Throttle Forty-Two

The Cerberus coasted across empty space at a respectable speed, catching up to some of the slower ships, and falling behind those rushing towards the only station in the entire system.

Whatever this system was, it wasn’t all that interesting. It certainly wasn’t habitable. The sun was weak, just a grey dwarf in the middle of the system, exuding a pale white light that had difficulty competing with some of the nearest stars.

A proto-planet was going around the system with an uneven orbit, trailing a long tail of gases and debris. It was a rocky clump, not quite round enough to be a proper planet, and devoid of much of an atmosphere at all.

The only station they could find was keeping well away from that. It was, at a glance, obviously some sort of temporary installation: an octagonal cylinder, with its flat sides as screens for bright advertisements and with spur arms sticking out of it for ships to dock at.

Ahead of it, connected by a grid of chains with flashing beacons, and held in place by a dozen tugships, were the jump rings. Diana counted nineteen of them, in a roughly hexagonal pattern which was squished out a bit to one side. The centre few were larger than the rest, but for the most part, each gate was significantly smaller than the one they’d crossed to arrive in the system.

“That’s the starting line?” Diana asked.

“Looks like it,” Zil Rossi said over the still-open coms.

Diana bounced on her seat. She was getting excited, that familiar tingle in her fingertips and toes that said that things were about to get fun. She brought the Cerberus in closer to the station, then parked it relative to the station a few kilometres out of the way, the ship’s nose pointing right at one of the smaller jumpgates.

“What kind of starting signal are we looking for?” Diana asked.

“There’s an all-channel broadcast coming from one of the ships, Mistress,” ChaOS said. “It seems like it’s a media vessel. It’s only armed with point-defence weaponry, and its sensor suite is significantly more advanced than what would be necessary on a racing craft.”

He highlighted the ship. It was a rather dull tube-like vessel, with antenna arrays all around it and a few laser emplacements at the fore and aft. The thrusters were all hidden in armoured housings, and Diana imagined it had something to do with stopping them from interfering with any outgoing signal.

There were a few similar ships, once she knew to look for them. Definitely not participants in the race, but maybe they’d be the ones capturing all the action and sending it back?

“What are they broadcasting now?” Diana asked.

“Several channels are live, with different commentators speculating over the race before it has begun.”

Diana nodded. “Anyone good?”

“Only one stands out. Do you recall the commentator for the Overflow Cup on Dirah Prime?”

Diana sat up taller. “They’re back here?” Diana asked. She liked their energy.

“I’m afraid not. But their cousin is, or something similar enough to a cousin for the label to function, at least.”

ChaOS opened a screen. There was a desk, and an alien behind it. A screen next to the alien’s head was showing a live feed view of a fighter ship. “Ohh, look at that sweet baby! That’s a Titarian Stinger!” the announcer said. “She’s a beaut! An ancient one though, that thing’s older than most of the racer’s near-ancestors! I can’t wait to see it zip down planet-side!”

The announcer was slim, with a wedge-shaped head covered in a crown of gaudy feathers. It had large eyes which wobbled about crazily with every janky motion it made, and a mouth that never stopped moving as it babbled.

“You like the Harrak announcers?” Zil Rossi asked. “That’s Yu, I think; he is related to Te, the announcer that did the Overflow Cup.”

“I guess so,” Diana said.

The ktacha sniffed. “They sensationalise everything.”

“Are they a species or…” Diana asked.

“Just a family of nutjobs. Rumour has it they’re all yovar that tried an experimental FTL system, stared too long into the dark beyond, and lost their minds. Now they’re obsessed with races.”

“That’s awesome,” Diana said.

Zil Rossi sniffed again. “If you say so,” she said.

“Ohhh, would you look at that thing!” Yu screamed into his microphone. The Rising Sun of Comcompan was hovering on the screen behind him. “That’s a Federation frigate! Someone must have been tossing the fun kind of bribe around to get their dirty mitts on one of those! This’ll make things even more exciting! And what do we have here? It’s Ven Geddi herself in the ugliest damned freighter I’ve ever seen! What is she thinking? Ohhh! They’re launching fighters! Bless my six hearts I can’t take the excitement! So many ships today! And soon we’ll be seeing them exploding across the Bolgian system like orbital drop bombs! Gentlebeings everywhere, sentients and quasi-sentients, this cycle’s Tyrant Cracker’s going to be one for the history books! T-minus one hour until the start of the race! I don’t know if I can take the excitement for that long!”

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Yu was frothing at the mouth and swinging back and forth, googly eyes flopping around wildly.

“I like his enthusiasm,” Diana said. She opened a command screen and ordered up a drink. A small panel on the edge of the cockpit opened with a hiss, and she pulled a cooled stainless steel bottle from the opening, twisted its straw around, and took a pull of the juice within while keeping an eye on Yu.

He calmed down long enough to check out a few of the fighter ships, then the alien covered a few more. She paid extra attention to the overview of Abatrath’s corvette, though Yu’s loud and erratic confessions of love about the ship didn’t actually tell her much. She imagined that it was more aimed at hardcore ship fans.

She grinned as the Cerberus appeared in the frame behind Yu.

“I have no idea what that thing is!” the announcer screamed, “but it’s not the first ship I don’t recognize today! That’s a mean-looking vessel! But we’re going to have to see if it has the guns and power to justify that size. That is one hefty frigate!”

Diana grinned over her drink. “You don’t know the first thing about my ship,” she said. “I’m just trying to make things interesting.”

“Mistress,” ChaOS interrupted. “We might have a development.”

“Oh?” Diana asked. She set her drink aside and sat up in her seat. Her fingers flew over to her controls, but hesitated above them. “What’re we talking here?”

“One of the ships that just arrived near the station has begun to broadcast on all frequencies.” ChaOS brought up an image of the ship in question. It was a relatively large vessel, maybe corvette-sized. Longer than it was wide, with two plates on the sides and a few guns mounted around the centre on what looked like a rotating assembly.

“That ship design looks pretty Bolgian,” Diana said. She had only seen a few of their vessels, but they shared a common design language. The colour was different from the images she’d seen, at least until she zoomed into a part of the hull plate where the topmost layer of paint was scraped off.

“It is, well-spotted Mistress. The ship is distributing packages now. They seem like propaganda, specifically anti-Federation. They are also decrying the race, and begging for those participating to give up on their endeavour.”

“Alright,” Diana said. She checked the area around the ship and noted a few vessels turning its way. “Oh, that looks like it will be trouble,” she said.

And that’s about when the first of those other ships fired at the corvette.

The shot hit the ship right in the side, but the vessel’s shields ate the blow without flinching.

The corvette instantly retaliated. Not by firing back at the ship that had shot it, but by launching a salvo of missiles that corkscrewed through space, then started to wobble their way over to the jump ring array.

Diana kicked the Cerberus engines on and started to laugh. “ChaOS, message on all-bands, tell everyone that the race is starting a little early!”

“That seems very unwise, Mistress.”

Half the missiles were intercepted kilometres away from the rings, and a few more were swatted out of the air by friendly racing ships.

One unlucky sod blocked a missile with their hull, though the blow seemed to have been mostly taken by the ship’s shields.

The pilot might not have noticed who fired on them, because they turned and opened fire on one of the ships trying to spray missiles out of the air with its point defence.

It was like watching a chain reaction: instant misunderstandings leading to rash actions leading to rapid and disproportionate retribution, and somewhere in that mess, the Bolgian Corvette was firing at what were no doubt Federation ships in disguise.

Diana started laughing even as she punched the gas and zipped into the fray.

***