Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen (3 page)

Bill turned away, wetness on his cheeks.

Jane had to admit, if this was all Mike Lomba’s way of trying to convince her to avoid tackling the Armstrong Cup, it was a heck of a good try. Her resolve to come to Cazetti—to take the big purse, and hold the big trophy over her head—was slowly softening. A few more days with Bill talking and acting like this, and he might actually start to sway her.

Then she remembered how hard she’d worked. To come from nothing, and get all this way.

17 years old, kicked out of the house; nowhere to go but up.

Other girls might have hung out the proverbial shingle. It would have been easy. Life in the colonies wasn’t like life on Earth—choked by so many laws and rules, a person couldn’t turn around without getting fined. No. Life in space was free—or about as free as could be managed, within the limits of necessity.

There were still far more men knocking around the solar system, than women, but a girl with a body and a business mind could make quite a bit of money if she liked. Jane hadn’t ever been interested in putting on heels and going to work. At least, not
that
kind of work.

Having stowed away on a freighter bound for Earth’s Moon, she got a job as a custodial chump at one of the junior-circuit tracks. Cleaning up tables and chairs in the track’s miniscule food court. It hadn’t paid much, but it had provided the first real independence Jane had ever had. And at night, stuffed into the boxy confines of her rent-by-the-day migrant housing dorm room, she’d dreamed up her plan.

When she wasn’t working she hung around the racers’ lounge. Nobody at that level was particularly famous, nor wealthy. They weren’t much older than Jane. Which made it both easier—and harder—to fit in. All of them hoping desperately for a chance to level up: to graduate to the seniors.

Most never made it. Turnover was common. Guys either quit, or moved on.

Eventually Jane convinced one of them to show her the ropes, which led in turn to her being signed as a backup driver.

Her ability—once unleashed—spoke for itself.

Now, ten years later, Jane ran her own outfit. A one-woman show. Just as she’d always wanted, ever since the first time she’d stood in that crappy little food court on the junior circuit, a wet table rag forgotten in one hand—her eyes watching rapt through the single-pane, curved window as the racers flew around the track, the movement of men and speeding machinery blending to form a thing of unique and intoxicating beauty.

If Mom and Dad could see her now—wherever they were, if anywhere at all—she hoped they were pleased. Jane was on the brink.

Just a few more races to go …

Jane stood up, flicking a towel around the back of her neck.

“Enough,” she said. “Mike swears you’re the best at what you do, and Mike is the kind of guy I trust to know what he’s talking about. But I don’t want to hear any more of this crap about curses and death and how I need to quit. Okay? If you can’t do that, then I’d better hire myself a new man. Because I’m racing on this track, and I am winning that trophy. Got it?”

• • •

When the first race of the series came around, Bill was in the pit with the tech team, suited up and thoughtfully jawing on a wad of gum. There were over five hundred teams putting drivers on the track for the first round, and at twenty drivers per heat, it would be days before the initial cull was complete and Jane could get on with the business of moving up the pyramid.

Not that she took the first heat for granted.

She’d seen other drivers get cocky like that, and wash out. Or worse. If illogical fear was an enemy at one end of the spectrum, foolhardiness was the enemy at the other.

Jane pulled her Falcon out of the pit and lightly maneuvered it into formation with the other drivers circling the track—grid position being determined by comparative standing in the last cup race any of the drivers had competed in. Her breath was even, controlled, and her limbs wiry and strong, but with flexibility to spare. Some drivers got tight on the bike and tried to force the machine to do their will. Jane was a pure flow theorist: best results achieved by blending body to the bike in as natural a symbiosis as possible. Which wasn’t always easy at some of the speeds Jane had been known to attain when she was trying to make the checkered beacon.

After trials, Jane could see why Cazetti was the home of the Armstrong Cup. It really was the toughest track she’d yet competed on. Where Bill looked and saw a cursed pattern, Jane looked and saw bald statistics. Of all the modern tracks, even with advanced equipment, the crash and death rate at Cazetti was much higher than anywhere else. That the women drivers of the past had died on the track—or avoided it out of fear—just made Jane that much more determined to be the one who broke through.

