Chapter 27
Going back to work feels impossible, but Clarke does it.
She stays home all day Sunday, wallowing and hiding, then gets up Monday and reports to Elemental Headquarters.
She’s civil to Yves and Raff. She’s diligent about training, attentive in meetings.
She doesn’t ask for anything. She waits for the other shoe to drop, for Atreus to let slip to some reporter that Julian thinks Clarke doesn’t have what it takes.
The shoe doesn’t drop. By Wednesday morning, as she’s getting settled in her cabin on the team transport, there’s still nothing about it in the press.
Did Julian actually go back to Atreus and bargain with him?
She hasn’t answered any of Julian’s (many) calls or messages, but the not-knowing is starting to wear her down.
Creeping remorse is also starting to wear her down.
She can see, in retrospect, that she was maybe too harsh on him.
Atreus had already decided he didn’t want Clarke before talking to Julian.
Clarke would’ve gone into that meeting thinking Atreus took her seriously, then been horrifically disappointed in front of him.
She was never going to get the job. What Julian said didn’t change that outcome.
And Clarke hit pretty far below the belt when she compared him to Anders.
She’s still furious with him for trying to take the choice out of her hands, though.
Too furious to call him back, at any rate.
Her cuff pings with a message from Rhynn. All set.
The relief Clarke feels knowing that her meeting with Atreus has been officially canceled is heady.
She was worried that Rhynn would push her to try to talk Atreus around, but her manager didn’t hesitate to start cutting their tentative ties to Provenance when Clarke told them what she’d overheard Atreus saying.
Clarke finishes securing her luggage and heads for the conference room two decks up, where the team is gathering to review the schedule for the days ahead while the trip to Mars gets underway.
Rhynn wants to know what Clarke wants to do next. Back in June, before break, Val had also asked. What do you want to do in this sport?
Clarke wants to win. She’s always known that.
But how she wants to win, how much she’s willing to compromise to get there, the parts of herself she’s willing to lose in pursuit of that goal—she doesn’t know yet, and the window to figure it out is closing.
There are nine races until the end of the season, and Clarke needs to do well in them if there’s any hope of another team coming to the table.
One thing at a time, Clarke thinks as she enters the conference room and is greeted by a projection of the Tempe Terra course.
Most of the team is already here, dragging models of the EM-82 around the track and talking about expected trouble areas.
Amira spots Clarke and waves her over. Clarke gets to work.
—
No amount of terra- and atmoforming can completely suppress a planet’s natural weather systems. The famous Martian dust storms of centuries past still happen. They’re manageable now, though, lasting for hours instead of weeks or longer, and they’re isolated to the highland regions.
Tempe Terra, the site of the sixteenth race of the season, is in the highlands.
The storm blows in early Saturday morning, before qualifying.
The non-Martian pilots and crew members stand out in the pit lane and watch it roil toward them, a wall of angry red-orange clouds that darkens the sky more with every passing minute.
Clarke and the other Martians have seen this before, and skip the awed gaping to start packing up as the sirens wail.
A few minutes before the clock would’ve started on Q1, the marshals adjust the veil settings.
The function of the force field that holds breathable atmosphere when the paddock’s off-planet isn’t normally in operation on-planet, but they turn it on now and adjust the settings, making it fully impermeable.
The storm breaks against the dome of it, swirling and dangerous and beautiful.
Amira stands at the entrance to the Elemental garage and frowns at the sky. “Weather delays are a bad sign.”
Clarke looks over at her, surprised. “You’re superstitious?”
“No, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know what I’m talking about,” Amira says.
Behind them, the crew is settling in to wait.
Clarke’s and Raff’s ships are fully shut down, draped in their traveling covers, pads on the fins.
“The whole rhythm of the weekend gets thrown off. Routines get messed up. They had to bring the track beacons in so they don’t get damaged, and there won’t be time to practice on the re-laid course before qualifying. This is when things go wrong.”
“All right!” Yves calls, standing a few steps up on the staircase. “It’s looking like we’re going to be in a holding pattern for at least the next four hours. Stay in the paddock and keep your radios on. Check with your race engineer if you don’t know where you’re supposed to be. Any questions?”
