“Perri, I’ll give you the lead on this one,” said Nic. “No pressure.”

“No pressure?” she scoffed, adjusting the arm of her skintight SimSuit. “I think you mean all the pressure.”

“If you can’t handle it, say the word now. No hard feelings—”

“I just happen to thrive under pressure.” She gave a reassuring wink. “I’ll give everyone the rundown once we load in, okay?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jarek agreed.

“[Okay,]” said Shanti. The calm tone of her thought-to-speech software’s voice belied the gravity of the situation. One last tiebreaker Wargame was about to decide the victor of Planet Nereus. Millions of credits, retirement, fame, and the freedom to go anywhere, do anything—an early culmination to Nic’s entire career awaited him.

Deep down, it was the release from the pain of this job that tantalized him the most. In a brief moment of clarity, it disturbed him to realize that simulating warfare, killing and being killed by his peers and made to feel every last wound as if it were really happening to him... this was seen as a coveted position in the interstellar economy. Classmates he left behind on Ayrus to be assigned to hard labor might literally kill for a job like this. And yet, if he had an out, he’d take it in a heartbeat.

So let’s take it, Perri, he thought. In another brief snapshot thought, he wondered if he’d ever see her again following their retirement—and then, tangentially, if he’d ever see Jarek, or Max, or Shanti. Of course. I could just visit them whenever I wanted, and they could visit me.

RTIFIS reminded him.

“Ready,” Nic replied when his squad signaled the same.

Nic opened his eyes and found himself inside a vehicle. He sat in the seat of a Satyr. The touchscreen-and-holographic dashboard glowed at his fingertips in shades of blue, white, and green.

Then the engine growled to life and RTIFIS said,

Nic slammed his foot onto the accelerator and took off.

The name of the Wargame was Finish Line. It was a fairly simple three-lap race around a holographically generated track; the actual terrain of Planet Nereus, uneven, rocky, and slippery as it was, would serve as the true racing course. The first player to complete a third lap would secure victory for their squad. One key caveat: any player whose vehicle strayed outside the boundaries of the track was automatically eliminated.

The race comprised fifteen players in fifteen vehicles—compact Satyrs, the streamlined two-seater ATVs. The only vehicle that could match a Satyr’s speed was the Harpy, but absolutely nothing rivaled it on land. Now’s your time to shine, Perri, Nic urged her on silently, and in the next instant, he was delighted to see her zip ahead of him in her fun-sized wheels and leave the competition in her dust. Yes!

“Nic, Jarek, and Max,” Perri announced from the head of the pack, “you’re our demolition crew.”

“Oh, I can do demolition,” Jarek cut in, a grin in his voice.

“Ram the enemy every chance you get—anything to slow them down. But be precise about it, okay? You guys remember the TVI trophy in Race Royale?”

“Tactical Vehicle Intervention!” Maqsud replied right away.

“Exactly! You want to keep your front wheels in pace with their back ones as best you can. Accelerate, steer into them, and apply pressure until they spin out. Got it?”

“Roger that,” Nic answered with her usual terminology.

“[What should I do?]” Shanti asked.

“Shanti, you use your talent for stealth and avoid other players as much as possible. Be a quiet presence on the racetrack and focus on speed. While Xanthic and Tyrian are knocking each other off the track, you can zip right past them, okay?”

A pause. “[I can do that.]”

“This is fun!” Perri giggled giddily. “I’ve never been in charge like this before!”

Nic chuckled. “It’ll be even more fun when we win.” He turned the front wheels of his Satyr to the right, grating against the back wheels of Jeffrey’s vehicle. Let’s see Severiano shake my hand after this one, he thought with a smirk.

The Tyrian player’s vehicle listed to the left around a bend in the track. Nic saw his opening and put the pressure on, accelerating harder—any faster and he worried he himself would careen out of the track boundaries. He waited for a straight section of track to complete the move. Almost there. Just a little more... Just as Nic predicted, just as Team Scarlet had trained for in Race Royale, Jeffrey turned his wheel in the opposite direction—initiating the spinout. Gotcha!

The Tyrian Satyr spun wildly with the excess speed, even rolling horizontally twice and clearing the racetrack completely. Smoke and steam rose up from the immobilized vehicle, its back left wheel still spinning idly, and Nic shook with excitement. “I got one!” he announced in the team chat. “Jeffrey’s out!”

JEFFREY [OUT OF BOUNDS]

“One down, nine to go!” said Jarek. “I’m comin’ up on Abigail here—I’mma try to knock her out ASAP. Perri, how’s first place treatin’ ya?”

“So good,” Perri answered happily. “I have two Xanthic proxies hot on my tail though. I’m gonna try to lose them in this next curve!”

RTIFIS told Nic. He took a straightaway section of the racetrack to glance at the squad standings.

