Chapter 19
A big part of being successful in Formula Zero—in any professional sport, really—is the ability to compartmentalize. You need to be able to block out everything else, no matter how distracting or upsetting or intoxicating, and focus on the task at hand.
Clarke is great at compartmentalizing.
Maki’s abnormally quiet as he clips Clarke in and runs through her checks. The five-minute siren sounds just as they’re wrapping up the final step, confirmation that Clarke’s biometrics feed is working.
“Strong and steady,” Maki says, reviewing the data on his display. “Need anything else?”
This is the part where Clarke says Nope, all clear, and he untethers to jet away. Today Clarke pauses and waits for him to look at her instead of the display. When she’s sure he’s watching, she moves them both to a private radio channel.
It’s not really private. Yves, Amira, practically anyone could drop in, and anyone looking at the comms dashboard will be able to see that Clarke and Maki aren’t on the crew channel anymore. They have to make this fast.
“What’s wrong?” Clarke asks.
Maki blanches, visible even through his helmet visor. “I don’t—”
“We don’t have much time,” Clarke says. The second marquee light turns blue. “Something’s bothering you. If it’s about the ship, I need to know. Now.”
Maki glances nervously to the side. Clarke can’t tell where he’s looking, doesn’t have the neck mobility to check, but the way he’s acting is setting her hair on end.
“If it’s not about the ship,” Clarke continues, softening her tone, “I still care. I’ll ask you again after the race.”
“It’s the ship,” Maki blurts, syllables all running into one another. “There was a weird artifact in the data from your power unit start-up tests this morning. We told Amira, and Amira told Yves and Timothy, but they said it wasn’t significant and we shouldn’t bother you with it and—”
Relief washes over Clarke. “Just the start-up tests?”
Clarke gets the impression Maki’d be chewing on his fingernails if he could get his hands inside his helmet. “Yes.”
“Any reason to think the data artifact would impact anything else about the performance of the ship?”
“No. It only happened when bringing the power unit up after a full shutdown.”
“Okay.” Clarke gestures to the ship, which is purring underneath her. Idling, as it has been for close to an hour. “Power unit’s on, right? And it’ll be on until the end of the race.”
Maki wilts. “Yeah. I know. I just…I don’t like it.”
“I don’t, either. But if there’s no evidence it’s going to cause a problem for me today, we don’t need to worry about it right now.”
“I shouldn’t have told you. Yves and Timothy were right.”
“I’m glad you did. I want to know, Maki, every time. Thank you.”
The third light turns blue. Two minutes to go. An FIC marshal bounds their way, ready to usher Maki off the course.
Clarke moves them back to the normal crew channel. “Nothing else. All clear.”
“All clear,” Maki echoes, and zooms out of range before the marshal can cite them.
Clarke resettles herself. Hands on the deck, head in the ship, eyes on the lights. She really is glad he told her. She’s not glad that Yves and Timothy, the chief engineer, overruled him and Amira. Clarke’s the damn pilot. She can understand not clueing her in about Matthew and Raff, but her ship?
The blues go out. The reds go out. They’re racing.
The plan holds for the first seven laps.
It’s clear by then that no one’s holding back, which was where Clarke would’ve put her money.
Delphine and Julian—and Provenance and Chronicle—are too close in points not to compete for every inch, and Enclave and Martian Motors are right there behind them.
They’re screaming around every corner, blazing through spirals and inversions, barely slowing when variables start changing one after the other.
Clarke oscillates between P6 and P10, traveling in an ever-shifting clump with some of the mid-pack.
On lap eight, the border around Clarke’s holodeck lights up yellow. The track beacons go yellow, too, a fluorescent contrast to their normal gold. Clarke slows automatically, cautious not to cut power too quickly lest she cause someone behind to run into her.
“Yellow flag, Clarke,” Amira says in her ear. “And we’re expecting—yes, there it is, double yellow.”
Clarke’s deck border splits into two concentric lines. She slows further. “I see it. What happened?”
A yellow flag means danger on the track; debris from a crash, usually.
Everyone has to slow down and they’re not allowed to pass one another until the flag is cleared.
A double yellow is more serious, signaling that the track is partially or fully blocked.
Ships have to slow down even more, and be prepared to stop.
“One of the Harkoners made contact with one of the Bright Doors. It’s behind you, you won’t see it for a few minutes.”
“Is everyone okay?”
“Checking.”
Clarke keeps herself steady. Her heart rate picks up, but her hands don’t shake as she loops around the fourth black hole.
This happens. Ship-to-ship contact, or a single ship going into the barrier, occurs in nearly 60 percent of all F0 races, and ninety-five times out of a hundred, the pilots walk away with nothing more than bruises and strains.
Four of those remaining five times, the injuries are more severe, but the pilot’s back for the next race.
Their ships are marvels of engineering, and the safety features (crash gel, particularly) go a long way toward preventing life-threatening injuries. Clarke knows this.
It doesn’t change the fact that every time there’s an accident, Clarke thinks about Connor until she gets confirmation that everyone’s okay.
It happened their first year out of Juniors.
Julian had gone directly to F0, while Clarke and Connor were biding their time on semi-pro teams, gaining experience and hoping to catch the attention of F0 soon.
Clarke and Julian had been growing apart all season, but Clarke and Connor were still fine, even if they didn’t get to see each other as often as they used to because they were in different circuits.
That weekend, Clarke and Connor were racing at the same track. Clarke’s circuit ran earlier in the day. She’d been in the middle of a post-race interview when Connor crashed.
The track was on Earth, so there was no vacuum of space to suck up sound.
Clarke heard the impact. Heard silence fall across the paddock as everyone’s radio conversations went solemn.
Audio clips were released later, every pilot asking the same question Clarke just asked—Is everyone okay?
