“It’s a little bit about the money. You wouldn’t do this for free,” Rhynn says, oblivious to how Clarke immediately starts mentally calculating how long she would and could do this for free based on her current savings. “It’s a signal of disrespect. They want you to turn this down.”
“I know,” Clarke says, rolling into a different stretch. She’s on the floor of a private cabin on a shuttle to Luna, working through some tension in her hips. They haven’t felt right since the suspension failure at Tempe Terra.
“They’re going to—wait, what?”
Clarke laughs at the flabbergasted look on Rhynn’s face. “They want me to walk away. I’m not allowed to disclose the terms, per my NDA, so they control the public’s perception.They’ll be able to say that they made an offer, and I won’t be able to say how shitty it was, so it’ll come off looking like I’m unrealistic about what I’m worth. They don’t want me back, they just don’t want to take the flak for not wanting me back. Fans punish teams that aren’t loyal to their pilots.”
She explains, in broad strokes, that Anders and Yves are planning to buy Elemental, and her theory about Yves purposefully making this year’s ship a shitbox. By the end of it, Rhynn has sequestered themself in a coat closet for privacy from their sister’s kids and looks about five seconds from committing aggravated assault.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” they say, shredding a scarf they found in the closet into wisps. “I’m not going to physically harm anyone. I’m just going to destroy them. Legally. Thoroughly. Gleefully.”
“They’re not technically doing anything that breaks the law, or violates FIC rules and regulations,” Clarke says. “Teams get bought and sold. It happens. And Yves doesn’thaveto deliver the best machinery possible. He doesn’thaveto try to win every race.”
“He has a duty of care to you. What he’s doing is gross negligence.”
“Only if I can prove it, which I can’t.” Clarke can’t stop a small smile breaking across her face. “Yet.”
Rhynn’s eyes narrow. “What does that mean?”
Clarke breathes into a deeper twist. A whim of a thought flits through her head: She wishes Julian were here to help with the stretching, like he did after Tempe Terra. “It’s nothing you need to worry about until after the Sponsors’ Gala.”
Rhynn flings the hem of a coat out of their eyes. “That’s amonth from now! You are not going to go out there and risk your life during another three races to prove a point!”
“I risk my life every race, which I’m seeing from your face is not the right argument to make, but it’s the truth. And I doubt they actually want me dead. It’s not nearly as charming of a ‘full-circle story’ if Anders’s daughter gets killed.”
Or maybe it is, Clarke thinks, a bolt of terror spearing through her. Sympathy for Anders and Elemental would be at an all-time high if Clarke died. That’s how it goes when someone dies in the seat. There’s an investigation, and so long as the results don’t show fault, the entire community rallies around the affected team and family. That’s how it worked after Connor.
Clarke folds over her legs again, hiding her face. She doesn’t want Rhynn to see that fear, doesn’t want Rhynn focused on that possibility. She needs Rhynn doing something else. “It’s time to start talking to other teams.”
That derails Rhynn’s mounting rant. “Really? You’re going to actually let me do my job?”
There are just as many voices telling Clarke she can’t do this as there are telling her she can. Everyone has an opinion.
Clarke is done valuing anyone else’s opinion over her own. “Let’s see what else is out there.”
“Hell yeah.” The image of Rhynn’s face jiggles as they start taking notes. “Are we being flashy or trying to keep it quiet?”
“Quiet if we can. I’d prefer Yves not find out yet.”
“I take it that means we’re not telling Yves to shove this piece of absolute shit extension where the suns don’t—”
“I want to negotiate with Elemental in good faith. At first, at least,” Clarke relents at Rhynn’s dubious scoff. “Let’s give them a reasonable list of changes and see what happens. Maybe I’mwrong. Maybe I’m being paranoid and jumped to the wrong conclusion.”
“Clarke, I’m going to flagrantly violate the boundaries of professionalism for a second. You okay with that?”
“Uh. Sure?”
“You stopped fighting, somewhere along the line,” Rhynn says bluntly. “You used to fight tooth and nail for what you wanted, and now you are letting other people tell you what you can have. This, today? This is the mostyouI’ve seen you in years. You are worth what you think you’re worth. Don’t fall back into doubting yourself.”
Clarke knows they’re right. She’s been making herself small off the track, complying with every order given to and restriction placed on her, nervous she’d be dropped the instant she put a toe out of line. And when she didn’t start winning, when her first season was lackluster and her second was even worse, she bent further and further. She told herself it was the price she had to pay to be an F0 pilot, and she was willing to pay it, because a future in which shewasn’tan F0 pilot was a future she wanted no part in.
She didn’t come to F0 just to fly. She came to F0 to win.
“On the track, when we go to chase someone down and take what we want, we call it going hunting,” Clarke says. “Fuck it, Rhynn. Let’s go hunting.”
—
Clarke’s hunt takesher to Mars.
