Mission Pack 2: Missions 5-8 (Black Ocean Mission Pack) Page 4

  A few of the contestants made salutary remarks. One or two snuck in a barb about his age, state of drunkenness the prior night, or some mixture of the two that implied someone his age shouldn’t try to match drink for drink with pilots ten years younger.

  Stacy from Silde Slims pulled him aside. She wasn’t dressed up in the promotional shirts that the lackeys were wearing, which meant she was actually higher up the food chain than Carl had credited her. “Ramsey!” she hissed. “You pull a stunt like that again, you’re out. If this were a field of 32 instead of 64, we’d have packed up and left by now. And look at you. There are cameras here, for God’s sake!”

  “Lucky for you, I guess,” Carl said. “You’d hate to miss out on me. As for the rest… I don’t clean up so good. Maybe you’re not seeing me at the top of my game, but my top ain’t much better. This is a flying contest, not a fashion show.”

  “It’s supposed to be a little of both,” Stacy replied.

  But Carl’s attention was drifting away. He squinted against the light and the pounding in his head to make out the times on the leader board. Most hovered around the 3:00 mark, but the top scores were closer to 2:55. Beside each name, there was a portrait of the contestant; he looked for July. She was third at 2:56.0381. With only three pilots to go, she was already qualified to move on to the top 32. He didn’t have to feel bad if 2.25 seconds weren’t enough to keep him behind her.

  Yalsim finished a run good enough to secure a spot of his own. The blond-furred laaku pilot came in at 2:57.3824, drawing a chorus of cheers and a single, pained moan—presumably the poor slob whose spot in the top 32 just got bumped.

  “Ramsey, you’re up,” a laaku official with a datapad shouted.

  Carl took a steadying breath and a gulp of coffee still too hot to be gulped, focusing on the burn down his throat and into his belly. He kept the stagger out of his gait as best he could as he made his way to the simulator cockpit.

  The race official wore a name tag that read “Silde Slims ground crew: Gabrin.” “Quick rundown,” Gabrin said in a lower voice as Carl reached the steps up to the simulator. “Simulated gravity is enabled. G-canceling in this model is good to about 5G, after that you’ll feel everything. This isn’t arcade sim; this is a full live cockpit. Only time this won’t seem 100% real is if you’d be killed, at which point the safeties cut in and the simulator ends. Got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Carl replied. “Let’s get this over with.” He threw a leg over the edge of the simulator and into the foot well.

  Gabrin reached for Carl’s coffee. “Let me just hang onto—”

  “Nah, I still need it,” Carl said, grabbing the canopy handle with his free hand and pulling it down behind him as he swung his other leg inside. The motion was so reflexive it was easier than walking, just then.

  “Hey, you can’t bring drinks into the… hey!” Gabrin shouted through the canopy as it sealed. It wasn’t soundproof, so Carl heard the last shouted bit. “You’re cleaning up anything you spill in there! You hear me?”

  # # #

  The crew of the Mobius—all but its captain and mascot—sat around the holovid, watching and waiting. They refreshed themselves with beer and popcorn, chocolate soda and Snakki Bars, beer and burgers, beer and leg of goat, and one combination of beer and beer and beer. But the mood was not so festive as it ought to have been. The Silde Slims Cadet Racer Challenge wasn’t going according to plan.

  “This isn’t good,” Esper said as the penalty counter for Carl was increased to 2.25 seconds. “What do you think happened to him?”

  “Probably ran his mouth and someone offed him to clear up a spot in the field,” Tanny said through a mouthful of popcorn. She seemed to be the only one enjoying Carl’s impending comeuppance.

  Mriy turned to Roddy. “You told me there was no crime on Phabian.”

  “There isn’t,” Roddy replied. “No way someone dusted him on-world. It’d be all over the news if anyone even tried. I’m guessing he’s just sandbagging. He’s only gotta come in the top half of the field to get on to the next round. There’s a six-second spread from the leader to the cut. He’ll let it get to three or four seconds maybe, then waltz in and blow them away.”

  “Or he got drunk off his ass and overslept,” Mort said.

