Chapter 128: Terms Of The Race

DING-DING-DING!

A soft chime rang through the suite, and Leo cracked one eye open to find bright golden sunlight pouring in through the glass wall and Chloe still sprawled across his chest like a small sleepy blanket.

"Good morning, honored guests," came a gentle voice through a speaker by the door, which Leo was fairly sure belonged to Sira.

"Breakfast is being served on the sea terrace. Miss Vexa asks that everyone attend... She says it’s very important, and also that the pastries are getting cold."

Chloe made a small unhappy noise and burrowed deeper into his shirt.

"Five more minutes..." she mumbled.

"Pastries, Chloe," Leo said.

"...I don’t eat pastries."

"Camila’s going to be there."

Chloe considered this for a long moment, and then she sighed and slowly peeled herself off him like a cat leaving a warm windowsill.

The sea terrace was a long stone balcony hanging right over the edge of the cliff, with nothing between the table and the violet ocean three hundred meters below except a low glass railing and a lot of open air.

The table itself was ridiculous.

It was covered end to end in silver dishes piled with food they’d never seen before... glossy blue fruits sliced into star shapes, little golden pastries dusted with something that sparkled, bowls of thick cream, plates of crispy pink strips of something that smelled exactly like bacon, and a tall steaming pot of a dark drink that turned out to be real coffee.

Leo poured himself a cup of the coffee, took one sip and had to put it down for a second.

’Oh man,’ he thought, staring into the cup. ’That’s real coffee... That’s actual, real coffee... I haven’t had coffee since the morning before the sky broke. Still, why does Nexus-Prime have the same food as Earth?’

He picked it back up and held it in both hands like it might run away. Harper sat down, picked up a pastry, bit into it and closed her eyes.

"I’m never leaving," she said with her mouth full. "This is my house now. I live here..."

"You said that about the machine shop yesterday," Elena pointed out, pouring herself a cup of coffee with perfect posture.

"I can live in two places, Princess."

Camila had already disappeared into the kitchen to interrogate Ollo about the pastries, and they could hear her asking question after question in an excited voice while Ollo answered by singing.

Jin-Ah was cataloguing every dish on her slate, Aoi was quietly enjoying her coffee with a small, peaceful smile, and Chloe sat at Leo’s elbow with her glass of lemon water and glared across the table at Vexa every few seconds.

Vexa, for her part, was carefully not looking at Leo, and she was also carefully not looking at Harper.

Harper was carefully looking at both of them with a huge grin.

’Please don’t say it,’ Leo thought, staring at his plate. ’Please, please don’t say it again...’

Harper opened her mouth.

"So!" Vexa said loudly, jumping to her feet and clapping her hands together. "The race!"

Harper closed her mouth again, grinning even wider, and Leo let out a breath of relief.

Vexa planted her hands on the table and leaned forward, and her tail started swaying behind her in slow, excited arcs.

"So, here’s how it works," she said. "This race is unofficial... No broadcast, no cameras, no crowd and no betting syndicates. It’s just you and me, Leo, because this one’s personal." She smiled at the girls around the table.

"You all get to watch, of course! I’ll have the course projected out here on the terrace so you can see every turn."

"And the stakes?" Jin-Ah asked, looking up from her slate. "You said there would be terms..."

"Right! The stakes!" Vexa bounced once on her toes. "If Leo wins, I’ll sponsor your residency right away, and I’ll help you with everything you need on Nexus-Prime... IDs, contacts, a place to work, introductions to the Merchant Houses, all of it with no strings attached."

"That’s very generous," Aoi said carefully.

"And if I win..."

Vexa paused, and her cheeks went a little pink, and her tail swished faster.

"...Leo marries me."

The terrace went completely silent as somewhere far below, a wave crashed against the rocks.

"Immediately," Vexa added brightly.

CLATTER!

Harper’s pastry fell out of her hand and bounced off her plate.

Leo stared at Vexa with his coffee cup frozen halfway to his mouth, and his brain simply refused to process the words for a few long seconds.

’Married? Married?! She just... What? Did she just say married?!’

Vexa smiled at him sweetly and sat back down with her hands folded in her lap, completely pleased with herself.

’He’ll still marry me later anyway,’ she thought happily, watching his frozen face. ’Obviously but for now... it’s a great motivator!’

Privately, a sensible part of her would have preferred to take her time first, to learn everything about him, what he liked to eat, what made him laugh, how he took his coffee, so that she could be the best wife in forty systems...

’But who said anything about not marrying him now?’ she thought, and her tail wagged harder.

The silence broke.

"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Harper slammed both hands on the table and shot to her feet so fast that her chair scraped backward across the stone. "Are you out of your mind, cat-girl?! You can’t just bet a whole person in a race! He’s not a trophy! He’s not one of your little crystal statues!"

"I wasn’t betting him," Vexa said, confused. "I was betting me though..."

"THAT’S WORSE!"

"Why is that worse?!" Vexa looked around the table, honestly baffled, and her ears drooped a little. "I’m a great catch! I’m rich, I’m famous, I’m fast, I have twelve kilometers of grass... and when I find someone who flies like him, I’m not just going to let him fly away! Do you know how long I waited to find someone who feels the same thing I feel?!"

For just a second, nobody had an answer to that, and the terrace went a little quieter.

"This is contractual extortion," Elena said coldly, setting her coffee cup down so precisely that it didn’t make a sound. "You’re holding our legal residency hostage in exchange for a marriage contract... In any civilized court, that would be thrown out in under a minute."

"There’s also no legal precedent for an inter-species marriage between a Thyrrian citizen and an unregistered Seeded human," Jin-Ah added, scrolling rapidly through her slate. "The paperwork alone would take weeks and Leo technically isn’t even a person yet, legally speaking, until his ID is filed, so you’d be marrying... an undocumented individual."

