Chapter 129: Preparation Complete

CLANK! WHIRRR! CLANK!

By midmorning, the far end of the hangar sounded like a construction site.

Harper was lying on her back underneath the silver-blue racer on a rolling creeper with only her boots sticking out, a torch in one hand and a spanner in her teeth, while two of Vexa’s technicians hovered nearby with the nervous look of people who had just watched a stranger take apart their life’s work.

"Who designed this coil layout?" Harper’s muffled voice came up from under the hull. "Why is the secondary injector on the left side? Who puts a secondary injector on the left side? That’s insane... That’s genuinely insane."

"It is a standard Thyrrian racing configuration, miss," one of the technicians said politely.

"It’s a standard Thyrrian mistake," Harper said. "Hand me the nine-millimeter driver... No, the other nine-millimeter driver... The good one."

Up on top of the wing, Elena knelt beside an open access panel with her sleeves rolled up and her honey-blonde hair pinned back, and her fingers rested lightly on the power coupling as her Mechanical Attunement hummed faintly through the metal.

HMMMMM...

"The power routing is less efficient than ours," she announced, frowning down at the panel. "There’s a twelve percent loss across the second junction... Bell, I’m rerouting it through the auxiliary line."

"Don’t touch my injectors while you’re up there, Princess."

"Your injectors," Elena said coolly, "are three meters away from me, Bell, and they are not yours..."

"Everything I’m currently lying under is mine... I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"That’s not how ownership works."

"It is today!"

Leo stood a little way off with his arms folded, watching them snipe at each other while they worked side by side, and he couldn’t stop smiling.

’They’d never admit it,’ he thought, ’but they’re a really good team...’

"Leo."

He turned around to find Jin-Ah standing beside him with her slate held up, and the screen was already covered in curves, numbers and a long diagonal line climbing up from the ground toward a dark band at the top.

"We need to talk about the ascent," she said seriously.

"The... ascent?"

"Launching from the surface of a planet into orbit." Jin-Ah tapped the screen. "You’ve never done it, Leo... You’ve only ever flown in open space, and the only time you’ve been near a planet’s surface was yesterday, when you came down... Going up is completely different."

"How different?" Leo asked.

"Very," Jin-Ah said, and took a breath. "When you launch, the planet’s gravity will pull you back the entire way up, so you’ll need to keep your burn high and steady until you break free... If you tip your nose over too early, you’ll waste speed fighting the air. If you tip it over too late, you’ll waste speed fighting gravity... You’ll want to climb almost straight up at first, then lean slowly toward the horizon as the air thins, and somewhere around fifty kilometers up, you’ll need to push hard to reach orbital speed before you start falling back down... Around eight kilometers per second and the air resistance will change the entire time, so the ship will handle differently every few seconds."

She looked up at him expectantly.

"Do you understand?"

Leo nodded slowly.

"Yeah," he said. "Totally."

’Go up,’ he thought. ’Go up fast. Lean over... at some point. Push hard... also at some point. Eight kilometers per second... Got it. I think. Maybe?’

Jin-Ah narrowed her eyes at him.

"You don’t understand at all, do you?"

"I understand some of it..."

"Which part?"

"The ’go up’ part," Leo said.

Jin-Ah closed her eyes for a long moment, like someone praying for patience, and then she pulled up a single very simple diagram on her slate and held it right in front of his face.

"Straight up... Then lean... Then push," she said slowly. "When the sky turns black, push harder..."

"Straight up, lean, push, black sky, push harder," Leo repeated.

"Good." Jin-Ah lowered the slate. "Now please don’t forget it the moment you launch..."

"I won’t," Leo said, and he was fairly sure he was lying.

By the time Harper finally rolled out from under the racer, smeared with grease and grinning, the launch pad up on the cliff was ready.

The techs towed the two racers up a long ramp out of the hangar and onto a wide flat platform of black stone built right at the edge of the cliffs, with the violet sea spread out far below and the open blue sky stretching endlessly above.

The silver-blue racer sat on the left side of the pad, and the pearly pink one sat on the right, side by side with their noses pointed straight up at the sky like two arrows waiting to be fired.