—and every race engineer giving the same answer Amira just gave—Checking.
Clarke’s not religious. But she flies slowly through the double hairpin, yellow lights all across her field of vision, and prays to the Martian saints and the Terran god and the Galilean pantheon and anyone who’ll listen that they don’t turn red.
Ten seconds, she tells herself. If Amira doesn’t give her an update in ten—
“Both pilots are fine,” Amira says. “They’re going to Medical to get checked out, but they’re okay.”
Clarke feels something in her chest loosen. “Thanks. Any word on when the double yellow will be lifted?”
The clump of ships Clarke’s traveling in is catching up to the race leaders.
Julian’s in P1 at the moment, maintaining a steady speed dictated by the safety ship as everyone else queues up behind him.
When the director lifts the flag and the safety ship leaves the course, Julian will open his throttle, and then the race will be back on.
“Within the next two minutes,” Amira reports. “Be ready.”
Clarke’s ready.
The pace picks up again, ships leaping forward one by one as reflexes fire all the way down the order.
Clarke falls back to P10 in the jumble, works her way forward to P6, drops to P9, reclaims P8, claws to P7.
One of the Barlowes loses their right thruster and goes through the barrier.
Oliver at Provenance experiences sudden engine failure and has to drop out.
Umeko, who was behind the Bright Door–Harkoner crash, sustained damage from debris; her coolant starts leaking and she has to retire, too.
It’s not even the twentieth lap yet, and the entire dynamic of the race has changed.
There are only fifteen ships left on the track, and the top fifteen get points.
It’s only one point each for P13, 14, and 15, but even that would be significant for a team in Harkoner’s position.
If a team finishes the season with no points two years in a row, they get knocked out of F0, and teams from the lower circuits can apply to take their place.
Harkoner had zero points last year, and has zero points so far this year.
If they were on-planet, it’d be as simple as Harkoner’s one remaining ship going slow and steady.
It wouldn’t matter how far behind he fell, so long as he crossed the finish line.
But they’re off-planet, and if you get lapped off-planet when variables are in play, you’re out.
Provenance and Chronicle won’t give Delphine and Julian specific instructions to hunt the Harkoner down.
Their priority is winning, not taking away Harkoner’s chance for a relegation-delaying point.
But they’re not going to slow down to keep Harkoner in the running, either.
This sport is ruthless. Clarke loves it.
On lap twenty-six, Amira calls Clarke in for a pit stop.
It’s earlier than she’d prefer, but not by much, and it goes smoothly.
She drops back in right behind Raff, who’s in P10.
She waits for two laps, sure Raff’s race engineer will call him in to box anytime, but he doesn’t leave the track, and the gap between him and P9 is expanding.
On lap twenty-nine, Clarke asks, “Is Raff headed in soon?”
“Checking,” Amira says. Clarke follows Raff down a twisting descent. “No. Raff’s going to stay out and run long on his starter shells. Asking for strategy, sit tight.”
Most F0 teams have a primary-secondary pilot arrangement (whether official or unspoken).
Both pilots have the same machinery, training, and resources, but race strategy will prioritize one over the other, particularly if it’s deep in the season and one of them has a chance of doing well in the individual bracket.
Julian, for example, is Chronicle’s primary pilot.
If his teammate Engel is ever in front of him during a race, it’s expected that Engel will let Julian pass without contest. If Engel’s ever directly behind Julian, it’s expected that he won’t try to overtake, but will instead drop back and play defense—try to block other pilots from taking a run at Julian.
Engel, from what Clarke’s seen, seems happy to be along for the ride.
Oliver, Provenance’s secondary pilot and Delphine’s ex-husband, is vocal about not being thrilled with living in Delphine’s shadow, but he also signed a multiyear renewal last season and Delphine’s a four-time interplanetary champion. He knew what he was getting into.
Clarke and Matthew, as a team, were never really competitive enough in the pilots’ bracket that Yves had to sit them down and talk about who they were going to prioritize.
They dealt with it on a case-by-case basis if there was ever a “Should Clarke let Matthew pass?” situation, usually favoring Clarke if they were off-planet and Matthew if they were on.
It makes sense to Clarke that they’d continue that logic now that Raff’s in the picture. His current pace is slower than what Clarke’d been averaging before the pit lane spit her out behind him, and he’s still getting to know the Elemental ship. He should let her pass.
Clarke comes out of a patch of chicane. Amira still hasn’t said anything. Clarke knows, by now, what a delayed response means, and whose voice to expect when she finally gets an answer. She makes herself ask anyway. “Are we fighting?”
It’s the other option. If you don’t give your pilots a cooperative strategy, or if you do and they don’t follow it, they fight. Clarke will try to overtake. Raff will try to block her. It’s risky, but it works for some teams, where there’s mutual respect between pilots.
It’s not going to work for Clarke and Raff.
Yves says, “Yes, Clarke. We’re fighting.”
This weekend just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?
It doesn’t end up being much of a fight.
Raff doesn’t know how to compensate for the power loss the EM-82 experiences on ascending banks (another thing Clarke would’ve told him about if he’d deigned to listen to her yesterday).
Clarke does. She passes him on lap thirty-two.
He pits on lap thirty-six, falls back to P13, and stays there.
Clarke jumps to P4 when a bunch of the others pit.
She loses it to Thierry almost immediately, and loses another two places when she has to pit again in lap fifty-one because her diffuser starts smoking.
She finishes P7, for 6 points. It puts her at eleventh out of the pilots, and keeps Elemental in sixth out of the ten teams.
Julian finishes first, once again leapfrogging Delphine for first overall. And when Engel clinches fifth while Oliver DNF’s, Chronicle passes Provenance on the team leaderboard for the first time this season.
Fourteen races down, ten to go.