1ST PLACE: PERRI (SCARLET) 2ND PLACE: CIGDEM (XANTHIC) 3RD PLACE: ANZHELINA (XANTHIC) 4TH PLACE: KARL (TYRIAN) 5TH PLACE: MAQSUD (SCARLET)

“I see you up there, Max,” said Nic. “Good work, man. Keep it up!”

“Concentrating,” Maqsud answered in the most stoic voice Nic had ever heard him use. “Sorry.”

Huh. Well, it’s about time he took something seriously. I should, too.

More elimination notifications popped up in Nic’s HUD.

ANZHELINA [OUT OF BOUNDS] TARIQ [OUT OF BOUNDS] NIANZU [OUT OF BOUNDS]

His heart dropped when the first Team Scarlet player met their vehicular end as well.

MAQSUD [OUT OF BOUNDS]

“Damn it all,” Maqsud hissed. “If you can hear me, please don’t lose heart! Team Scarlet can still be victorious!”

“You did well, Max,” Nic congratulated him. “We won’t give up! Wait... I can hear you!”

“And I, you,” said Scarlet 4 with a tone of intrigue. “My point of view isn’t changing, either. I can still see—albeit a frustratingly limited corner of the racetrack. But I can’t move at all! Erm... Go squad?”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Jarek said, grunting with effort and exertion, “but Shanti, you might wanna look out. I’m hittin’ Abigail now! Steer clear!”

“Excellent,” said Perri. “Shanti, you can move up through the path he makes! Right?”

“[I can do it,]” Scarlet 5 affirmed.

“Awesome!”

Nic heard metal crunching metal in the team chat—saw Jarek’s red proxybot leaning and pumping its arms, furiously steering against the enemy Satyr to destabilize it. But Nic could already see a problem: the straightaway was leading up to a hairpin turn.

“Jarek, watch your velocity there,” Nic told him.

“I see it,” he replied. “Don’t worry, bro, I’m good.”

“Dude, wait till after the turn!”

Scarlet 2 hesitated before answering, “Okay. Okay, I’ll wait.” The racers cleared the tight bend in the track, with Nic gaining ground on them. “Now?”

“Now!”

Just as Jarek turned, Abigail slammed on her brakes, forcing her Satyr into a front-wheelie, what the sim Race Royale called a “stoppie.” The back end of her vehicle tipped upward into the air from the force of the sudden deceleration. Meanwhile, Jarek’s Satyr steered into its own skid, rolling off the track completely.

JAREK [OUT OF BOUNDS]

“Agh, come on!” Jarek yelled.

Maybe I should have let him try to knock her in the turn, Nic thought. Then at least he would have taken her with him. No way she could’ve pulled off that stoppie and still stayed inside the lines. “I’m sorry, man. Maybe a bad call on my part.”

“Nah, you had the right idea. I got cocky. Gotta say I didn’t see that comin’, though. Watch out for Abigail out there, y’all! She’s dangerous!”

Up in the lead, Nic picked out two yellow proxybots gunning for Perri, accelerating on a straightaway to gain lost ground. “Look out, Scarlet 3, you’re about to have company,” he warned her.

“I see ‘em back there,” she said deviously. “Abigail’s not the only one who knows that little trick!” Even from this distance, Nic could hear Perri’s tires squeal with the friction of her braking. She executed her own stoppie—sending both Xanthic racers careening off the track in opposite, intersecting trajectories. “Amateurs!”

ROLAN [OUT OF BOUNDS] CIGDEM [OUT OF BOUNDS]

“Woo!” Nic cheered. “Multi-kill!”

“That just leaves one Xanthic, right?”

Nic checked his rearview cam. “Yeah, but they’re in dead last with Karl. I’d focus on the leading Tyrian players now. I’m catching up to Severiano—Abigail’s closing the gap fast, too!”

Maqsud sighed, “God, I wish I could see what was happening.”

said RTIFIS. Perri is still in the lead, Nic thought, but anything could happen. The crushing weight of anticipation closed around him like a vise. Reality sank in even deeper than it already had—bone-deep now. His smile left him; beads of cold sweat crept out of his skin. This is it.

He hurriedly glanced at the updated leaderboard.

1ST PLACE: PERRI (SCARLET) 2ND PLACE: SHANTI (SCARLET) 3RD PLACE: ABIGAIL (TYRIAN) 4TH PLACE: SEVERIANO (TYRIAN) 5TH PLACE: NIC (SCARLET)

Two Scarlets in the lead. That’s good. As if to dash his hopes, Abigail revved her engine in a wide curve of the track, her Satyr leaning slightly off the ground—all to run Shanti off the holographic path.

“[Abigail,]” was all Shanti’s dispassionate software said at first.

SHANTI [OUT OF BOUNDS]

“[I’m sorry, friends.]”

“It’s okay, friend,” said Nic. “You raced well. It’s up to us now, Perri.”

