Chapter 14
It’s symbolic, the same way that starting and ending the season on Earth is symbolic.
Earth was humankind’s first home, the place all their roots are, the place they came from.
Luna was the first location humans permanently settled beyond Earth, back when they still just called it “the Moon.” Luna was their first step out into the vast wilds of space, so Luna holds a place of honor in the season schedule.
Mare Imbrium—the Sea of Showers, one of the large, flat plains on Luna formed by volcanic activity however many millennia ago—is an easy trip for Clarke and the Elemental team, less than an hour on a suborbital flight.
It’s not their home track (that’s Copernicus Crater, already over and done with this season), but races on the same planet where a team is headquartered are always busier than elsewhere, and this is no exception.
The schedule is packed with events that pair Clarke and Matthew up with the two pilots from the other Luna-based team, Bright Door, or pilots who are Lunar by birth, like Thierry.
They have a full day on Thursday, and Naomi only lets them go reluctantly for Friday’s practice session.
The first practice back from mid-season break is always interesting. Some teams will debut serious modifications to their ships. Some ships won’t perform well after the forced hiatus. At least one of the teams at the bottom of the bracket will have made personnel changes.
Harkoner Racing does all three at Mare Imbrium. Their ships look completely overhauled, one of them belches smoke when the pilot tries to open throttle, and their brand-spanking-new support team clearly has no idea what to do about it.
“Not a good day to be Harkoner,” Matthew comments mildly, watching the misbehaving ship get towed back to the pit lane.
“Is it ever a good day to be Harkoner?” Clarke asks. They’re sitting outside the Elemental garage, enjoying the first five unscheduled minutes they’ve had since Wednesday. “Not that we really have a leg to stand on.”
“We had legs today!”
Clarke totters her hand back and forth in midair. “I’ll give you one leg, and maybe half of another.”
Elemental’s practice session was good, mostly.
The last few upgrades and fixes the team was testing over break are in place.
There’s still inexplicable shimmy in the aft fuselage, and understeer for any curve over forty degrees, and power degradation when ascending on a bank, but as long as nothing new goes wrong—
Hah. Clarke’s not naive enough to finish that thought.
“Yeah, you might be right about that,” Matthew says. He looks around, like he’s checking to see if anyone’s listening, then scooches a little closer to Clarke. “I’d feel more like we had two whole legs if our lineup was set for next year. No movement on your contract, still?”
That’s the other reason the first post-break practice tends to be dramatic: The normal window for publicizing contract decisions for the following year is closed.
There were four other pilots with contracts expiring this year, and all but one of them announced extensions (or, in one case, a retirement and handing over of the seat to a new kid) in the past few weeks.
Any team or pilot could choose to break a supposedly set contract at any time, of course, but as far as known-unsecured seats go it’s just Clarke and Rafferty St. Sebastian from Enclave now, and suddenly everyone’s got opinions about their paths forward.
She’s been given a scripted answer to repeat to anyone who asks, and she’s already sick of saying it.
She’s sick of hearing Yves’s version, too, which implies that Clarke’s being uncompromising in negotiations.
They’re not even in negotiations yet, because Elemental has to offer her a contract before there’s anything to negotiate, and that hasn’t happened.
Rhynn, Clarke’s manager, is furious about how Elemental’s handling this and itching to let other teams know that Clarke’s on the market.
Clarke’s still resisting shining a light on the writing on the wall, wants to see what happens this weekend and at the next couple races, but she’s holding on to that with her fingernails.
She’s in a truly wonderful mood for her first session with Julian.
“No,” she says to Matthew, then stands when she sees Sara walking their way.
Matthew scowls. “I can’t believe they’re making you do this. It’s bullshit.”
Matthew doesn’t know the details, but he knows the outline.
He’s two years into a three-year contract, probably wondering if Yves is going to pull the same hardball crap when it’s his turn to work through renewal.
Probably wondering if he made a mistake accepting Yves’s offer, especially considering that the team he left, Enclave, is doing well this year.
“It is,” Clarke agrees, before giving Sara and her cameras a bright smile. “Time to go?”
“Time to go,” Sara confirms. “Got everything you need?”
“I don’t know what I need. You still haven’t told me where we’re going or what we’re doing.” Clarke sticks her head into the garage, waits until Amira sees her and gives an acknowledging wave that she’s leaving.
“That’s part of the fun. Don’t worry, I’ve got an outfit for you.”
Clarke looks down at herself. She’s in every pilot’s unofficial off-track uniform: joggers and a light hoodie, both team-branded, and a pair of sneakers she’s being paid to wear in public. “This won’t work?”
Sara laughs at her.
—
“This is not a good idea.”
Sara swishes her fingers. The cameras move in sync. “Tell me why.”
“No, Sara, I—I’m not saying that for the cameras. This is not a good idea.”
Sara looks at her impassively.
Clarke sighs and pulls her sweatshirt off. Sara will just have to edit this out later, assuming they get any usable footage at all and don’t have to scrap the whole thing. “If the point of this is to show people that we’re friends, setting us up to fight each other is not the way to do it.”
“You’re not fighting. You’re boxing. With children.”
Clarke pauses in the act of kicking her joggers and shoes off. “There are kids involved?”
“Of course. It’s part of Julian’s youth boxing program.” Sara clacks her rings together. “Now, tell me why this isn’t a good idea.”
“Me and Julian are competitive past the point of sanity,” Clarke says, sitting on the bench in this private locker room to don a tank top and close-fitting athletic shorts. “Have been since we were nine and got into a fistfight during our first race against each other.”
It’s a story they’ve rehashed for the public countless times.
