by Randal Sloan
Especially because of the size of her ship, they all expected the others would quickly catch her, easily passing her in the long haul. But then in the earth fly-by she had taken a course that no one could match, cutting it closer to the atmosphere and thus shortening her path. The Reynolds ship had made a true-to-the-course standard fly-by and was managing a somewhat distant second. The backup Wilson pilot, rumored to be Wilson himself, couldn’t even pull that off and he was an even more distant third. The rest were just behind them, except for the Jackson ship, which was out.
Everyone was now staring up in amazement at the big VR screen as it showed the girl’s fly-by in slow motion, a superimposed image of the other ships showing just how far back they were. No one had a clue how she had done it. Now the commentators were speculating, did she already have it won?
All the ships were now in the long leg that took them out into space. By the nature of the ship designs, no one would be able to make much of a move on anyone else during this part of the race. In general, there was nothing a pilot could do to improve over the AI during this part of the course, so everyone usually turned everything over to their AI.
That meant they were surprised again when somehow the Caldwell girl still kept increasing her lead on the others. Not as much as in the earlier runs, but still as the run extended she gradually pulled a little further ahead. What would she do next? They knew that the two 90 degree legs were coming up. The VR kept flashing up her position and her course as related to the racing path, and her ship was getting close to the point that it would have to begin its turn. Everyone was holding their breath to see what she would do. Would she continue to surprise them?
Both of the two legs required them to make a near 90 degree turn around a space buoy. Of course, no ship could make such a turn, so most everyone would make a wide pass around, gradually bringing their course to the new heading. Juliette had to do the same, but she cut it much closer than the AI course, using the pulse drive to push them faster onto the new heading, once again Sam working the pulse drive to give her even more than she expected. She knew her dad would have that grin of his.
Almost as if he knew her thoughts, a VR came in from him. “Once more,” he said. “Your team is rewriting the book on racing. You’ll be able to charge a fortune for that pulse drive of yours.”
Juliette smiled at that. That would mean more money for her best friend and her brother’s best friend with their ten percent stakes. “Cool!” was all she said and her dad laughed at that. He knew her thoughts. The rest of the team celebrated at the news; Joey was already thinking about how he could spend his money.
The next leg went the same, with another buoy and another 90 degree turn. They cut more time on that turn. By this time, the Reynolds ship was a very distant second and the Wilson ship was so far back Juliette believed she could coast in before he could get there. The remaining ships were out of it for sure.
#
Back on Space Tech station, the announcers were going wild. She had done it again. Somehow she had cut the corner far sharper than anyone else could and then repeated it at the next buoy. Everyone in the crowd was going crazy. They all knew they were seeing history in the making. The analysts were trying to figure it out, but no one had a clue how she had done it. They just kept flashing the VR of the turns back up and watching them over and over.
In the back of the crowd, two men were very nervously moving toward the exit. They knew a certain individual would be looking for them. In their distress, they forgot to deactivate the backup insurance.
#
Juliette and her ship were now on the last leg of the run. Joey flashed up a warning, as they would pass relatively close to the R5 point and its collection of mining asteroids. Katie was working her magic, giving a course that offered the quickest time through with the margin of safety they had all agreed on. Juliette had a sudden premonition and moved her hands toward the pulse drive controls. She noticed Storm had suddenly gotten very agitated. Then her mother’s call burst into her head. “Juliette! When I tell you to, I need you to hit the pulse drive and I want you to use that other mode we said not to use. Only for an instant and then shut it off.”
Suddenly understanding, Juliette answered, “I’ve got you, Mom. I think I understand what’s happening.” She sent an urgent message to her brother, using their mental connection because it was faster. “Sam, Mom says we have to use the beta mode. We have to completely phase out for an instant. I don’t care if we burn it out, if you can control the feedback. Can you do it?”
Sam quickly sent back, “Yes, I’ve got it.” He quickly switched the pulse drive to the beta mode, the one they hoped one day would take them to the stars. He set it for as high a number as he dared, one fifty percent and he carefully shaped the field so any feedback would be shoved outwardly from the ship. “Ready!” he said.
A moment later she got her mother’s frantic “Now!” and she hit the engage just for the barest instant, killing the drive completely an instant later. Even then, she would find the drive was completely fried by the feedback, a small price to pay.
Wilson’s insurance was a rail gun system set up on an asteroid. Somehow they had disguised it so it wasn’t visible to anyone’s scanners. It had an automated tracking program that would fire at the first ship it detected on the race course unless it transmitted the correct code. The plan was to fire a single round and then the rail gun would self-destruct and the resulting explosion would look like a secondary explosion from a terrible accident where the pilot had somehow failed to detect an asteroid fragment and then struck it. It probably would have worked too, but when Juliette hit their pulse drive that last time using the beta mode, their ship for the tiniest instant of time was no longer traveling in the normal universe. They phased completely out of space and in the instant later when they reappeared, the rail gun round had passed beyond them and they were safe.
