Throttle Twenty-Nine

Unsurprisingly, there was a small crowd that gathered near the starting point of the race. People—aliens included, it seemed–were always ready to stop what they were doing to watch a disaster unfold.

Diana stretched her leg back, grabbed her ankle, then pulled it up while tensing the muscles in her thigh and calf. Then she did the same with the other leg. Stretches were surprisingly easy to do in zero-g.

“I am tempted to ask if you’re certain about this, Mistress,” ChaOS said. “But I’m aware that would be a waste of both of our time. I’m uploading a map of the route to your neural augmentations now. You have a few minutes to study it in detail. Don’t forget to keep an eye on your fuel reserves.”

Diana nodded. She brought up the information on her hud and shoved it to a corner of her vision. As it was, most of her thrusters were above the 90% mark. Those in her legs were at 87%, but even as she looked, they ticked up to 88%.

The little nozzles didn’t have much in terms of reserves though. Even just jetting around one or two corridors at full burn would likely deplete her entirely. The jets did have tiny compressors that could pull from the air around them to refill the tiny tanks of compressed air, but it was by no means a rapid process.

“Is there a way to increase the recharge rate on these things?” Diana asked. “I feel like I’m going to be redlining them the entire time at this rate.”

“I can adjust the compression rate,” ChaOS said. “It will take a few minutes for the nanites to rearrange themselves into a more optimal position.”

“Let’s do it,” Diana said. “I do want to win this thing.”

“Understood,” ChaOS said.

Diana planted a boot on ChaOS’s chest so that she could reorientate herself. A glance ‘up’ showed her new pal Abatrath talking with a few other polerins. He was noticeably bigger than most of them.

“Give me a timer on when the compression rate’s fixed,” she said. “And… yeah, ChaOS, I’m going to need your help for this one.”

“I exist to serve,” ChaOS said. “Also, I would rather you win. I have placed a substantial bet on you, and I intend to use the winnings to purchase a few things.”

Diana snorted. “Getting yourself a gambling addiction, huh?”

“It is not gambling. Merely understanding statistics and using them to my advantage to gain greater riches.”

“Uh huh,” Diana said. “Once you’re the richest entity in the universe, do remember to share.”

“I will merely have to distract you with a few shiny baubles,” ChaOS said.

Diana laughed as she launched herself over to where Abatrath was standing. She flipped over in mid-air, then tapped the ground with the tip of a boot, anchoring herself in place with the magnets in her soles.

That didn’t stop her forward momentum entirely though; she had to tense up to stop herself from swinging forwards and into the aliens around her new pal. “Hey, Abatrath, you almost ready?” she asked.

“Nearly,” Abatrath said. “You need to give the gamblers time with these kinds of events. My friends are trying to convince people that you’re a worthy opponent in all of the bars across the station.”

“That’s kind of them,” Diana said.

“Just trying to make better odds for when I win. As they are, the odds are thirteen to one in my favour. I’ll hardly win anything when you lose.”

“Aww, you’re so confident,” Diana said. “So, before we start this thing, rules?”

“There aren’t any rules to this kind of thing,” Abatrath said.

“Really?” Diana asked. She half-turned. “ChaOS, pass me your plasma rifle.”

The robot reached behind his back, then pulled out a compact rifle whose boxy frame was covered with shiny aluminium fins. It glowed a little, almost as if the gun was on the verge of exploding with violent potential.

“Perhaps some rules,” Abatrath allowed. “The children that usually participate in these street races don’t have access to anything so lethal. No guns then.”

“How about we try not to kill each other?” Diana asked. “Just a nice, fair-ish race. We can even try to avoid killing the civilians on the track too.”

“That seems reasonable,” Abatrath said.

Diana nodded. “So, how do polerin shake on agreements?”

“Shake?” Abatrath said.

“Like, a physical gesture that says that two parties are in accord over something,” Diana explained. “Where I’m from, we shake hands. Well, in most of the places where I’m from that’s how they do it. Cultures, you know?”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Ah,” Abatrath said. “You know little of the polerin then. We give each other a lock of our hair.”

Diana laughed. “That’s so romantic.”

“It’s a warrior’s gesture. There is nothing romantic in it.”

“I think it’s cute,” Diana said.

“Are you mocking my culture to encourage me to win?” he asked.

Diana shook her head while making negative gestures. “No, no, I’m sorry. Truly, really sorry. I’m being insensitive. I’m a bit of a country bumpkin. Do you want a lock of my hair?”

“No. It’s a gesture done for an agreement between warriors. Not between a talentless country bumpkin and a warrior.”

“Alright then,” Diana said. “So, standard race, from here to the end, about… is that three kilometres? First one across the line’s the winner. No murdering each other along the way.”

“Sounds about right to me,” Abatrath said.

Diana leaned forwards, bending double to touch her toes, then she stood back up and twisted left and right, working all the muscles in her lower back. “Sounds easy,” she said.

A polerin flung himself closer, only stopping with a burst of forward thrust. “Boss! Station security heard about this, they’re on their way here!”

“Looks like this is about to start then,” Abatrath said. He walked over to the edge of the platform they were on, boots clunking with every step. The edge had little footrests on it set at forty-five degree angles. Below was one of Waitless Station’s long narrow streets. Tubes on the sides, some of them filled with onlookers, and trams running across the middle in both directions.

Diana opened her hud up and studied the map. This road ended at a fork. She’d take a right, then it was down another long passage before they hit a wider area.

The timer for her compression upgrade gave her a minute forty-three seconds until completion. Until that was done, she’d be stuck using whatever compressed air she had in her tanks, which really wasn’t much.

“We’ll go on yellow,” Abatrath said. He pointed to a crossing guard sign some forty metres ahead. It had two lights, one red, which was glowing even then, and a yellow above it.

“Fair enough,” Diana said.

She put her feet onto the bracers, bunched up her legs until her muscles almost shook and stuck her rear up so that she was in as optimal a position as possible to launch herself.

Abatrath did the same, but with a lazy sort of confidence. He didn’t have jets on his arms or legs, but he did have a thruster pack on his back with much bigger tanks than anything she had.

“Good luck,” she said.

“You might rely on such frivolities,” he said. “I don’t.”

“Maybe you’ll change your mind about it,” Diana said.

She turned her focus on the lights, tuning out the rest of the world. Nothing else mattered but that split-second after the light’s colour changed.

From the edges of her vision, she took in the path ahead. There was a tram a bit below her moving towards the end of the road. A line of smaller aliens were slipping out from a tunnel at the end of the corridor. The reflected flickering of lights was glinting off of the glass on some shop fronts, the same lights she’d just seen security using.

The light went yellow.

Diana grunted as she threw herself forwards, the magnets in her boots clicking off even as she fired her back thrusters to realign her sudden burst of speed.

Abatrath was only a quarter-second behind her in reaction. His thrusters roared, and even as Diana narrowed her form to cut wind resistance, she felt the bigger polerin burst past her, the warmth of his thrust washing over her.

So, he was going to be faster in the straights.

She grinned, sharp and feral.

She could work with that.

Diana shot a leg out, half-spun in the air, then fired her thrusters to spin in the opposite direction just as she came even with the front of the tram. Her booted foot rammed into the vehicle heel-first, jarring her teeth in her mouth and sending a shock through her leg.

It also sent her flying across the tunnel much faster than she’d been going.

If Abatrath was going to have the advantage on thrust, then she’d just need to bounce around enough to negate it.

This was going to be fun!

***