IGMS Issue 28

by IGMS

  When the first race of the series came around, Bill was in the pit with the tech team, suited up and thoughtfully jawing on a wad of gum. There were over five hundred teams putting drivers on the track for the first round, and at twenty drivers per heat, it would be days before the initial cull was complete and Jane could get on with the business of moving up the pyramid.

  Not that she took the first heat for granted.

  She'd seen other drivers get cocky like that, and wash out. Or worse. If illogical fear was an enemy at one end of the spectrum, foolhardiness was the enemy at the other.

  Jane pulled her Falcon out of the pit and lightly maneuvered it into formation with the other drivers circling the track -- grid position being determined by comparative standing in the last cup race any of the drivers had competed in. Her breath was even, controlled, and her limbs wiry and strong, but with flexibility to spare. Some drivers got tight on the bike and tried to force the machine to do their will. Jane was a pure flow theorist: best results achieved by blending body to the bike in as natural a symbiosis as possible. Which wasn't always easy at some of the speeds Jane had been known to attain when she was trying to make the checkered beacon.

  After trials, Jane could see why Cazetti was the home of the Armstrong Cup. It really was the toughest track she'd yet competed on. Where Bill looked and saw a cursed pattern, Jane looked and saw bald statistics. Of all the modern tracks, even with advanced equipment, the crash and death rate at Cazetti was much higher than anywhere else. That the women drivers of the past had died on the track -- or avoided it out of fear -- just made Jane that much more determined to be the one who broke through.

  Beating the odds was second nature to her.

  Green lights at the starting line gave the drivers clearance to throttle up and begin competing -- the lone, yellow pace bike slowly coasting down to its own pit, leaving the drivers free to engage.

  Jane dug her toes in and went for the throat, almost immediately.

  One didn't beat better talent or instincts by being subtle.

  Jane knew she wasn't the most gifted driver in the heat, but by God she was going to show those guys who had the most balls.

  The Falcon soared down the first straightaway like a comet, a thin mist of reaction exhaust from the main engines forming contrails in the lunar vacuum. If Jane's guess was correct, and it usually was, she'd be fueling up exactly once more than the other drivers. The time she'd lose on an extra stop in the pit would be more than made up for by being aggressive early.

  She was on the tails of the grid leaders when they came to the first turn complex, and started banking up the wall of the track.

  Ferocious acceleration into the turn and ferocious braking in the middle of the turn left her temporarily in the thick of the leaders as they flirted within dangerous proximity, their bikes sometimes centimeters from catastrophic contact.

  Heads and eyes flicked this way and that, some of the others showing their whites as Jane touched thruster studs and then shook her rump to the side, spinning the Falcon a full 720 as she banked precariously close to the upper lip of the track, past one opponent, then came down across the vertical track wall and edged out a second man, finally coming out face-front into the first prolonged straightaway, upon which she gunned the mains once more.

  "Fancy," said Bill's gruff voice in her ears.

  "Hey," she said, grinning behind the visor of her helmet. "I thought you'd fallen asleep on me. How am I looking?"

  "Reckless," Bill said. Paused. Then muttered, "But brilliantly so."

  "You ain't seen nothing yet. Second turn complex is coming up. I'll be out in front of this bunch by the third set of turns. You watch."

  And she was right.

  By the fourth set of turns -- and almost one complete loop around the convoluted track -- Jane had gotten a nice lead on the other drivers as they headed into the longest, straightest portion of the course. She set the throttles up to as close to max as she dared, knowing that too much acceleration would leave her unable to compensate when she came back around on the first bunch of turns.

  Jane savored the feeling.

  It wasn't better than sex. That was a different kind of thrill altogether. But it was probably the next best thing.

  After the second go-round, Jane's lead on the pack was considerable, and she began pacing herself: one eye to the dwindling fuel gauge and one ear wide open for news from the pit.