Clarke looks at Amira again. “In my prep room?”
“Where I can find you,” Amira agrees, and turns to field the same question from a dozen mechanics.
—
Qualifying gets delayed and delayed until they tip past the point of no return and a new announcement plays over the loudspeakers.
The storm is finally passing, but qualifying’s been pushed to tomorrow morning.
Clarke knew it was coming. Even if the air looks clear in an hour, it won’t be.
Fine particulate lingers after a storm like this.
If they put the beacons back out and turned them on, all those leftover dust motes would hang in the zero-grav environment, and F0 ships aren’t built to cope with that.
They need to give the dust time to settle.
Not to mention that the roads in the surrounding city will be absolutely caked and need to be cleared before the fans can return.
They can push qualifying to Sunday morning, but they can’t push the Grand Prix to Monday.
The paddock and ships and everything else need to be packed up and shipped off to the next location on time, otherwise the delay cascades into the next weekend.
They’ll qualify tomorrow morning, and race tomorrow evening.
“Parc fermé starts now, since there won’t be time for legality checks between qualifying and the race,” Yves says as the team regathers following the update.
“The ships will stay where they are, in team garages, and FIC marshals will come around to do inspections. Clarke, Raff, you’re dismissed after you check your ships in. Everyone else—”
Clarke goes in search of Sara, certain she has at least an hour before the marshals work their way to the middle of the paddock for check-in.
She and Julian were supposed to have one of their friendship sessions after qualifying, but that’s probably been rescheduled just like everything else.
Clarke’s dreading it, but it’s part of the job.
“No, you’re good to go,” Sara says when Clarke finds her gazing off with that mid-distance stare she gets when she’s reviewing footage on her ocular implant. “We’re not doing a you-and-Julian thing today. Or this weekend at all, actually.”
Clarke’s glad (she’s not at all sure how she’s going to react to being put in a one-on-one situation with Julian again) but confused. “I thought it was a requirement?”
“We already have the content we need to cover this weekend.” Sara pulls up a screen showing a series of photos posted to Graham Grayson’s profile.
They’re from the wedding reception. It’s mostly Graham and Hailey and their families, but there’s one near the end that someone must’ve taken from the house right after the wedding party’s ship arrived.
Clarke is standing at the edge of the field across from Julian, Graham, and Hailey.
The three of them are smiling brightly, and Clarke’s mouth is open in a laugh.
Julian’s Clarke? Hailey had just asked. I’m Graham’s Hailey!
Seeing it feels rather like what Clarke imagines getting stabbed feels like. She’d wanted to be Julian’s Clarke. She still does, maybe, but she can’t have that. Can she?
Sara closes the screen. “It’s getting traffic, positive commentary, and it helps that it didn’t come from either team’s official account. Makes it seem more authentic. Naomi’s not thrilled that you didn’t take any photos yourself, but I talked her down.”
Clarke’d been wondering why she hadn’t been hauled into Naomi’s office and reamed.
Julian must have specifically asked Graham to include this picture, to mitigate the consequences of them not complying with team orders.
And it sounds like Sara is helping cover Clarke’s butt, too. “Thanks. I—thank you.”
“It’s my job,” Sara says with an easy smile.
“It’s not. It’s not your job to defend me from your boss when I’m the one who didn’t—”
“I can’t change the way the team’s handling Matthew’s article,” Sara interrupts. “There’s a lot that goes on here I can’t change. But I could do this. I wanted to do this. Okay?”
This isn’t the first time Sara’s aligned herself with Clarke.
Clarke’s grateful for it, but also doesn’t like the idea of someone putting their job in jeopardy for her, but also isn’t going to tell Sara what to do just a week after fighting with Julian about respecting her ability to make decisions for herself. “Okay. Still, thank you.”
“No problem. We’re on the same team.”
“We are,” Clarke confirms, and gives Sara a quick hug that leaves the other girl stunned before ducking back down to the garage.
—
A few free hours when other pilots will likely be unoccupied is rare during a race weekend. Clarke messages Thierry with an invitation to dinner in her hotel room. He takes her up on it and flops face down across the bed immediately upon arrival, mumbling something into the blanket.
“Can’t hear you, buddy.”