Throttle Thirty-Two

She whooped as she crossed the finish line.

It wasn’t a very strong whoop, but it conveyed her joy well enough, she figured.

Still, there were station security people after her and Abatrath, and even though there was something of a crowd not too far from the finish line (which happened to be a spot with colourful resto-bars across from each other) she didn’t think that it would be all that easy to disappear into the crowds when the police came looking.

Diana spun around, fired off some compressed air from the thrusters in her feet, then moved to one of the sidewalks.

She had a bit of a problem.

That last turn, where she had to execute a tight s-turn between two bulkhead doors, had not been easy. She might have dislocated her arm. She wasn’t entirely sure, but the entire thing did feel tingly and she couldn’t move it. Her shoulder felt kind of hollow too. It was weird, and deeply uncomfortable.

“Mistress,” ChaOS said into her auditory lobe. “You’re injured.”

“Yeah,” Diana said. She grinned at the aliens that crowded around her, then winced as one of them smacked her shoulder with a friendly tentacle.

They seemed to be ushering her into one of the bars while others floated up behind her and purposefully-accidentally got into the way of station security.

“I can’t feel my entire right side, so that’s cool.”

“Your pain receptor nerves have been shut down by your automated nervous control system. Do you want me to turn them back on? Perhaps it would provide a valuable lesson about using a limb to execute a slingshot turn.”

“Hey, my other arm is fine,” she said.

Then again, the second turn hadn’t been quite as fast as the first, and she imagined it had been a near thing. Still she won, so the results spoke for themselves.

A group of polerin that seemed vaguely familiar crowded around her and ushered her into the bar’s lobby. Instead of floating down to the main room though, they helped her into a little side doorway with a tunnel leading upwards, with a lift waiting for them in the middle of it.

“Uh, you know, I’ve just been following you guys, but who are y’all?” Diana asked.

One of the big cats huffed and made a gesture with a hand that she couldn’t read. “We’re with Abatrath. Don’t worry, we’re only taking you to the VIP room above. Abatrath will be here soon. He’s of his word, don’t worry.”

“Oh, I wasn’t worried,” Diana asked. “Though, if you could help my, uh, friend ChaOS over here, that’d be nice. I dislocated my arm at the end there, and I need help setting it back in.”

The polerin nodded. “We can do that.”

“That was a stupid move,” one of the others said.

“But I won,” Diana replied.

The group did their equivalent of a laugh, and Diana grinned along too.

“Strange, to admit to injury after doing something so brave. The arrogant would hide the weakness,” her new buddy said. “Especially when in a small lift with so many who could be hostile.” He showed his teeth to her, big sharp things that hinted at a predatory ancestry. He was much bigger than her by a head at least, and a lot bigger all around.

Diana shrugged one her good side and smiled back. “There’s only… what, six of you? I could take you with one arm down.”

“Take us?” he asked.

“Uh, did that not translate right?” Diana asked. “I meant kill.”

“Ah,” he said. He stared down at her, as if uncertain of what to do with someone who just smiled and escalated a threat instead of backing down.

The lift stopped at the end of the long tube they were in, and Diana felt her body continuing to lift until she clamped her boots down on the metal grated floor.

The VIP lounge was a wide space, with a bar halfway up one wall, a few hovering seats along the outer edges of the room, and a large glass-like dome above that that opened up onto empty space. A few ships were visible, moving to and from the asteroid station. They were deep enough down that the window afforded them a view of the massive, mountainous side of the asteroid where it curved out above.

“Nice place,” Diana said as she took in the room at a glance. Lots of glowing things and furniture made of natural materials. Woods, mostly. It seemed that some things didn’t change.

“This way,” her guide said before walking over to a booth to one side of the room. Her augmentations warned her in a flash across her vision that she was entering an area with lots of radio interference.

So, radio-jammers were a thing. It made sense, she supposed as she sat down.

“Want anything to drink?” her host asked.

“I’m good,” Diana said.