  So far, Bill hadn't said much beyond the formalities of his job. Little naggings about consumption rate and vehicle stress, as relayed to the pit's tied-in computers. The pit readout told Bill far more than Jane's display: information which would have been too distracting for her to manage. That was Bill's role. Jane's was to jockey for position and build leads. Bill would make sure her machine ran smoothly.

  After five laps, it was time to tank up.

  Seeing nobody behind her, Jane slowed and slid into her pit, the space-suited crew rushing out with the fuel hose and jamming it into the side of the Falcon, which hummed lightly as it floated above the ground. Jane saw Bill through the control window and she tapped her right index and middle finger to the rim of her visor in acknowledgement. Bill just watched her, his arms crossed over his chest and his face expressionless.

  The crew slapped her thigh and gave Jane the thumbs-up, and she applied throttle again just as the pack burst past the mouth of the pit.

  Shortly, Jane was back in the melee, making her way once more up through the grid by guile, skill, and a lot of chutzpah.

  Round and round she went, the faces of the domed-over crowds flashing past again and again and again as the laps flew by.

  Jane was almost beginning to think she'd mastered the Cazetti track.

  When the Falcon began to vibrate in a most alarming fashion.

  "Bill?" Jane said, hands gone light on the control bars as she felt the machine rattle through the seat of her tight-bottomed vacuum suit.

  "Hold on, we're checking," said the old man.

  Seconds, seconds . . .

  "Bill, I need status," Jane barked.

  "We've got a lubricant pressure spike in Number Two."

  "Is it red-lined?"

  "Not yet, but it's gone up five percent just in the time we've been talking."

  "Can we bleed it off?"

  "I already activated the auto-bleed. Look behind you and tell me if you see anything."

  Jane craned to check behind her on either side of the bike, and saw nothing.

  "Nope," she said. "What's happening?"

  "Pressure is up another fifteen," Bill said. "I'm bringing you in."

  "It's too soon," Jane said. "I don't need to fuel up for another three laps!"

  "I don't care," Bill said. "Bring it in. Now."

  Jane considered. This was why she'd needed Mike to tell her who she'd do best with. The crew boss wasn't called a crew boss for no reason. In addition to running the pit, in some ways he also ran the driver -- if the driver and the boss had that kind of relationship. And Mike had known Jane would need someone older -- who could put his foot down in situations where Jane would want to push things too far.

  "Did you hear me?" Bill demanded.

  "Roger that," Jane said, finally exhaling. She'd have to fight like hell to get back into it on the next pass, assuming the pit crew could identify the problem and fix it fast. If they couldn't fix it . . .

  No. Jane wasn't going to default, not in this the first run of the series.

  She flipped the throttle for Number Two all the way down until it clicked, and the vibration coming up through the saddle, ceased.

  "Two has been powered down," Bill said, an edge to his voice. "Can you make it back to the pit, or should I signal for a tow?"

  "I'm not coming in," Jane said. "I can finish this thing on one main engine."

  "If you burn the engine out, maybe."

  "Bill, I'm not letting myself get taken out of this heat. Not by a stupid pressure problem. Shunt the lubrication system over to Num
ber One and run it at 150 percent. I can at least try and stay up with the leaders. Make it to the next heat."

  There was a fuzzy silence.

  "Don't ever do this again," Bill said, his voice hot.

  "It's the reason why everyone buys bikes with two engines now, Bill. Are you with me or not?"

  More fuzzy silence.

  "Fine. You've got your shunt. We'll see what happens."

  What happened was that Jane finished in fourth place.

  Not a tremendously encouraging start to the series, but it at least got her to the next heat, to be held one day later. Since the mechanical issue wasn't of the spectacular, crowd-pleasing, spinning-out-of-control destruct-o-matic variety, Bill and Jane kept the problem to themselves.

  Though by the time of the next heat, even the best techs on the pit crew couldn't find the source of the difficulty. Even when running the bike at full-power static.

  Race time for the second heat was therefore met with a decidedly tense atmosphere in the pit.

