They slipped into her office.
“There are two matters I wanted to discuss with you. The first is the rate at which you have been going through hoversleds.”
“We just went over that, though.”
“Indeed we did. And I am not asking you to curtail your behavior in any way. I have structured the business to accommodate a considerable amount of this sort of overhead. But I would like to ask if there is anything troubling you.”
“You’ve seen the track times. I’d say I’m doing fine.”
“That isn’t what I meant. You are driving very aggressively. Far more so than I’ve ever seen from you.”
“I’m just keeping up with traffic. I realize this is a second-chance league, but most of those racers out there weren’t dropped from league racing for gambling. Most of them were dropped for cheating. Get enough of those guys together, and that’s going to make for a certain type of racing.”
“You have initiated at least half of the collisions you’ve been in, and all of the wrecks.”
He shrugged. “The best defense is a good offense, right?”
“The word ‘suicidal’ has been applied to your techniques.”
“And a magician looks like he’s sawing a woman in half if you don’t know the trick behind it.”
“We have a therapist on our payroll. If you need—”
“Preethy, I appreciate the concern, but what’s going on up here,” he tapped his head, “is not going to be in any psychiatric bag of tricks.”
“That doesn’t fill me with confidence for your state of mind.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“If you are certain. The other matter we need to discuss, as you’d indicated earlier, is the sandstorm issue. As we draw nearer to the season, we are getting a clearer picture of the forecast, and it looks as though we are in for more storms this year than usual.”
“Did something change?”
“No, no. It is quite common for certain years to be more intense in that regard than others, but we’ve been unlucky enough to have a major storm season line up with the formal launch of our new league.”
“Is there anything we can do besides hope for the best?”
“I can’t go into specifics, but a substantial amount of that research and development budget Michella was so suspicious of is dedicated to that particular problem. Overall, it’s nothing to be concerned about. Most of the tracks that will see major use are situated in areas with low storm activity. But some of our more noteworthy tracks—and as such, the tracks we have chosen to highlight in our early season publicity—are in areas that might catch the brunt of a storm or two. We thought we’d scheduled our races on those tracks early enough in the season for this not to be a problem, but Mother Nature may have other plans.”
“If there’s anything you need me to do, say the word.”
“I bring this up because the confluence of weather and event scheduling has left us with very little room for error. We cannot afford any further delay, or we run the risk of a major race overlapping a major storm. Delays alone are a promotional black eye. Delays due to completely foreseeable weather phenomena are worse. If we end up having to rearrange our schedule on our very first season, it would be a blow to our credibility that would cost us fans, investors, and respect.”
“How bad are we talking?”
“Uncle Nick has funded us to an enormous degree. And he is above all else a businessman. He knows one must be prepared to put money into a business for a long time before one can expect to draw any money out of it. But a poor first season could be a multiyear setback, and we’ll never have a better chance than this year to capture an enduring audience. So it is absolutely vital that nothing endanger the timeliness of our first race.”
“Dare I ask, why are you telling me this?”
“You are something of a magnet for misfortune and misadventure. I ask that you not take any undue risks. My concern in this regard is related to our previous discussion regarding your state of mind and reckless driving.”
“I see. So you’re asking me to not do anything purposely stupid or crazy.”
She grinned. “If you think that is within your power.”
“It’ll be tough, but I think I’ll manage.”
She brushed off her hands. “That concludes our business, then. Ah, with one exception.” She swiped her slidepad. “Van?”
“Yes, Ms. Misra?” came a youthful voice from the slidepad’s speaker.
“Please make a reservation for two under the name Trevor Alexander at Sarafa tonight at 8 p.m., will you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Thank you, Van.” She closed the connection. “Having gotten my start in business as the endpoint of perpetual delegation, it is a rather triumphant feeling to be on the other side.”
“Things are looking up for the two of us. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll be able to join us for dinner. If all goes according to plan, there’ll be celebration in order, and you’re one of the only friends of mine near enough to join in the fun.”
“Ah, dinner. I’m afraid not. I’ve got an appointment that could conceivably run as late as ten. But I’d be happy to join you both for drinks afterward.”
“Great! That’s when the fun is going to be had anyway. You’ll miss all the tears and hugging and show up just in time for the partying down. The usual place.”
“I look forward to it.”
He stood and made sure Squee wasn’t about to spring off onto Preethy. The little stinker loved every opportunity to perch on a new shoulder.
“See you then!” he said. “And no crazy nonsense, I promise. A second chance was hard enough to get. I’m not going to risk having to get a third chance somehow.”
#
Lex pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building. Since he was a relative rarity in his preference for piloting a personal vehicle rather than using automated ones or mass transit solutions, the parking structure seemed bizarrely undersized. It had room for only a few dozen vehicles, and was actually shared between the apartment building and its nearby neighbor, a freshly built hotel.
He hurried toward the apartment building entryway. A few strides from the merciful shelter of the building’s shadow, Squee yipped a few times and sprang from his shoulders.
