location of the person they wanted to find. It really made it a challenge growing up. But the whole thing also made life very interesting. Like the game they were currently playing, where Sam’s enhanced physical and mental abilities were what he was trying to take advantage of in this game. Since his brain allowed him to learn the gravity level locations better than the rest of them, the longer he played in a particular game, the better he got. Since this was match point, he had played this game long enough to know how to put the ball exactly where he wanted it.
In one of his usual physical stunts, Sam pulled a fast move on Juliette, bouncing the ball off two walls and the ceiling to pass just beyond her fingertips to his teammate Joey, who sprinted toward their goal. But her teammate Katie was there too and although she didn’t have nanites, she had inherited her mother’s athletic ability. Katie’s mother had been a soccer star at the college their parents had attended, and she had been really good. Katie snagged the ball from Joey to make her own run toward the opposite goal. Sam made a move toward Katie to block her but Juliette got him by tweaking the gravity plate in front of him. Her tweak caused the gravity to jump to three hundred percent and twisting in a spiral. That threw him off balance, so he missed Katie, who slipped just past his outstretched fingertips to run undefended to the goal, scoring the match point.
Sam gave Juliette a dirty look. “Good one, Sis. I was expecting something, but it never occurred to me that you could tweak it that high. What’s your limit?”
Juliette laughed. “It’s entirely dependent on the amount of power available. And we have lots of power in here.” She looked pointedly at her brother. “That’s your fault. You wanted the power to be ‘way beyond the specs’ as I remember.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. I’ll have to think on this one a while. There’s got to be a way I could use it.” He gave her an evil smile.
They actually just had a lot of fun with the games, with the two siblings pushing their abilities at times to try to win out over the other one. Juliette knew Sam would figure out a new strategy to use on her, and they would start the cycle over again. But they got along fabulously. Any time she had a question regarding a scientific theory or a “How do we do this?” question, she would go to him and he usually had the answer. Like their last little project she was hoping to get to try out soon. And when Sam wanted a field tweaked, he came to her and Juliette would make it do exactly what he wanted and then
some.
Juliette knew he would get his revenge later but she didn’t care right now. The match was theirs and she would take advantage of the win for now.
She gave her brother a big smile. “Nevertheless, that’s three for the week so the flag is ours!” She tapped a control on her wrist and her AI sent a VR expanding into the room showing a flag on a hill with two girls holding it. Katie came running up to Juliette and the two tapped their AI armbands together, sending VR fireworks flying everywhere.
Laughing, the four of them left the court they had used to play their game, going into the lab next door that they had claimed as their own. They used it for their special projects for school, but they also used it for their plans as a group. When they were all there, Katie exclaimed in excitement, “It’s official. I just got a VR from my dad. They’re announcing the race tomorrow, and it’ll be held in four weeks. Not surprisingly, they made all the rule changes on their proposed list, including your request to allow minors to compete as long as they have an adult sponsor. Just like we’d already known, the course will be one pass around the earth, a long run out into deep space, two 90 degree turns around buoys to turn the ships around, with a final sprint back to the station to finish.”
Juliette was just as excited as her friend. “Thanks, Katie. I owe you one for that. All of it plays right into our plans. Of course, we’ve still got to pull it all off.”
Katie’s dad, Uncle Joe as Juliette called him even though he wasn’t a blood relative, was on the race committee for this year’s space race. Every year Space Tech sponsored the race and the winner not only won a lot of money, but more importantly to Juliette, the winning pilot got first dibs on the next year’s pilot class at Space Academy. With the rule change this year, senior students were going to be able to compete if they had a parental sponsor. Juliette not only intended to compete, her intention was to win. And to get to this point, it had all been a team effort.
Juliette turned to the boys, who were still talking about her and Katie’s VR stunt. ”You heard what Katie said. This is it. I’m going to need to get everything ready in the next month. Including building our little ship. Sam, have you found any more problems with the pulse drive? We’ll need it for the race, just like we talked about.”
“Nope. As long as you’re talking about the standard mode. That should be all you need for the race, although I’m certain you could win without it. But it will be fun to watch you use it. You’re going to be so much ahead of the rest it’s going to be hilarious. When we’re done, some of the guys around here will be eating crow for a while.”
Joey gave a laugh at that. “They already know better than to mess with either of you two. But it will make my life a lot easier. They all think I’m crazy for hanging around with you guys.” Joey had a long time ago decided he didn’t care what the rest of the kids thought. He and Katie were the only ones out of all the Space kids that knew Juliette and Sam’s secret. Plus, he really enjoyed hanging out with them. When they did their schoolwork and especially their project work, Joey had a habit of coming up with the right questions that would prompt the others to look at a problem in a new way. Often that would eventually lead them to a better solution than they would have come up with otherwise. That gave him a real sense of satisfaction, because he felt like he had a chance to make a difference. If they pulled off their plans, which only began with the race, he thought they really would be able to make a difference.
“You are crazy, but that’s beside the point,” Sam laughed. “But Jules, you can’t use the beta mode. I still think something’s not right about it. And I really want to keep my sister around a while longer. You never know when I might need a field tweaked or something.”
Juliette placed her hand on her heart. “I swear I won’t touch the beta mode. You’re right. I probably could win without the pulse drive, but I have to be sure. There’s just too much riding on it. But we know it will work in standard mode safely. I won't need the other mode right now.”
