Flight of the 500, page 7
“I could say the same about you.”
Raith nodded. It was true. There weren’t many SI racers. “Last question. Were you telling the truth when you said everyone was holding back their throttle on the practice runs?”
Carter laughed, slapping his knee in sync with his final toss. “I think you know the answer, my friend.”
Raith returned to the Juniper, finding his crew seated in the common area. “We need to talk,” Harrison said.
“Yes, father,” Raith said. “I’m here for discipline. What can I do for you?”
“Can you take this seriously for one second?” Donyi said. Erika stayed silent. “We’re ready to leave you here, on your own. This is ridiculous.”
“Hey!” Raith raised his hands. “I didn’t ask for you all. You should have known what you were getting when you targeted me. If you can’t learn to work with me, then leave. What do I care?”
“Raith,” Bonta said, his voice measured. “If we leave, so does the ship.”
“Wait, what?”
Harrison grimaced, resting his hand on the table. “I didn’t want to pull this card, but I thought I made it clear the first day you set foot on the Juniper. Take a seat.”
Raith reluctantly obliged, plopping onto one of the cabin’s couches. “All right. I’m listening.”
The man nodded, revealing the graying ends of his black hair. “Good. Now listen up. You’re part of a team. We are that team. You are going to let us run this team like a team.”
“Look, I know—”
“Raith, let the damn man finish speaking!” Bonta said.
“Right.” Raith swiveled his head to face the other SI. “Fine.”
“Thank you, Bonta,” Harrison said. “So I don’t know what the hell happened to you in prison, but this is not the synth-psyche profile we pulled when we selected you. You used to be part of a team, man! They were your family, you all worked together like clockwork. You’re not even giving us the chance to work with you. So what do we need to do to make you feel comfortable?”
Thankfully, they hadn’t mentioned Hector’s name. Or any of the others. “Look, I—”
“He’s still not finished,” said Erika and Donyi in unison.
“Okay, seriously, you both need to tell me what’s up or cut that out,” Raith said.
Their eyes widened at his outburst toward them. “Look, you don’t understand a thing about how our mind works, if you would actually pay attention to someone other than yourself—ugh. Forget it.”
Harrison stared at the ceiling, clearly frustrated at how this meeting was going. “All right, here’s how it’s going to go down. You’re going to start by talking to us about everything. Everything. If you want the Vindicta to remain here with you so you can race, you’ve got two weeks to get your act together. And that starts with telling us what the hell is going on. Why you won’t let us work with you on the simulations. Why you play as much poker as an alcoholic drinks. Why you met with Vanaka two weeks ago without saying a word to anyone.”
Raith’s eyes widened, nodding in understanding. “Were you spying on me?”
Bonta shrugged. “I followed you. We know where every racer is sleeping.”
“You followed me?” Raith couldn’t believe it. His own crew, spying on him. “How can I trust you if you’re spying on me?”
“We don’t know a damn thing about you because you won’t talk to us,” Harrison said.
Raith slammed a fist against the wall. “Because I don’t like who I am!” The room went silent. His eyes drifted from corner to corner, avoiding contact with any of the people in the room. “You happy now?”
Erika and Donyi stood, approaching him.
“What are you doing?”
The pair arrived by his side, enveloping him in a massive sandwich of a hug.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Raith, open your eyes, look beyond your mind, and see the people around you for what they are.” They released the hug. “Who do you think we are?”
Raith stared up at the two women, noticing for the first time, more. Simply more. More than the fact they were practically tied at the hip. More than their weird voice thing. Green eyes, ochre skin, colorful, wispy hair. “You’re twins,” he said. He noticed the scars on their heads. “You were . . . conjoined twins.”
“Correct,” they said at the same time. “And do you know why we sometimes speak simultaneously?”
“No idea.”
“When we were two, and they separated us through surgery, we received implants to ensure our nervous and mental faculties stayed intact. Because our brains were slightly connected . . . the implants need to talk to each other. Keep our brains talking to each other. Our minds? They’re slightly melded together.”
“That’s . . . amazing.”
“You might think so, but many others did not. Do not.”
Raith saw the truth. Their deep eyes told a story he couldn’t fathom. For years, they must have hated their existence. And yet . . . here they were, with an SI and a man for a family. “You were outcasts.”
“We know what it’s like to hate yourself,” they said, “and we are here for you, if you need it.”
“Now look at me,” Harrison said. “Do you see who I am?” He tilted his head slightly in the other direction.
Raith zoomed in on the man’s head . . . and there it was. A tiny grey tattoo, snuck beneath his ear. “You were a convict.” He accessed ICH court records. “Fifteen years for smuggling . . . contraband weapons. To rebels in the frontier worlds? And you still worked with Theren?”
“Don’t act like you know everything about them, Raith,” Bonta said.
“The point is,” Harrison said, “I know what you went through. “Over a decade in the pen, and I lost a larger percentage of my years than you did.”
“So what about Bonta?” Raith said. “You look like an ordinary SI. Nothing strange about you.”
Bonta laughed. “Normal? Me? Oh boy.”
