Throttle Thirty-Seven

The time leading up to the start of the race was dwindling fast. Conversely, the number of things they had to take care of were growing.

With only a couple of days left—by her own Earth-centric clock; Waitless station didn’t have a day-night cycle, so really, all they had was a rough count-down—the list of things to take care of was just tight enough that if she did nothing but work, then maybe they would actually get to participate in the race.

“I need a break,” Diana said. She let her arms droop to her sides and turned her head back so she could rest her eyes. Next to her sat the fightercraft she was planning on handing over to Zil Rossi.

It wasn’t the prettiest ship Diana had ever seen, but it was functional.

The fighter was roughly triangular, with a blunt nose cone that had four thrusters in it, and a set of large fins on the back that were there mostly for show.

The ship had side thrust, as well as two reaction control systems on the belly and tucked away into the stern. The nose had more directional thrusters as well, though they were hidden away under shifting armour panels.

Currently, the ship had two gaping holes in its side that allowed Diana to see the complex innards of the vehicle, where powerlines twisted around struts and coolant pipes. In order to hide the use of nanomachines, they had to make sure that the ship worked in a more traditional way.

Examining the scrap parts Ahvie had given them gave Diana and ChaOS a good idea of the level of miniaturisation they could get away with.

Stealth wasn’t her first priority. Diana could not care any less about the laws concerning things like AI and nanotech. What she was concerned about was being disqualified from future races because of a technicality.

Besides, it wouldn’t be fair to the other competitors if she came in with something leagues ahead of what they had access to. Being on the cutting edge was fine. Leaving the cutting edge behind because you had chainsaws was just being rude.

So she aimed for great tech, but not technology that was too far beyond what the average well-off racer in the Federation could get their hands on.

A few problems arose with that plan. For one, a lot of the ships ChaOS had seen used reaction systems that were unlike anything used back in the Sol system. They varied from more powerful to more efficient than what humanity had figured out, but rarely both at the same time. Their nanomachine-built ships had the edge on reliability, that much was certain.

So they had to spy on the ships coming and going from Waitless station for a while, with ChaOS turning some of his processing power to working out how their engines worked.

Then they ran into the issue of weaponry.

So far, the most data they had gathered was from one flyby of some military ships, and a few minutes of footage of scrap ships with scrap guns on a planetary surface.

It wasn’t enough to figure out what a capable weapon’s system was like.

“Right,” Diana said. She set down a tablet onto a freshly printed desk, the back of the tablet sticking to the surface with a click. “We need to check out weapons, right?”

“It is on the list of items to verify,” ChaOS’s voice said across the cargo-hold-now-hangar.

Diana nodded, then stretched her back out. “Cool. Want to print out a body? I’m going to head into the station. There has to be at least one shop that sells things that put holes in others.”

“Civilian-grade weaponry is exceptionally limited in scope and power,” ChaOS said.

“Yeah, but it probably won’t be limited in design. We need to know what they use to poke their holes. Lasers? Bullets? Guided munitions?” Diana gestured to the fighter. “This thing won’t be complete until we figure out what kind of guns to strap onto it. Then there’s figuring out our own ship. We need to figure out the weapon systems we’ll be bringing to this shindig.”

“Are you considering purchasing the equipment outright? Even if you purchased enough for every hardpoint, it would not significantly decrease production time. The likelihood of second-hand equipment having more points of failure than would be advisable is also relatively high.”

“Nah, just going to look. We need to figure out what kind of bang we want to bring to the race. We’ll probably want to go in with a… diverse portfolio of chaos-enhancing weaponry.”

“I feared as much. It had been a while since you paused your work. A break would alleviate some stress, though I would much rather see you sleeping. You have been awake for nearly forty hours.”

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Diana shrugged. She was hyped up on enough drugs to kill a horse, but work needed to be done. “Schedule in a good twelve hours of down-time before the race starts. Maybe… six hours pre-start? By the sounds of it, the race itself won’t last more than an hour or two.”

“Added to the schedule.”

Diana nodded as she walked along. Soon enough she had a coat on, a gun strapped to the small of her back and another on her thigh, and a mask covering the lower part of her face, just in case. A much-improved propulsion system too, just in case some security-types spotted her and she had to make a run for it.

She met ChaOS by the airlocks. The AI had built a new body, this one more of a ball with directional thrusters and some long stalk-like legs which unfolded beneath it. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“Yeah. That thing armed?” Diana asked.

“Armed and capable of incredible violence against non-human and mechanised targets,” ChaOS said reassuringly.

“Cool. Better safe than sorry, right?” Diana asked.

They walked through the airlock and down a corridor leading into Waitless Station itself, metal-shod boots and feet clanking with every step. They weren’t parked in the same spot, not after heading out to grab resources out around the edges of the system.

Diana hadn’t spent enough time exploring the station for the section they walked into to be familiar, so she had to ask ChaOS to lead the way through the twisting roads and little tunnels that led pedestrians through the complex.

The store the AI led her to wasn’t too terribly far from the docks, next to what looked like a location selling off smaller craft. There was only one on display, but the showroom had a lot of floating holograms of different ships.

The weapons shop was a little more discrete. The far wall had a large gun, maybe three metres long, with eight barrels fixed to a large boxy receiver. It wasn’t a Gatling gun, but Diana figured from the design that it was meant to spit out a lot of rounds in a short amount of time.

They slipped into the shop and were almost immediately greeted by a hovering drone. “Greetings and welcome to Morbid Monopoly Munitions. We are the only purveyor of weaponry in this system. If you require defensive armaments, you will obtain them here.”

“Nice sales pitch,” Diana said.

“It is good for potential clients to understand their situation,” the drone said.

“Are you an AI?”

“AI are illegal according to Federation laws. This device is a remote-controlled drone. It decreases the discomfort some clients have with making contact with certain other beings and makes the sale and purchase of weaponry a more comfortable experience.”

“Right,” Diana said. “Look, we’re doing some window shopping? Just want to see what the options are, you know?”

The drone stayed planted in place. “What is your budget, and what are your needs?”

“Assume that we have no budget,” Diana said.

“What level of permit do you have?”

“For purchasing weapons?” Diana asked. “Uh, just assume we have normal civilian clearance.”

“Understood. Please follow me.” The drone turned and headed to a holographic display which flicked off as they approached. “Let us begin by addressing your needs; that will allow us to narrow down your requirements.”

Diana nodded. “I need a few options: a mid-to-long range high precision weapon, some sort of targeted munitions, maybe missile-based, and… I suppose whatever a good fighter-craft would be armed with.”

“Fighter-craft, or any vessel built exclusively for the purpose of combat, require higher clearance levels than civilian.”

“Is that so? Can you show us the goods anyway?” Diana asked. She added a smile for good measure.

The drone seemed to stare at her for a moment before the holographic display lit up. “This is the MMM-0487 Multi-strike kinetic cannon.” A gun sprang into being, rotating around in a big circle. A few alien silhouettes hovered next to it, giving an idea of its size. “It is a popular and reliable kinetic-firing weapon.”

“Are kinetic guns popular?”

“Rail-based weaponry is generally more popular, but is more restricted. Missile platforms are outright banned in Federation space, with the exception of deterrent-based weapons such as scramblers and decoy launchers. Beam weaponry is a popular, but expensive, addition to many larger civilian vessels, serving as point-defence and a very precise deterrent to low-level threats.”

“Good, good,” Diana said. “Show me everything.”

***