Explode: Team Supernova (The Great Space Race) Read online

  Who knew you could charm an AI? Her brother was going to love this!

  Chapter Five

  APPARENTLY PART OF the gimmick for the opening gala was that contestants had to buy their own outfit—using a credit chit holding a random sum of money provided by Octiron. “We gave you a little extra on your chit,” Zissel whispered as she handed Sarr’ma her chit. “You’ll need something custom. Not many tailed people on Primaera.” This could be great! At least she wouldn’t be wearing her altered jumpsuit for the evening, and who didn’t like new clothes?

  Tripp, on the other hand, grumbled as he got ready to head out. Remembering the worn but comfortable-looking gray outfit he’d been wearing when they met, she pulled him aside. “I think I’m supposed to give you bad advice to create drama, but I don’t want to look at you in a hideous outfit all evening. So trust me: find a living clerk to help you. Sales ’bots are great, but they don’t have that much judgment. And the people from the show might steer you wrong just for comedy.”

  He must have gotten a good salesperson, because when he showed up to escort her—along with Zissel, who, in a long, shimmering silver gown, was going to make sure they both got to the gala on time—he wore a bright blue, high-necked, asymmetrical tunic-jacket thing that skimmed close to his knees on one side and showed his truly fine ass on the other, a synthsilk scarf, and tight charcoal-gray trousers. He kept tugging at the neckline of the tunic/jacket as if it was uncomfortable. “I look ridiculous.”

  Then he seemed to realize that both females were staring with something other than fascinated horror. “It’s all right?”

  “Pretty-pretty, you look good enough to eat,” Sarr’ma purred. The jacket thing was odd, but it worked, and that color was great on him. And they didn’t clash.

  Her dress wasn’t her usual style. The floor-length, slim skirt would make it hard to run, climb, or swing from chandeliers. But since it was stretch velvet, at least she could dance or get to the bar quickly at last call. She could always slit the skirt with her claws in an emergency. And there was absolute nothing wrong with scarlet stretch velvet, a deep V-neck, and a design that gave her tail freedom without exposing anything that would shock people from more prudish cultures. She’d had to fight for flats with thin, grippy soles instead of the ridiculous heels Zissel and the people at the store had recommended, but she’d won.

  And stars, she and Tripp looked good together.

  Now to check out this party. She couldn’t imagine it was going to be anything like a party back home—no whipped-cream duels or competitive games of “boost the neighbor’s zip-bike” with extra points for returning it nicely detailed. But the food, at least, should be good, and it would be a chance to check out the competition.

  In ten-minute prescribed intervals, as it turned out; around the time a conversations started getting interesting—when she thought she might be getting below someone’s slick surface or starting to figure out the body language of a new-to-her species—they’d be moved along. Even Sarr’ma’s outgoing nature was feeling the strain and poor Tripp had pretty much given up doing anything but introducing himself and then concentrating on food or quietly pretending to sip the same cocktail he’d been carrying all night.

  It was almost a relief to end up at a cocktail table with the white-skinned giant, whose name turned out to be Armond Nolde. At least they’d kind of met, even if they hadn’t spoken. His teammate was Vin, a curvy woman whose blue-black skin and ebullient personality contrasted with Armond’s pallor and supercilious silence.

  Fine. She’d let Armond and Tripp be moodily silent and she and Vin would enjoy the party. Though maybe Armond had a reason to be quiet; he was trying to not scream in sheer fashion horror. Tripp might have been afraid someone had been making fun of him, but Armond’s purple- and green-striped catastrophe of an outfit had to be a joke. He was a handsome guy once you got used to the dead-white skin, but no one could look good in that suit.

  Then again, as she looked around the crowded room, clothing in this galaxy was slightly off from what she was used to. A lot of the males looked ridiculous to her eyes—no restrained smoothstyle or elaborately elegant history-flash, but crazy color combinations and odd shapes—and almost all the females wore toweringly high heels. The twenty-first century called, she thought, remembering vintage holos she’d seen; it wants its torture-shoes back. Vin didn’t seem to have a problem with hers and they did make the dark woman’s legs look fabulous. But no way.

