This isnotwhat Clarke needs right before Q3. This is compromising her preflight headspace. She sounds annoyed when she says, “If you’re looking for the Chronicle garage, it’s three buildings up.”
“I was looking for you, actually.”
“Why? Q3 is about to start.”
“I know. And I don’t mean to—I’ve been getting an earful about needing a good result this weekend, after what I did and the points it cost me at Tiresias,” he says, shoulders creeping up closer to his ears. “Val’s on my case about making sure I havemy eye on the prize. And I get it, that’s her job, but I couldn’t listen to it anymore. So I started thinking about how you and me and Connor used to blow off steam when the pressure was getting to be too much, and how much better I’d feel after, and I wanted to see you for a minute. Sorry. I can go.”
“It’s fine,” Clarke says, an automatic response to Julian being stressed enough to show vulnerability in hostile territory. The walls on either side of them are Elemental’s light, bright blue and Martian Motors’ rusty orange-red. Julian, in his rich Chronicle-green racing suit, could not stand out more if he tried. “But I don’t have any of Connor’s dumb jokes handy.”
“I should’ve written them down.” Julian’s expression goes a little distant, a little wistful.
“Yeah, me too.” The tinge of shared melancholy softens Clarke further, and she swallows some of her pride. Thinks about what Thierry said yesterday—not the sleeping-together part, the rest of it. “Hey, listen. Thierry told me you think I’m mad at you, and I’m not. I’m irritated about you prying into things at Elemental that aren’t your business, but I shouldn’t have said what I said. We can be competitors without being enemies.”
Relief brings Julian’s shoulders down from their hunch the longer Clarke talks. He waits, making sure she’s done, and asks, “But we can’t be friends?”
Exasperation smacks into Clarke like breaking the surface of an ice bath post-race. Is he constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone? “Okay, this? I can’t do this right now.”
“Then when?” Julian moves toward her, earlier patience nowhere to be seen. “If you’re finally willing to talk to me, then just give me a time and place, Clarke, and I swear—”
“Clarke? We’re ready for—oh.” Amira, who’s just poked herhead around the edge of the garage at the end of the alley, takes in the scene: Julian leaning forward eagerly on his toes, Clarke leaning away like she’s about to bolt. “Everything okay here?”
“Perfect,” Clarke says, storming past Julian.
“Clarke,” Julian calls after her.
“Q3.” Clarke raises her voice, focusing only and exclusively on Amira. “Anything I should know?”
Amira pivots with Clarke’s movement. “No changes. You want to do a warm-up lap?”
Clarke doesn’t need to warm up. The rekindled frustration with Julian and the impossibility of their situation has her boiling inside her suit. “I’m warm. Let’s get going.”
—
Saints, Clarke lovesracing.
The track opens up in front of her. It’s marked by beacons that glow gold, both in her actual vision and on the control deck, which is the holoscreen she uses to fly the ship. The variables only move during the Grand Prix and practice sessions, not during qualifying, so she knows what’s coming and when. The first element is a descent that starts righthere—then a corkscrewhere—the harness pulls tight against her chest, bringing out a faint twinge in her still-sensitive collarbone—then bottoming out before a sharp climb with a 180-degree rotation over the next two, three, four seconds, so she’s flying upside down relative to the cascade.
There’s nothing like this, she thinks as she does a hard wrench to the left and slows down to tackle one of the zigzaggy chicane sections. Bits of starfall shatter and dance across her windshield. All the heartache and disappointment, the long hours training, the invasive cameras, letting someone else tellher what to eat and how to work out so that her body is the perfect weight and build for this—it’s worth it.
She whips out of a turn and onto the first of what counts as a straightaway in off-planet racing, a section with a gentle vertical curve. She opens up the kickdrive again and nudges the jaw control for her radio. “How’s my pace?”
“Four-tenths faster than your Q2 lap” is Amira’s prompt response. “This is great, Clarke, keep it up. You’ve got Belette ahead at the curve; she’ll move to top-right relative.”
She’s averaging four-tenths of a second faster than she did in the previous qualifying round. Belette from Martian Motors is in front of her, not doing a timed lap yet, and will make space for Clarke to pass without contest.
Clarke flies, and flies, and flies.
Laps are longer for off-planet tracks than on-planet, both in distance and the time it takes to complete one. The typical off-planet lap is twenty kilometers long, and can be completed in about three minutes if a pilot is maintaining a good pace. Lion’s Head is a little lengthier than most. Clarke crosses the line for her timed lap at 3:08.72.
“Nicely done, that’s P1 for now,” Amira says as Clarke eases back, breathing hard. “Faster than Provenance or Chronicle did in Q2, too. You want to stay out?”
There’s still more than ten minutes left in Q3. Clarke can call it a day and be done now, happy with her performance, or she can keep looping the track at a slower pace, monitoring how well the other pilots do and trying again if anyone happens to beat her time.
“I’ll stay out,” Clarke says. She’s grinning like an idiot inside her helmet, and hopes no one is watching the feed from her visor cam. “More time with the ship is always good.”
It’s a convenient excuse, but the truth is that she just doesn’t want to stop yet. This is the best she’s felt in the seat in weeks. She stays far away from the prime racing lines, leaving plenty of room for other pilots making their attempts to roar past, and just enjoys flying while the timer in one corner of her deck ticks down to zero.
“Okay, that’s it,” Amira says, when 00:00.00 flashes. “You’re P1 for tomorrow. Congratulations!”