“Whoa, hey!” he called after her.
The blazing pavement wasn’t just uncomfortable, it was dangerous for the sensitive tootsies of his pet, so having her dashing about outdoors wasn’t something he was willing to tolerate. Squee was no fool, though. Her prodigious leaps brought her from shadow to shadow, navigating the parking lot as though it were a game of the floor is lava. He had to sprint to keep up with her. Even at full speed, he was a step behind her as she dashed through the doorway of the hotel.
A short run and the punishing heat left Lex pouring sweat as he slid in after her. “Squee, seriously. You can’t be doing this,” he huffed.
He scanned the lobby of the hotel. For all her faults, Squee wasn’t usually difficult to find. She was a sucker for affection and attention. All he had to do was find the commotion, and she would be at the very center.
In this case, a small crowd of startled people around the coffee shop had made some room around a pair of men. One was a fit, somewhat burly man with dark brown hair. He was dressed in bright colors and was reaching for the funk. The other was the one Squee had chosen to assault, a sharply dressed guy with dirty-blond hair whom Lex realized he recognized.
“Jon?” he said. “Leave it to Squee to spot someone she knows from across a parking lot.”
“Lex! Call off the hounds!” the man said, halfway between a joke and a plea.
Lex retrieved Squee from the shoulders of what turned out to be Jon Nichols. He’d started out at GolanaNet News as Michella’s intern. After establishing that he could keep up with her sometimes frantic research style and survive her hands-on coverage, he’d been promoted to a new
position. There was probably an official title for the position, but if everyone was being honest, he’d just be called “Michella’s handler.” He was generally present as the nagging voice on the other end of a call nudging Michella about deadlines.
“Oh my god, you’re him!” said the other man. He grabbed Lex’s hand and shook it with a vigorousness that threatened to dislocate Lex’s shoulder. “I am such a fan. I am such a fan. We actually went to college together! You probably don’t remember me. We didn’t have any classes together, and you were two years ahead.”
“That would make it hard to remember you,” Lex said.
“But I followed you all the way through the rise and fall. I’m so into racing.”
He had yet to stop shaking Lex’s hand, which was beginning to go numb.
“Uh, yeah, great, thanks. Could we move a little further into the introduction process before I lose circulation in my fingers?”
“Oh, sorry! I’m Donnie G.” He ended the handshake and flipped his hand over to waggle his fingers, revealing a ring. “I’m Jon’s fiancé.”
“Oh, right! Of course.” Lex slapped Jon on the back. “Congrats! I guess I haven’t seen you since the proposal.”
“Michella is a full-time job,” he said. “I got your ‘congratulations’ gift though.”
“I love the pasta machine,” Donnie said. “We’ve been making ramen nonstop since we got it.”
Jon glanced at him. “Easy. You’re getting fanboy all over him.”
“Jon, not that I’m not happy to see a friendly face, but why are you here?”
“You want the official truth or the actual truth?”
“Let’s hear them both so I can pick my favorite.”
“Officially, I’m here because of the forthcoming grand opening of the first ORIC season. You being Golana’s favored son, it’s simultaneously a sports piece and a fluff piece.”
“You’re not a sports reporter. Or a fluff reporter. Or any sort of a reporter,” Lex said.
“Yeah. The actual truth is, even though she said she’s on sabbatical, the people in charge don’t like having Michella where they can’t see her. They think she’s probably working on a story and not telling anyone. So they sent me to make sure she turns in what she’s got, if she’s got something. After that whole money-laundering thing broke last month, the coverage about her coverage got more traffic than her actual coverage, since we didn’t have time to prepare.”
“And I tagged along because I had vacation time coming, and this one never took time off for a honeymoon,” Donnie said.
“That’s because we’re not married yet.”
Donnie crossed his arms. “That’s no excuse.”
Jon turned to Lex. “Is Michella around? I just got in a little while ago, and she hasn’t returned any of my messages.”
“No. She’s been making herself scarce. I didn’t even bother trying to message her. When she’s off doing her reporter routine, she may as well be in a coma for all the attention she pays to her slidepad. Though that might not be the problem this time.”
Lex pointed to the lobby displays. They were attempting to show a newsfeed, but the resolution of the image was awfully low, and there were frequent pauses for buffering.
“Something’s up with the network. It’s been like this for the last few weeks,” Lex said.
“Lex! You’ve got to tell me, is it true you had a fling with Venus Vrill back in the day?” Donnie said.
Lex raised an eyebrow. He briefly tried to figure out what about the conversation thus far had brought that little non sequitur to mind.
“No,” he said. “Were people saying that about me?”
“Well, she was on her way out of the spotlight and you were on your way up, and she had that tour that included Golana, so everybody sort of assumed.”
“You sort of assumed that, Donnie. All by yourself. Come on. Let’s get checked in before you finish putting the nails in the coffin of this first impression.”
