Race weekends all follow the same rhythm. Thursday is media, Friday is practice, Saturday is qualifying and lower circuit races, and Sunday is the F0 Grand Prix. It’s equal parts exhausting and exhilarating, and Clarke usually lands firmly on theexhilaratingside during off-planet weekends when she can toy with the edge of being reckless and really open up her kickdrive on straightaways, but all she feels now is a growing sense of apprehension.
It’s not the track. The track is amazing. Lion’s Head Cascade gets its name from the artificial starfall constructed at the far end of the course, which throws dazzling, ever-shifting light across the turns and inversions. It’s possibly Clarke’s favorite of the off-planet sites. She placed third here last year, earning her first (and only, so far) F0 podium.
If she could trade this year’s ship for last year’s, the one she did so well in, she’d probably feel a hell of a lot better. She actually proposed that earlier this week, when the team met up at Elemental Headquarters on Luna to prep for the weekend. Amira backed the suggestion, but Yves said no.Not enough time for the crew to brush up on the old model,he’d said.We can talk about it again after break.
Clarke doesn’t want to wait until after the break. She doesn’t want to fly out into the beauty of the cascade in a ship she doesn’t feel confident in. The team rebuilt it after the disaster at Tiresias, wholly replacing almost the entire back end of the ship, and it handled fine during open practice today, but practice only shows so much.
“Seriously,” Amira continues, jabbing at Clarke with her elbow. “It’s one thing for you to bring your spy into our house, but does he have to be so loud?”
“I’m notloud,” Thierry protests, offended. “And what wouldI be spying on? The secret to how Elemental keeps failing in new and exciting ways?”
“Thierry,” Clarke chides halfheartedly.
“The spy has a point.” Amira pushes her glasses up into her mass of gray-streaked dark hair and rubs her eyes, then looks at Clarke through her fingers. “Is it helping you to have him here? I can call security.”
“It’s helping,” Clarke says while Thierry squawks at the empty threat. “Thanks.”
It really does help, having Thierry around. Clarke didn’t make many friends in F0 last year (Yves and Naomi strongly encouraged Clarke to bond with only Matthew, not pilots from other teams, and Clarke came in with a chip on her shoulder regardless), but when Thierry Allaire joined Enclave Alpha this year for his rookie season, he fell in with Clarke like a bonus younger brother to the biological one she already has. Pilots aren’t supposed to be in one another’s garages during race weekends, but Amira usually lets it slide. It helps that Thierry’s impossible to dislike.
Thierry yawns and drops his head onto Clarke’s shoulder. The chairs at the engineering station are not designed for that; he has to stretch one long leg out across the next stool over to keep from toppling both of them to the ground. “Are you almost done driving yourself nuts? I want to sleep.”
“No one’s making you stay,” Clarke points out.
He cracks one eye open, a slit of hazel and white against his dark brown skin. “Youjustsaid I’m helping! And I don’t trust that you’ll go to the hotel at a reasonable hour if I don’t personally escort you there.”
Clarke’d bristle at the implication that she’s not responsible enough to put herself to bed the night before she has to race, buthe’s got a point. Not about Clarke not going to sleep on time, but about there being nothing else Clarke can do to impact the weekend’s outcome. She’s been studying track variables since dinner, but the sunlamps space stations use to promote healthy circadian rhythms have almost gone dark and her brain is saturated with ship specs and course variable possibilities.
“Yeah, okay,” she says, logging out. “Let’s go.”
Lion’s Head Cascade started as a tourist attraction. A company built the starfall and a small, resort-style space station with a few dining options. As it grew in popularity, the demand for lodging and shopping and other leisure activities increased, so they started adding on to the original structure.
These days, Lion’s Head is roughly the size of Terran Manhattan. Very few people live on Lion’s Head who aren’t staff, but when the station is close to capacity for a big event (like a Formula Zero race), there are almost two million on-station, and another quarter million or so on ships docked at good spectator viewing points around the track. There are decks on the station that never really sleep, casinos and clubs and restaurants open at all hours, but Formula Zero booked up whole hotels in one of the quiet zones. Clarke and Thierry meander through a green space on their way there, Terran trees and Martian crystal flowers and Lunar shrubbery all reaching toward the overhead panels that give the illusion of sky at dusk.
“I chatted with Julian for a minute at pilot roundup,” Thierry says after a few minutes of silence.
Clarke has a lot of experience not reacting outwardly when F0 people drop Julian’s name around her. She puts up her inner walls, bracing for whatever comes next. “Oh?”
“He thinks you’re mad at him.”
Cracks appear in Clarke’s walls at the implication thatJulian’s putting Thierry in the middle. “Did he ask you to talk to me about this?”
“No! I just—” Thierry chews on his lip. The overheads shade further down, switching to a full night scene featuring twin moons. “He mentioned it. That’s all.”
Clarke pushes her anger away with both hands. “I get that you’re trying to help. And if you’re hanging out with him, that’s great—I’m not about to tell you who you can and can’t be friends with—but you can’t get involved in the me-and-Julian thing.”
“Are you ever even going to explain what the you-and-Julian thingis, though?” Thierry wheedles. “Because some days you’re worse than Delphine and Oliver.”
“You take that back right now,” Clarke says, only half joking. Oliver Bright is Delphine’s partner pilot at Provenance. They used to be married, but their divorce was finalized between this season and last. It was not amicable, despite the Provenance PR team working overtime to make it seem like it was. “We’re perfectly civil compared to them.”
“A lack of open hostility does not a pleasant work environment make,” Thierry says, leading the way out of the green space and into the hotel sector, where aerotrains in gravity tunnels offer quick transport to the hotels. Elemental and Enclave are in the same hotel, so they share a train. Thierry seems to be done talking for the night, tipping his head against a seat and closing his eyes, but something he said is eating at Clarke.
“Julian really told you that he thinks I’m mad at him?”
“This is me not getting involved,” Thierry says, pointing a finger at his face.
“I’ll give you a free pass, for the next five minutes. What did he say?”
“Something about a fight you got in after the press conference last race?”