  She and Vin compared notes, mostly about the food (amazing and extravagant); the cocktails (too weak for Sarr’ma’s taste, but everyone else—except slow-sipping Tripp and Armond, who seemed to be drinking water, and that cautiously—seemed to be getting more and more animated as the alcohol flowed); the interesting species and crazy clothes; and the bliss of being here. Vin had never raced before, but she was a longtime fan of the show who’d applied on a whim. “So when I got the com that I was in, I was thinking this must be a joke, you know? Like someone had a vid-feed on me and was waiting to jump out and laugh. But it didn’t happen, and then I got the official confirmation for contest entry and I nearly passed out.”

  So cute. Nice to know someone else was excited to be here—unlike their grumpy partners.

  “Oh, me too!” She couldn’t help bouncing a little. “I figured I had a good chance of getting in; I’ve done solo racing and I knew from the one season that’s been broadcast in my galaxy that Octiron likes a diverse group of contestants. Who’s going to be more diverse than someone from a species that isn’t native to Paragon, right? But when I was accepted, they could probably hear me squealing three planets away.”

  “We’re living the dream. Now let’s go kick ass—after we eat well at Octiron’s expense!” Vin high-fived her. Sarr’ma remembered at the last second that when non-Mrrwr’wrn did that, claws were not involved. Vin seemed to notice the hint of claw and winked, as if to say, Your secret is safe with me.

  At that point, two waiters appeared, one with a small, fancily presented variant of the apparently universally popular meat-on-a-stick concept and the other with some kind of deep-fried pink puff. That didn’t look safe, but she snatched several of the kebabs—she might not get anything that wasn’t from a vacpac for a while after tonight, so she’d enjoy meat while she could—and watched Vin fall upon the pink puffs with glee. “You have to try these,” Vin exclaimed, urging the waiter to point the tray at Sarr’ma. “Joobroot with a stuffing of spicy bean paste. So good.”

  “All yours. I have meat. Not sure what kind, but it’s from an animal so I’m good. And it’s on a stick, which makes things taste better.”

  The two of them turned their attention to eating.

  And in the relative quiet, Sarr’ma heard Tripp ask Armond, “You’re not in this willingly?” and Armond reply, “‘Willing’ is a subjective term around here.”

  She cocked her ears toward the men while pretending to concentrate on her food and look for a waiter dispensing cocktails.

  Tripp nodded. “You got that right.” He added—a little too quickly, or was that Sarr’ma’s imagination?—“I mean, I volunteered. But you hear stories. Big corporations have a lot of power.” A sudden silence, then Tripp laughed—it seemed forced, but maybe it sounded odd to Sarr’ma because he hadn’t done it often when she could hear. “You’ve got yourself a chatty partner.”

  Armond sighed. “All too true.”

  Vin , who hadn’t heard the first part of the exchange, chuckled at that. “Poor uptight Armond. I hope he loosens up.”

  “He just implied he wasn’t here voluntarily!” Sarr’ma hissed. “That’s a good reason to be on edge.”

  “No way! He must have applied the same as everyone. He’s tired and dealing with culture shock—he’s a long way from home—so he probably misspoke, or his translator glitched.”

  “I’m a long way from home too and I’m having a great time. If he’s being coerced somehow…”

  Vin looked shocked. “This is The Great Space
Race! It’s been around for years. It can’t be doing something that sleazy or people would know. Plus, Armond’s not dumb and he seems like a major control freak. If he didn’t want to be here, he’d have found a way to fix it. Not that he acts like he wants to be here, but I think that’s because he’s either a stick or super-shy.”

  “Sounds like my partner.”

  Vin paused, took another bite of food, then grinned. “Too bad we can’t trade partners. You and I could go meet interesting people, eat exotic food, and generally have a cosmic adventure, and the guys could be sexily broody and not talk for days. We could be Team Party and Team Silent.”

  Sarr’ma couldn’t decide if she wanted to press the issue of people being coerced or laugh about the guys being “sexily broody”—definitely some truth there!—but a bell rang, indicating it was time to circulate on to the next pair of contestants.