She made a mental note to find out if there were any species that had food that were fully human-compatible. It would make ordering drinks and food a whole lot easier.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The first to arrive was Abatrath.

It made sense, she’d beaten him, but not by all that much, and she imagined he was decent at avoiding station security.

The big polerin sat across from her, looking a bit gruff as he stared at her with narrow eyes. “I don’t know what to think of you,” he said.

“You can think whatever you want,” she said. “I’m not going to snoop into your head to make sure you only have happy thoughts about me. I do expect you to give me what we bargained for.”

Abatrath sniffed. “You’ll get it,” he said with a weirdly feminine wiggle of his hand. “I will keep my word. Besides, from the start I felt like you were asking too little and giving too much away.”

“I didn’t give anything away,” Diana said. “I won, didn’t I?”

He grunted something that her translation software couldn’t figure out. It was likely either too mumbled to make sense of, or not actually a word at all. “I suppose so. Are all the people like you lacking in common sense?”

“Only the fun ones,” Diana said. She leaned forwards, cradling her dislocated arm onto her lap. “So, you gonna give me my prize now?”

He nodded. “If you have made the bet something a bit more valuable than mere intelligence, I might be tempted to fight you off. But fine, you want to know about the Tyrant Cracker. Where do you want me to start?”

“I first heard about the race maybe a week ago? Uh, that’s… four standard cycles ago. Most of that time was spent in-transit. Assume I don’t know anything.”

“Insane,” he muttered again. “Fine then. The Tyrant Crackers have always been a way for the Federation to thumb its nose at adversaries and weaker political dissidents. Federation space is huge, but the bigger it becomes, the more space occupies the edge of the bubble.”

“Sounds like basic math,” Diana said. “Bigger you are, the more surface area you have, right?”

“Yes, I suppose. Along that edge will always be new systems ripe for colonisation, some of these will be inhabited already. It doesn’t matter how. Sometimes its long-lost colonists that landed on a world a millenia ago thanks to some leaky old ark-ship, sometimes it’s a corporate world started far, far away from Federation jurisdiction. There are cults and mad aliens and every sort of lawless fool who love the outer frontier. And among those are the tyrants.”

“And what are those?” Diana asked.

“Sometimes a single being, often a council or closed government or a family. They rule over their own little world like ancient dictators. All the power consolidated in their grasp. Most sentients across the galaxy able to think independently have the tendency to have leaders or a leadership caste. These can become wildly too powerful if left unchecked.”

“Okay, so what’s the history lesson got to do with the race?” Diana asked.

“I’m getting to it,” Abatrath said. He half turned and made a few complex gestures to one of his men, who then floated over to the bar. He turned back. “See, the Federation doesn’t like these tyrants, but it can’t go around stomping all of them. Too many, and when the Federation starts to act out against them, they’ll sometimes band together. A few dozen power-mad beings with cults of personality or enslaved worlds behind them can cause a lot of trouble. The Federation’s own fleets will always be greater, but…”

“But a whole nation dedicated to making warships and attacking everything they see could cause a lot of problems,” Diana finished. She was starting to see where he was going.

“So the Tyrant Cracker started. The first was bankrolled by some poor fool that ran away from one of those worlds. A few million credits to embarrass the planet’s dictator. It was a resounding success. A profitable one. And it eventually led to the tyrant’s collapse. Hard to be taken seriously when a group of punks just used your capital as the site of a high-stakes race.”

“And now the Federation uses the races to do the same elsewhere?”

“More or less,” Abatrath said. “The race is, of course, entirely illegal. The Federation will arrest any racer who participates and will reprimand anyone who assists quite sternly.”

Diana nodded towards the window above. “But they have a fleet right there.”

“Entirely a coincidence. Or so they’ll say. Every race one or two mercenaries get arrested for participating. They always escape before trial though. It’s a big farce to ensure the Federation isn’t actually culpable according to galactic law.”

“So, the entire race is about pissing off some one-planet despot? That… sounds kind of awesome.”

“Sure,” Abatrath said. “Now, let me explain the rules.”

***