“So Katie, did you finish up the latest changes to the design of the ship?” While Juliette was a real artist herself, she had learned a long time ago that Katie had a pretty good knack for manipulating the 3D design tool they were using. So for the design of the race ship, she had delegated that task to her. And the last time she had looked at it, the design was coming along very well.
“Yes, including the latest design for the pulse drive. And I added the routing sheet for the control runs. Joey’s idea of putting them under the gravity plates in the control room instead of routing them through the access panels outside shortened the runs and has the added benefit of making it easier to get to them if we ever have a problem.”
Juliette nodded. “Joey is our official cable router from now on. What about the rest of you? Anything else we still need on the ship?”
When everyone shook their heads, Juliette sighed and looked at them all. “Which brings us back to the next hurdle. Getting Mom and Dad onboard. That may be the biggest challenge of them all.”
Sam gave her a shrug. “That’s your task, Sis, although I suggest you probably want to get Aunt Em to help. This one is definitely a job for her.”
Juliette figured she would have a pretty good chance with her dad, but her mom, that was a different story. She agreed with her brother that she needed the help of the best schemer in the galaxy. So she made a VR call to her Aunt Emily, her dad’s sister. Long ago, Emily had tried to set up Juliette’s dad with Caitlyn, Katie’s mom, and when that didn’t work out, she helped Juliette’s future mom and dad to get together. That one had worked out well for her and Sam or they wouldn’t have been born.
"Aunt Emily, I really, really need your help.” Juliette tried to give her most appealing and sweet little girl routine. She really needed her aunt on her side. “It’s really important.”
Emily knew that when Juliette called her Emily instead of her nickname and tried to lay on her charm so thickly, she was up to something no good. "What do you need my expertise to try to pull off this time, my little troublemaker?”
Juliette did tend to find more trouble than most anyone else. She always meant well. “I don’t know what you mean, Aunt Emily; it’s not my fault trouble always finds me. But this time, all I want is to compete in this year’s Space Tech Space Race.” She paused at her aunt’s look of surprise, but she went on, “Of course, I plan to not only compete in the race, but to win it. But I’ve got to get Mom and Dad’s ok to compete and Dad to be my sponsor. And I need the best schemer in the galaxy to get Mom to let me. I can work on Dad myself, but Mom, she won’t come onboard quite so easily.”
"Is that all? I handle her all the time. But you’re going to owe me, my favorite little niece."
"I'm your only niece, Aunt Em."
“Oh yeah, that explains it then. Ok, so here's the plan." Emily explained her idea. Juliette listened carefully and had a few thoughts of her own. Together they came up with the scheme they thought would work.
#
Emily and Joey joined the Caldwell family for dinner that evening, which in itself wasn’t at all unusual, but Emily was acting suspicious. She kept glancing over at Julie and Zeke during the dinner, prompting Zeke to begin looking closely at his sister. He had a lot of practice with her scheming and so that put him on his guard.
He sent a mental message to Julie, “Em is up to something but for some reason she’s waiting for you to leave the room I think. Plus, I do believe that our daughter is in on it with her, based on her excitement level. Probably our son too, but they didn’t let him in on the plan.”
Julie sighed mentally before sending him a response back.“Yeah, think I will make a little trip to the kitchen. Let’s see if that’s what they’re waiting for.”
Picking up her cup and now speaking out loud to the group, Julie said, “Gone to the kitchen. Anyone need anything?” When no one answered, she told them, “Be back in a couple of minutes.” Placing her napkin on the table Julie left the room.
Zeke lo
oked at Emily intently, raising an eyebrow. Of course, Emily had been waiting for his unspoken invitation. She responded quickly, “What would it take if I decide to sponsor someone for this year’s race, just for fun? Would I have to fly with them or could I just turn it completely over to them?”
Before her dad could answer, Juliette asked her, “You’re gonna need a ship to sponsor, and you don’t have a ship, so you would have to build or buy one. Plus, who would you get to fly it?”
“That’s easy. I would get my brother to help, of course, in answer to both your questions.”
To that Juliette responded, “Yeah, Dad and I could help, couldn’t we, Dad?” She smiled her biggest smile, “Although, Dad’s not really the racing type.”
Zeke quickly figured out what they were up to; after all, he had known about Juliette submitting the request for the rule change to allow graduating seniors to participate in the Space Race. Looking at the two of them, he said, “Ok, you two. Just stop right there. I’ll save you a lot of time. Juliette, I’ll agree to help you with the race if your Mom will let you do it. But you have to talk to her first.”
Julie timed it so she walked back in the room as Zeke mentioned her. “Talk to me about what?” she said innocently, as if she had no idea what was going on.
Emily wasn’t fooled. She knew Julie very well, who was, as far as she was concerned, the sister she never had. She knew Julie had been listening from the kitchen. “Sis, you know it’s time to let the fledgling out of the nest to try her wings.”
Julie was really trying to be patient, something she had learned quickly after dealing with the two special children of theirs. Among their special abilities, her family all had super hearing if they just concentrated on listening to something, and she had indeed been listening to the conversation from the kitchen. She sighed and sent a mental message to Zeke, careful to not let it slip through to Juliette, who sometimes highjacked a message between them. “I know you remember our vision of Juliette and her space race. Do you think this is it? I want to say no because she’s still my baby. I want to protect her, but based on that vision, I don’t dare say no.”