Vexa came skipping across the pad toward him before anyone else could, already in her white racing suit with her helmet tucked under one arm and her tail swishing excitedly behind her.

"Ready, Captain Handsome?" she sang. "Last chance to back out!"

"Not a chance," Leo said.

"Good!" She grinned up at him, and then she leaned in a little closer, lowering her voice. "Just so you know... I already picked out the venue."

"Vexa..."

"It has a view of the sea!"

"Vexa..."

Then she glanced past his shoulder, and her smile wobbled, because six women were standing a few meters behind him and staring at her with varying levels of murder in their eyes.

"...I’m going to go get in my ship now," she said, and backed away quickly, and then turned and ran.

Leo stood at the foot of his racer’s ladder, and one by one, the girls came to see him off.

Harper came first.

She walked right up to him, wiped her greasy hand on her trousers and held up her fist.

"Bump it, Cap..."

He bumped it.

THUMP!

"I fixed the injector," she said. "So if you lose, it’s not the ship’s fault, it’s yours... and then I’ll kill you."

"Got it," Leo said.

"I’m serious... I want you to win so you have to give everything you got."

"I know you are... and I’ll give everything I have and even more."

She glared at him for one more second, then grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him down and pressed a quick hard kiss to his cheek before letting go and stomping off without another word though her ears were bright red.

Elena came next.

She stepped in close without saying anything and reached up to fix his collar, folding it down neatly and smoothing it flat with both hands, even though it didn’t need fixing at all.

"The power routing is now at ninety-eight percent efficiency," she said in her cool, proper voice, keeping her eyes on his collar. "The ship will perform. I expect you to perform as well, Captain..."

"I will, Elena."

She paused with her hands still resting on his collar.

"...Come back in one piece," she said quietly. "Your racer is borrowed so I won’t be held responsible for the repair bill."

Then she stepped back and walked away with her chin up.

Aoi came after her, and she didn’t say much at all.

She just stood in front of him and looked up at him with a warm, steady expression, and then she reached out and lightly touched the back of his hand with her fingertips.

"Be careful," she said softly.

"I will."

"And Leo..." A small smile tugged at her lips. "Try to remember what Jin-Ah told you."

"Straight up, lean, push right?" Leo said.

"...Close enough," Aoi said, and her smile grew a little wider.

Jin-Ah stepped up, looked him in the eye and held up one finger.

"Eight kilometers per second..." she said.

"Eight kilometers per second..." Leo repeated.

She nodded once, satisfied, and stepped aside.

Chloe was next.

She walked up to him slowly, took hold of his sleeve with both of her small hands and just held it, looking up at him without saying a word with her green eyes steady and serious.

She held on for a second longer than she needed to, and then another, before she finally let go.

"Don’t lose," she said simply. "I don’t want to share you with the cat..."

Leo laughed and ruffled her bangs.

"I won’t."

And then, last of all, Camila stepped up.

She’d been standing at the back of the group the whole time, holding something small wrapped in a cloth napkin, and she’d been very quiet ever since breakfast.

She stopped right in front of him, looked up at him, and took a deep breath.

"Leo," she said, and her voice was trembling a little, but she didn’t look away. "I... I don’t want you to get married."

Leo blinked.

"Not yet," Camila went on quickly, and her cheeks were turning pink, but she kept going. "Not this early. Not like this, just because of some silly race... We only just got here, and everything’s only just started being good, and I don’t... I don’t want you to..."

She stopped, and her mouth opened and closed, and the words ran out completely.

Then they came back in a completely different language.

"?Ay, Dios mío, esto es una locura!" she burst out, waving her free hand in the air. "?Casarte con ella? ??Así nada más, por una carrera?! ?No, no, no, se?or! ?Tú no te vas a casar con nadie todavía, ?me oíste?! ?Con nadie! ?Y menos con una gata que ni siquiera sabe cocinar!"

Leo stared at her with his mouth slightly open.

"Camila, I don’t..."

