Throttle Sixty-Seven

Things weren’t going too well on the war front. On either side. Ships were being ripped apart, and it looked as if the battle was only just heating up.

Diana wasn’t part of that though. The Styx slipped out of both fleet’s longer range capabilities without so much as a stray missile trailing after it. The Federation and the Bolgians had bigger worries to deal with than her.

Meanwhile, Diana was looking over the point tally from the race so far. “That’s a good, hefty number,” she said.

“It is indeed. At the bare minimum, it will enter you into the top three. The issue comes from the final numbers which might be contested.”

“You mean the points earned for destroying the cruiser?” she asked.

“Yes. It could be argued that since the cruiser wasn’t a Bolgian one, it doesn’t count for the purposes of the race,” ChaOS said.

“Ah, but it was here from before the race started, and I think the rules only talk about ships that were in-system. It never says that they need to belong to a particular faction.”

“That is correct. The other argument is somewhat more solid. Technically, you did not destroy the vessel. The Federation destroyed it when they opened fire upon an allied ship.”

Diana hummed to herself, but she couldn’t think of a clever gotcha for that reasoning. “We are definitely the reason they opened fire on it though. They wouldn’t have done so if we hadn’t proved to the Federation that we’d stolen their ship.”

“It could be argued that pirating a vessel does not count as destroying it, even if it was destroyed because of said piracy,” ChaOS pointed out.

“That’s really frustrating. But hey, we have a lot of evidence that we were onboard the ship and messing with it, right? We can totally just use all of that to overwhelm whomever has to make the decision. Oh! And we took out a couple of smaller ships with the cruiser’s own weapons. They can’t deny that we damaged the flagship’s engines, for example.”

“But the points are tallied based on destruction, not damage dealt. There are actual descriptions of what counts as sufficient damage for a vessel to be considered ‘destroyed.’ Interestingly enough, merely having the ship be temporarily inoperable counts as destruction, even if the ship is still repairable.

Diana checked her navigation, then twitched the ship slightly to one side. Most of the action had happened in decently close proximity to the system’s main inhabited world. The jump rings themselves were still a few hours out at her current top speed. “Well, let’s hope we made enough of an impact that no one will dare really contest us.”

“That is possible, Mistress.”

“Can you start compiling sensor data? Every move we made since arriving. Do one part like a highlight reel of the best moments, and another file with just everything. Bet that’ll make it harder to call us out if we distribute that.”

“Do you want me to degrade the information?”

She frowned. “In what sense?”

“Current Federation-wide scanner technology doesn’t use the same standard as what we are used to. I could format things to make them seem as if they were captured from a good, but not impossibly good, sensor suite.”

“That’ll keep a couple more cards up our sleeves,” she said. “Yeah, I’m down for that. Think you can send a file to the announcer, but discreetly? They were pretty entertaining, and I bet plenty of others listen to their broadcast.”

“I will see what I can do, Mistress.”

Diana nodded and leaned into her seat. She was starting to feel that familiar cool-down that happened whenever a big race had ended. It wasn’t quite over yet, so she didn’t allow herself to relax fully, but the stress of the past few hours was starting to wear on her.

She’d been in plenty of races, of course, but none quite like the Tyrant Cracker. “That was fun,” she said. “But I don’t know if I’m ready to do that again. Not for a week or two, at least.”

“We did burn through the majority of our resources. Once we’ve returned to Miss Ahvie’s vessel we will have to rebuild a lot from scratch.”

“That’s fine,” Diana said. A few stops by some asteroids and maybe a few chunks of ship purchased here and there would get them back up to speed.

She was a little concerned about possible retribution from the Federation. She hadn’t quite single-handedly ruined their operation, but she imagined that she’d cost them a lot more than the average individual did.

She had some tenuous legal protections there, but they were as paper-thin as the Federation’s own excuses to invade the system, and she didn’t imagine they would be nearly enough to dissuade the Federation from seeking retribution.

Having overwhelming firepower would do that.

Which meant, of course, building up that firepower in a bit of a hurry. A problem for later.

“Hey, how are our racing buddies?” she asked.

ChaOS brought up a system map and showed her the location of the group of racers she’d been with. Having Zil Rossi in the group made it trivial to figure out their position.

Which actually reminded her. What was she going to do about that woman? The ktacha had proven to be an excellent pilot, even if she had the advantage of using the Foxtail, which was probably a generation or two ahead of most of the other small fighters in the competition.

Diana wasn’t sure if she trusted her yet, which she realised might not have been too fair on her part. At the moment, she didn’t think Zil Rossi could really do much, so she’d share the victory.

“Can we reach Abatrath?” she asked.

The comms fizzed for a moment, then a gruff and familiar voice filled her cockpit. “Something told me that wasn’t the last I’d see of you,” Abatrath said.

Diana grinned. “Come on now, if it was so easy for me to die, then I wouldn’t have made it to my twentieth.”

“Are you claiming to be immortal now?” he asked. She still had a hard time reading his voice, but she imagined he was amused.

“In the way that all good racers and daredevils are. That is, immortal until I’m suddenly and violently not. At the snail’s pace you guys are moving at, I should catch up within half an hour or so,” she said.

“Are snails slow?” he asked.

“They’re faster than you are right now,” she replied easily.

There was a loud huff over the line. “Catch up when you can. Maybe we’ll make it difficult for you. Once we’re at the afterparty, I need to share a meal with you. To commemorate your shared immortality.”

“I look forward to it,” she said. “You can toast to my victory.”

“And to the winnings I made betting on you despite the terrible odds.”

Diana laughed. “I’m flattered! But I haven’t won yet.”

“I’m not certain anyone will want to deny you the victory. You took out a Federation cruiser with only a jumped-up corvette. I heard that message you sent out, about capturing the ship. How’d you manage that?”

“A girl ought to keep some secrets,” she said.

“What does your gender have to do with secrecy?” he asked.

Diana laughed. “I’ll share the how over that meal you promised me. It’s not nearly as impressive as you think.”

She lined herself up for a smooth curve that ended with her slipping past the other racers, then she swept in and came level with Abatrath’s corvette. The entire manoeuvre took nearly an hour, which meant that by the end of it, they were nearing the jump ring leading out of the system.

ChaOS did what he could to verify that it was heading in the right direction and that it was functional, but without being able to control it directly, there was still a risk.

Diana decided to take it. Their entire group going missing after snubbing the Federation like that would probably be noticed.

“What are you going to do after this?” Zil Rossi asked over a private line.

“Win the next race, of course,” Diana said.

“You might have made some big enemies,” she warned.

“That’s not surprising. I don’t like what the Federation tried to pull today, so I might have to make that displeasure known. But I’ve always had something of an anti-authoritarian streak, unless I’m the one in charge, of course.”

“Of course,” Zil Rossi replied. “I don’t know how wise it would be for me to associate with someone so keen on making themselves the public’s number one enemy.”

“Aww, don’t worry. I don’t plan on becoming too big of a thorn in anyone’s side. As long as everyone deals fair, then I probably won’t bother to stick my nose into things.”

“That’s not as reassuring as you might think,” Zil Rossi said.

“Then maybe everyone ought to keep that in mind.”

***