  Tripp, she noticed, seemed more withdrawn than ever after his chat with Armond.

  *

  She met so many people that even her sociable head was swimming, ate far too much, and practically dozed off listening to an endless, smug welcoming speech by the show’s primary host Suede (or was it Leather?) Something-or-Another, who was either famous or acted like he was, but finally the gala was over. Sarr’ma waited for a chance to get Tripp alone in the hallway of the hotel where candidates were staying until the race started. “You asked Armond whether he was here willingly. What the marling stars is up with that?”

  Tripp looked at the floor. “He looked like he expected to be on This Week in Bleeding-Edge Science and wound up here instead, so I was poking him. But the laws in the Central Alliance are bizarre. Non-citizens don’t have full legal rights and there are weird loopholes, like, if you can trick a non-citizen into signing a contract, it’s binding.”

  “Yeah, I saw that on the Universenet; my mother always told me to know the local laws when I was traveling. I’m being on my best behavior, you bet!”

  “Big corporations like Octiron can do a lot with gray areas in the law. So there are always rumors that they rope people from outside the Alliance into joining the show for a more diverse group of contestants. I was talking about the rumors, but the way Armond reacted, either his translation software glitched or maybe there is something shady going on.”

  She thought back to the gala. No one had said anything to her directly that suggested they weren’t there on purpose—although Team Orion Nebula, who obviously knew and loathed each other pre-race, talked around why they were there. But she’d overheard a few things that hadn’t made sense until now.

  Not everyone had come here as eager and excited as she and Vin.

  “I can’t participate in this if people are being forced to race! I don’t care if it’s quasi-legal here, it’s against everything my culture believes. I should quit. I think I will quit!” She took two steps toward her room, fully intending to start packing.

  Tripp grabbed her arm. “You can’t quit!”

  “Watch me!” She shook off his grip. “Sorry. I know it would put you in a tough place, but I’m not sure I can go through with this if I even suspect Octiron’s doing things like that.” She took a deep breath. She wanted to do this race, but did she want fame, killer tech, and a chance to prove to herself she wasn’t a nashbet enough to support such slimy tactics?

  It was a tougher call than she’d ever admit to her brother.

  “No, I mean you literally can’t quit. It says right in your contract that Octiron will only arrange for contestants’ transportation home if they make a good-faith effort to finish the race.”

  Blast him for being right and ruining a good rant with sense! Her tail sank toward the floor. “Marling stars, I forgot about that. It’s not like there are commercial intergalactic flights yet, let alone commercial instantaneous transports. I guess I have to do this. No, I have to win this. And then I can expose what’s going on.” Her tail started to return to its normal proud arch along her spine.

  “Nothing’s going on, Sarr’ma. At least, we can’t prove it. So let’s just have a good race and not make a fuss.”

  Sarr’ma watched Tripp’s face. Too serious for a man who claimed he’d been teasing Armond earlier and was talking calmly about having a good race. Too many signs of anger for a man who claimed he wasn’t sure anything shady was going on. “Are you here on purpose, Tripp?”

  Tripp pretended to count on his fingers. “Let’s see: I can explore the galaxy on a super-fast luxury yacht, maybe win a lot of credits, and at least end up with great stories to impress girls. Or I can stay on Nieves in a job that’s dangerous, low-paid, and boring. You bet I applied! I’m in way over my head and have no idea what’s going on most of the time, but it still beats mining.” Tripp snorted. “Say, did you actually pounce on that bizarre wiggling dessert?”

  Nice change of subject, but she couldn’t help laughing. “How is a cat-girl supposed to resist that? At least I knocked it off the tray instead of tackling the poor waiter.” She sighed theatrically. “It wasn’t even that good once I caught it. Something that moves ought to be meat, not sweet.”

  Tripp made a face that might be a grimace or a rusty attempt at a smile. “You are the strangest girl, Sarr’ma. But I’m sure we’re getting some popularity votes for you cavorting on the floor chasing your dessert while wearing an evening dress. I’ll take all the points we can get.”