Before he could finish, Camila unwrapped the napkin, revealed a small golden cupcake with a swirl of white frosting on top, and shoved the entire thing straight into his open mouth.

SQUISH!

"?Buena suerte, Leo!" she said fiercely, and then she spun around and fled back to the others with both hands pressed over her burning face.

Leo stood there at the foot of the ladder with his cheeks puffed out and frosting smeared across his chin, chewing slowly.

’That’s... actually a really good cupcake,’ he thought.

He swallowed and looked over at Jin-Ah.

"What did she say?"

Jin-Ah tilted her head thoughtfully, as if she were reviewing a transcript.

"She said good luck," Jin-Ah said flatly. "And some other things that I’m not going to translate..."

Behind her, Camila made a small strangled sound and hid behind Aoi.

Leo wiped the frosting off his chin with his thumb, laughing, and climbed up the ladder into the cockpit of the silver-blue racer.

FSSHHH!

The canopy slid shut over his head and sealed with a soft hiss, and the cockpit lit up around him in soft blue light.

Leo looked down at the controls, and his stomach did a small flip.

Where the crystal cradles would have been, the cockpit closed around him in a smooth shell of pale blue light.

Two contoured grips hung at the ends of the armrests inside soft fields of hard light, shaped to fit a hand and so sensitive that the racer’s whole display shivered the moment his fingertips brushed them, and holographic readouts bloomed across the inside of the canopy in curving lines of speed, altitude and heat.

Behind him, set into the back of the seat, was a curved padded slot lined with little silver contacts, and a small light beside it was blinking amber.

[Tail-link not detected... Switching to manual grip control.]

Leo stared at it.

’Tail-link,’ he thought slowly. ’They fly these things with their tails... Of course they do.’

"Oh!" Vexa’s voice came through his headset a second later, sounding honestly embarrassed. "Sorry, Leo, I totally forgot you don’t have one of those! The manual grips work great, though... Probably! Most of our trainees learn on them before they’re allowed to link up!"

"Great," Leo muttered. "So I’m flying the trainee setup..."

"The trainee setup that goes to space!" Vexa said brightly.

He wrapped his fingers around the grips, and the hard light shaped itself snugly to his palms.

For all the glowing fields and holograms, it felt strange and familiar at the same time, like a song he hadn’t heard in years.

’It’s still a stick, though,’ he thought, and a slow grin spread across his face. ’Fancier than anything in the sim lab... but it’s still a stick in my hand. Aoi’s sim class... Thursdays... The canyon run... I never touched the walls once.’

He squeezed the grips, and deep in the small of his back, the guide gave a warm pulse, like it was telling him it was still there.

Across the pad, he could see Vexa climbing into the pink racer, and she waved at him through the glass with both hands before her own canopy closed.

BZZZT-CLICK!

"Can you hear me, Leo?" Vexa’s voice came through his headset, bright and eager.

"Loud and clear..."

"Great! Also... did that girl just shove a cupcake in your mouth?"

"Yeah."

"Was it good?"

"It was really good," Leo admitted.

"I’m going to ask her for one later," Vexa said seriously. "Okay! So here’s the course."

A glowing map unfolded across his canopy display.

"We launch straight up from this pad, punch through the atmosphere and break out into orbit. Up there, there’s a loop of beacon gates around one of the small moons, and then we come all the way back down and land right here on the cliffs... First one to touch the pad wins."

She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice had gone softer.

"Leo? I really hope you do well. I mean it... I want this to be the best race of my life..."

"It will be," Leo said, settling his hands onto the controls.

Up on the terrace above the pad, the girls had gathered at the railing to watch, and the course projection was already glowing in the air in front of them.

Leo could just make them out through the side of the canopy.

Harper leaning so far over the railing that Elena had a hand fisted in the back of her shirt, Aoi with her hands clasped tight in front of her, Jin-Ah with her slate up, Camila still hiding behind Aoi and Chloe standing perfectly still at the very front.

’Alright,’ he thought, and let out a long breath. ’Straight up, lean, push... Let’s do this.’

Then a bright number lit up on both canopies at once.

[10]