Chapter VIII: Blastoff

“Chance favours the prepared mind.”

~ Louis Pasteur, 1822 – 1895 A.D.

(Record Intact)

507 A.E. May 04, 07:53:03 Local

Danther Minth

New Earth Imperial Order, Delan III, Red Heaven, ENS Legacy

“Engines?” Sol asks.

“Check!” Soma replies, enthusiastic.

“Weapons systems?”

“Check!”

“Sol,” I say.

“Environmental systems?”

“Check!”

“Sol, you don’t—”

“Powerplants?”

“Check!”

“Sol, it’s—”

“Operations? —uh, operations?”

“Yeah, that’s a good one!”

“Operations!”

“Check!”

I shake my head.

“Engineering?”

Soma doesn’t reply.

“Engineering?”

I look up, seeing Sol and Soma staring at me. I sigh. “Check.”

“Medical?”

“Check!”

“Tactical?”

They go on like this for a couple minutes, I doing my best to ignore them. I could mute the conversation—have my neural inform me if they say anything of importance—but something about it—stupid as it is—bears enduring. Sol has the right of it sometimes; on occasion, stupid as the memory will be, some things are worth remembering.

They continue, and I abide, the two eventually running out of made up things to confirm.

“We ready, Soma?” Sol asks.

“I think so,” she replies, a quizzical tone to her voice. “Relaying intent of departure now.” She pauses for a moment. “Confirmation received.”

The ship around us appears to go semi-transparent, a spherical holo display responsible. I reorient the gravity to true, enacting the vertigo countermeasure I devised and sitting’s suddenly like lying on my back, legs held aloft; at least I’m not dizzy or nauseous.

I feel a jerk as the ship lifts off and turn to Soma. “Soma, is something wrong with inertial dampening?”

“I’m piloting under reduced effects,” Sol says. “Helps me feel what’s going on.”

“Hmm,” I muse aloud, having my neural review the settings. He seems to have set it to a logarithmic scale and, judging by the numbers, we shouldn’t reach levels of acceleration that will pose any threat. I’m not sure if my stomach will agree, however. If it gets too bad, I’ll just head to the engine room and isolate the inertia there.

“We’re doing it!” Sol yells, looking to Soma and myself in turn. “We’re in the air!”

I grin; I can’t help it. He’s just so happy. He looks around, pointing here and there, naming landmarks and cities. For my part, I just keep my eyes forward, zooming in on the starting plane.

Soma wasn’t kidding; the competition is… ridiculous.

Sixty-seven competitors and less than a quarter of them are recognizably ships—well, the exteriors look semi-ship-like, but the general specs are silly and they are covered with advertisements; I suppose someone has to pay for all this. There’s no wonder this race has such low ratings.

One’s quite literally a lineship’s configuration of engines with a superficial structure created around it; I suspect that’s one that’ll be testing engine coordination, rather than trying to win. Six more seem virtually identical to one another and those, at least have an interesting, hammerhead-like configurations—probably test ships with one or more being a control group; there is also a seventh, larger version, which is probably the proof of scale. The vast majority of the ships have corporations listed as the owners and most of those are owned by the “Big Three:” Dowin, MacKerving, and GDE.

The ships actually recognizable as proper ships vary, however. I watch a recording on one of the ship’s—the OCS Otter 357—race landing page, seeing a chipper looking captain introduce the crew and explain they are using the race as material for business advertisements, the Otter a transport for hire. Another shows an arrogant young captain piloting his first ship, the OCS Invincible 2293—God, have there really been that many Invincibles?—as one phase in an initiation into a mercenary group. The others prove interesting as well.

On a whim, I check the corporate ships’ profiles, the six hammerheads confirming that they are indeed an experiment intended to field test a new engine’s delectium configuration. The rest of the profiles prove less interesting, even to someone like myself who is interested in the subject of engines. Who watches these races?

“We’re on our final approach to the starting plane,” Soma says, and I exit my neural pages, taking in my surroundings. “Uh, Sol?”

“Yeah, Soma?”

“They want to allow arbiters aboard.”

“What, like referees?” he asks.

“They’ll be the ones ensuring we don’t use any spatial warping or rift,” I say by way of explanation. “It’s standard to have human arbiters on the less dangerous races.”

“But they’re strangers,” Soma says, a not incognizant tone of worry to her voice.

“I…,” Sol begins. “Oh… I hadn’t thought of that.”

“They’re required if we want to participate in the race,” I say, not sure what else to do.

“Do you want to back out of the race, Soma?” Sol asks, and I look at him; would he really—

“No, I…”

“If it makes you uncomfortable, we—”

“Don’t worry about it, Sol,” she says, smiling now. She blushes. “Your willingness to… Well, I’ve already given them clearance.”

507 A.E. May 04, 10:36:03 Imperial Standard Time

Soma

New Earth Imperial Order, Delan III Orbit, ENS Legacy

I try to put on a reassuring face, but the prospect of having strangers in my ship bothers me. I have already begun running thorough background checks on the two arbiters and they seem acceptable, but I cannot help thinking this is the final step in some elaborate trick by Khal… it kind of makes sense, at least.

As the small docking craft with the arbiters and their sensor equipment approach, the main one begins interacting with me via neural. I reluctantly give him clearance and the ship docks. After they pass through the security airlock, I lead them via neural to the main room, Sol and Danther in the makeshift operations area.