  “Nah,” Roddy said. “They’re all sleeping in a communal bunk. Someone would’ve woken him up. Pure sandbagging. Trust me.”

  Esper leapt from her seat, pointing. “There he is!”

  “He looks like hell,” Tanny said.

  “Hell don’t look that bad,” Roddy said, shaking his head. He glanced over to Mort. “Looks like you win.”

  “How’s he going to fly if he’s hung over?” Esper asked. She had only been half watching the other competitors, but most of them looked pretty awake and aware. And though she was no connoisseur of pilot sports, they all appeared to handle themselves rather well.

  “Look, he’s got a coffee with him,” Roddy said. “That oughtta wake him up.”

  “Doesn’t it take two hands to fly?” Esper asked.

  Tanny lifted a lazy hand in surrender. “I could never figure out how he flies in the first place. He should be dead a hundred times over, way I figure it.”

  The holovid feed cut away from Carl sealing himself into the simulator cockpit and went to a visual from inside the program. Carl’s imaginary Squall sat at idle in the asteroid field as disembodied numbers floated in space, counting down.

  “Next up,” the commentator announced. “Carl Ramsey. Ramsey is a former Earth Navy Lieutenant Commander with extensive experience in the Typhoon class assault fighter. For those unfamiliar with the Typhoon, it’s the military model that modern racing Squalls evolved from. Let’s see how he handles a civilian craft with more thrust per kilo than he’s used to.”

  “That’s the big question now, isn’t it?” Roddy asked. “Give ‘em hell, Carl!”

  The countdown hit zero and the Squall lurched forward. The first lap was always a warm-up, but all the other racers had treated it like it was timed. Carl’s Squall meandered down the opening straightaway, drifting from one side of the lane carved through the asteroid field to the other.

  “It would appear that Ramsey is a little skittish,” the commentator said with an amiable chuckle. “I guess the Squall’s more ship than he’s used to handling.”

  “Or he’s hung over and fumbling with the controls to dim the interior lights,” Tanny said. “Is it any wonder why I fly the Mobius instead of him?”

  “He’s probably still working on his coffee,” Roddy said. “Look, you can’t expect him to risk spilling his drink on the practice lap.”

  “It doesn’t look like he’s trying,” Esper said.

  “Into the first turn, and… he’s shut down his main thrusters. He’s going through on maneuvering jets.”

  Carl’s ship drifted through the turn, nose waggling as he over-corrected first one way, then the other. He had time for all that maneuvering because he was taking the turn at 1/4 the speed of the other contestants. As he completed the turn, he fired the main thrusters in a quick burst before letting them go dark again.

  “Maybe he doesn’t know this is being broadcast,” Esper said.

  “When he returns, we’ll rename both the ship and Carl,” Mriy said. “We don’t need to carry this shame to every port in the galaxy.”

  “I’m not sure what Ramsey is doing here, but his lack of flight time in a Squall is showing through.”

  Apparently the race sponsors were concerned as well. “Ramsey, are you having technical problems in there?” a new voice asked.

  “Ground control, can you shut the fuck up and let me fly?” Carl replied. “I’ve only got one lap to get a feel for this bird. You’ll get your show on the two that count. Ramsey out.”

  Carl’s Squall did a corkscrew spin before straightening out and lazing its way through the next turn. The turn after, he took backward, using the braking thrusters for propulsion. It was like watching a weird starfi
ghter ballet, or those ascetic monks doing martial arts exercises in slow motion. Carl’s piloting was as far from racing as it could be.

  “This is embarrassing to watch,” Mriy grumbled.

  Tanny sighed. “No, it makes sense. He’s never flown this ship before. Close as it is to a Typhoon, it’s not a Typhoon.”

  “If these were Typhoons, I’d have put money on this contest,” Roddy said.

  As Carl made it through the final turn—waggling the back end of his Squall the whole way—the whole demeanor of his ship changed. The main thrusters blazed to life, and the Squall shot down the straightaway toward the start/finish line.

  “As Ramsey approaches the timed run, he’s accelerating to racing speeds. He’s… he’s not slowing down for the first turn.”

