Chapter 27 #2
Thierry picks up his head. “I hate this. I’m bored and stressed and antsy and tired all at once. I’m not going to be able to sleep.”
Clarke offers him a take-out container. “Want to eat about it?”
“I want to whine about it,” Thierry says, sitting up. He’s lanky in the way that boys who get their last growth spurt late can sometimes still be in their early twenties. Coordinating his limbs when he’s outside the cockpit seems to take conscious thought. “How are you so calm?”
Clarke wouldn’t classify herself as calm right now, but everything’s relative. “I grew up on Mars, remember? Weather delays are nothing new to me. Getting worked up about it doesn’t help.”
“You say that like I can just turn it off,” Thierry sighs, chewing contemplatively. “I need something else to think about. How are you?”
“Flattered to know that my well-being is only valid to you as a distraction.”
He stabs another dumpling and points at her with it. “Answer the question, Madeline Clarke. How are you?”
Clarke scrunches down into her chair, propping her feet on the desk and balancing her dinner on her stomach. “I’m stuck, I think.”
Thierry makes an encouraging sound around his mouthful of food.
Clarke picks at a bite of rice, trying to decide what to say.
For all that she and Thierry are friends, she hasn’t opened up to him much.
They’ve known each other less than a year, and the focus has always been on Thierry’s adjustment to F0.
Clarke doesn’t want to put her problems on him, and she definitely can’t put him in the middle of her and Julian.
But maybe she could talk to him about Elemental?
While she’s still trying to decide, Thierry looks at a notification on his cuff and dons the audio loop. “Sorry, Clarke, one sec—hi, Lennox.”
Lennox Redfoot, the Enclave team principal. Clarke busies herself with her food.
“Shit,” Thierry says, sounding more exasperated than upset. “Well, we knew this was coming. What do I need to do? Yeah. Yeah, okay. No, but I can stop by her room on my way.”
Clarke stands and starts divvying up the rest of the food so he can take some with him. She knows what getting summoned by your principal sounds like.
“Will do. I’ll be there in ten. Thanks.” Thierry hangs up and groans, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Not good news?”
“Enclave got flagged for exceeding the variance cap.”
Clarke fumbles sauce out of the container and onto the desk. “What?”
One of the many things the FIC checks during parc fermé is variance: how much a ship has changed since the start of the season.
There’s no limit on how many replacement parts you install or repairs you make, but the bulk of your ship, both hardware and software, must be identical in design and function for the duration of the season.
It serves as both an informal spending cap and a safety measure, because there’s not much time to test changes with only four days between a Grand Prix and the next practice session.
If it’s determined that you’ve passed the 25 percent variance mark, the FIC will give you until two hours before the race starts to revert.
Further infractions result in heavy fines, grid placement penalties, or disqualification if you keep pushing.
“That was just the first guy’s assessment,” Thierry says. “They have to bring a reviewer over for the cross-check. It’s fine. We’re at twenty-three-point-five variance.”
Clarke stares at him, not sure she’s understanding. “You’re running a twenty-plus variance? And getting noticed for it now?”
Most teams barely hit 10 percent variance over the course of the entire year, and the majority of that is typically incurred far earlier in the season, when you get your first few sets of live race data and still have plenty of time before turning your attention to next year’s ship.
If Enclave’s just getting flagged now, they must still be making significant modifications. It’s practically unheard of.
Thierry acts like it’s barely worth commenting on. “It’s Lennox. If she’s not one foot over the edge, it’s not worth doing.”
Lennox Redfoot is a racing pilot in her own right.
She did professional interstellar rallying in one of Formula Zero’s sister circuits for more than a decade before switching to team management, and still participates in amateur-level events today.
During the F0 season gap, she gets into a ship barely larger than Clarke’s and spends weeks sprinting from one star to another with limited instrumentation, virtually no telemetry, and nowhere to sleep but her cockpit.
Clarke is well aware of the fact that she, like all F0 pilots, has a skewed relationship with risk and adrenaline. Interstellar ralliers make F0 pilots look normal.
“I’ve got to get going,” Thierry says, accepting the bag of food and pointing a mock-threatening finger in her face with his other hand.
“You are not getting out of talking about what’s going on with you.
I’m assuming that at least some of it has to do with why Julian has reached a level of brooding previously unknown to man, but we don’t have to talk about that part if you don’t want to. ”
Clarke’s whole chest twinges at the mention of Julian being noticeably upset. “It’s not fair to you to—”
“I’m your friend, Clarke. And the Saga of Clarke and Julian has taken some sort of nasty twist, and your former teammate accidentally did an interview that makes you Elemental’s bogeyman, and your new teammate is Raff. I’m allowed to be worried, and you’re allowed to talk to me.”
Warmth spreads in her veins. “I know. Thank you. Now go, don’t keep Lennox and the FIC waiting.”
Thierry hustles off after a hug. Clarke is still anxious about what Atreus is going to do, and frustrated with Yves, and ripped in a million directions over Julian. But Thierry’s words buoy her spirits enough that her stomach unclenches for the first time in a week, and she sleeps well.