Beating the odds was second nature to her.

Green lights at the starting line gave the drivers clearance to throttle up and begin competing—the lone, yellow pace bike slowly coasting down to its own pit, leaving the drivers free to engage.

Jane dug her toes in and went for the throat, almost immediately.

One didn’t beat better talent or instincts by being subtle.

Jane knew she wasn’t the most gifted driver in the heat, but by God she was going to show those guys who had the most balls.

The Falcon soared down the first straightaway like a comet, a thin mist of reaction exhaust from the main engines forming contrails in the lunar vacuum. If Jane’s guess was correct, and it usually was, she’d be fueling up exactly once more than the other drivers. The time she’d lose on an extra stop in the pit would be more than made up for by being aggressive early.

She was on the tails of the grid leaders when they came to the first turn complex, and started banking up the wall of the track.

Ferocious acceleration into the turn and ferocious braking in the middle of the turn left her temporarily in the thick of the leaders as they flirted within dangerous proximity, their bikes sometimes centimeters from catastrophic contact.

Heads and eyes flicked this way and that, some of the others showing their whites as Jane touched thruster studs and then shook her rump to the side, spinning the Falcon a full 720 as she banked precariously close to the upper lip of the track, past one opponent, then came down across the vertical track wall and edged out a second man, finally coming out face-front into the first prolonged straightaway, upon which she gunned the mains once more.

“Fancy,” said Bill’s gruff voice in her ears.

“Hey,” she said, grinning behind the visor of her helmet. “I thought you’d fallen asleep on me. How am I looking?”

“Reckless,” Bill said. Paused. Then muttered, “But brilliantly so.”

“You ‘aint seen nothing yet. Second turn complex is coming up. I’ll be out in front of this bunch by the third set of turns. You watch.”

And she was right.

By the fourth set of turns—and almost one complete loop around the convoluted track—Jane had gotten a nice lead on the other drivers as they headed into the longest, straightest portion of the course. She set the throttles up to as close to max as she dared, knowing that too much acceleration would leave her unable to compensate when she came back around on the first bunch of turns.

Jane savored the feeling.

It wasn’t better than sex. That was a different kind of thrill altogether. But it was probably the next best thing.

After the second go-round, Jane’s lead on the pack was considerable, and she began pacing herself: one eye to the dwindling fuel gauge and one ear wide open for news from the pit.

So far, Bill hadn’t said much beyond the formalities of his job. Little naggings about consumption rate and vehicle stress, as relayed to the pit’s tied-in computers. The pit readout told Bill far more than Jane’s display: information which would have been too distracting for her to manage. That was Bill’s role. Jane’s was to jockey for position and build leads. Bill would make sure her machine ran smoothly.

After five laps, it was time to tank up.

Seeing nobody behind her, Jane slowed and slid into her pit, the space-suited crew rushing out with the fuel hose and jamming it into the side of the Falcon, which hummed lightly as it floated above the ground. Jane saw Bill through the control window and she tapped her right index and middle finger to the rim of her visor in acknowledgement. Bill just watched her, his arms crossed over his chest and his face expressionless.

The crew slapped her thigh and gave Jane the thumbs-up, and she applied throttle again just as the pack burst past the mouth of the pit.

Shortly, Jane was back in the melee, making her way once more up through the grid by guile, skill, and a lot of chutzpah.

Round and round she went, the faces of the domed-over crowds flashing past again and again and again as the laps flew by.

Jane was almost beginning to think she’d mastered the Cazetti track, when the Falcon began to vibrate in a most alarming fashion.

“Bill?” Jane said, hands gone light on the control bars as she felt the machine rattle through the seat of her tight-bottomed vacuum suit.

“Hold on, we’re checking,” said the old man.

Seconds, seconds …

“Bill, I need status,” Jane barked.

“We’ve got a lubricant pressure spike in Number Two.”

“Is it red-lined?”

“Not yet, but it’s gone up five percent just in the time we’ve been talking.”

“Can we bleed it off?”

“I already activated the auto-bleed. Look behind you and tell me if you see anything.”

