Prologue - Going Faster
“Mistress, we are going to die.”
The Incident (capital letters being quite deserved here) occurred because of four undeniable facts.
First - Space is mostly empty. If you were to cordon off a one kilometre cube of empty space, there is likely going to be absolutely nothing in it.
It is also possible that there will be some lonesome hydrogen atom, bouncing along on its merry way. Or perhaps a micrometeor, launched into the void by some collision between two not-so-micro meteors a billion years ago.
Because of this, most human vessels have a shield: a bubble of electrons in flux that shimmer and waver around them, keeping the vessel safe from the mostly empty void.
Second - Electro shields can’t move faster than 0.050% the speed of light.
The moment a shield passes that limit, something happens to them, something violent and explosive which usually ends with the vessel within the shield being turned into more micrometeors for others to worry about.
Hundreds of studies were conducted to determine the why, and while the how is well documented—and there are plenty of hypotheses on the why—it is widely agreed that no one knows what they’re talking about when they try to explain the phenomenon.
Third - A human with too much time on their hands is a danger to themselves and society at large.
In an era where ‘scarcity’ is a word taught in educational programs, the average human has a lot of time to do stuff. This mostly involves watching or participating in some form of entertainment, pushing the boundaries of science or knowledge, or doing incredibly stupid and daring things in order to feel alive.
Fourth - Diana Slowbane had a strong dislike of limits and a love for speed that was frequently dangerous.
“Mistress!”
Diana was currently sitting in a bath of absorbagel. The material was able to reduce the strain from 100 Gs of sudden motion into something akin to a light breeze. It was, without a doubt, the most capable and advanced material ever designed when it came to reducing the forces the human body had to face when moving very quickly.
She was currently pressed so deep into her bath that the straps holding her in place were straining. Blood was being squeezed across the stretched skin of her cheeks and from the corners of her eyes.
Her heart was currently pressed against her spine and twitching spasmodically, and if it wasn’t for one of the pumps shoving blood through her neck, she would be quite dead. As it was, she was very close to being dead. All the drugs in her system could only do so much to stop her brain from being squished.
“Mistress, please slow us down,” a familiar, vaguely British (because Diana felt that it sounded properly posh) voice spoke into her auditory cortex.
Diana raised her hand, fingers and arm straining to push forwards.
There were many screens ahead of her. The cockpit wasn’t very large, but what space it did have was crammed with screens, touchpads, switches, and knobs. Most were never actually used, but they came with the cockpit and looked good, so she wasn’t about to get rid of them.
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Before her were three displays.
To the left, her ship’s status. A few items were flickering orange, but the repair systems were fixing them as soon as they broke.
In the centre was a camera view of empty space, with a distant ball of light that was growing closer. The sun. An overlay hung before that, projected into the empty air. It was the track for the race: a loop around Europa, then a spin around Jupiter and its other moons before cutting a straight line past the sun and towards Earth, the finish line. There were dots on the display, each one a different colour, representing the others in the race.
She was in second place.
That snobbish prick Alphonse was in first place, but just by a hair.
To the right was her speed. A large display, currently flashing red. It read 0.04994 in its centre, and was currently surrounded by warning signs.
She imagined that the alarms were ringing, but her eardrums had popped a while ago, and she couldn’t hear anything.
Her eyes dragged over to the dot that represented Alphonse on her centre screen. He was a few thousand kilometres ahead. A pittance. But he was moving at 0.04998. He was going to widen the lead.
Her hand, still straining, finally reached the throttle.
She pushed it forwards.
“Mistress, you aren’t so foolish as to go even faster… please slow down, we can gain time at the next turn.”
That was a lie, she knew. The next curve was slight, and Alphonse’ little ship was better around the turns than her Star Skipper.
The warnings grew flashier as she sped up.
0.04995, then 0.04996.
Alphonse wasn’t slowing down any, and she wasn’t about to do the same.
0.04998… 0.04999…
The ship threw up warnings, safety protocols blaring at her to stop. She had to mentally disable them, then disable those that came after. Most commercial vehicles never came anywhere close to the oh-four hundreds, but the Star Skipper wasn’t some store-bought space yacht.
Finally, 0.05000. The fastest she had ever moved. Faster than Alphonse.
The computers did the math.
She would lose.
Barely, but she would.
She would catch up to Alphonse, would surpass him, but only a million or so kilometres past the finish line.
There were hundreds of millions watching.
She pushed the throttle forwards, just a little more. 0.05001, then 0.05003.
More!
Her lips were peeling back from the acceleration already, but she strained the muscles in her cheeks to smile anyway.
She’d beat that no-good snot-nosed brat if it killed her!
“Mistress!”
She would be the fastest there ever was, no matter what!
“Mistress!”
0.05010
Space exploded.
A few moments later, across the system-wide internet, Diana Danger Slowbane was declared the winner of the forty-second System Grand Race. It didn’t matter that all that the cameras and numerous sensors had caught of her ship crossing the line was an electromagnetic scream and a shockwave; that was more than enough to award her the prize.
***