  The other contestants had measured off a balanced speed before decelerating to take the first turn. Carl kept up the thrusters longer than any of them had dared. Faster. Faster. Dangerously faster.

  Roddy grinned. “That’s my boy!”

  As the turn approached ever faster, the ship twisted in a flat spin until it was traveling with thrusters forward. The main thrusters roared, slowing the Squall with bone-crushing force.

  “That turn measured 12G,” the commentator said. “That means Ramsey felt 7 of that in the cockpit over what the gravity compensators can handle.”

  Esper stared at the holovid field. “Isn’t that bad?”

  “Nope,” Tanny replied. She took a swig of beer. “You’d black out from hypoxia, but Carl’s a pilot. They train for shit like that.”

  It wasn’t the only such maneuver Carl pulled. He took the course at breakneck speed, hammering down the accelerator until after what should have been the last possible second. Then he flipped his ship around and angled the main thrusters to overcome the ship’s inertia and force it around the turn.

  “Why weren’t the other pilots doing that?” Esper asked. As Carl passed the lap marker and started his second full-speed run, the race feed showed the lap time. He was four seconds ahead of the day’s best lap.

  “I… I’m somewhat at a loss for words right now, race fans,” the announcer said, the snarky boisterousness had vanished from his voice. “Or maybe I’ve got one: wow.”

  Carl’s second lap was, if possible, more reckless than the first. Twice he scraped the nose of his Squall on asteroids as he hugged turns rating more than 13G. Even though they were virtual sparks from a make-believe ship in a simulator program, Esper’s heart pounded in her chest just watching it.

  The run ended with a finish time of 2:44.8831 seconds, after applying Carl’s 2.25-second penalty for tardiness.

  “How much is Carl going to be winning?” Esper asked.

  # # #

  The 250,000 terras were as good as in his hands. Carl opened up the canopy and scanned the stunned faces of the onlookers. He tossed the empty coffee cup to Gabrin. “Did you know that at 7G’s interior, you can sit a cup of coffee on your chest and not spill a drop?”

  He didn’t even bother to check his run time. That scoreboard-watching stuff was for amateurs. He might not have been a professional racer, but he was a professional pilot. What he needed was a washroom. Nearly two liters of coffee without so much as a muffin or a plate of scrambled eggs, and he was ready to burst.

  “Mr. Ramsey,” someone with a holovid recorder drone by her shoulder hailed him. She was human, young, the kind that got people to watch things they weren’t interested in. “Mr. Ramsey, you just took the top spot in the time trials. How does that feel?”

  For a split second, Carl was tempted to give an honest answer—he needed to take a leak. But in deference to Stacy’s early hysterics, he tried the slick approach. “I got in the top half. That’s all that matters. I’d just like to take a moment to honor the ARGO citizens serving in Earth Navy.” Carl looked into the recording drone and gave his best I-still-sort-of-remember-how-to-do-this salute. “Lieutenant Commander Ramsey, Earth Navy, retired. Keep giving them hell out there for me.” With a smile and a wave, he walked past the public relations rep and her holovid drone.

  Stacy caught him outside in the hallway. “Holy shit, Ramsey. You really can fly.”

  Carl squinted at her. “Was that you on the comm?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” she said. “I was trying to give you an out if you weren’t up to handling a Squall.”

  “Fun toy,” Carl replied. “It’s got some kick in the seat, that’s for sure. But solo with no one to shoot back? Shit, that’s kids’ stuff.”

  “Can I prevail on you to shower and change before the head-to-heads?” Stacy asked.

  “Can I prevail on you to let me find a washroom before this conversation takes a turn for the embarrassing?”

  Five minutes later, and with a fresh coffee and a donut in hand, Carl found Stacy waiting for him. “So what’s the deal with this next bit?” he asked.

  “You missed the itinerary. But all things considered, I guess I can go over it again for you. The time trials were to wash out the pretenders and the slugs. This afternoon is a cut down to the final 16. It’s seeded, so you’ll be facing off against the 32nd ranked pilot—you’re as good as through to the main event. Over the next couple weeks, we’ll have different events to rank the 16, and those results will handicap the final race for the championship.”

