Clarke cuts the thought off at the root, then digs up the roots and burns them for good measure. She needs to stay in the moment, not think about hypotheticals.
It’s hard not to think about hypotheticals when she’s nine minutes from finishing P2.
For forty-seven laps, the order was stable with Delphine in P1 and Julian in P2. Then Julian made his move, and Delphine didn’t cede the line. The actual contact wasn’t bad, but they were in a fully impermeable part of the course. Delphine rebounded off the barrier and ended up partially blocking thetrack. There wasn’t time for a flag or a safety ship to come out before she was moving again, getting out of the way, but it slowed Julian, Engel, Oliver, and the Martian Motors pilots down. Thierry and Clarke werejustfar enough back to miss the obstruction, far enough back that they didn’t have to reduce their speed. They zoomed around the cluster of slow-moving race leaders, and nowthey’rethe race leaders.
“Julian’s passing Raff. He’s through,” Hodge reports. “And Delphine…yeah, there she goes. It’s Thierry, you, Julian, Delphine.”
Clarke enters the part of the track that whips through city streets. “Think Delphine’ll go for it?Shedoesn’t need the P3 points, but Provenance might.”
The math is simple. If they finish as they are right now, Delphine wins the individual trophy. She could sit tight, not risk another conflict with Julian, take home her fifth interplanetary championship. But the team trophy might still go to Chronicle, depending on how Engel and Oliver finish.
Lennox joins Clarke and Hodge’s channel. “Atreus will make her go for it. He wants the team win.”
Clarke takes a tight corner. The harbor comes into view again, all endless, shimmering blue.Oceans, ugh. “Badly enough that he’ll risk Delphine’s win to get it?”
“Without a doubt. Let’s hope she keeps Julian busy,” Lennox replies, and clicks off the channel.
Clarke crosses the timing line. Two more laps.
Straightaway paralleling the main pier. Turn, turn, vertical climb. Pivot, chicane, loop-the-loop. Bouncing over boats. Entering the city.
“Delphine’s attempting to overtake,” Hodge says. “Ah! She’s in the water!”
Clarke just about swallows her tongue. “She’swhat?”
“She tried to pass, Julian blocked her, she went through the barrier and into the water. Okay, she’s flying again. She’s heading back to the track, moving slow.”
“Glad she’s okay,” Clarke says, and makes herself not ask the question she dearly wants to ask.Is Delphine going to be far enough back in the order that Julian might win?She wants to know, but that information isn’t relevant to her in this exact moment. She and Thierry are a lap and a half away from Enclave’s first ever 1-2 finish. Clarke doesn’t need to be thinking about what’s happening farther back in the order; she needs to be focused on defending her position from the immediate threat.
The immediate threat is Julian. He’s less than two seconds behind, and Clarke’s seen the stats sheets. The Chronicle ship, all other things being equal, averages 0.6 seconds per lap faster than the Enclave ship. He’s going to catch her.
Numbers and scenarios present themselves for evaluation. Clarke doesn’t have much brainpower to spare, so she jumps to what matters: She could let Julian through. Enclave would still finish third overall, and Julian’d have a better chance of taking the individual title.
“Gap behind is one-point-one and closing,” Hodge says as Clarke starts her final lap. “Get ready.”
Straightaway. Turn, turn, vertical climb.
Would Julian want Clarke to let him through? They’ve never given each other help on the track before, not when they’ve been on different teams, but they’ve never been in a relationship before. What if he doesn’t get the points he needs, and he blames Clarke?
Pivot, chicane, loop-the-loop.
Julian can go to hell if he tries to blame Clarke. She has a jobto do. She does not owe Julian her spot, and she is not the kind of person who lets people take things from her. Not anymore. Not even Julian. And if he doesn’t respect that, tough shit.
Bouncing over boats.
If the situation were reversed and Julian let Clarke through, she’d be furious with him. She’d be rip-his-spine-out-and-beat-him-with-it furious, as her fourteen-year-old self once said. And Julian, about to be pushed out of a temple in the sky by his former team principal, had once said that if he didn’t win honestly, there was no point in winning at all.
They enter the city. Julian moves to overtake.
Clarke moves, too—directly into his path.
He spirals up, trying to invert and pass overhead instead, but Clarke knows that trick. He honed it in the canyons behind Clarke’s mom’s house when they were seventeen. She cuts in front of him again.
They corner. Corner again. Corner again. He darts down and left, trying to sneak through, but Clarke knows that play, too, because he always uses it in racing sims. She boxes him out.
They take the last corner, emerging onto the final section of track. It’s a horizontal loop that rings the harbor, then a short straightaway on the main pier. Clarke hits the loop and curls up the outside edge, skimming perpendicular to the water, vision blurring as the accumulated force saps her blood pressure.
Julian takes the inside edge, curving up the barrier opposite Clarke. It’s a shorter distance, the inside edge, but harder to get into and out of at this speed because it goes against the ship’s natural momentum. It’s the last play of a determined, daring pilot in the last few seconds of a race.
