Throttle Nine

The shuttle descended on the night-side of the planet, piercing through a thin layer of clouds before rumbling down towards the surface of the planet.

The shuttle wasn’t anything impressive. It was a cockpit strapped onto an armoured box filled with modular seats designed to fit as many alien posteriors as possible with a few thrusters at the rear and some unfolding winglets to assist with in-atmosphere flight.

The entire thing shook and rattled on the flight down, and Diana couldn’t help but feel as if there was a good chance the entire thing was going to burst apart in mid-air. It was rather harrowing. She liked a good bit of freefall, and even the thrill of rushing through the atmosphere in a tin can was fun, but she liked it best when she had a view and some control over the flight.

“Ahvie thinks we’ll be landing next to the stadium,” Ahvie said. “We will need to rush over to our ship and make sure it’s all still ready to go before we are pushed to our position at the starting point.”

“Pre-race check up,” Diana said. “Got it. Can we expect anything else? Media presence, interviews, that kind of thing?”

Ahvie shook her head. “Ahvie is just a small nobody here. The big racers will be interviewed, the celebrities, but not us.”

“That’ll change once we win, I bet,” Diana said. She grinned down at Ahvie who stared at her for a moment, then opened her mouth and showed off her little pointed teeth.

Diana laughed. The smaller alien was obviously imitating Diana’s own body language. It might have looked strange, seeing as how Ahvie was clearly not human, but Diana found it more endearing than anything else.

“We are about to land. Brace yourself, Mistress,” ChaOS said.

Diana grabbed the edges of her seat and hung on as the shuttle’s engines fired up and slowed them down in the space of a couple of hundred metres from a dead fall to a slow, more controlled flight.

The shuttle flew around in a downwards spiral, finally slowing down and coming to a jarring landing, hydraulic landing gear hissing and the whole ship bouncing as it settled on the spot. A few long clangs reverberated through the hull, and the ventilation system kicked into high gear.

“Ahvie suggests that you keep your mask on,” the little alien said. “The air around the Overflow is toxic to a lot of sentients.”

“She is correct, Mistress,” ChaOS said. “The air venting into this compartment has trace elements of heavy metals, and some radiological contaminants. Otherwise, it has a low oxygen count and high counts of hydrogen.”

Ahvie had a little satchel she had brought with her. She hurried to open it up and slid on a well-used mask over her mouth, then she tugged on a pair of thick goggles over her eyes, with lenses that made her eyes seem just a little bit bigger.

“Cute,” Diana said. She resisted the urge to pat the alien, again. Ahvie was a grown woman as far as Diana could tell. A proper responsible adult. The fact that she was small and of the perfect huggable size didn’t mean that she’d appreciate it. Worse, Diana had no idea if that kind of physical affection was acceptable in whatever culture the mirian had.

The side of the shuttle opened up, and Diana squinted past the bright lights illuminating the landing site. A dozen other ships were settled down around them, all within circles demarcated by lights planted into the dirt.

The aliens in the shuttle filed out, and soon Diana and Ahvie followed them out.

The Overflow was a vast scrapyard. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of ships and shuttles and ancient stations, were all abandoned and left to rot. They formed gigantic mountains of scrap.

Cranes filled the skyline, constantly reaching down and pulling up large slabs of metal and parts of ships to move them into more orderly piles, but by the looks of things, there was enough work left to be done sorting through the debris to last them a hundred years.

“Whoa,” Diana said.

There weren’t any yards like this back in the Sol system. Not with most modern ships being entirely operated by nanites. Any destroyed or scrapped ship was quickly rendered down into its base constituents.

“This place is awesome,” Diana said as she turned around. There was a single large building nearby, a dozen floors tall and all made of some dark cement-like material. It was a box structure, with garage doors at its base, and a few square towers poking out above it, with tops not too dissimilar to the air traffic towers Diana had seen in textbooks.

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“That’s the stadium,” Ahvie said. “It used to be the headquarters for the Overflow Scrapping Company, and Ahvie guesses that it still is, but now it also has the arena. The other side has the starting lines, and seats for aliens to watch from.”

“Neat,” Diana said. There were so many things to look at that she wasn’t sure where to begin. “Is that where your little scrap rocket’s parked?”

“Scrap Rocket,” Ahvie repeated. “Ahvie likes that name, though it’s not actually a rocket.”

“Don’t you have metaphors in your language?” Diana asked.

Ahvie glanced up to her. “Not in Federation Standard, no.”

“Oh,” Diana said.

“The language was clearly constructed to be as precise as possible. Things like metaphors tend to muddy the water when it comes to communication. Pardon the linguistic pun,” ChaOS said.

“Oh, very funny,” Diana shot back.

Ahvie led their little group forwards and into the large building, only having to pause once they were inside to pull out a small tablet and check a map. The interior was a maze of wide corridors, with backlit signs hanging from the ceiling pointing the people entering the place every which way. “The race starts in a quarter rotation,” Ahvie said as they made their way down a ramp to a lower section of the building. “That’s how much time we have left to make sure the… Scrap Rocket works well.”

“Did you test it before now?” Diana asked.

Ahvie’s tail whipped from side to side. “Ahvie has. But Ahvie also doesn’t trust some of the other racers not to tinker with her ship.”

“Ah, fair enough,” Diana said. “ChaOS here’s got some good scanning equipment. We can check for more explosive problems before we take off.”

“Ahvie would appreciate that,” the mouse-like alien said. She glanced back at Diana, then after a moment’s hesitation, showed her teeth in a strange smile again.

Diana laughed. “That’s not a natural expression for you, is it?”

“It is not. Ahvie thought that’s how your kind shows happiness?”

“It is, more or less,” Diana said. “Your expression shows, uh, pain too. But hey, I applaud the effort. How do you smile? Or whatever your equivalent is.”

“You would need a tail,” Ahvie said. “And the right scent pheromones.”

“Huh. Well, I’m sure we could rig something up,” Diana said. Ahvie made a noise that Diana decided to interpret as laughter.

“Ahvie appreciates your trying, sentient Diana.”

“Just brushing up on my alien-talking abilities,” Diana said.

They made it down to the bottom-most floor where Ahvie presented some ID to an osel guarding a door, and they were let into a cavernous room. It was filled with the sparks of welding and the constant, whining grind of metal being cut apart.

Squares were painted onto the floor in fluorescent paint, and in each one were four tarp walls, with slits in their middle for aliens to move through them. Diana got a peek at the interior of one of the tarped-off sections when a large cat-like alien moved through. There was a scrap ship within.

“Oh, so we each get our own little area. Simple enough,” Diana said.

Ahvie nodded, then paused as a group of sentients moved by, tugging a cart on which a large gun sat.

“Uh,” Diana said as she watched the cannon move past. “That’s a weapon.”

“There are no rules against arming your ship,” Ahvie said. “It makes the race more exciting. Though there are a lot of rules about the kinds of weapons available, and then there’s a point system that makes it so that even permitted weapons are limited in number.”

“What’s our little Scrap Rocket got in terms of firepower?” Diana asked.

Ahvie looked up. “Nothing.”

“Well, that’s not optimal,” Diana said. “Not even a handgun?”

Ahvie scratched at the edge of her mask where the seal was pressed up against her fur. “Maybe Ahvie can enter a single gun into the database before we take off? Just one though, Ahvie spent all her points on making sure the Scrap Rocket was fast.”

Diana grinned. “Well well, we might not need more than one gun. Trust me, I’m a pretty good shot.”

“Ahvie will trust you. But first, Ahvie will verify.”

***