  "It's a brand new unit," Jane argued, her helmet hanging in one hand while two pit crew checked the life systems umbilicals of her suit. They prodded at her back while she and Bill glared at oneanother, his sunken cheeks flexing with quiet contempt.

  "It's not the bike," he said adamantly. "It's her."

  His arm pointed to the ceiling, where the transparent glass gave the pit crew a decent view of the starry sky, as well as Sally Tincakes in the far distance, her CAZETTI RACEWAY sign raised proudly over the field.

  The youngsters on the pit crew looked at Bill nervously.

  "You go out there again," the old man said, "and there's no telling what might happen this time. First heat was a warning. She doesn't give warnings, usually. We file a technical disqualifier with the track office, and you get excused without having to take a hit in overall standings."

  "And no chance at the Armstrong Cup until next year," Jane said. "No thanks. I'm here to do this thing, now. Not later."

  Bill's jaw ground bitterly, then he looked away. Silence, for almost a full minute.

  "Time hack's in 20 minutes," he finally said. "Get on the bike and get out of here."

  Second heat, and the mysterious pressure problem did not return. The Falcon performed to perfection, earning Jane a first-place finish amidst a much tougher group than she'd been up against for the first heat. She got some nice press in the leader board blogs, and an interview with the track rats who split the news feed back to Earth -- for those on the mother planet who were sports-junky enough to care about the exotic stuff going on in the rest of the solar system.

  If anyone else noted or cared about the female record of zero finishes and 100 percent fatalities, they didn't say so. Which was just fine with Jane.

  But it didn't stop Bill from chastising her again as she prepped for the third of the five total heats.

  "It's time to put the baby to bed," Jane said. "We had our one weird problem for the series, and we're going smooth now."

  The old man was agitated to the point of fidgeting, his tablet and stylus appearing like foreign objects in his hands as he nervously shuffled them back and forth, one hand to the other.

  "Every time you go back out on that track, you're just daring her to notice you. It might not happen now, it might not happen tomorrow, but before this series is over . . ."

  "Enough," Jane said, sharply. "Quit, and let someone else run the crew. Or shut up and bring me home for the win."

  "You really think you're good enough?" Bill said. "I was full of beans in my day, and even I couldn't make it past the third heat."

  "Maybe that's your problem," Jane said, letting the techs check her vacuum suit's fittings. "Because you haven't climbed this particular mountain to the top, you're afraid it can't be done?"

  Bill's face flushed brightly.

  "I'm a lot of things, lady, but I ain't a jealous man."

  "Prove it. Put the curse in the trash where it belongs, and make some good things happen."

  Bill didn't look convinced as she went out the airlock for the third heat, but he did look relieved when she came back two hours later, a second-place finish notched.

  The fourth heat meant press both before and after the run. The competition was down to 80 drivers now, and after the day was done, there would be only 20 remaining for the final, championship heat -- and the crowning of the Armstrong Cup winner. As the only female in the bunch, Jane got more than her share of attention, including several in-depth interviews during which the inevitable history of the track -- the five female deaths, the dearth of female competitors overall -- came to the surface.

  Jane blew it off. Bravado was a prerequisite for all drivers. But by the time she was suiting up for the heat, she had to admit even she'd been rattled. They'd showed her some of the old footage of the accidents from the past -- news people generally having no clue whatsoever about what's appropriate to show a person right before they're about to do something hazardous.

  Jane laughed her way through it, but was quiet during the race prep.

  "Not so funny when you see what's possible, is it?"

  Jane glared at Bill.

  "I noticed they didn't even censor the footage of your daughter's death," she said.

  "Those bastards don't care about me now, if they ever did in the first place. It's ratings. Crash movies are part of what make the sport fun for the crowds. Money. All that bull."

  Jane nodded, and went back to checking her wrists and ankles for complete air seals.

  "It's not too late --" Bill began.

  But Jane cut him off.

  "Oh yes it is. I'm not going to go down as the woman driver who chickened out. Everyone's paying attention to me now."

