Chapter 7
Race day.
Clarke’s not as rigid about her race day routine as some pilots.
She likes to eat the same breakfast, but she’s not going to freak out if her yogurt’s the wrong flavor.
She likes to listen to music, but there’s a wide variety of playlists she’ll pick from to suit her mood.
The only thing she really insists on is ten minutes to herself, after the race briefing and warm-up laps are done, when her ship is in starting position and being watched over by the support crew.
She retreats to her prep room, works through her nerves, gets herself mentally and physically squared away.
A voice calls for her through the door. “Clarke? It’s almost time for the anthems.”
“Coming!” Clarke splashes some water on her face.
The top half of her racing suit is dangling around her waist; she pulls it on over her fireproof base layer, zips it all the way up, secures the tab at the neck.
Her earpieces, gloves, and helmet are waiting on the desk outside the bathroom.
She grabs them, leaves her cuff behind, and exits to the garage.
At an on-planet track, Clarke would walk to her ship.
That doesn’t work off-planet; the space station’s artificial gravity (and breathable air) only extends to the end of the pit lane.
She tucks her earpieces in and tugs the balaclava attached to her base layer up, smoothing it into place until it covers everything but her eyes.
The helmet is next, and she quadruple-checks the CO? recycler.
The recycler will give her about an hour of breathable air, but that’s just for cushion.
She’ll be in her ship in ten minutes, helmet hooked up to the ship’s air supply.
Amira, wearing a suit with an external O? pack, meets her at the edge of the garage on a small liftpad with a waist-high railing. “Radio check. Ready?”
Her voice comes through Clarke’s earpieces like she’s inside Clarke’s head. Clarke finishes snapping her gloves into place and ducks under the railing. “Loud and clear. Ready.”
Amira flies them out of the garage, across the box where Clarke’ll pull her ship in for servicing mid-race, and down the pit lane. “Anything you want to review?”
“No, I think I’m good.”
“Solid on race strategy?”
“Solid? Yes. Happy? No.”
Amira grimaces. “Off-planet racing.”
There are plenty of strategy nuances specific to off-planet racing, but the one they’re referencing is particularly tricky: It’s not necessarily a good thing to be in first place during the race.
The track changes. Every lap off-planet, you’re going to encounter something different.
Sometimes it’s a big change, sometimes it’s not, but it’s always something you’re going to have to adjust for, and at 400 km/h, you don’t have much time to make that adjustment.
Whoever’s P1 in a given lap will be the first person to discover that lap’s variable, and everyone else’s race engineers will be watching to see what it is and give their pilots a heads-up.
One school of thought is that it’s best to hang back, purposefully running at P4 or P5, until closer to the end of the race when the bulk of the variables has already been used and you’ve got a better chance at predicting what you’re going to see next.
Pilots who prefer on-planet racing, who have incredible reaction times but aren’t as great at handling unknowns, tend to follow that strategy.
It’s what Yves wants Clarke to do in this race. He wants her to drop back after the first lap. Yves and Clarke do not see eye to eye on this.
Yves is objectively brilliant, but his style and Clarke’s don’t line up.
He’s more conservative in his judgment calls, and Clarke is decidedly not.
Amira’s and Clarke’s opinions tend to align more, but Yves doesn’t listen to Amira, either, and there’s only so hard Amira can push without jeopardizing her job.
Not to make this about Julian again, but Julian’s management gets him.
Whenever Chronicle releases clips of Julian and Graham’s radio conversations, you can tell they’re on the same wavelength.
On the rare occasions they disagree about something, Val comes in as the tiebreaker, and it’s all resolved within a few seconds with no apparent hard feelings.
Clarke is harboring some hard feelings, but she makes herself drop them as she and Amira pass through what’s affectionately referred to as the veil.
Every scientist Clarke’s heard talk about it says that it’s not a force field, it’s a semipermeable atmospheric barrier with a built-in visual indicator for safety, but force field rolls off the tongue nicer and veil has a romantic, fantastical feel, so that’s what people call it.
It’s where the bubble of breathable air around the space station ends, and it lines up perfectly with where the station’s gravity generators stop having effect, too.
