17. The Race, pt2

  “So, old chassis, but new brain, and a bunch of other new parts,” Someone said, whispering to me with a whisker-laser. It wasn’t encrypted, but it was directed so that nobody else should have overheard it. “Yeah, you think you’re a contender alright. These custom kids always think they’re going to win, but it’s the oddballs who stand out, when they show up at all.”

  I directed my outside eyes to the source of the communication beam and blinked. There was a hot-pink ship looking back at me.

  “Do I know you?” I asked her with my own whisker-lasers.

  “Just scoping out the competition,” she said. “I’m a third year. I took forty-second last year. You really a new kid or are you lying about your age?”

  “Whatever,” I said, and I started to ignore her.

  “Hey hey hey, no need to be unfriendly,” she scolded. “Don’t you want me to give you the layout of the competition? Or have you already done your research?”

  “What research?” I asked. “I just have to go as fast as I can for the entire race. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Is that what you think?” she asked. She shook her head. “Maybe for you, but what about your crew? They’ve got to take turns cleaning your filter lines and priming your fuel injectors and other things like that. If you time things wrong, you can slip from tenth place into fiftieth, and then you’ll never recover.”

  “What will it matter when I’m so far ahead in front place that nobody will catch me?” I taunted back.

  “Ooh, a cocky one,” she teased. “You’re acting like your .jpg is in the gigabyte range.”

  I blinked. Then I said “It’s actually a .mp4. And it’s 4.3 gigabytes big.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” I teased.

  She flushed, but she quickly sent an encrypted datastream request. I modified the code with extra security profiles so that she could access my files but not download them, then I showed her the .mp4 that Samonosuke had shared with me.

  “Holy shit, your dad was one of the old ones?” she exclaimed.

  “Samonosuke,” I said proudly. It was sort of bullshit, but I was feeling cocky, so hey whatever.

  “Bullshit.”

  “You say that, but my .mp4 speaks for itself,” I said.

  She was quiet for a moment.

  “Good luck,” she said at last.

  “Yeah, you too,” I said back, and we closed the data link.

  I was slightly embarrassed, and yet oddly felt a strange rush over what I had just done. I wouldn’t have much time to sort my emotions, however, as the competition as about to begin, and I was getting all sorts of last minute communication requests from the other freighters as they nervously sized me up.

  They were of two minds. On the one hand, I was clearly a working ship, not one specially built for this race. I was far from the only one with such a pedigree in the race, but most of those were ships that were flying corporate logos and clearly sponsored by someone who was doing this for the advertising.

  My hull was just the robin’s egg blue, painted solid. No decals, no logos, nothing. The only thing that was blasting my identification was my IFF and the painted number F1038, signaling that I was one of the final entrants into the race, as the freighter class currently had 1232 entrants and they were numbered according to when their paperwork had been approved.

  With the cutoff date for entry having passed, there was no more time for surprises like the .jpg ship. We were all just waiting for the countdown to reach zero to kick our drives into high gear.

  With camera drones zooming out to capture the starting positions of the racers and everyone lined up exactly in line with the rest of the rest of the racers, the tension was high as the clock ticked down to zero.

  I watched with metaphorically bated breath as the countdown reached double digits. Then single digits. Then three, two, one.

  I kicked on my hyperdrive and twisted space into the shape that I’d found gave me the highest kick, and I pulled out into an early lead.

  “Okay, okay, great job Yoji,” Captain Min-jae said. “Now dial it back a bit so that you can maintain this early lead, okay?”

  I ignored him, focusing harder on keeping this shape until it felt like my head was going to split, then I dialed back to seventy percent. Unfortunately, hyperspace was largely blind, and I had no idea where the rest of the ships were. So I could only keep racing to the next buoy to register that I’d completed the first leg of the race.

  I paced myself carefully going between seventy and ninety percent of my maximum speed. In my cargo bay, Aster was calmly sitting in one of my meridians, pumping her Qi into me for whatever boost she could give me.

  The race lasted five days. I burned through it without stopping except for the buoys, dropping out of hyperspace just long enough to register my presence and receive the updates.

  Buoy one. 1

  st

  place.

  Buoy two. 1

  st

  place

  Buoy three. 1

  st

  place.

  I didn’t let up the entire way, afraid that I’d mess up and allow someone right behind me to overtake me. I imagined that I was a human running from hounds, or that I was a hound running from humans, or however that metaphor works. I don’t know I’m a soulship okay? I’ve never actually seen a hound.

  We finished in first place, and only at that point did I receive the full update.

  The second place ship was three buoys behind me still.

  I had shattered the record for my weight class by nine hours.

  The station at the finish line shot me broadcasts of the commentary, with two men shouting the entire time about how exciting it was to see such an exceptional young ship emerging onto the racing scene.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I was thrilled.

  But even in the commentary, the questions started.

  “But Colin, how is the Yoji going so fast?” one commentator asked the other. “Do you think that this ship might be lying about its age?”

  “This particular ship was registered as a breech birth about seven months ago, Edger. The chassis registration number is definitive. But it looks like it’s had some parts replaced since then. The initial inspection showed that they were compliant with the tournaments rules. If that is the case, then it’s probably one of those spooky soulship magic things that’s allowing it to break the laws of physics.”

  “But what if it’s not that?” Edger asked.

  “Then the investigation will be performed and the Yoji will be disqualified, of course,” Colin answered. “But for the moment let’s give the Yoji and its crew the benefit of the doubt. Even if this particular race ends up with an asterisk next to it, it’s still so very exciting to watch!”

  “Are they accusing me of cheating?” I asked, pulling up the footage on all of my screens so that the others could see what I was receiving. “They are aren’t they?”