  Bill took a step back, his face gone suddenly white.

  The stylus and tablet hit the floor, albeit gently in the lunar gravity.

  "What?" Jane said.

  "That's exactly what Ellen said to me, before . . . "

  Jane literally bellowed, her helmet clenched in one fist.

  When she stopped, everyone was blinking and looking strangely at her.

  "No more!" she said. "I can't take one more word!"

  She looked to one of the young techs. "Is my Falcon ready?"

  "Yes ma'am," he said, gulping.

  "Then let's go!"

  The fourth heat was by far the most competitive. All of the inexperienced and tentative drivers had been pruned away, leaving the calculating, the experienced, the determined, and the creatively diabolical to challenge each other for the coveted final 20 spots on the championship grid.

  Facing these odds, Jane scrapped through all but the final two laps -- just a couple of minor brushes with opponents' vehicles, and the certain knowledge that she'd be wringing a gallon of water out of her undersuit when all was said and done.

  Second to last lap, and Jane was in a familiar spot with the leaders at the front of the pack. Having gamed her way into the elite group -- same strategies and tactics as always -- she'd almost considered her advancement to the final heat to be a foregone conclusion, when one of the other drivers from the middle of the pack made a particularly dangerous -- and gutsy -- move. Trying to copy Jane's technique as they entered a turn, the man began spinning out of control, first pinballing off one bike, then another, then a third, until suddenly the track was alive with wildly spinning bikes, their riders trying desperately to regain control -- overcorrecting -- and then either smashing down into the safety barriers nearest the domed-over crowds, or pinwheeling up and off the track altogether, arcing out across the sun-blasted regolith, legs and feet come loose, flailing.

  Jane experienced a moment of surreal calm, where all sensation ceased and she could see clearly all the other riders around her, as if in extreme slow motion. Then her Falcon was being smashed down into the safety barriers, the metal grinding on the lunar rock for just an instant.

  The controls were frozen as Jane tried to steer up off the wall. She was pinned by her neighbor, who'd nosed into
her T-bone style, and was having no success reversing course. They looked at each other for a split second, raw panic passing between them, and then the bikes were flipping, and Jane was thrown high into the air.

  Again, a moment of surreal calm.

  The track, passing swiftly underneath.

  The crowd, faces upturned and mouths open wide with astonishment.

  Many drivers and bikes spinning, rolling, whirling. One or two skating ahead of the scrum, their drivers raising their fists and pumping them.

  Somewhere, Bill's voice was screaming.

  Jane started to come down. In the moon's gravity, it wasn't as fast as it might have been on Earth, but with the velocity imparted to her by her bike, there was more than enough kinetic energy to kill her when she hit. Jane caught a glimpse -- just a tiny glimpse -- of Sally Tincakes: the rocket booster over the statue's head, the exaggerated bustline, the glamour model smile, and then Jane was smashing down into the regolith beyond the track.

  All was white. Jane sat in the ready room. No pit crew. Not even the noise of the crowd reverberating through the walls. Her helmet was clutched in one hand, her elbows on her knees. It was time to go. She felt it in her bones. The race was on. And yet, not. Standing up, she started towards the door to the pit -- and stopped short as someone else walked in from the door on the opposite side.

  The visitor wasn't in coveralls. Instead, she wore a vintage evening gown styled like those worn by glamour models at the tail end of the previous century: slit high on one thigh, strapless, low-cut, and strategically boned so as to create a gravity-defying silhouette with plenty of cleavage. The dress's satin fabric was embedded with fiber optics that swirled and rippled in various tints and hues of bright blue light.

  "Sally," Jane said softly.

  The ex-Mrs. Cazetti smiled, but didn't say anything. She walked skillfully on a set of platform heels across the ready room to the opposite wall, turned, and leaned against it.

  Recent memory swirled: the Falcon had been pinned, then flipped, followed by a long, frantic parabola over the track towards the surface of the Moon just beyond . . .