The cold light of the distant sun reflected off the exterior panels of the Starlit Swan. The bight red racing yacht lay in her dock at Station #145 orbiting Kalysto, the Apanian System’s capital planet. Sitting in the cockpit, a young man drummed his fingers impatiently against the armrest of the captain’s chair. Leoi Netwall had never liked sitting around or waiting for things to happen.
At other times, and to other people, the dull rhythmic thud of the fuel and oxygen pumps would have been relaxing. But right now it just reminded Leoi of the painfully slow speed at which everything was moving. But there was nothing he could do about it, so he forced himself to be patient.
Leaning back in his chair, Leoi looked up at the stars he could see through the viewport above him. A deep breath in, and a deep breath out. Forcing the muscles in hid body to relax; Leoi leant his head back toward the air vent behind him, relishing in its cold refreshing breath. A moment of serenity, a moment to look up, and to wonder; no matter where he was the starry expanse, the allure of space had always served to calm him, and today was no different.
The millions of points of light reminded him of where he had come from; the path he had travelled; the sacrifices he had made.
He didn’t want all that he had done to be in vain.
He didn’t want to make mistakes.
But most of all, he didn’t want to lose.
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On the outskirts of the system’s central asteroid belt, three standard day-cycles later, Leoi was in the thick of a week-long race. A race against the best this system had to offer: the Apanian Slingshoteers.
The slingshoteers were a unique breed. They’d grown up out here in the asteroid belt and among the multiple moons of the Apan System, and from a young age, they had developed their skill. From a young age, they’d learnt how to utilise the gravity wells of moons, asteroids, and other planetary objects to move quickly and efficiently around the solar system. And they’d had developed their skills to the point that they rarely needed computers or even simple navigational instruments. Instead, they relied almost solely on instinct, and on feeling the subtle changes in gravity as they moved about their world.
When she lined up beside the Slingshoteers’ run-down, junkyard ships, the Starlit Swan stood out as a polar opposite. Her streamlined hull looked brand new amongst the bare, asymmetric contraptions that she was racing.
However, the Starlit Swan was not a new ship. Nearly seven years old now. And if you looked closely, you could see it. The myriad of patches and dents and scrapes were a testament to that fact.
Leoi had no plans to buy a new ship soon. Nor did he plan to give the Swan a makeover. Aside from maintenance and a bit of tinkering, he liked her how she was. Each scratch, each dent, and each patch held a special place. They were a connection between him and his ship. And to cover them up, to fix them, or to hide them, he felt would be breaking that bond.
He could still remember the first time he’d seen her. Back at home, on Tavetti, with his family and friends. She’d been a present for his eighteenth birthday, the space racing yacht of some famous driver. An expensive toy, that, like all the other fast cars and flashy toys, had been destined for the garage. His father had never meant him to fly the Starlit Swan, much less race with it in competitions around the galaxy. But the spaceship had beckoned to Leoi, and he’d heeded its call, giving in to the urge for adventure, falling to the wiles of wanderlust, and travelling off into the unknown.
Now just three years later, with the experience of multiple races under his belt, Leoi found himself only a short interstellar leap from Taavetti, his home planet. Three years had passed since he’d rejected the offer of a role in his family’s galaxy-wide business and had left home with the Swan and what little money he had to his name. But the business training he’d endured had not been for naught, and he hadn’t let that small nest egg go to waste. Not only had he made a name for himself, winning multiple famous races in his solo racing yacht, but he had built a multi-system conglomerate of his own along the way. Scoping out exotic worlds on his journeys around the galaxy, Leoi had built up a chain of successful holiday resorts and restaurants throughout the entire occupied universe.
And as such, his recent trip to Kalysto had been two-fold.
First, and foremost in his mind, he had come to test his skills against the well-renowned slingshoteers. They’d remained had obtained a near-legendary status, and Leoi was looking for a challenge.
Secondary to his race, but still at the front of his mind; he had come to scope out the money-making potential in the Apanian System, a once closed off ‘Hermit Kingdom’ that was now opening its borders to the galaxy. Rumours of wondrous sweeping vistas and fairytale landscapes had intrigued Leoi and had drawn him to the system. And if he curried favour with the Apanian government, he hoped he would find a way to build a resort on one of their worlds. Such a move could give him the lucrative monopoly on holiday access to one of the most closed-off systems in the galaxy.