Jane craned to check behind her on either side of the bike, and saw nothing.

“Nope,” she said. “What’s happening?”

“Pressure is up another fifteen,” Bill said. “I’m bringing you in.”

“It’s too soon,” Jane said. “I don’t need to fuel up for another three laps!”

“I don’t care,” Bill said. “Bring it in. Now.”

Jane considered. This was why she’d needed Mike to tell her who she’d do best with. The crew boss wasn’t called a crew boss for no reason. In addition to running the pit, in some ways he also ran the driver—if the driver and the boss had that kind of relationship. And Mike had known Jane would need someone older—who could put his foot down in situations where Jane would want to push things too far.

“Did you hear me?” Bill demanded.

“Roger that,” Jane said, finally exhaling. She’d have to fight like hell to get back into it on the next pass, assuming the pit crew could identify the problem and fix it fast. If they couldn’t fix it …

No. Jane wasn’t going to default, not in this the first run of the series.

She flipped the throttle for Number Two all the way down until it clicked, and the vibration coming up through the saddle, ceased.

“Two has been powered down,” Bill said, an edge to his voice. “Can you make it back to the pit, or should I signal for a tow?”

“I’m not coming in,” Jane said. “I can finish this thing on one main engine.”

“If you burn the engine out, maybe.”

“Bill, I’m not letting myself get taken out of this heat. Not by a stupid pressure problem. Shunt the lubrication system over to Number One and run it at 150 percent. I can at least try and stay up with the leaders. Make it to the next heat.”

There was a fuzzy silence.

“Don’t ever do this again,” Bill said, his voice hot.

“It’s the reason why everyone buys bikes with two engines now, Bill. Are you with me or not?”

More fuzzy silence.

“Fine. You’ve got your shunt. We’ll see what happens.”

• • •

What happened was that Jane finished in fourth place.

Not a tremendously encouraging start to the series, but it at least got her to the next heat, to be held one day later. Since the mechanical issue wasn’t of the spectacular, crowd-pleasing, spinning-out-of-control destruct-o-matic variety, Bill and Jane kept the problem to themselves.

Though by the time of the next heat, even the best techs on the pit crew couldn’t find the source of the difficulty. Even when running the bike at full-power static.

Race time for the second heat was therefore met with a decidedly tense atmosphere in the pit.

“It’s a brand new unit,” Jane argued, her helmet hanging in one hand while two pit crew checked the life systems umbilicals of her suit. They prodded at her back while she and Bill glared at one another, his sunken cheeks flexing with quiet contempt.

“It’s not the bike,” he said adamantly. “It’s
her.
”

His arm pointed to the ceiling, where the transparent glass gave the pit crew a decent view of the starry sky, as well as Sally Tincakes in the far distance, her CAZETTI RACEWAY sign raised proudly over the field.

The youngsters on the pit crew looked at Bill nervously.

“You go out there again,” the old man said, “and there’s no telling what might happen this time. First heat was a warning. She doesn’t give warnings, usually. We file a technical disqualifier with the track office, and you get excused without having to take a hit in overall standings.”

“And no chance at the Armstrong Cup until next year,” Jane said. “No thanks. I’m here to do this thing, now. Not later.”

Bill’s jaw ground bitterly, then he looked away. Silence, for almost a full minute.

“Time hack’s in 20 minutes,” he finally said. “Get on the bike and get out of here.”

• • •

Second heat, and the mysterious pressure problem did not return. The Falcon performed to perfection, earning Jane a first-place finish amidst a much tougher group than she’d been up against for the first heat. She got some nice press in the leader board blogs, and an interview with the track rats who split the news feed back to Earth—for those on the mother planet who were sports-junky enough to care about the exotic stuff going on in the rest of the solar system.

If anyone else noted or cared about the female record of zero finishes and 100 percent fatalities, they didn’t say so. Which was just fine with Jane.

But it didn’t stop Bill from chastising her again as she prepped for the third of the five total heats.

“It’s time to put the baby to bed,” Jane said. “We had our one weird problem for the series, and we’re going smooth now.”