Using AR, Bonta threw a digital diagram into the air. “This ship? It’s the Colossus. A former colony ship from the twenty-second century. Pre-ICH years.”
Raith nodded. “I recognize it. One of the ones that ghosted for a few decades before ICH scouts found it, lost en-route to its destination. What about it?”
“I was the Colossus.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Bonta leaned forward. “That ship? That ship was me. I flew it straight through a meteor shower that crippled all its systems. Life support failed, all my passengers died within days. Nothing we could do. No one to save us. Instead, I sat there, alone, for fifty years before they found me.”
“Jesus.”
“Didn’t take you for a religious one,” Bonta said.
“Funny.” Raith leaned forward, clasping his hands together. “Okay, I get your point. We all have our demons. I just don’t understand what you expect me to do. I can’t change how I feel. I’m still grieving from the loss of everything. I went numb in there, and now I’m out, I have my second chance, but . . . I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for a family again.”
Harrison smiled. “Those words, my friend, they’re the first step in the right direction. We’re all a little crazy here, and that’s a good thing. Embrace it. And we’ll embrace you.”
“I’ll . . . I’ll try.”
“That’s all we ask,” Erika and Donyi said.
Qualifying, one day away. After joining the humans of his crew for lunch, Raith stopped by the Bloodhound to wish Carter luck. The man smiled, saying, “luck has nothing to do with it,” and Raith continued onward, calming his mind with a lap around the Hub.
While he’d spent most of his time holed up either in the hangar or at the Lightspeed Café, Raith made a point of exploring other portions of the Hub. Never hurt to know more about the neighborhood. He appreciated the station’s design; a sphere, with similarly spherical layers increasingly smaller and smaller when nearing the center. It was elegant, and pedestrians could quickly reach any destination in under three hours just by walking. Of course, lifts were also an option, but it wasn’t fun getting somewhere quickly. He traveled fast plenty when flying.
So once a week, he left the Juniper early in the day for a full lap around the Hub’s outer ring, sometimes walking, sometimes jogging. With a jog, so began his final lap before the race officially started.
An hour into his jog, the hallway narrowed. No, that wasn’t right. The lights were dimming, changing the perception of the hall. On a station constantly monitored by a million nano-bots, there shouldn’t be any—
A bag flew over his head. Rough hands shoved him through a nearby door.
They pulled the bag off his face, a bright line shining in his eyes. Cold water splashed his faceplate. “What the void was that for?” Shadowy figures danced behind the glow, but he couldn’t make out any distinguishing features.
“Raith.” A modulated voice, though no way to know if it was Vanaka again. “You thought you’d escape us? Do you know what we’re going to do to you?”
“Go to hell.”
“Raith, the race begins tomorrow. You might have escaped us with your clever stunts, but this is your last opportunity. You owe us. You know you owe us.”
“And I said, go to hell. Look, I ruined my life when I worked with you twenty years ago. You think I’m going to put myself through all of that again? You think I’m going to risk another twenty years because you can’t let sleeping androids lie?”
The voice laughed. “You don’t understand what’s at stake here. You never can. This is more than just about you and some petty race. We need that ship.”
“I’m the only one who can fly it.”
“That’s not true. You’re not special.”
Raith scoffed, and they threw more water across his face. “You know that doesn’t really do anything to me.”
Ignoring his comment, the voice said, “We need you to win, whether you’re with us or not. And we’re going to make you recognize that truth. So. Starting with your friends. Especially your new one.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“Then you won’t care if we ensure Carter Ricks doesn’t make it through qualifying?”
Raith paused. No, Carter wasn’t his friend. Right? They had great chats, sure, but friends? He was forming a closer relationship with his crew, too, but of course, the Conglomerate wouldn’t take out those who would help Raith win. So the answer was simple. “Do whatever you want to Carter. I don’t care. It won’t convince me to give you the ship. You’re going to need to pry it from my hands after I win the race.”
“Maybe we’ll do exactly that.” The bag dropped back over Raith’s head.
“You know, that’s not really necessary. I can still track where I’m going when you block my visual receptors.” He knew it was to hide their faces from his view, but he still liked mocking them.
“Just move.”
They took him through a few winding hallways and kicked him out a door near where he’d been jogging. The whole ordeal lasted less than twenty minutes. He thought about taking a lift back to the hangar, but choosing to do so would signal something was up. By now, everyone on his team knew he avoided the lifts whenever possible, especially on his morning jaunts. He resumed his jog, finishing only ten minutes behind schedule.
“Friends, both synthetics and humans alike, I welcome you all to the first annual Five Hundred Light-year Classic, presented by QuanCom!”
The crowd in the auditorium cheered. Raith stood next to Carter on the stage, seven hundred or so other racers surrounding them. The Hub’s main auditorium was capable of holding nearly fifty-thousand spectators. QuanCom had practically built their own planet for the race. A funny thought, Raith mused, when considering it orbited one.
“Today begins the official start of qualifying!” The voice resounded. Supposedly, the announcer was some famous voice of the past half-century, but Raith couldn’t give two Jumps who he was. “Beginning at noon, Hub Standard Time, the first qualifier, drawn from a lottery, will make their run down the Gauntlet, our specially designed qualifying course! Three light-years to a nearby system. Racers earn points for their place reaching the target. Then, a series of technical loops earn them the second set of points. Together—their score creates their qualifying rank. The Gauntlet. You’ll love it.”
