Chapter 35
The Hanoi Grand Prix is a literal blur. It’s a night race, and the city is decked out in lights that reflect off the river and lake.
It’s visually stunning when standing still, but Clarke isn’t standing still.
She’s whipping around buildings and skimming the water at breakneck speeds, and the lights streak and smear at every turn.
There are a lot of turns. Hanoi is a tight track, one of the most technical on the schedule.
The straightaways are short, the loops are compact, the angles are sharp.
It should not be somewhere that Clarke does well, especially since she now has confirmation that Yves is deliberately trying to hinder her performance.
“Are you kidding me?” Thierry hollers, throwing himself at Clarke after they park their ships near the podium. “Since when do you fly like that on a track like this?”
“Says the guy who just got his fourth podium of his rookie season!” Clarke shrieks back. Glee is coursing through her, as it has been since the moment in the race she realized that if she could just keep Thierry’s thrusters in sight, she’d finish third to his second.
Unbridled happiness carries her through the podium ceremony and into press, which is a near-repeat of the Iani conference but with Thierry and Engel in opposite seats.
Engel speaks proudly of his P1 finish and what it means for Chronicle, who have once again moved past Provenance into overall first. Thierry talks about continuing to chip away at the lead for third Martian Motors has on Enclave.
“And Clarke,” a reporter asks when they’re nearing the end of the session. “Your teammate gave us a pretty exciting announcement at Ohars after a third-place finish. Any chance you’re about to do the same?”
“We’re in negotiations,” Clarke says easily. It’s true, even if said negotiations are, so far, going nowhere. Elemental won’t even agree to let Clarke use a biometrics patch next year instead of the embedded chip. “You’ll be the first person I call after we figure it out, okay?”
There’s scattered laughter. Silver Sight, of course, can’t leave a good thing alone, so speaks up. “This week is the three-year anniversary of Connor Bennett’s death. Do you think that impacted how you raced today?”
“Gods, this asshole again,” Engel says under his breath.
Clarke agrees, and if she hadn’t been expecting it, the question might’ve thrown her. But she’s been thinking about Connor in every spare second since she and Julian talked about Eclipsis, so she simply looks Silver Sight straight in the face and says, “No more than he does every other day.”
“You don’t feel more of a need to honor him around this time of year?”
Anger bursts on the back of Clarke’s tongue, sharp and hot. “As opposed to on his birthday, or his moms’ birthdays, or the day I met him?”
Silver Sight keeps pushing. “Don’t you think that Connor—”
There’s a Naomi-approved way to handle this in which Clarke comes off as humble, approachable, and dedicated. There’s a raw, unfiltered Clarke way to handle this in which she comes off the couch and gouges Silver Sight’s fake eyeballs out of his skull.
“I think that Connor was one of my best friends, and him dying while participating in a sport we both loved was traumatic in ways I’m still grappling with today,” Clarke says, deciding to split the difference.
“I think that you constantly bringing up his death is your desperate attempt to generate an interesting headline, because you’re incapable of understanding enough about F0 to write about the actual sport. ”
Thierry pulls the collar of his shirt up to his nose, eyes wide above the hem.
Engel hides his smile behind his hand. Someone at the back of the room lets out a choked noise, and all heads turn to Lennox Redfoot, who has just spluttered a mouthful of whatever she was drinking all over the side of Naomi’s blouse.
“Sorry,” Lennox coughs, brushing at Naomi’s sleeve. “Wasn’t expecting that.”
“I think we can probably end the session there, right?” Engel asks. “All good, everyone? Great, see you next weekend.”
The conference breaks up. Clarke follows Engel and Thierry to turn her mic in, but someone steps into her path.
“An impressive performance today, Ms. Clarke,” says Atreus Skordi, Provenance team principal.
“Thanks,” Clarke says, doing a poor job of covering her surprise.
Why is he talking to her? She canceled the meeting with him and doubled down on her lack of interest with Delphine.
He doesn’t think she’s good enough for his team anyway, and Julian said they didn’t need to worry about him.
“I didn’t realize you came to press today, since neither of your pilots… ”
She trails off, suddenly aware that pointing out that neither Delphine nor Oliver podiumed and his team just fell out of first place is rude, but he laughs good-naturedly.
It’s a loud sound. He’s a loud person, with a commanding presence.
“It wasn’t the best day for Provenance, true, but it could have been worse.
Tell me, Ms. Clarke, are you unintelligent, or simply unrealistic? ”
It’s so far from anything Clarke was even remotely expecting to come out of his mouth that words fail her. He spoke quietly, but it doesn’t matter that no one else heard. Clarke heard.
