“Clarke.” Naomi stands at the end of the hall, sleek ponytail and brittle smile. Time starts again. “The team’s waiting for you, for debrief.”
Clarke does not like Naomi, but she’s happy to see her in this moment. She sidles away from Julian with relief. “Okay, sorry. Have a good break, Julian.”
Julian doesn’t do empty platitudes. He’s silent as they leave, and Clarke feels the heat of him watching until the door shuts behind them.
The paddock feels both calmer and more excited than usual at this point in a race weekend. There’s less of a rush, because there’s no hurry to get everything shipped off to the next race site, but everyone also wants to get their jobs done fast, so they can turn their brains off for break.
Naomi is radiating displeasure that slices through everything else. “What the hell was that?‘Take this outside and settle it on the track,’ honestly—approachable, humble, dedicated. That’s what you’re supposed to be. Not antagonistic toward the Galilean Golden Boy.”
No one from the colonies on Jupiter’s four largest satellites, collectively known as the Galilean moons, has ever been the F0 champion. Part of it’s that they’re the youngest and smallest human settlements in the solar system, part of it’s that life in the colonies doesn’t leave a ton of spare time for recreational activities, and part of it’s that transit through the asteroid belt, while a good deal safer today than it was even fifty years ago, still isn’t something done on a whim. Julian had a lot of hurdles to get over to compete at the level he did in the youth circuits, faced a lot of barriers inner-rim kids like Clarke didn’t.
There’s a Grand Prix held in the reigning champion’s home nation every year. If Julian wins, there’ll be a Formula Zero race in the Galileans for the first time ever. The prestige, money, and tourism an F0 event brings would go a long way toward accelerating the colonies’ development. Julian carries that weight every time he gets in his ship.
“Is that how it looked?” Clarke asks. “Like I was antagonizing him?”
“It looked like you were contemplating tearing his throat out with your teeth.”
Clarke thinks about Julian’s throat, and getting her mouth close to Julian’s throat. “How bad is it?”
“There’s already backlash. You set yourself against the fan favorite to dethrone Delphine, with no actual reason to do so beyond a childhood rivalry you apparently can’t get over.”
Clarke needs to throw something. Break something. Put on her favorite boots and go kicking through a patch of wild crystal back on Mars.
The team debrief doesn’t change that need for catharsis via violence. In some sports, if you don’t know why something’s going well, you don’t talk about it for fear of jinxing it. In Formula Zero, you talk about everything. Endlessly. And then you talk about it again. And then someone makes a spreadsheet of how many times you’ve talked about it, and you talk about the spreadsheet.
There’s a purpose to it. Most sports don’t run as high a risk of someone dying if every single element isn’t performing to precise expectations. Clarke’s ship was supposed to fail today, but it didn’t, and since they don’t know why, they can’t say if it’ll happen again. They can’t replicate a success they can’t explain.
“It’s got to be the compounder,” says one of the mechanics. “Nothing else makes sense.”
“We have checked the compounder eight times. This week,” start crew engineer Maki says tiredly. “Tomás, pull up the spreadsheet and show them how many times we’ve checked the compounder.”
“Eight on Clarke’s ship, only seven on Matthew’s,” confirms Tomás. “Think that’s significant?”
Clarke’s going to rip all her hair out, right here at the table. Would that be significant?
“We’re not making any more progress tonight,” Yves says, putting an end to the squabbling and, hopefully, this meeting. “It’s been a long four months. We’ll come at it with fresh eyes when our shutdown’s done. See you in two weeks, everyone. Clarke, stick around.”
Clarke, already halfway out of her chair, drops back into it. Matthew makes eye contact across the table and quirks his head, offering to stay.
Matthew had an awful race, fighting his ship for every inch. He’s pale and drawn under his supportive smile. Clarke’s been in his shoes, knows exactly how exhausted he must be.
She jerks her chin to the door. Matthew needs to rest, and Clarke doesn’t want witnesses to whatever dressing down Yves is about to give.
She checks her cuff while the others trickle out. There’s the usual pile of unread post-race messages from people Clarke knows well enough to have given them her Link ID. There’s the handful of fan comments Sara’s curated that she’d like Clarke to react to directly. There’s a brief video from her family, Clarke’s brother shrieking with glee in the background while her mom and stepdad shout “Congratulations” over and over. Thierry’s sentTHAT WAS AMAZING, YOU DID AMAZING, also happy break and remember that you said you’d come to my birthday party.
“I’ll make this quick,” Yves says when the room is empty except for the two of them.
Clarke braces.
He pulls a holoscreen out of the table, logs in, swipes at something. Clarke’s cuff dings. “Just wanted to make sure this didn’t get lost in the post-race madness.”
The new message at the top of Clarke’s cuff is a calendarinvite to a meeting two and a half weeks from now, at Elemental HQ.EM-83 Design Session.
The EM-83 is the model of next year’s ship. They’re inviting her to the meeting about next year’s ship. Hope gallops through Clarke’s heart.
“Any questions?”
“Does this mean my contract’s getting renewed?”