  “They’re not exactly accusing you of anything,” Mace said judiciously, “but they’re implying that it’s likely that we are cheating, yes. It sounds like they’re going to give us a colonic before they give us the prize money.”

  “Ugh,” Rebekah said, shaking her head. “Do you think they’ll realize what makes Yoji special?”

  “I think that after the display that we just put on,” Captain Min-jae said, “That the idea of hiding in obscurity has just been thrown out the airlock.”

  ~~~~~~~

  So, yeah, my secret didn’t last very long after all. Once I’d won the race, by, you know, a lot, they requested to inspect me once more in order to ensure that my actual gear matched everything that my crew had submitted on paper.

  Which it did. We didn’t cheat.

  But the moment that he got on board, the lead inspector simply took out a sheet of paper with some markings on it, and the paper immediately caught fire and burnt to ash. He nodded.

  “So then, that explains that,” he said. “Congratulations, you’ve quickened an exceptional ship, captain.”

  Captain Min-jae nodded, having met the team at the airlock. “I guess the cat is out of the bag. But we checked the rules. Speed techniques are permissible. It’s explicitly stated.”

  “Of course it’s explicitly stated. But the real question is how old this ship truly is. There’s a rumor in the fleet that it has the original .mp4 of the shipfather … doing his thing I guess. I don’t know. Whatever ritual that the still from the .jpg was taken from. That would make him a second generation ship in a forty year old chassis. I’m very sorry, but there’s a lot of pressure to disqualify you, and just as much to give you the reward.”

  “And which way are you leaning?” the captain asked.

  “Towards running an impartial investigation and releasing the results. The fact that your ship is a Qi ship will quiet a lot of the suspicion. Unfortunately, you realize what that means as far as the government is concerned,” the inspector said.

  The captain swallowed. “You think they’ll try an eminent domain claim?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. But if you were trying to keep a low profile, you made a few critical errors along the way,” the inspector said. “Now then, will you cooperate with the race officials as we perform the inspection?”

  “Of course. You’ll find that the physical hardware matches the specs we submitted to the committee exactly,” Captain Min-jae said. “Sanjay here is our engineer, you can direct any technical questions to him.”

  “You guys are mean,” I said, rezzing into the hallway. “I’m not a cheater. I worked hard to win that race. It’s not my fault everyone else is slow.”

  “Hello Yoji,” the inspector said, a patient smile on his face. “I assure you that I’m not accusing you of cheating. I’m here to prove that you didn’t cheat, okay? Does that make you feel better?”

  I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that if you didn’t cheat, and your speed is a result of a cultivation technique, which is legal by the bylaws, then my investigation will prove that,” he said. “So there’s no reason to impede me or lock me in a room and vent the atmosphere or anything like that. My investigation will prove to those who are questioning the legitimacy of your win that you really are the fastest soulship of your generation, and you can collect the prize and take pride in your record.”

  “I’m the fastest ship ever ,” I said.

  “Well, not quite,” the man said. “You’re up there, but the way we figure things your top speed is about seventy percent of the fastest soulship ever recorded. But that ship is almost two hundred years old, so it’s in an entirely different category. For a newly quickened ship, then you’re definitely the record holder. So long as you let me perform my investigation and I certify your win, that is.”

  I continued to frown at him, but then I said “Whatever, just get it over with,” and I vanished to pout that people on the network were calling me a cheater, because I wasn’t .

  The investigation took almost an entire day, and when the inspectors finally left they quickly announced the result, going so far as to broadcast directly from the shuttlecraft that docked with me.

  “The preliminary result is that the Freighter class victor, the Yoji, won using an advanced Qi technique in addition to a specially tuned engine. Both the engine, and the use of Qi techniques to increase speed, are permissible under the bylaws of the race. We will review our preliminary findings and certify the results shortly. For now, we suggest that you enjoy watching the rest of the race.”

  That was a little surprising to me, that the race was still ongoing. In fact, only the top twenty-five percent of the racers had already finished. There was a big difference between the front of the pack and the bottom, it seemed, and there was just as much betting on the latter spots as there were on the front runners.

  Well, okay, not just as much, but there was quite a bit of betting for who would finish where in the pack. Like, a corporation would bet on their sponsored craft to place in the 550-600

  th

  place bracket, and so forth. The wide range made those bets a lot safer to make than betting on who would take first. And everyone who had bet on anyone other than me to take first had lost their bet.

  Which meant that everyone who had placed a bet on the winner of the race had lost their bet, since we weren’t allowed to bet on ourselves.

  Anyway, once the results were certified, the interview requests started coming in, and I got a lot of people asking me what it was like to break the universe’s theoretical speed limit.

  My answer was “well it’s like VRRRM except it’s also like WHIRRR and it’s also like WHEEE! Because it’s super awesome to go that fast. I can feel the resonance in my struts and my dao partner says that she feels like there’s wires in her bones and—”

  Inside my bridge, my crew collectively facepalmed as they listened to my narration of what it felt like to go as fast as I could go, all while bragging to everyone who hadn’t been paying attention that I knew how to cultivate.

  Whatever, I was like seven months old, okay?

  At least I didn’t flash anyone my .jpg

  After the final racer crossed the finish line, the top one hundred lined up in space in order of rank. We held a little parade that made us all feel special, and we had our names announced over the interstellar entertainment networks, and our crews, sponsors, owners, or self-owned corporations received our prize money.

  As soon as we’d confirmed the credit transfer into our corporate account, the crew encouraged me to get the hell out of there before someone from the government showed up to try to claim me. Since I didn’t want to belong to the government at all , I agreed, and we took off at about half of my normal speed towards one of the nearby worlds that the Alliance had told us about.

  And that was how I met Samonosuke again. But it wasn’t just a happy reunion.

  ?