Lets do something with that Kickstarter.
If you can't win playing fair, stack the deck in your favour.
I've still yet to come up with a valid reason for nobody else having done it beforehand.... beyond 'Our existing designs were competitive enough' and people didn't see the need, to the fact that homologation specials are expensive, rarely make their money back for the manufacturer, and are only really worth it to keep the manufacturer from looking bad compared to the others who're doing the same thing.
In actual combat... it doesn't do well.
Well... it's an attempt at a no-bodycount story at any rate.
Ultimately, they're not beating the best... they're just stacking the deck in their favour as best they can. The status quo will resume soon enough.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
If you can't win playing fair, stack the deck in your favour.
Quote:December 13th 2023. Cassini Raceway.
It was hard to breath.
“I really hate Muv Luv.”
The suit crushed her body down, constricting tighter each time she exhaled. It was designed to provide counterpressure in vacuum, to be electrostatically compressive around crucial areas to help the pilot withstand extreme Gee, and to act as a racing harness, locked in place in the pilot’s seat
Aside from some plastic armour and her head and neck restraints, it was barely a step above being naked.
She hated Mackie for winning the right to name it the Body Defence SysteM rather than just sticking with Fortified Suit. At least it adequately described how wearing the body-hugging suit felt.
It was the way it was because it had to be. It was twenty kilograms lighter than standard suits. Racing wasn’t about comfort. And it sure wasn’t about modesty, even if she was quietly thankful that the hangar bay had been cleared out.
A little padding kept some things to the imagination, but not much. A combination of deep navy blue and garish neon green colouration made her easy to spot if she had to eject in open space.
It was just herself and the prototype, Alone for some quality time. Standing in front of it, forward swept wings made her feel like it was swooping down, eagle-like to grasp her and carry her away. The black carbotanium structure shimmered as microscopic strands of titanium woven into the carbon glinted in the overhead lights.
She mused that they missed a trick by not giving it a slight golden tint.
Helmet in hand, she did her best to swallow her fears, walking around the spacecraft checking for any leaks or missing covers.
The metal on the landing gear was still brand new and untarnished. The markings were still fresh, with a deep lustre to the TITANS-derived logo of Survival Shot. Fuel lines to the endurance fuel-tanks mounted inside the weapons bay were clean and free of leaks.
Conventional hardpoints on the wings would’ve just made the wings heavier, and created turbulence in the drive field envelope at speed.
She tried to desperately hard not to think about screwing this up.
There were ten guests watching who’d paid for the privilege to be there, and if what they saw disappointed them, then they wouldn’t be shy about telling the rest of Fenspace about it. Two years of work would be blown away in minutes.
Maybe it wasn’t the suit.
It wasn’t combat but it was that same feeling in the pit of her stomach - like everything inside her was winding up in anticipation of the big release. It begged to be let out.
She glanced up at the twin exhausts. They were both still shiny and fresh, as yet unaffected by a gentle cruise across from Frigga. Both tail rudders had split down the middle, folding open to form the airbrakes. Exposed actuators were clean and free of obvious leaks.
“Don’t let me down.” she warned it.
The jet didn’t answer.
It looked like a true fighter to the untrained eye. Great Justice had certified it for Part L compliance. ARRR had homologated it as an acceptable ‘Combat Spacecraft’ for the purposes of racing.
It was, Daryl felt, just a bit more special than a lightened Valkyrie. It was nothing more than exactly what it needed to be to do the job it did . It had the bare minimum necessary to be homologated as a fighter, and that was it. It was Teutonically precise in its purpose and design.
A true homologation special, it was built solely to go around a racecourse as fast as possible. Benjamin Rhodes had compared it to putting a cannon on a Williams and calling it a battle tank.
If she was honest, she didn’t really care herself what they thought. Ultimately worrying about what other people thought was Jet’s issue, she just wanted to fly the damn thing. Who cares what the hell anyone thinks, I just want to get out and fly.
It was hard to convince herself she really didn’t care about what they thought when the future of the project depended on it.
Trying to force it from her mind, she checked both engine intakes were free of debris, shining a torch down the throat of the intake.
The best thing about living on Frigga was the space to do things you just couldn’t do in the Crystal Cities. The hangar fees alone for something as large as the Kulbit would put it out of the reach of all but the wealthiest or most influential.
