Chapter 30
Another race, another mechanical failure.
Naomi finds Clarke in her prep room, after. “You’ve been tapped for press.”
Clarke looks up from where she’s been chucking things at the couch as hard as she can to try to vent her feelings so she can survive debrief without screaming or crying. Possibly both. “Why?”
There’s no reason for the press to want to talk to her.
Her yaw control, which allows her to turn the nose of her ship left or right, stopped working halfway through the race.
The technical team, to absolutely no one’s surprise, thinks it was secondary to shimmy.
Clarke compensated with pitch and roll as best she could, but couldn’t keep any sort of competitive pace. She finished fifteenth.
She should be proud of her personal performance.
She managed her ship. She kept her head.
She pushed through the lingering pain from Tempe Terra.
She got across the finish line, got a point.
Julian didn’t. Neither did Delphine. They crashed into each other.
No injuries, but their ships couldn’t continue.
She’s not proud. She is violently, abrasively frustrated.
Naomi is not impressed by either Clarke’s flat delivery or the minor destruction she’s wreaked in the ten minutes since getting out of her ship. “I don’t know. Fix your face. Let’s go.”
Fix her face? Clarke will fix Naomi’s face, with her fist—hey, there’s an idea. Maybe Julian can get Clarke one of those boxing droids to keep in her prep room.
She messages him to ask on the way over. He’s frustrated, too, his discontent over his DNF only offset by the fact that Delphine is coming away from this weekend with no points, either, and writes back that he’ll have it delivered for next week’s race.
I’m happy for Engel, at least, he adds. And Thierry, holy shit. Tell him congrats from me when you see him?
Clarke smiles, ducking her chin to her chest so no one will get pictures of her being inappropriately cheerful.
Julian’s teammate took second, and Thierry—Thierry fucking Allaire, twenty years old, in his rookie season—won his first F0 race today.
The happiness is a breath of fresh air she desperately needs, walking into this press conference.
It’s Thierry, Engel, and Clarke. Most of the questions go to Thierry, as they should, and he’s all smiles and jokes and gratitude for his team. A good amount of questions also go to Engel, centered around how his points today mean that Chronicle has pulled ahead in the team bracket.
“Do you think it’ll come down to the last race of the season?” one reporter asks. “Neck and neck, until the end?”
“Provenance will keep it interesting as long as they can.” Engel is calm and affable, someone who seems easy to spend time with. “But I think Julian’s got Delphine’s number.”
“He crashed into her today.”
“They crashed into each other,” Engel corrects. “Contact isn’t uncommon. And anyone who’s raced Julian knows he’s not going to cede a line once he’s committed to it.”
The next question goes to Clarke. She braces for the inevitable A disappointing result today, what do you have to say to the fans?
“Clarke, how do you respond to rumors that—”
Oh, gods. Oh, saints. This is the other shoe dropping. Atreus must’ve—
“—you’re in contract talks with Harkoner?”
Pure confusion short-circuits the panic that had been building in Clarke’s brain. “What? Harkoner?”
She must look genuine, because the reporter checks their notes and stammers a few times when clarifying. “Yes? Harkoner Racing?”
Harkoner, the last-place team in both brackets. No points to their name, this season or last. Clarke has no idea where the rumor came from, but she knows she hasn’t spoken to them. “I’m not talking to Harkoner.”
“You’re not?”
“No?” Clarke and the reporter look at each other in bewilderment for a second. Clarke ventures to add, to the broader room, “Is this why you guys wanted me today? Because sorry, but—”
The reporter Clarke most despises, Silver Sight, interrupts with a stage whisper to his neighbor. “Are we supposed to be surprised? Of course she’s not talking to Harkoner. No one wants her, not even the guys in dead last.”
Clarke must’ve misheard. He can’t have just—there must be—
“What the hell, man,” Engel says, his friendliness from earlier nowhere to be found.
“What’s wrong with you?” Thierry echoes, looking from Silver Sight to Clarke to Naomi, who is standing with the other publicity and leadership people.
Clarke doesn’t bother looking at Naomi. She’s not going to get support from that corner.
“I’m saying what we’re all thinking,” Silver Sight says. “Between your performance and your reported attitude issues, can we really expect that you’ll sign a contract for next season? With Elemental, or with anyone at all?”