“Delphine said you declined meeting with me because you’re not interested in being her secondary,” Atreus goes on.
There’s a kindly smile on his face, so at odds with his tone that Clarke’d be impressed by the paradox if she weren’t crumbling inside.
“But you must know you don’t have the talent to be a primary. ”
Clarke’s media training kicks in. She says, inanely, “I appreciate the feedback.”
He guffaws. Again, it’s loud, and more eyes turn to them. Cameras, too. “You’ll manage a half-decent result next week, I imagine.”
Clarke got P5 at next week’s site last year. Still on automatic, she says, “Wonderland is always—”
“I do hope Yves doesn’t take all the fun out of your last few races in Formula Zero.”
Ah, now Clarke gets it. He’s one of those. He wanted to see her face when he told her she wasn’t worthy. She robbed him of that, and Julian blocked him from getting his satisfaction another way, so now he’s humiliating her in public.
Unluckily for him, Clarke has recently decided not to let shitty men push her around anymore.
Clarke is still holding her mic. She fiddles with it, clicking it on as if by accident, and says, voice as flat as she can make it, “You don’t need to worry about me and Yves.
You need to worry about Julian and Val. Your engineering is stagnant.
What’s your variance this season, two percent?
And only three between this season and last, right? ”
If everyone wasn’t watching before, they sure are now.
Atreus’s eyes go sharp; a raptor spotting a rodent that ventured to leave its burrow. “There’s no need to improve upon perfection.”
“Perfection?” Clarke arches a brow. She’s vibrating in her skin.
Saints, she’d almost forgotten how good it feels not to hold herself back.
“You’ve only placed first seven times this season.
Seven, out of nineteen races. And there’ve been eight races, including today, where your pilots haven’t even podiumed. Is that how you define perfection?”
Lennox is standing nearby, waiting on Thierry, and chokes on her drink again. She narrowly avoids splattering Naomi a second time, who swerves to the side with a dirty look while on her way to Clarke.
“Sorry, sorry, again, sorry,” Lennox coughs. “Haven’t seen Clarke wake up and choose violence before.”
“I’ve been telling you this is her default state,” Thierry says conversationally. “She’ll fight anyone.”
Naomi arrives at Clarke’s side. She takes the mic out of Clarke’s hand, tosses it onto the couch, and starts pulling Clarke toward the door. “We’re late for debrief. Let’s go.”
Atreus watches as they leave, passing Val and Engel on the way out. Val catches Clarke’s eye, looks meaningfully at the tight grip Naomi has on Clarke’s elbow, tips her head in a silent offer to step in. Clarke rolls her eyes and flashes a grin.
She appreciates the support, but she’s got this.
—
“Not yet.”
“Why not yet?” Rhynn protests. “We have proof that Yves is hiding assessment results. If we leak it—”
“I still don’t have a seat for next season,” Clarke says. It’s Monday night. She’s in the bathroom of her Luna house, painting her toenails. The tiny bot doing the painting unlatches from one toe and moves to the next. Clarke stifles a giggle at the tickle. “One thing at a time.”
“We don’t know when the sale of the team is going to be finalized.” Rhynn is still at their sister’s house. There’s a baby asleep on their shoulder, tiny face nestled into the crook of their neck. “If you want to disrupt that, this is the best chance we have.”
“We’re missing something. Raff’s ship is better than mine now, right?
But Ohars result aside, he’s still not doing well.
He’s underperforming. Why? If bringing Raff over was supposed to be this great decision by Yves that increases shareholder faith in him so news of the sale goes over well, it’s really not working out the way they planned.
I don’t want to play our cards until we know what’s in everyone else’s hand. ”
Rhynn shifts the sleeping baby into one arm and starts poking at the screen with their other hand. “If we keep waiting, we might miss our window, and—oh.”
“Oh?”
Rhynn pulls the screen in close, treating Clarke to a view almost directly up their nose. “I just got a response from one of the teams I reached out to about you.”
Clarke deals with a brief internal schism in which half of her leans hard toward optimism and the other half cautions against getting her hopes up. “Good news or bad news?”
“I think that’s up to you,” Rhynn says. Clarke’s cuff lights up with a new message. “Well?”
Clarke skims the message. It’s short. Straightforward. Suggests a meeting time and place, four days from now. “I’m interested. Confirm the meeting, please.”
“Done and done.” Rhynn props their screen up again. “Okay, where were we?”