The Under-10 Accelerated Juniors season opener: Julian’s first time racing in the inner rim, Clarke’s first time in a zero G race.
There’s a montage of Clarke losing control of her ship and knocking Julian through the barrier, and Julian coming back a few laps later to ram Clarke into the barrier.
Julian, of course, reverses the intentionality when he tells the story.
He claims that Clarke flew into him on purpose, and his hitting Clarke later was just an accident.
In the end, it was a moot point, because they both DNF’d.
They weren’t hurt (U-10 ships have more in common with bubble-wrapped bumper cars than they do with F0 hardware), but they got into an ineffective brawl in the middle of the track instead of finishing the race.
Connor ended up winning. The Council of Moms laughed themselves silly.
“Julian’s the one who invited you to tag along today,” Sara says. “Take it up with him.”
It’s a pointed reminder that this is supposed to look like something Clarke and Julian were already doing of their own accord and just agreed to let their teams film.
Clarke puts more teeth into her smile than necessary and starts braiding her hair to get it out of her face. “I’ll be sure to do just that.”
—
“Shoulders down.”
Clarke shakes out her arms, adopts the staggered-foot stance Julian had demonstrated, and throws another punch at the padded droid.
“Shoulders down.”
She narrows her eyes at the eight-year-old she’s partnered with. “My shoulders are down.”
The eight-year-old glares right back and pokes a panel on the droid. A small holoscreen emerges and plays the last few seconds of footage. Clarke’s shoulders are up around her ears.
Clarke deliberately, slowly rolls her shoulders down. The eight-year-old smirks.
“Way to keep her honest, Riley,” Julian says, appearing around the other side of the droid. “Good job today. You can pick up your tickets at the door on your way out.”
“Okay!” Riley chirps, suddenly all smiles and not the taskmaster who’s been putting Clarke through her paces for the past thirty minutes. “Thanks, Julian!”
The girl scampers away. Clarke stares after her, dumbfounded, then mops sweat off her forehead with the hem of her tank. “You really do this every race weekend?”
“I train boxing a few times a week,” Julian corrects.
His eyes drag over her exposed stomach. Clarke flushes and drags her shirt back down.
His eyes jump to her face. “But the youth program, yeah, every weekend except when we’re off-planet.
Find a local gym, hold a free class, give participants passes to the paddock. ”
All around them, the cheerful racket of the past hour is dying down as kids stream toward the exit.
Clarke heads for the bench where she’d left her water, thinking through the short introductory speech Julian’d given at the start of the lesson.
“And Val’s the one who got you into boxing in the first place? ”
Julian follows her, waving at a few stragglers.
“I’m sure you remember that I didn’t exactly wow anyone my first season in F0.
I thought I needed to focus more, but Val had a different idea.
She’d been boxing for forever, said it was the only thing that gave her brain a break from racing.
She brought me to her gym, introduced me to her trainer. ”
Clarke plops down onto the bench and looks up at him. He’s otherworldly, almost, with the overhead lights limning his unruly hair and defined physique. “It looks like it’s working for you.”
He raises an eyebrow.
She kicks at his knee halfheartedly. “You know what I mean.”
He grabs her foot and uses it to pull her off the bench. “Come on, time for part two.”
She goes, hopping awkwardly. “No one said anything about a part two!”
He tugs her toward a cupboard by the locker rooms. “PK, Sara, all good? We cooperated enough that we get what I asked for?”
“All good,” Sara says happily. She’s recalled her cameras, settling them into the divots on her forearms that serve as ports. She and PK stand from the benches they were sitting on to monitor the session and head for the door.
Clarke doesn’t know what’s happening. “Where are you guys going?”
“To start working on the piece,” PK says, checking the time. “Julian, fifteen minutes?”
Julian finally gives Clarke her leg back so he can root through the cupboard. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes for—Julian, no.” Clarke turns the gloves Julian just tossed her over in her hands. They’re made of a tough black fabric, and there are small circuitry pads on the fingertips. “You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t joke about glow tag.” He dangles a set of tactical goggles from his finger.
It’s a game they haven’t played since childhood. Her hand reaches for the goggles without her permission. Anticipation is already humming behind her breastbone. “We’re supposed to be getting along, not feeding our competitive sides.”
He puts his goggles on. “The cameras are gone. We can be as competitive as we want to be.”
Clarke slips her goggles on, too. Player 1: 0. Player 2: 0, says the readout in the top-left corner of her vision. “You will not get out of this unscathed.”
Joy and mischief gleam in his dark eyes. He drags his gloves into place with his teeth, the muscles of his tattooed forearm flexing. “It’s you and me. I wouldn’t expect any different.”
It’s too weighty of a thing to say. It carries too much, leaves too much open to interpretation. It stuns Clarke into a second of hesitation.
Mistake.
Julian lunges. He’s got four inches on her, and the reach to match.
Clarke shrieks and tries to dart clear, reflexes firing like she’s coming off the starting line, but it’s not enough.
The lights are still on, so she can’t see the twin glowing streaks he just left on her arm, but the display on her goggles updates.
Player 1: 0. Player 2: 2. A ten-second countdown starts, too, noting the grace period between tags.
Julian is grinning, this big open thing that she suddenly realizes she hasn’t seen from him in years.
Her heart is bursting with wants, one after another: She wants him to always be this happy.
She wants to bite at the hinge of his jaw, just to see what happens.
She wants it to be this simple forever, just the two of them, no solar system outside waiting to see what they do next.
Clarke yanks her gloves on. “You realize, of course, that this means war.”
Julian’s grin gets deeper. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
He reaches out to a panel next to the wall. With a single touch, all the lights in the building go out.