He gave Jon a look. “Not until you ask him about the restaurant.”
Jon grumbled under his breath. “Donnie wants to know—”
Donnie blurted over him. “It seems like the one restaurant we can’t get into is Sarafa, and I figured that must mean it’s the only restaurant worth going to, so we wanted to know—”
“He wanted to know,” Jon corrected.
“—if you could help us get a table.”
“I guess I could shoot Preethy a message. Mitch and I are supposed to be eating there at eight.”
Donnie looked to Jon again. “I told you. We’re as good as in.”
“Thanks, Lex,” Jon said. “And if you see Michella before we do, let her know we’re here. Give her the official truth.”
“Will do, but I don’t think she’ll have any trouble figuring out the actual truth.”
They all shook hands again and parted ways. Lex headed back toward his apartment.
“Well, Squee,” he murmured to his pet. “Michella takes a sabbatical and not only does she spend most of her time working, half of the office follows her. I’m getting a nasty feeling that something exciting is about to smash into this little chunk of good fortune we’ve been enjoying.”
He scratched her between the ears. “And not the good kind of exciting, either. The kind where someone I’ve never met suddenly wants me dead.”
He reached for his slidepad. “I think I’ll give Mitch another try.”
Chapter 3
Michella had spent the vast majority of the morning and early afternoon preparing for her trip to the station. She cross-referenced the information she’d been able to dig up thus far, checked databases of faces and names to see if any of the people she’d encountered had any aliases she might have missed, and even ensured she knew where to depart so that she would not be picked up on any atmospheric monitors. By the time the early evening had rolled around and she’d actually initiated her mission, she thought she’d covered everything that needed to be done.
She’d missed one little detail.
“This is not how it worked when I was in the ship last time,” Michella muttered.
If one is not well trained in the operation of a vehicle, it usually isn’t the best idea to take one’s first lessons in the absolute cutting-edge version of that vehicle. Michella knew her way around operating a hoversled, as most adults did to one degree or another. But Lex’s ship was not a hoversled. It was a spaceship, and a unique one at that. All of its controls were on a hair trigger. The slightest tug of this or that caused the whole ship to pivot and slide to an absurd degree. The take off had been handled by automated navigation, but now that she was leaving the atmosphere, the ship had “helpfully” flipped to Lex’s preferred mode of manual operation. Ever since then, Michella had felt more like she was wrestling the ship than actually piloting it.
A particularly graceless tug of the control stick threatened to heave her from the seat.
“Why does he turn down the inertial dampeners?” she growled.
Michella searched through the manual controls, then the software settings until she found the dampeners and took them back up to a more reasonable level. She knew she’d found the right setting when the ship’s engines stopped forcing her into the seat. She was far enough from the surface for gravity to be a non-issue, and thus without the acceleration of the ship pushing her around, she was weightless.
“Ugh,” she said, putting her hand to her gut. “Why couldn’t he have artificial gravity installed? Microgravity always turns my stomach.”
A quiet beeping gradually reminded her that her fiddling with his settings had meant she’d not focused on navigation, or even looked out the cockpit windows, for a full three minutes. She’d assumed that would be fine, as she had all of space ahead of her and thus probably wasn’t going to crash into anything. But when she looked up, she found that she’d managed to get completely turned around and was headed back toward the surface with e
nough speed for a shockfront to form in front of the ship.
“No!” she said, pulling hard at the controls.
The SOB flared its navigational boosters, and she found herself tracing tight little loops in the Operlo sky. Any attempt to bring herself out of the loop served only to tighten or reverse the looping.
The roller-coaster visuals outside the ship weren’t doing her already upset stomach any favors. Nausea in turn wasn’t helping her focus at all. The entire endeavor was quickly spiraling toward a gastrointestinal misadventure at the very least, and quite possibly a crash shortly after.
Tones sounded all around her. The controls physically wrenched from her hands, and the ship eased out of its spin. Slowly, the horizon leveled out and drifted downward. Her vision filled with the star field of the Operlo sky.
“Okay, what did I do, and how do I do it on purpose?” she asked, scanning the various displays.
The gauges were all in the green, and the screens were all blinking the phrase External Control Initiated.
“Hello, Michella,” said a voice over the com system. “It looks as though you were attempting to pilot the SOB. Would you like help?”
“Ma?” Michella said, recognizing the not-entirely-convincing digital approximation of a female voice.
Michella’s experience with Ma had been rather limited, though what experience she did have was notable. The artificial intelligence system had crossed paths with Lex repeatedly, and even spent some time installed on his pet, though the details of that were something she tried not to dwell upon. While Michella wasn’t certain just how much of her apparent humanity was an illusion, she did at least seem to strive to be helpful.
“He’s got all of the helper functions turned off. I thought I fixed that,” Michella said.
“Lex has a two-stage preference system. One for atmospheric and one for interplanetary/interstellar travel. You need to adjust both presets if you wish to avoid full-manual control.”
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