Chapter 34
Crazier things have happened. Four years ago, Chronicle was in fifth at mid-season break, and came back from the month off with major upgrades to their ship.
Delphine, flying for Chronicle at the time, started placing top three every race, and that’s the story of Delphine’s first individual championship: a surprise victory that no one saw coming.
No one saw Delphine’s defection to Provenance barely a month after raising the trophy for Chronicle coming, either.
No one thought she’d change teams at all, but Provenance would’ve been at the bottom of the most-likely lists if they had.
She’d said before, on the record, that she didn’t think she and her then-husband, Oliver, would do well on the same team.
Their divorce three seasons later, following Delphine’s fourth consecutive championship and Oliver’s obvious bitterness about it, proved the point.
Delphine leaving Chronicle opened up a seat. Val had her pick of pilots with the prestige her team was enjoying. It was a shock to everyone when she chose Julian, then a relatively unknown up-and-comer.
Unpredictable things do happen in Formula Zero.
Sara comes to collect Clarke after qualifying, picking her up just as Clarke’s checking her ship in to parc fermé.
Clarke scrolls through the attestation language to the very bottom of the form and, for the first time in her life, pays attention to the row of tiny checkboxes at the end.
Pilot requests a copy of the preliminary assessment.
Pilot requests a copy of the final assessment.
Pilot requests notification of Grand Prix clearance.
Only the third box is checked. Clarke carefully ticks the others and scans her cuff, then hands the holoscreen back to the marshal before looking to Sara. “Are you finally going to tell me what we’re doing today?”
Sara looks around furtively as they walk toward the front of the paddock. “You and Julian are meeting with the lower circuit team who wants to supply the ships for the post-season one-on-one.”
Clarke leans close. “Why are we whispering?”
“Because it’s still a secret, and—”
“Clarke! Sara!”
They turn at the sound of their shouted names to see Yves walking quickly toward them. When he catches up, he says, quietly, “We’re canceling today’s session with Julian.”
Sara immediately pulls up a holoscreen, frowning. “No, that’s—since when? We need this for the—”
Clarke lets Sara argue with Yves, but has personally skipped confusion and gone straight to disappointed resignation.
She saw this coming. Contract negotiations are off to a bad start.
Yves is holding the post-season race over Clarke’s head; she won’t be able to participate without a team’s support.
She signs, or she loses this. Alternately, he truly does just want Clarke to walk away and doesn’t want Elemental to waste any more resources on an event that isn’t going to happen.
What a prick.
“It’s fine,” Clarke says loudly, drawing a surprised look from Sara and a suspicious one from Yves that she isn’t protesting.
She doesn’t bother explaining, instead taking a second to send Julian a quick message letting him know she won’t be coming.
As badly as she wants to race him on equal terms, this isn’t a battle she can pick. “What’s the new plan?”
—
The new plan is more of the old plan, Yves impressing upon Clarke that she needs to perform well this weekend. The or else is heavily implied. The machinery hasn’t improved, and team strategy still isn’t clear, but sure, Clarke will just magically have a better result here.
Her Are you freaking kidding me? attitude breaks through at a few points.
She can’t help it. She’s here, in Yves’s tiny office, getting berated, instead of with Julian talking about their race.
Naomi told Clarke back in the middle of the season that her image was starting to skew bitter and spiteful?
Well, Clarke’s certainly feeling it now.
Julian calls when she’s in her hotel room, getting ready for team dinner. “Elemental pulled the plug?”
Clarke casts the video to feed to the mirror and continues trying to get the ends of her hair to lie flat. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” He’s in a hotel room, too, on the other side of the city.
He’s got a cap in his hands, the ubiquitous kind everyone wears on race weekends, but it’s a deep purple she knows but can’t place, not Chronicle green.
“I just wish I’d read your message before I went into the meeting.
It would’ve been easier to give it up if I hadn’t known what ships we were supposed to use. ”
He turns the hat around, showing Clarke the logo. She recognizes it immediately and has to sit down on the counter. “Eclipsis.”
Julian nods, the same blend of grief and love on his face that Clarke’s feeling. “Yeah. The team Connor was flying for when he died.”
Memories clamor to the front of Clarke’s mind. Connor’s easy way of diffusing tension, his fierce affection for his younger sisters, how he was forever losing track of his belongings. The hug he’d given Clarke the last time she saw him, tight and quick as their circuits crossed paths between races.
Be careful out there, she’d said, looking up at the darkening sky with a frown. Visibility’s about to go to shit.
You and Julian were made for each other, he’d complained, and shown her the message Julian had sent him just a moment earlier with the same warning.
He’s watching? Clarke had asked.
Of course he is, Connor had said confidently. We’re his favorite people, even when you guys are fighting.
Tears threaten. Clarke presses her fingers into the corners of her eyes, holding them at bay. “He would’ve really liked that. I would’ve, too.”
Julian sets the hat aside with careful hands. “Now that I’ve had a few hours to think about it, yeah. I didn’t exactly react well in the moment, though.”
Clarke goes still. “PK didn’t tell you before you walked into the room? That’s awful, Julian.”
“He thought I knew.” Julian’s voice and face are flat, his emotions controlled. “He talked to Val, and Val told him she’d talked to me, and that I said you and me would both be fine using Eclipsis hardware.”