"Then I’ll file the ID first!" Vexa said brightly. "Problem solved!"

"That’s not how any of this works!" Harper shouted.

Aoi set down her cup very calmly, folded her hands on the table and took a slow breath.

"Vexa," she began, in the patient, reasonable voice of a lecturer about to explain something to a confused student. "I understand that your culture might view these things differently, but on Earth, marriage is a very serious commitment between two people who..."

"I am very serious!" Vexa said.

Aoi opened her mouth, closed it again and looked at Leo helplessly.

Camila had come out of the kitchen halfway through the argument, holding a plate of pastries, and she was standing frozen in the doorway with an expression Leo had never seen on her face before, quiet and very still and beside Leo’s elbow, Chloe said nothing at all.

She just stared across the table at Vexa with her green eyes completely empty of expression, unblinking, and her fingers wrapped very tightly around her glass of lemon water.

CRACK!

A thin line split across the side of the glass.

Vexa glanced at Chloe, and her ears went flat, and she scooted her chair a few centimeters farther away.

"Okay," Leo said, finally setting his coffee down. "Okay, everybody, just... hold on."

The terrace went quiet again, and every head turned toward him.

He looked across the table at Vexa, at her hopeful pink face and her wagging tail, and then around at the girls, at Harper’s furious red face and Aoi’s worried eyes and Elena’s icy glare.

’This is insane,’ he thought. ’This is completely insane... But we need those IDs. Without her sponsorship, it’s six months in a dorm and losing the ship and honestly...’

He felt the faint warm buzz of the guide in his back, the same buzz he’d felt flying beside her through the asteroid stream.

’Honestly, I want to race her. I really, really want to race her.’

"I’m going to win..." he said simply.

Vexa’s eyes lit up.

"Is that a yes?"

"It’s a yes," Leo said. "Because I’m going to win."

"Leo!" Harper hissed.

"Harper... do you think I’m going to lose?"

Harper opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again, and glared at him for a long moment with her arms folded.

"...No," she muttered finally. "But if you do, I’m gonna kill you, and then I’m gonna kill her."

’I doubt you would.’ Leo thought with a sweatdrop, Vexa was too strong for her own good... He was pretty sure she was faster than a bullet which was actually crazy when you thought about it.

"Fair," Leo said.

It took another twenty minutes of arguing before everyone grudgingly agreed.

"I want it noted for the record," Elena said stiffly, "that I object to this entire arrangement in the strongest possible terms."

"Noted," Jin-Ah said, typing it into her slate. "Vexa... I also need you to confirm something in front of witnesses."

Vexa perked up.

"Okay!"

"Whatever happens in this race, win or lose, you will still sponsor our residency." Jin-Ah looked up at her steadily. "Our IDs don’t depend on Leo marrying you... Only the extra help does."

"Of course!" Vexa said, looking genuinely shocked that anyone would think otherwise. "I’d never leave you all stuck in a dorm! That would be horrible! The marriage is just... a bonus prize."

"For you," Harper muttered.

"For me, I agree..." Vexa agreed happily.

Aoi caught Leo’s eye across the table, and her voice went soft.

"Just be careful, Leo," she said quietly. "Please..."

"I’ll be careful," he promised.

Nobody asked Chloe what she thought since Chloe didn’t offer, and the cracked glass of lemon water sat in front of her for the rest of breakfast like a warning.

Afterward, Vexa led them all down the stone steps to the hangar.

The Wanderer-7 sat exactly where they’d left her on the polished black floor, and the Violet Mirage gleamed beside her in its own bay.

Vexa walked right past both of them.

"Wait," Leo said. "We’re not using our ships...?"

"Nope!" Vexa spun around, walking backward again with her arms spread wide. "You’re too used to that chubby gunboat, and I’ve been flying the Mirage since I was a teenager... That’s not fair for either of us... A real racer has to be able to switch ships and still win so today, we’re both flying something new."

She stopped in front of two tall bays at the far end of the hangar and slapped a control panel.

CLANK-WHIRRR!

The bay doors slid open, and two racers rolled out on their cradles side by side.

They were a matched pair, sleek and narrow, about thirty meters long with swept-back wings and long needle noses, and their engines were mounted in a tight cluster at the back like the barrels of a gun.

One was painted silver-white with long streaks of blue along its flanks, and the other was a pale pearly pink with white trim.

"They’re twins," Vexa said proudly. "Same engines, same frames, same everything. They can fly straight from the ground up into orbit and back again without breaking a sweat... The blue one’s yours, Leo."

Harper let out a low whistle in spite of herself and walked a slow circle around the blue racer with her hands in her pockets, peering up at the engine cluster.

"Okay... okay, I hate that she’s a lunatic," she muttered, "because these are gorgeous. Look at that intake geometry, Princess."

"I’m looking," Elena said, already crouched beside the landing gear and running her fingers along a power coupling with a thoughtful frown. "The routing is unfamiliar... Bell, I’ll want to go over the entire power bus before he takes it up."

"Already on it," Harper said, and for once, the two of them didn’t argue about who’d go first.

Leo walked over to the silver-blue racer and looked up at it.

Behind him, the comm panel on the Wanderer-7’s hull gave a small distinct chime as he walked away from her.

[This unit will remain here and judge the Master Captain’s choice of vessel...]

"Sorry, Vela," Leo said, and he couldn’t quite keep the grin off his face. "It’s just for today..."

He climbed up the short ladder onto the wing of the racer and reached out and laid his bare hand flat against the cool silver hull.

For a second, nothing happened then, deep in the small of his back, the guide stirred.

It was a faint warm tug, reaching toward a ship that wasn’t his and had never been his, and the hull under his palm seemed, just for a moment to hum back.

’What a weird feeling...’