“The what?” Raith said, other racers surrounding him similarly murmuring.
“You hadn’t heard the rumors?” Carter whispered.
“Uh, no, you had?”
“This is why you gotta talk to people. There’d been mutterings that qualifying would occur on a course completely separate from the fifty-light-year route we’ll be racing.”
“Fantastic. Just fantastic. So the simulations were for nothing?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Might contain some of the same elements, we’re still in the same sector of space, after all. I imagine it might go through the same system as the first major checkpoint.”
Raith sighed, turning his attention back to the speaker.
“—when all is said and done, we’ll have five hundred racers, ready to go in two weeks. Who will be the first champion of the Five Hundred Light-year Classic? Who will go down in history as the first pilot to win a race at full Jump? Stay tuned!”
The cheesiness of the lines almost made Raith laugh, but he held back his sound box. The crowds began dispersing, and the other racers flooded out of the room toward their hangars. Carter and Raith headed out together. For the first few hundred meters, they walked in silence.
As they neared the hall of their hangar, Carter said, “You’re going to do great.”
“Thanks?” Raith replied. “You too?”
Carter rested his hand on Raith’s shoulder. “We’re both in the front of the pack on all the record boards. Obviously no one knows what anyone’s ship can actually do, but this’ll be the first time anyone’s run their ships for more than a few hours. Three light-years? That’s two days in the seat. Gonna be fun.”
Raith nodded. “I’m still surprised they’re letting SIs compete against humans.”
“You know, it’s that attitude that sometimes makes us fleshy boys and girls not like you.”
“Hey, I’m just calling it how it is. We don’t need sleep. You do.”
“And we’ve got plenty of time to sleep in the void between systems and checkpoints.”
They reached the hangar doors. As they slid open, Raith said, “Sure, but that’s when I’ll be doing my calculations for the next set of vectors. I’ll be able to run through millions of possibilities.”
Carter stopped, his eyes meeting Raith’s. “Oh, right. Of course you’ve not actually read the rule-book.”
“What?”
“Humans get ship-board computers to help with a lot of the calculations.”
“What?”
Carter started walking again, heading toward his Bloodhound. “You really should pay attention.”
“They told me this race had no rules!” Raith shouted after him.
“Every race has rules,” Carter replied.
Twenty-third. He’d drawn twenty-third. QuanCom released racers onto the course ever ten minutes, which meant he suited up in the Vindicta three hours after the first pilot launched. A half hour later, he was floating in space, drifting between two virtual buoys.
“All right,” said Bonta’s voice in his head. “You ready for this?”
“You ask that all the time,” Raith said.
“I know what it’s like to be in the void alone for days on end,” they said. “I’ll be in your ear the entire time.”
“A little creepy.” Then he added, “But . . . I appreciate it. Glad to have you with me.”
Piped through the QuanCom transmitter and into his “display” were a series of darkened lights, though it was hard to describe as such, given he perceived the world through a three-hundred-sixty degree orientation using all the ship’s sensors. “All clear,” said a race coordinator over the public channel.
“You’re probably going to need to turn that off,” said Bonta. “No need to hear their comments.”
“Aw, but I want to know how everyone else is doing!” Raith said. “What’s the fun if I don’t know what time to beat for each section?”
“Focus on the course, let me do the hard numbers. I’ll give you lead times.”
“Fine. Fair. All right, we got this.” He disconnected from the public channel.
As if reading his mind, the race coordinator triggered the countdown sequence. The dimmed lights began to ignite, one at a time. Three red lights from the left. Then two yellow, then . . .
Green.
Raith gunned the throttle. The Jump-core created its warping gravitational fields.
The thrill. The rush. It all returned, his mind entering its natural state. He was racing again.
The first six hours of the race were dreadfully boring, hitting check points out in the void between worlds. Until someone actually experienced flying solo between two star systems, it was nearly impossible to explain its utter emptiness. Billions upon billions of cubic kilometers without anything at all. Sure, there were stray pebbles or pockets of gas, maybe a random asteroid jettisoned away from a star, but the odds of actually encountering anything significant were infinitesimally low.
So for the first six hours, Bonta and Raith charted their plan through the Gauntlet. They now understood why it bore the name.
“Okay, so I think we’ve nailed the correct vectors,” Raith said. “What are our unknown variables?”
Bonta sighed. “We’ve got very few. The most unfortunate truth of all this? Since we’re twenty-fourth, we only get to see twenty three runs before we make a decision on our vectors.”
“I looked up their profiles. Good chance at least half the racers in front of us are never going to make it into the five hundred.”
“That might be an understatement, which makes their vectors even less useful.”
Raith brought up the course map. The qualifying route actually ended in S-1024. Racers then flew back without receiving a score for the return journey on a different Jump vector. So a little less than three light-years of straight flying, gunning it for their destination. Then, the most complex set of in-system maneuvers Raith could imagine, all while at Jump. “They really know how to weed out the worst of us.”