“Greetings, racers,” says man with a blonde mustache and a somewhat bored expression, he accompanied by a younger, more eager compatriot with an excited air. “My name is Tavin Jorr. I will be your onboard senior arbiter. This is Miln Hornsvether, junior arbiter,” he says as he looks around. “Hmm, cozy,” he adds, before Sol has a chance to speak. “Traditional, single plane layout—that’s inefficient, but well suited for first flyers.”

“Excuse me?” I ask over comm., indignant at the man’s indecent bluntness.

“Hm, that’ll be the ship’s A.I. then? What mod—”

“I’m not the ship’s A.I., Tavin; the ship is mine.”

“It sounds as though your A.I. has personality,” he says with a grin.

“I—,” I begin, but then growl, annoyed. I manifest before him.

He looks at me, letting out a patronizing little “hm.”

I kick him in the shin.

The man spews a litany of profanity I filter away. He stumbles after me, but I dissolve the hologram. The other man tries to speak up, but Tavin, furious and unable to find me, rounds on Sol, pushing his way through the overgrown path, bamboo creaking. The other one—Miln—rushes in front of Tavin, putting a hand on the older man’s chest. Tavin tries to get past him, but Miln shoves him. “Do you have any idea where we are, you idiot?” Miln asks in a terse whisper, Sol and Danther staring in bewilderment.

Tavin’s eyes widen. “How dare—!”

“This is the ENS Legacy—bloody Alexander Reynard’s ship.”

The man freezes, and I reappear. “I’m glad someone has manners at least.”

Tavin stars at me. “I’m so sorry, Soma—the Soma—I… I didn’t know! I—”

“Just maybe try not to be such a… a…,” I say, waving my hand like the humans do.

“Dick?” Sol asks.

I turn around, narrowing my eyes. “Sol, language.”

He smirks.

When I turn back, Tavin’s right in front of me, inspecting me; I take a jerky step back, uncomfortable.

“I—oh, sorry!” he says.

Completely weirded out now, I disappear again, content to watch without being ogled.

The four talk as the two arbiters set up their scanning devices and Sol fabricates seats for the guests, Miln telling everyone how the junior arbiters had set up a bidding war to see who could be on this ship. Tavin, meanwhile takes on an almost reverent aura, though only barely follows along as Danther and Miln chatter about the ship, I having to contact Danther via neural several times to keep him from sharing anything too important in his zeal. I—

“Soma?” Sol asks, a silent question made audible to me through neural.

“Yeah?”

“Well, for one, there’s a lot about you and this ship I didn’t realize,” he says with mild, amused accusation. “ENS Legacy? Should’ve recognized that name.”

“I… well…”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, warm. “Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah.” I smile. He can feel it. “I like people.”

507 A.E. May 04, 11:52:08 Imperial Standard Time

JP “Sol” Starwind

New Earth Imperial Order, Delan III Orbit, ENS Legacy

We get our final clearance a little while after I speak with Soma, who seems okay, if a little shy; it’s quite cute, actually. All the ships line up, Legacy in the lower left of the plane and a huge clunky-looking thing dead center, surrounded by six similar, smaller ships Danther says are part of a study. They have some interesting advertisements, though, and I watch: a sim gallery dedicated to an old Earth artist; one for Rolus, Delan III’s premier resort destination; some restaurant created by some old guy with hand-cooked food—evidently the place we ate at when we first arrived in Red Heaven was inspired by that; and two adverts for Nouveau Fantastique, which is some kind of fashion thing. I start to lose interest. Miln says the ships paid extra for prime positioning, all seven of them Dowin ships; I expect the advertisers picked up that cost.

“Incoming communication,” Soma says and a large holoscreen shows up, light of the giant aquarium shining through.

“Greetings racers,” a subdued voice says. “The following is today’s route. The race will begin in five minutes.”

“Bringing up route analyzer,” Soma says, appearing before us by the screen. “Potential routes plotted.”

“Thanks, Soma,” I reply.

She turns, grinning and avoiding eye contact. “It wasn’t that difficult. Hmm,” she says, turning back. “Calculating,” Soma adds, several paths showing up in a large gas giant’s atmosphere. “Hmm, I’m going to need to run scans when we get closer for weather conditions, but based on previous data, I have a tentative optimal route.”

“You are going through the atmosphere?” Tavin asks.

“Yes, Tavin,” Soma replies, obviously still annoyed at the man. “Sol, it looks like today’s race will consist of several stages. The first is a straight shot to Delan IV, presently 3,514 light seconds away—but we’ll take a rift gate to within a very small fraction of that.”

I nod.

“Next is a near complete loop around Delan IV, then a warpfield, then a short jump through dedicated rift gates, and finally a trip around Delan proper, this system’s sun.”

“Sounds good,” I say, as a big “60” appears on the holoscreen, counting down. “Everyone take your seats; I fly with inertia, so—”

“You what?” Tavin exclaims.

“It’s on a logarithmic scale,” Danther replies and that seems to calm the man, though I’m not sure what that means.

“Ready Sol?” Soma whispers over neural a little while later after I run through all the final checks, holographic representation of her giving me a significant look from the holoscreen.

I give her a nod. “Hell yeah.”

She narrows her eyes. “Language.”

3 flashes red; I crack my neck.

2 flashes orange; I ignite the antimatter engines… the ones no one expects to see.

1 flashes blue; a shiver runs through my spine.