“When there’s something to announce, I’ll announce it,” Clarke says mechanically, eating her humiliation and anger as best she can. “And until then, there’s nothing I can say.”
“That’s what you’ve been saying for months.”
“And it’s what I will keep saying until—”
Lennox Redfoot, Enclave principal, leans forward and looks down the row of team representatives to Naomi. Very loudly, she asks, “Out of curiosity, are you planning on doing your job today?”
Naomi gives her a perfunctory glance. “How Elemental handles the press is none of your concern.”
“You are not handling the press,” Val chimes in. She’s doing something on her cuff and doesn’t look up to add, “That’s Lennie’s whole point. Your job is to protect your pilot, and you’re not doing it.”
“Don’t call me Lennie,” Lennox says.
“If I have a problem with how Naomi is doing her job, I’ll bring it up with her,” Yves says. He’s seated, fingers laced behind his head. “Maybe focus on your own teams, ladies?”
“Our teams aren’t disasters,” Val says.
“Well,” Lennox says, taunting.
Val straightens up. “Do you have something to say, Lennie? Because Chronicle’s in first. My pilots are happy. The only open seat besides Elemental’s is yours, because the reserve pilot you pulled up after letting Yves poach Raff—”
“I did not poach anyone,” Yves drawls lazily, like this is beneath him. “Our negotiations with Raff were completely aboveboard.”
“—has yet to put up a single point,” Val continues, talking over Yves. “Enclave would be falling down the rankings like a brick if your rookie—sorry, your other rookie, since no experienced pilot will stay with you—wasn’t pulling podiums out of his—”
All heads and cameras are turned toward the back of the room by this point. Thierry clicks his mic off and leans across the space between armchair and couch. “Are they allowed to do that?”
“They’re the bosses, of course they’re allowed,” Engel replies, slouching deeper into the cushion and stretching his legs out in front of him. “Are they supposed to argue like this in public? No. It’s a bad look for Formula Zero. They’ve been cited by the FIC before.”
Clarke didn’t know that, and is grateful not to be the center of attention anymore. “They have?”
“Val and Lennox have, for sure. And Val and Atreus, obviously, since he’s the one who snagged Delphine after she won with us four years ago.”
Clarke had almost forgotten about that. Delphine won her first individual championship under the Chronicle banner, and surprised everyone when she moved to Provenance the following year—where her then-husband, Oliver, would be her new teammate. “I can see why they wouldn’t get along.”
“Yeah. Val really doesn’t like the guy. There isn’t a line she wouldn’t cross to beat him again.” Engel tips his cap down over his eyes. “Wake me up when the adults get their shit together, okay?”
—
Before Clarke can leave for the next site, she has to see Anders.
He comes to most races on Mars. Clarke can usually get away with them just existing in the same circles, the fans satisfied by Anders’s reactions while Clarke’s on the track and maybe Anders tapping Clarke’s helmet at some point, but a few times a season they’re supposed to do more and this, unfortunately, is one of those times.
Anders flies them back to his home in Elysium Planitia so late that it’s Monday by the time they arrive.
Naomi travels with them. Clarke wishes Sara were here instead, but she’s with Raff, doing continued welcome-to-the-team stuff with Elemental superfans.
Clarke excuses herself as soon as she can, then lies in the plush, comfortable bed, unable to sleep.
Typical. It’s this house, and her inability to let her guard down while she’s here.
She plucks the drawstring of her sleep shorts. Would it be weird if she tried to get herself off right now, in Anders’s house? Orgasms make her sleepy, and she’s been thinking about Julian’s hands on her since his photo shoot. She slips a finger down and—
Nope. Too weird. Definitely too weird.
She flips the covers back and gets out of bed. She goes to the bathroom. She stretches. She reads a chapter in her book. She lies down after each of these activities, hopeful, but is up again within minutes.
Maybe fresh air will help?
She pads across the room. There’s a large bank of windows she could open, but she goes for the door to the balcony instead. She pushes it open slowly, not sure how well-maintained these hinges are and wary of waking up Anders or Naomi.
She needn’t have worried. Anders and Naomi are both awake, and talking on the patio beneath this balcony.
“—suspiciously incompetent,” Anders is saying. “Nothing we’re doing right now is building confidence in Yves. The shareholders are going to leave en masse after the announcement. We’ll bleed sponsors.”