Leoi had done his research, and he had found the perfect spot for a resort. The object of his study was a small habitable moon that orbited one of the system’s gas planets. It was teeming with flora and fauna of all imaginable variety, and its landscapes were like those you saw in fantastical picture books. The Apanian government had prevented anyone from visiting there, much less residing there, for decades. Still, Leoi was hopeful that with the right approach, and the right amount of cash, he could get them to change their mind.
The moon was one of a total of 23 natural satellites that orbited Semele, the largest gas giant of the Apanian system. And of all those 23 moons, Eulia was the only one capable of comfortably sustaining humans outside life support systems. The air was breathable, good for you even, and temperatures on the dominant landmasses were steady at tropical-temperate levels. And with its deep blue sea, dotted with emerald green isles, it’s no wonder it was known as the Jewel of Semele.
By an incredible stroke of luck, or providence, if you believe in that sort of thing, Eulia, that moon of Semele, was a prominent feature of the race they were now running. The final long stretch of the trek took them out to that gas giant, where the last turn before heading back toward Kalysto took them around Eulia.
Leoi was already dreaming of the day he would visit the moon; taking in the glorious vistas in person. He dreamt of the day he would begin the construction of a fabulous resort; an extravagant vacation destination that would cater to the tastes of those wealthy adventurers, and be the centrepiece of his interstellar franchise. The ones who wanted to feel the spirit of adventure and the rush of discovering new places, without having to brave the hardships, and dangers, that accompanied such feats.
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A sharp jolt brought Leoi’s daydreams to a close, as the main drive of the Starlit Swan shut off. Eulia was fast approaching, and to execute the tight turn around the small moon, Leoi needed to slow the Swan down.
His hands gripping the controls in front of him, Leoi spun the ship around and prepped the main drive for reignition. As he did, he glanced across to the local scanner readout. Looking at the screen he was shocked to notice, that despite his powerful engine and the long burn from the asteroid belt to the orbit of Semele, he was still not yet in the lead.
A small pack of slingshoteers were still some way ahead of him, and unless he could overtake them before they turned, he had no chance of getting a finishing place in the race. Quickly, Leoi tallied up the possible options, calculating alternate trajectories on the computer display in front of him, testing out every possibility, trying to get an edge on the competition.
Only one option gave him the slightest chance of success, and it was by far, the most dangerous. Like Leoi, the slingshoteers were going to have to slow down before they reached Eulia. They needed to get the distance from Eulia and approach speed perfect to be able to enter and exit the gravity well within the correct window, and without putting too much strain on their ships or bodies.
If Leoi approached Eulia at a higher speed, he could overtake the slingshoteers as they slowed, by executing a much sharper turn around the moon. But this came at the cost of a significantly increased gravitational pull threatening to strain his ship and his body to their breaking points. Leoi knew that the slingshoteers could never do this with their old, weak, and shaky ships. And that gave him an advantage over them. As for the Starlit Swan, Leoi was reasonably confident of her abilities and trusted she would be able to make it through. But Leoi’s main concern was whether he would be able to hold up to the strain that the turn would place on him. The computer clearly showed that the gravity would exceed the maximum G’s he had withstood during training, and that had been in a controlled environment. Out here, any number of factors could increase (or decrease) the gravitational pull by multiple G’s, all within a split second. Leoi was genuinely playing with matters of life or death here.
But losing was never an option in Leoi’s mind, and he began prepping for the dangerous manoeuvre. The possibility of needing to perform high-G maneuvres during a race, while slim, had always been present, and, Leoi, not willing to leave things to chance, had always prepared the necessities for such an eventuality.
His cockpit seat had already been retrofitted with the necessary injectors for a high-G serum; all Leoi needed to do was connect up the canisters.
Leoi reached across the cockpit and flicked the auto-hold on, and the controls locked into their positions. A switch on the armrest loosened his harness and dropped the seat away from the control panel.
Unbuckling himself, Leoi pulled himself up, and out, and across to a small cabinet at the rear of the cockpit. He pressed his finger into the little recess that hid a scanner, and with a click and a hiss, the cabinet door popped open.
Inside was a row of small purple canisters filled with a cocktail of chemicals specifically manufactured to help the human body withstand increased G-forces. Leoi grabbed two of the cartridges, closed the door of the cabinet, and pushed back up to his seat.
With a practised motion, he pushed the canisters into their slots, either side of the chair, and locked them into place. Satisfied they were connected up correctly, Leoi swung himself over and down into his seat. The moment his harness was in place, he fired up the engines. The computer had already calculated the required approach vector, and a short burn would slow the ship down to the right speed.