Clarke can’t imagine what that must’ve felt like for him, shaking hands with the team that built the ship Connor died in with no warning. She wishes she could hug him. “And that didn’t happen?”
“It did not. I’m going to talk to Val about it, see where the miscommunication happened.”
“That’s a big miscommunication.”
“Yes. It is.” Julian appears to let his discontent go between one breath and the next. “Speaking of, I should probably get going. My parc fermé clearance came in a bit ago, and I need to meet up with Val before dinner to review the assessment.”
“You already have your report?”
“Of course. It came attached to the clearance notification, like always. Why, has your clearance not come through yet?”
“It did, but there was nothing attached to it.” Clarke presses her thumbs into the inner corners of her eyes, sighing. “What do you want to bet Yves has something to do with that?”
“No bet. That guy’s an asshole. I’m starting to think all team principals are.”
“Val did one thing you don’t like. Just talk to her, I’m sure there’s an explanation. Tell me what she says?”
“I will,” Julian promises. “Tell Yves he sucks?”
“I’ll think about it,” Clarke laughs.
—
“I didn’t realize you actually wanted the report,” Yves says during team dinner. Clarke sits on her hands so she doesn’t smack the look of innocent surprise off his face. “I thought you checked the box by accident. You’ve never been interested before.”
Clarke is supposed to play it off, say something that lets this be swept under the rug.
She says, “I didn’t know it was an option before.
You’re the person who oriented me to the F0 parc fermé pilot attestation, and you didn’t point out the boxes.
I’m certainly interested in making sure my team has all the information they need. ”
Most of Elemental is here, in the large hotel dining room they’ve taken over.
Clarke is seated with Amira and Maki. Yves ate quickly and is making the rounds, and most conversations have died down as eyes follow his progress.
Clarke didn’t speak loudly, but a lot of people heard what she just implied.
Yves is the picture of a blameless principal doing his best to manage an uppity pilot who’s sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. “I pass along everything that’s relevant. You should be focused on the race, not the paperwork.”
“I’d like to see the report for myself. In full,” Clarke says, keeping her voice calm. “I’ll get it from the FIC directly if I have to.”
Clarke’s never openly set herself against Yves like this before. It’s intimidating. Yves is intimidating.
Clarke lifts her chin and dares him to keep pushing.
For a second, she thinks he’s going to do it.
Going to flat-out refuse to give her information she’s entitled to.
But instead he chuckles, so patronizing that Clarke has to wedge her hands farther under her thighs.
“No need for dramatics, Clarke. I’ll send it your way once dinner is over.
It’s not exactly light bedtime reading, but who am I to tell you what to do? ”
That’s the question, isn’t it?
Yves exchanges niceties with the people one table over. Clarke eats a bite of dinner (Bland. Nutritionally sound. Gastrointestinally friendly. Selected by someone who isn’t her).
“Um,” Maki says once Yves is far enough away, managing to squeeze an awful lot into the one-syllable interjection.
“What the hell was that?” Amira adds, more coherent but no less pressing.
Clarke aims for nonchalant. “Just a misunderstanding.”
Maki huddles in close, conspiratorial. “We’re on your side, Clarke. If you’re making a move—”
“I’m not,” Clarke says, fondness fizzling through her at his declaration of allegiance. “I’m gathering information.”
“But if she does make a move,” Amira adds, “she knows she can count on us. Anything she needs. And we’re not the only ones that feel that way.”
Clarke’s fizzling turns into the type of chemical reaction schoolkids make science fair projects about. “Really?”
Amira raises a pierced eyebrow. “Are you doubting me?”
Literally never, and Amira pretty much holds Clarke’s life in her hands on a weekly basis. Clarke realizes with a start that Amira and Maki are, in her head, above reproach. She’s questioned practically everyone at Elemental in the past weeks, but not the two of them.
“Exactly,” Amira says dryly, reading the look on Clarke’s face. “You can trust us. Trust us with this, too.”
“I’ll try,” Clarke offers, choked up.
“Good,” Amira says, final, and turns the conversation to a new topic.
—
Later that night, Clarke’s cuff alerts her to a new message from Yves.
A copy of the assessment of Clarke’s ship is attached.
It does not match the copy Clarke requested and promptly received from the FIC.
The Analysis section of each contains an identical list of noted concerns about the ship, but where six line items in the Yves version of the report read Root Issue Undetermined in the Resolution Status column, those same items are marked Resolved in EM-82-St. Sebastian; Changes not pushed to EM-82-Clarke per team decision in the FIC report.
Problems with the Elemental ship have been fixed for Raff, but not for Clarke.
She keeps reading. The FIC estimates Clarke’s ship’s variance since the start of the season is at 8 percent, whereas Raff’s variance is close to 20, and all of that difference has been incurred over just the past two months—since Yves booted Matthew and brought Raff on board instead.
The FIC finds no violations of formal policies or regulations in the EM-82-Clarke, the Conclusion section of the unedited report reads. The FIC continues to strongly urge team leadership to upgrade the EM-82-Clarke to match the EM-82-St. Sebastian.
Clarke has already sent the unedited report to Rhynn. She sends along Yves’s version, too, then stares at the ceiling of the hotel room until she falls asleep.