Concentrating on her link with her daughter, Julie knew the instant it was over and tears poured down her checks as she knew how close she had come to losing the most important people in her life. An instant later, Sam and Zeke were in the mental link too and for a moment nothing else mattered to the four of them as they celebrated their family and their love for each other.
Juliette would tell her team and her parents later about what she saw during that instant of time they were not in normal space. To her, it was as if time had stopped. Everyone else seemed to be frozen except her and Storm. He was not frozen. In fact, he stood and it looked to her like he was preening. Her VR viewscreen suddenly flashed and she was looking at a group of people, humans she was certain, but they certainly were not on earth. She could see a large viewscreen behind them, and in it the whole sky was reddish purple and the huge red-colored sun she could see in the background was not nearly as bright as the earth’s sun would be.
The leader of the group, a young woman standing slightly in front of the others, smiled at her. “I thought I would take this moment to say hello. The next time we meet, we’ll be a little busier and we won’t have as much time to just talk. I see you’ve already met Storm, and he’s joined you. That’s great. We really enjoyed our time entertaining him.”
Seeing Juliette’s confusion, she explained. “Because you’re outside the normal universe at this instant in time, we’re able to send you a temporal message. You see, to us we’ve already met you and your trusty friend. We’re sending you this message back in time to reach you now. My friends tell me that your journey has just begun and that you’re using a very early prototype of the future star drive and for now it’ll only work for the briefest period of time. That is why we’ve frozen the instant of time for you and Storm.”
“You still have much to do before you come to see us, so I really won’t go into any of that right now. Just trust me; your star drive will work at the proper time and we’ll see the two of you then.” One of the young men behind her whispered something to her. “We’re about to have to release time again, so we’ll have to continue late
r I guess, whatever that means. My trusted lieutenant here says to tell you congratulations on your space race and that he’s looking forward to seeing you again. I’m not even going to attempt to explain what that means, although I think that means you two have a future date or something.” She gave a big smile at that and looked to the side at her panel.
“Ok, we’ve really got to go. Just remember that we all love you, little sister. And keep your eyes and ears open. The agents for our enemies have already found you. They were the real ones behind this attempted attack.” The VR viewscreen gave another flash and went blank.
Time went back to moving. Juliette became distracted with her link to her family and would only later go back to think over what she’d seen. But she would look at Storm even closer. He was really a special cat, something she already knew, but somehow he was involved in her future when she traveled to see those other people. She wondered what their story was and how she got to know them. Why did they only talk to her and Storm and not the rest of her team? She also wondered what they meant about their enemies finding her.
It would make a little more sense after she talked with her mother about it. Her mother reminded her of the temporal war that she had fought in before Juliette was born. That led Juliette to understand that the ones she had seen were their friends from the future. Obviously, the agents for the enemy referred to at the end were from the other side of the war.
Juliette didn’t know anything to do but to let it all work out. Her future would be what it would be. She had her mother and her visions to help her, and a few premonitions of her own that she would have to pay close attention to when she had them. A lot to do if they were going to pull it all off.
The end of the race was rather anticlimactic. They would sail into the finish line at normal speed. The final push Juliette had intended to get from the pulse drive wasn’t there to give them that extra burst of speed. She didn’t even bother to tweak the normal drives for extra speed. But it didn’t matter anyway. They were so far ahead of everyone else, that little bit would have only been a little more.
#
Of course, the tiny program in the rail gun knew none of this so it completed its programming and blew itself up in the self-destruct. With no presumed accident to hide it, however, authorities were easily able to track down enough of the bits and pieces remaining to find enough evidence to point the finger at Wilson. Unfortunately for him, he never got his day in court. He was killed in prison while waiting for the deal he never got from the authorities. He never got to tell anyone about the mysterious man who had come to him several months prior and had given him the plans for the rail gun. The two he was dealing with didn’t fare much better. When the loan shark they had borrowed the money from realized that there was no way they could come up with the money to pay him, he sent his guys to take care of them. He had his reputation to maintain after all.
When it came out that Reynolds knew about Wilson’s plans and didn’t prevent it from happening, he was forced to forfeit his second place finish and was banned from ever racing again. He didn’t argue the decision, because he knew that if Juliette and her team had been killed, it would have been his fault too.
Juliette and her team were bombarded with requests from the media. Zeke refused to allow them to speak with any of the team due to their age. He did consent to allowing an interview with one specific journalist; Doctor James Hollingsworth, of course. He came out of retirement to do the interview. When they told their story, Storm was there with the rest of the team and he quickly stole the hearts of Doctor Hollingsworth, his VR crew, and then the audience.
It didn’t matter anyway. The question of Storm and his presence was a moot one since Julie as CEO had amended the rule to allow pets if they met specific criteria and the owner invested in all the equipment to insure proper sanitation.
They would donate a large portion of the prize money to charity. Juliette did pay her dad back for the amount he spent building her ship so she could say it was entirely hers. And they sold the plans to her ship, minus a few special additions. The pulse drives sold out faster than Space Tech could make them. Of necessity, those models only supported the standard mode. But to Juliette the big thing that mattered, the seat in the Space Academy pilot school, was waiting for her. And the rest of her future.
That, of course, is another story.