“This lead is getting slippery,” Scarlet 3 answered warily. “I’m flooring it on every straightaway. I’m trying not to get sloppy on turns—”

“Keep doing what you’re doing, Perri. It’s worked so far. I’ll do what I can to get these purple ‘bots off your tail!” Nic did away with a small fraction of his caution in exchange for more speed. He did what he advised Perri not to do, letting himself get a little sloppier to cover more ground more quickly. He had no delusions of winning this race—that was all her job. But he was going to make sure Team Tyrian didn’t get in her way.

Abigail was still tailgating her at a frighteningly close distance. Nic hated to see that, especially this late in the race. He would never catch up to the female Tyrian player in time. Severiano, on the other hand, was within his reach. There was only half a lap left in the race. To help even the odds, he came to a difficult decision.

“Perri, tell me you’re gonna win this race.”

She let out a nervous chuckle. “Well, I’m giving it absolutely everything—”

“Perri.”

She waited a moment before answering resolutely, “I’m gonna win this race.”

“Good. I’m gonna sacrifice myself and take out Severiano on this last hairpin.”

“Is that a good idea, Nic?”

He gritted his teeth. “He’s a really good player. I believe you can beat Abigail. I don’t know if you can take them both at once—and if you can’t, then none of us could. I think this is our best bet.” A pause. Time was running out fast. “Perri, I need an answer—”

“Do it. Godspeed, Siegfried!”

He nodded. “Roger that!”

The final tight bend of the racetrack loomed ahead. Nic negotiated acceleration and accuracy with his Satyr, frantically trying to balance them—a losing game the more speed he picked up. Severiano was only a few meters ahead of him; at these speeds, it felt like a kilometer.

Good game, Severiano, he thought bitterly. Our race is done. One last tweak of the steering wheel took advantage of the racetrack’s harrowing curve. It was all he needed.

The next moments were an explosion of sound and color. Metal scraped against rock, multicolored pebbles went in all directions like confetti, arcs of mud trailing behind them like dirty comets. Nic’s Satyr rolled eight times before it came to a rest outside the racetrack’s boundaries—albeit upside down.

NIC [OUT OF BOUNDS] SEVERIANO [OUT OF BOUNDS]

“It’s done,” he panted, adrenaline coursing through his body. “Do it, Perri! Win this race! Win this planet!”

Nic was grateful for his vantage point. Although his perspective was flipped, the stony ground above him, the dark, cloud-covered, alien dusk below him, he could still see the red and purple proxies jockeying for position toward the end of the final lap.

He held his breath. Abigail was so close behind her. Perri accelerated so hard that she nearly popped a wheelie—she corrected herself, gunning the vehicle as fast as it would go without achieving liftoff.

“Come on,” she growled competitively. “Few more seconds... Come on! This is it! Come on!” She sounded positively rabid in the heat of the moment. Nic was afraid to see the result.

At the last second, Abigail gave her Satyr a little more juice. She pulled up next to Perri.

No, Nic thought. Not like this! Not now!

“I did it!” Perri exclaimed. “I-I did it! It’s over! Did I win? Guys, I did it! I beat her! Right? Didn’t I?”

The racetrack disappeared. Nic opened his eyes in the Simnasium.

“What happened?” Maqsud asked.

“You won, right?” said Jarek.

“I think so,” Perri answered. “I was ahead of her the whole time!”

“At the very end,” Nic said warily, “she, um...”

Perri’s blue eyes widened at him; a knot twisted in his stomach, and he was terrified that her heart was about to break. “She... what? What did she do? Nic, did I lose? Why isn’t RTIFIS saying anything?”

“I don’t know,” Nic answered. “Whatever happened, you raced your heart out on that track. No one’s doubting that. You were the champion out there, no matter what happens.”

said RTIFIS.

Nic broke into a tentative grin. “That’s a good sign. That’s what happened last time and we won.”

“Did we just win 10 million credits?” Jarek asked, his mouth agape. “I’m gonna... Oh, I don’t even know what I’m gonna do. My head’s spinnin’ right now!”

“Well?” Perri asked. Her expression perched precariously on the border between explosive joy and gut-wrenching disappointment. “What is it, RTIFIS? Did we win? One of us had to come out in the lead!”

“If there were a clear winner,” said Maqsud, “I doubt there’d be a need for such prolonged deliberation. Red Terraforming’s RTIFIS is currently debating the outcome with the other instances.”

said RTIFIS. Nic’s insides tied a knot again.

“TIE?!” Jarek and Perri both yelled in outraged disbelief.

“Well, this ought to be interesting,” said Max. “Does this mean we’re each awarded 5 million credits instead? I’d be amenable to such terms. Just don’t tell me we need to start an entirely new match, would you? We’ve been at this for hours! Please tell me I can take off this miserable suit...”

“Oh, thank heavens.”

“What happens now?” Perri asked warily.

“Sudden Death?” Jarek echoed.

Maqsud fixated on a different detail. “Vac-armor?! Did I hear that correctly? Are we going to have to leave the Corvette?”

“[What game will we play?]” Shanti asked.

Ice flooded Nic’s veins when he heard the answer.