One second you’re walking and talking like you would planetside, then you pass through a translucent pane of silver light and there’s no gravity and you can’t breathe.
It’s also cold, which is why everyone’s suits have thermal regulation built in.
Clarke holds on to the railing as the pavement falls away and her feet leave the platform. There’s an enclosed spectator area immediately overhead. She waves with her free hand and thousands of people wave back.
Amira drops her off next to her ship, which is idling to keep the power unit warm and anchored in place by cables for battery, air, and controls.
She hooks an elbow around one of the ship’s external safety bars so she doesn’t drift and waits while the last few pilots take their places.
The perspective from this far forward is different enough from her normal that it’s novel, and her eyes wander over Delphine in P2 and Belette in P3.
Julian’s P4, and he’s looking at her.
Clarke aches, sudden and deep. They used to celebrate each other’s successes like they were their own, and not being able to do that now is really fucking hard.
Clarke has missed cheering for Julian’s podiums and hearing the pride in his voice during their traditional post-win calls.
She remembers the first time he was P1 to start an F0 race, how he stumbled over his words trying to explain the awe and responsibility and pressure he felt.
Clarke gets it now, and wishes she could tell him. But even if they were talking to each other, he’s ten meters and dozens of support staff away, so—
Julian, moving deliberately, holds up his index finger, makes a fist, and then salutes.
Clarke sucks in a breath. That’s a signal they made up with Connor. It means, roughly, You’re P1. You won’t be for long. Here I come.
An unexpected surge of affection grips her, and Clarke does her part of the call-and-response: index finger pointing up, then down, then a returned salute. I’m P1. I’m staying right here. Bring it on.
Two traded gestures, and Clarke’s heart is full again.
The anthems play. The ten-minute siren sounds. Everyone who isn’t an FIC race marshal, pilot, or member of a start crew goes back through the veil.
Clarke climbs into the cockpit and fastens her harness.
Maki, her favorite start crew engineer, leans in and hands Clarke the air tube, which she clips into the port in her helmet just above her visor.
He then runs the tube along the crest of Clarke’s helmet, clipping it again against the side of the headrest. A second, thinner tube gets fed up through the bottom of the helmet, giving Clarke access to the hydration pack contained in a pocket behind her seat.
“No leaks, yeah?” she jokes, taking a tiny sip to make sure it’s hooked up properly before giving a thumbs-up to Maki, who’s nearly fully inverted over her while he works.
“One time. That was one time,” he says. “All right, prime the deck for me?”
Clarke presses her gloves together, palm to palm. When she draws them apart, a holoscreen hangs in the space between, ten inches across and eight inches tall. Covering the screen are the ship’s controls: mode shifts, pedal pressures, pitch/yaw levers, diff settings, throttle netting.
Clarke wraps her fingers around the edges of the control deck like she’s holding an old-school steering wheel.
There’s a bit of haptic feedback at the base of her thumb, as her gloves and the deck auto-run a quick diagnostic.
All the readouts on the deck light up and fade as each component is checked.
“Looks good.” Clarke holds still while Maki jerks on her harness, checking that it’s secure. The five-minute siren sounds, and the first of five blue lights turns on across the top of Clarke’s deck as well as on the big marquee above the starting line. “Biometrics?”
Maki projects a display. It shows Clarke’s heart rate, respirations, blood levels, and some other data streaming from the chip implanted below her elbow. “Strong and steady. Need anything else?”
“Nope. All clear.”
“All clear,” Maki repeats, unclipping the retractable tether on his suit from a safety bar and jetting off.
Then it’s just Clarke and the ship and the track.
That’s how it seems, anyway. In reality, there’s a good deal of chatter in her ear as the team does final confirmations, and several members of her start crew are still darting around ensuring that the ship is ready to go.
But to Clarke, everything falls away as the minutes tick by and the blues turn on.
She is focused. She is determined. She is a really fucking good pilot, and Lion’s Head is her course.
With a minute left, the board is fully blue. Clarke breathes.
The minute ends. The blues go out, and the five reds light up instead, one per second.
Red across the board is an instant that lasts for infinity. Then all the lights go out, and Clarke shoves her hands and feet forward, and they’re racing.