  “No problem,” Carl said with a mouthful of donut. The concessionary had sworn that it was made from real ingredients—completely unhealthy and not that creepy synthetic goo that got turned into nearly every food on Phabian. “Got a version I can transmit to my crew? They’re going to want to know how long we’ll be in system.”

  Stacy gave a wry smile. “That depends how long you stay in the contest.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carl replied. “Can you include the pro race I get to enter after I win? They’ll want to stay around for that, too.”

  # # #

  Esper stared into the blank holoviewer field after Roddy turned it off. “You know, we do most of our best thinking once it’s a little bit too late. But don’t you guys think that maybe putting Carl on a live holo-feed might be a bad idea?”

  A long silence followed.

  “What’re the odds those Harmony Bay clipboard chauffeurs are racing fans?” Mort asked.

  Roddy sighed and tossed an empty can in the direction of the waste processor, missing with a clang. “Not as good as the odds that they’ve got a watchdog program scanning for anything mentioning our names on the omni. Shit.”

  “I thought Carl’s plan was not to evade them but to keep to somewhere they couldn’t ambush us?” Mriy said. “How does this change anything?”

  “Well, it might have been nice to have some chance that they didn’t know where we are,” Tanny said. “Dammit. I’d sort of hoped these amateur racers could at least outfly him in a ship he’s never so much as sat in before. His ego is going to be planetary after this.”

  “So… smaller than normal?” Roddy asked.

  Mort harrumphed. “It’s not like they can just sneak any of you off. And they can’t file charges for anything without tipping an ugly hand and revealing their own dark science.”

  “So what do we do?” Esper asked.

  Roddy flicked the remote for the holovid. “We find something to watch until the head-to-head races.”

  # # #

  July caught up with Carl just as he was escaping the hullabaloo of the race event. She’d ranked fifth, so there was no cause for any awkwardness over the standings. It wasn’t like Carl was going to be matched against her, or had knocked her out of the top 32.

  She was short of breath and flush faced. “Where the hell did you learn to fly like that?” she asked. As come-ons went, he’d heard better. But it was enough to get him to stop and wait for her.

  “Aboard the ENV… shit, not supposed to say,” Carl replied with a grin. He started to walk away.

  July grabbed him by the arm, but matched his pace instead of trying to stop him. She had a firm grip. “No, seriously. How long
did it take to learn that technique?”

  “About 500 hours flight time in simulators,” Carl replied with a shrug.

  July nodded along. “Yeah, I’ve got a couple thousand between live flight and simulator. Think I could manage it?”

  Carl just chuckled. “No, that’s 500 hours just practicing that maneuver. I practically lived in the simulator in my downtime, back when I was active duty. Spend your time drinking, you get put on report for drunkenness and get your wings clipped. Gamble too much, you go broke. Sim time was good clean recreation and kept me alive when I was under live fire.”

  “You’re not even bullshitting me, are you?” July asked. Her violet eyes were as serious as they could get—or at least as seriously as they could be taken, being a color that belonged in a kids’ finger paint set.

  Carl took a sip of his coffee and shrugged. “If I was, you’d never know the difference.”

  “Care to give me a few pointers before the head-to-heads?”

  Carl scratched behind an ear. “I don’t know that we’ll be able to get a hold of any simulator time between now and then. Plus, I’m kinda—”

  “Dense,” she finished for him. “Come on, let’s get out of this zoo and find someplace private.” She tugged him along, and he followed.

  Carl might have been as dense as accused, but he wasn’t that dense.

  # # #

  Why July had a hotel room on Phabian, Carl could only begin to guess. Maybe someone had sponsored her. Maybe she had hedged against not making the cut for the contest. But either way, she had accommodations in a laaku-sized single-bed room in a place charmingly called Per-Night Rental Housing: Unit 7103. Carl ducked through the entrance behind her.

  “Nice place,” he remarked.

  “Stuff it,” July replied. She sat on the edge of a bed too small for one, let alone two. “This place may be the size of a sock drawer, but it’s not bugged.”