Why are they talking about Elemental’s shareholders and sponsors? What announcement? Clarke creeps farther out onto the balcony.
“You’ll have plenty of opportunity to charm the sponsors at the gala in a few weeks, and if the current shareholders choose to divest, there will be millions lining up to take their places,” Naomi says. “The draw of Yves Gagnon and Anders Dalsing partnered in team leadership is—”
“Yves looks like he can’t lead a team to build a ship that doesn’t fall apart if you look at it funny, and I’m the guy standing around watching that team treat his daughter like shit,” Anders says.
“If I were a prospective shareholder, I wouldn’t trust the two of us.
And saints know the FIC doesn’t trust Yves at the moment. ”
“A few podiums under Raff’s belt at the start of next season, and all those bad feelings go away. People want to see Elemental return to what it once was. They want the full-circle story.”
“There will be questions if we make too much of an improvement between this year and next. There are already questions. Amira Bahtri is—”
Naomi gets impatient. “Questions we’ll answer by pointing to the amount of team resources spent managing Clarke and compensating for her shortcomings. We’ve been working toward this for more than a year, Anders, why the cold feet now?”
“She’s my daughter. Forgive me if I’m not champing at the bit to throw her in front of the aerotrain.”
“You agreed to this! Yves came to you with the proposal, and you agreed that pinning all the recent failures on Clarke was—”
“I know!” Anders shouts, voice echoing off the house and out across the pristine landscaping.
Silence falls. All Clarke can hear is her breathing, ragged through the hand she has over her mouth, and her heart, pounding against her ribs like it’s trying to get out.
Whispers, from the patio. They’re worried Anders’s yell might have woken Clarke. There’s the sound of soft footsteps, then the double click of the patio door opening and closing.
Clarke had instinctively crouched when she realized she was eavesdropping, despite there being no chance of Naomi and Anders seeing her from the patio directly below. She drops to her butt now as she tries to comprehend everything she just heard, stunned.
Anders and Yves are going to buy Elemental. They’re going to purchase majority ownership. It’s perfectly legal (active and former team members own portions of their organizations or parent organizations up and down the grid), but…wow.
That confusing conversation she’d had with Anders last time she was at this house, when he’d asked what she thought team ownership might do after a string of disappointing seasons—had he been trying to warn her, in some roundabout way?
Because it seems like he’s regretting his suggestion to hang Elemental’s struggles on Clarke.
But if they are going to do that—blame Clarke for sucking up resources that could’ve been spent improving the ship, souring the atmosphere with her personality like the Matthew article implied, having a flying style that doesn’t jibe with Elemental’s technical foundation—they’re not keeping her after this season.
There’s no way. If they’re saying Clarke’s the problem, they have to get rid of her.
She hugs her legs up to her chest and presses her kneecaps into her eye sockets, taking shallow, damp breaths in the confined space between her belly and thighs. When she’s not hyperventilating anymore, she releases the hold, tilting her face up and back to the night sky.
It’s hot. Martian seasons are twice as long as Terran and Lunar.
It’s September by the standard calendar, but on Mars it’s still the height of summer.
The air is humid and close. It’s what she was raised in.
She fills her lungs with it, finds her center, finds her resolve.
Oddly—or maybe not oddly at all—hears Julian’s voice in her head.
You’re one of the best pilots of our generation, but you’re wasted at Elemental.
She will not be their scapegoat.
There’s nothing she can do about it tonight.
She needs to try to get a few hours of sleep so she can pretend she doesn’t know any of this when she and Anders have a photogenic breakfast tomorrow before Naomi and Clarke catch a shuttle to the next race site.
She can call Rhynn from the hotel, figure out some next steps.
Because there will be next steps. Clarke doesn’t know what they are yet, but there will be something she can do. There will be a way to use this information to Clarke’s advantage. And if there isn’t? If there’s no way to salvage Clarke’s place at Elemental, and if no other teams want her?
She’s not going to go quietly, if it comes down to that. She’s spent too long bottling herself up, cutting pieces of herself off, whittling herself down into exactly what Elemental wanted only for them to move the checkered flag farther out to step away with grace.
If Anders and Yves try to paint Clarke as the problem, Clarke will damn sure make herself a problem.