  Chapter Six

  THE RACE WAS about to start. And Tripp could do nothing but hope Sarr’ma was as good as she thought she was, as good as the pre-show flight simulators suggested. His instructions, both official and from his bouncy teammate, were to stay out of the way and keep his mouth shut.

  Sarr’ma added a few strategically-placed marlings to the instructions; he’d never heard the word before meeting Sarr’ma, but the meaning was obvious.

  He looked out the wide, sweeping windows that surrounded the Supernova’s bridge. Twenty-one nearly identical ships, crowded together like cargo floaters in the storage shed, hovered, waiting for the signal to start. Some of them, he figured, were piloted by people whose simulator scores were only slightly better than his, relying on the AI to do most of the work. He’d heard an AI could do much of the flying in open space, with a living pilot keeping an eye on things in case of emergency. In such close quarters, though…

  Some of us are going to die.

  If it’s us, Zel’s doomed too.

  And I can’t do a thing to help.

  I can’t even com her to say good-bye. The com’s set for tomorrow night and it’s not like Eno would change it because of the race schedule.

  As the countdown began, he closed his eyes and began reciting the Central Principles to himself. It wouldn’t help any of them to survive, but it should help him keep his dignity—or at the very least, not distract Sarr’ma and/or Sparky at a critical moment.

  All that is born dies, and all that dies returns to stars and dust.…

  Maybe he’d be better off reciting nursery rhymes or telling himself dirty stories. But at the moment, the Central Principles were all he could remember.

  *

  Sarr’ma’s previous races had all started once the competitors reached an out-of-atmo area bounded by given coordinates. Kilometers between you and the next ship. Plenty of room to maneuver.

  This one started at a spaceport. What a marling idiotic idea.

  The good news was that it was a huge station floating in low orbit over Primaera. But it still wasn’t big enough for this many ships to take off at once without drama. The distance between ships was doable for experienced pilots in no particular hurry, but less than ideal for mostly newbie racers with new-to-them racing yachts. Even though many of the other competitors had flown something, only a few had raced before.

  Which meant their instincts would be to start as quickly as possible, rather than as intelligently as possible. On a course that spanned days and thousands of kilometers—let alone months and light-years like this one—your initial position didn’t matt
er that much as long as you got started safely. But she hadn’t believed that as a newbie. Thankfully the Seit Quadrant race start was one of those widely dispersed ones, so she’d done nothing worse than waste fuel and get her tail in a knot for no good purpose.

  In such close quarters, it might not go so well.

  As the countdown started, she took a second to look at Tripp. His eyes were closed. His big hands gripped the armrests of his “co-pilot’s” chair. (She put the word in mental quotation marks. Her strong, quiet partner would be useful on the challenges, but he’d been the first to say the closest he’d come to flying the Supernova would be keeping an eye on instrument readouts while Sparky was in charge and letting her know if anything veered from safe parameters—and the instruments were color-coded so he didn’t need to remember anything technical.)

  She thought he was muttering something to himself. Praying, maybe. Couldn’t say she blamed him. She always sent a few words to the Great Cat Mother at the start of a race and she was more or less in control. If she’d been sitting there surrounded by the flashes and bleeps of unfamiliar instruments and hoping someone she’d just met knew what they were doing, she’d be pitching prayers to every deity she’d ever heard of and a general petition to any she’d missed.

  She wanted to crawl into his lap, put her arms around him, and tell him everything would be all right. But the race was about to start, and even if he’d been comfortable with the casual touch that came so naturally to her—and he didn’t seem to be—he’d have no reason to find her reassurances comforting.

  Especially when she doubted them herself. She trusted her own skills. It was everyone else she was worried about.

  “Sparky, are you ready?” She made sure her voice was perky, musical, confident. The contestants couldn’t hear everything from their competitors’ ships; it would be overwhelming. But once in a while, the show runners let you hear a snippet (including one bloodcurdling conversation that revealed why Tierc and Ahnna of Team Orion Nebula had more reason to kill each other than work together—and she’d thought she’d had bad luck because she’d been paired with an inexperienced partner). If they projected her voice to other ships, she’d better sound like a winner.