A while later, after the small reduction in speed, Leoi began to pass the leading pack of slingshoteers. Muffled cries came over the group channel. The slingshoteers shouted out warnings, telling Leoi that he would be flying too close to the moon, that gravity would rip apart his ship. But Leoi shut them out; he was concentrating on his goal. He was confident in his, and his ship’s, abilities, and nothing would change that. Eulia was fast approaching, and he was moving in for the kill.
The closer the moon got, the faster the Swan accelerated as it fell into the moon’s gravity well. Looking at the viewport in front of him, Leoi could see the green and blue ‘jewel’ of Semele. Behind the moon, now filling the viewport, was Semele itself, the system’s gas giant. As he drew closer to Eulia, he could begin to make out some of the features on its surface. Leoi could see the dark green of the thick jungle that covered the small world’s largest landmass, the sapphire blue ocean surrounding it, and the small islands dotting that vast sea. The ship was heading in the right direction, and it’s fate was chiefly out of Leoi’s hands now. Leoi leant back in his seat as he felt the slow increase of gravity, and watched as the moon drew slowly closer.
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Leoi opened his eyes. Eulia was close now; it was all he could see out of the viewport. The ship had begun to turn around the moon, and the Gs mounted on the vessel and Leoi’s body. The Swan had been through this sort of strain before; it would hold up. But Leoi was about to experience the most G’s he had ever felt, and he wasn’t sure how well he would cope. The gravitational pull exceeded the preset threshold, and the serum injectors jabbed into his side. He could feel the liquid coursing through his veins, burning, expanding, resisting against the gravity holding him down. The weight pressing down on him didn’t abate, but he had the strength to push back against it now, he could fight it.
As the small ship pressed tighter and tighter into its turn around the moon, the force pushing Leoi back into his seat steadily got stronger. Eulia was close now. All Leoi could see outside the viewport above him was the seas and islands of the moon as he swiftly passed overhead. Suddenly, a blinding flash lit up the cabin. The digital viewports, along with all the onboard systems, went dead. Leoi’s hand leapt to the joystick to take manual control of the ship, but that was as far as he got. The entire ship jumped sideways, momentarily increasing the gravity far beyond what Leoi was capable of withstanding. With his hand grasping for the joystick, Leoi blacked out.
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Leoi came to as the Swan entered the upper atmosphere of Eulia. The air roared as it rushed past the ship, heating the exterior panels beyond breaking point. The panels weren’t designed to handle atmospheric reentry at speeds like this.
The exterior shell of the ship began to fail. As it cracked into pieces and peeled away, Leoi wrestled with controls, trying to regain some control of the quickly deteriorating situation. The automated voice of the computer system continued to repeat the incessant warning that Leoi had woken up to, “Catastrophic Failure Imminent. Eject Now. Eject Now.”
With a horrendous ripping and tearing sound, the last of the protective exterior fell away. The Swan was failing fast as the burning air destroyed vital systems, but still, Leoi tried to get her under control. Leoi yanked at the controls again, and the ship lurched backward in response, slowing the speed of descent by a small, but appreciable amount. But Leoi’s victory was short-lived, and the computer repeated its message for the final time; “Catastrophic Failure Unavoidable. Overriding Manual Control. Ejecting Personnel Capsule Now.”
Leoi felt a sharp jolt as the cockpit disconnected explosively from the rest of the ship. Designed to withstand any catastrophic failure, including high-speed reentry, the capsule would be more than capable. As the automated emergency systems took control, the now detached cockpit stabilised its flight, and the rest of the Starlit Swan continued its fiery descent.
A herd of small mammals grazed in the small open field beside an aqua-blue water hole. The clear water of the small pond revealed multiple brightly coloured fish swimming in its depth. Above it, on the branch of an overhanging tree, a long-beaked and brightly coloured bird sat. It watched the fish below, timing their movements, and waiting for the moment to pounce.
A sharp thundercrack rung out, and shrieking in surprise, the bird flew up into the air. A fiery trail burned across the open blue sky, as the Starlit Swan burned through the small moon’s atmosphere. A parachute billowed out above the thick rainforest and drifted slowly toward the ground, a small, brightly coloured capsule hanging underneath. Inside it, a dejected Leoi sat, not knowing what to feel, trying to process his emotions.
His only joy for the past five years had been taken from him in the span of a few short moments. To Leoi, it felt like he had lost a loved one. And all for the sake of winning a race.