Throttle Eight

Diana had all of twelve standard hours between the time she left Ahvie in her hangar and the departure time for the Overflow Cup. That wasn’t the least amount of time she’d ever had to prepare for a race, but it was certainly not the longest time either.

Upon arriving at the Star Skimmer and after taking a quick shower and eating, she had ChaOS add his scans of the scrap racer to the ship’s computer, then she left the cockpit and headed for the back where there was more room.

It took the nanomachines that made up her ship ten minutes to recreate the cockpit of the scrap racer. It wasn’t a perfect re-creation; the rust wasn’t actually iron-oxide, and some parts of ChaOS’s scans were at a lower resolution, so nothing was atom-perfect.

Still, it gave her a place to sit down while taking in the controls.

The layout wasn’t anything she was familiar with. The cockpit favoured dials over levers, which Diana immediately took a dislike to. They didn’t have the same weight and feel to them. Slamming a throttle lever down past its maximum was a lot more cathartic than twisting a knob.

The screens were all labelled in an unfamiliar script as well, but she only needed to study them a little to really get a feel for what each screen meant. That the speedometer looked more like a loading bar than a dial in a circular case was less cool than what she liked, but she could live with it.

The racer was a simple little vehicle. It had a set of repulsors in its middle, all pushing downwards with a decent amount of force, as well as three engines at the rear. The middle-most was a chemical-burn thruster. Explosive fuel went into the turbine, mixed with some compressed air, and was then ignited.

Easy as rocket science.

The other two thrusters were more akin to electric, fuel-less jet engines. They had directional thrust controlled by what were essentially a pair of joysticks on a column right in the middle of the cockpit.

The scrap racer had little winglets at the front and rear, with rudders on the end, as well as a few directional thrusters jutting out of the nose. She figured it was going to be faster on the straights than in any of the turns.

Only the fact that it was an open cockpit allowed Diana to fit inside. Even so, her legs had to bend up at an awkward angle, and she couldn’t comfortably reach everything without some strange twisting around.

“This is going to be a nightmare to pilot,” she said. It didn’t stop her from going to bed with a stupid grin on while ChaOS printed out some very basic safety equipment for her to survive the race. As it was, there was no way the AI could bring its current body aboard, and according to the rules, he couldn’t join in either case.

Only two sentients were allowed per vehicle, and as far as either of them could tell, no AIs or fully automatic systems were allowed. It was supposed to be a race to prove the pilot’s, and the engineer’s, ability.

Diana could hardly sleep, she was so excited. But eventually she nodded off, and the night, or whatever time it happened to be on-station, passed.

The next morning was a mad-dash. Diana scarfed down some nutrient paste, got dressed in a similar jumpsuit as the day before, and grabbed the bare minimum equipment that she was allowed to bring: a helmet, some padding that went over her suit to protect her, and some sturdy footwear and gloves. Nothing complex, nothing with any sort of assistance. The only equipment allowed in the race proper were the bare minimum to keep the pilots alive, and whatever had been scrounged up from the scrapyard below.

She raced through the corridors of the station while fiddling with her ears.

“Mistress, you will dislodge the device if you tug on it too much,” ChaOS whined.

“It feels warm,” she said.

“That’s the reaction from the glue hardening. It will pass momentarily. You don’t want it slipping out at the first bump.”

“Bump? What kind of pilot do you think I am, that I’d hit a bump?”

“I know exactly the type of pilot you are, Mistress.”

“An awesome one, you mean,” Diana said.

ChaOS chose not to reply to that.

They passed through the station, taking a faster route than the night before and using a railcar to travel along the outer edge of the station and to a central hub from which they were able to reach Ahvie’s dock faster.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

On arriving, they found the little mirian wiping her paws with a cloth, the hold of her ship now empty of the scrap racer. “Heya, Ahvie,” Diana said.

The little alien turned and nodded to her, a strangely human gesture from someone who definitely wasn’t a human. “Ahvie greets you, Diana Danger Slowbane and ChaOS,” she said. Or rather, she said, and the device glued to the inside of Diana’s ears translated within a hundredth of a second. It even mimicked the particularly squeaky nature of the mirian’s voice.

ChaOS approached Ahvie and lowered himself to one knee. “Miss Ahvie,” he said in what Diana’s in-eye augmentations labelled as Federation Standard. “This is a translation device, to better understand my mistress. As I won’t be there to translate for you, I think this will serve to help.”

Ahvie glanced at the device in ChaOS’ hand, then back up. “Ahvie has seen similar translators before. But they’re not usually made for mirian ears. This one is.”

“It is, yes,” ChaOS said without any added explanation.

Ahvie picked up the translator and carefully placed it inside of one of her large, mouse-like ears. She flicked her ears after, and Diana had to resist the urge to touch them.

“Ahvie is listening, if you are ready to speak.”

“Hello again, Ahvie!” Diana said.

Ahvie looked up to Diana, her ears twitching again. “Ahvie understands you now. It will be good to talk to you more directly.”

“Awesome! But don’t worry, I want to learn your language too. Or, ah, Federation Standard, I guess. It doesn’t look like it’ll be that hard to learn. It’s nothing compared to, like, English.”

“Ahvie doesn’t know that one, but it’s possible that it’s harder to learn than Federation Standard. It was designed to be easy to learn and precise. A lot of species need it to communicate between each other.”

Diana nodded along. “So, where’s the racer?”

Ahvie turned towards the spot the racer was in, then back. “It should be planet-side now. The organisers took all the ships and brought them down. They’ll be checked for cheating before the race starts.”

“That seems fair,” Diana said.

“Ahvie will look at it again before we start it. In case of sabotage.”

“Is that a worry?” Diana asked.

The smaller woman nodded quite seriously. “Yes. The Overflow Cup is… a backwater race. And some of the racers are very popular. Gambling isn’t legal, but it happens anyway.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

“Come, Ahvie will lead you to the shuttle to the surface. We will not have a lot of time to waste, the race is at first-light.”

Ahvie closed up the dock, locking the heavy doors down and turning on a rudimentary security system before she led the two back through the station and towards the ‘bottom’ where passenger shuttles were slowly filling up. Ahvie had a pass to the surface aboard a ship heading straight to the location of the race.

“How popular is this race?” Diana asked. She took in the crowds of aliens, dozens of which were of species she’d never seen before.

“The Overflow Cup? Ahvie thinks that a lot of the traffic in the system today are people coming from other systems to see it. It’s not the most popular race, but it isn’t unpopular? It’s easy to enter for sentients that just want to try to race, and it’s good for mechanics to make a name for themselves. But it’s dangerous.”

“Oh?” Diana asked.

Ahvie nodded again. “Yes. Ahvie knows that there hasn’t been a single race without some injuries, and only one without a death. Did you not know?”

“I didn’t.”

“Ahvie… wants to know if you will want to participate after knowing that.” She glanced up to Diana, who, while still not familiar with the rodent-like alien, could still read something like nervousness in her eyes and in the twitch of her tail.

“Are you kidding? The danger makes it even more exciting!”

“Ahvie isn’t so fond of excitement. But she’s glad that you’re so enthused about the race. Just… we need to place high.”

“Place high?”

“There are a hundred and eighty two racers this year. We need to be in the top five to win what Ahvie needs. Maybe just in the top ten would be enough. There are sponsors, and smaller prizes.”

“Top ten? Ahvie…” Diana shook her head with a laugh. “Sweetie, I intend to be the top, period.”

***