She slipped her helmet over her head, clearing her blonde hair out of the way before clasping it onto her neck restraints.. The same shape as a hardsuit helmet, but made from the same carbon as spacecraft itself, it felt incongruously light on her head. It took her a moment to remind herself that she wasn’t wearing a full hardsuit.
She left the visor open for the time being.
A thin carbon ladder folded out from the side of the fuselage, It didn’t look like it could hold a toddler, let alone her own weight. A four centimetre heel on her foot helped keep her from slipping off as she climbed.
A concession to Jet’s puppet, but it still had its uses.
More than anything, the cockpit betrayed the true purpose of the craft. It was built up around the pilot to form a protective crash-box, rather than allowing for maximum visibility in battle. The instrument panel carried the bare minimum needed.
The seating position was almost supine, reclined back to help the pilot bear G-forces that could kill an unprotected human. And most of all, it was small.
The cockpit seemed to slip over her body like a nylon stocking. Her seat had been specifically made to measure, formed from a single piece of carbon. Latches on her flight suit hooked into the seat-back, fixing her in place with an electronic chirp. A little green light flickered to life on the control panel.
The throttle and control-stick came easily to hand. Her feet locked into position on the rudder pedals. The navigation computer was practically between her legs- easily to hand - with engine gauges and standby instruments above it. The weapon controls were awkwardly mounted under her right arm. while radio and sensor systems were over her left shoulder.
She flicked a few switches to enable the battery systems, then retract the ladder with a whine from a servomotor, before placing her helmet over her head. The comm system came to life she she connected the head and neck restraints to the seat back, locking her hard into position.
For a claustrophobic pilot, it might’ve been uncomfortable. Daryl took it in her stride. It was a cocoon against the dangers of open space. There was a good reason why she was the one giving the demo flight, and thought of it brought a wry smirk to her face. Another switch brought the comm system online.
“Course Control, Stratos, comm-check.”
“Stratos, Control, Reading you loud and clear.”
She didn’t know who he was, but she could tell that he really didn’t want to be there. She reached up to close the canopy. It locked down with a solid thunk. The pressuriser chirped, confirming a solid seal.
“Control, Stratos,. Request engine start. “
“Stratos, clear for startup.”
The startup checklist was taped to the inside of the cockpit. It saved her having to remember it. Getting the reactors started was almost the easy part. Set the reflector blocks to startup positions, then uncover the neutron source.
Start fuel pumps with a whine, open the shutoff valves then set the thruster governors, before hitting both ignition switches. Both engines lit with a hollow crump and a kick in the back that felt like someone’d driven a car into the back of the jet.
It strained against its brakes as engines spooled up to power. Hydraulic pumps built pressure, life flowed through the structure, then up through her body. For a moment, she closed her eyes and felt herself a part of the machine. Locked in place in her seat, she might as well have been.
She tried the controls, verifying their function with the aid of a pair of mirrors mounted to the top of the instrument panel. Gauges woke up, filling with green light as the engines worked up to their operating reactivity.
The momentum was building. She could feel herself starting to quiver with excitement.
“Hey Jet, what’s my telemetry look like to switch to boosters?”
“All green on my end. Go for it.”
“Roger.”
“No time like the first,” she muttered to herself as she flicked the first switch. She held her breath and the power shunts locked into place. Fusion fuel flow valves were opened. Throttles were set to idle.
The boosters kicked in with a shudder through the frame as the thrusters coughed. Instruments flickered a moment, boost gauges spinning up to idle power.
“I’m on booster power. Engines are idling.”
“Neutron flux is stable. Core temperatures are within range. Telemetry is good. What’re your indicators?”
“Both engines … N1, N2, EGT.... they’re where they should be. Life support generator, AC generators. Navigation radar, ejection charges... sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Stratos ready for flight.”
“Go for it. Good luck. ”
She muttered the prayer of Shephard to herself as she switched the frequency back.
“Control, Stratos, request depressurisation, then clearance to course,”
“Stratos, Control, Standby for further clearance.”
Daryl motored the engines, tweaking the throttle. The roar of the thrusters lagged behind her inputs just a little. It took a few milliseconds, engines waiting for boost to build before bothering to answer.
The green bar on the gauge raced to catch up with the red power setting.
The structure creaked , taking the strain as the pressure outside dropped. Her heart raced as she closed her visor down. Darkness enclosed her face for a moment, an integrated oxygen mask pressing down on her face.
She had to force herself to breath against pressurised air.
A moment later, her helmet’s displays had sparked to life, giving a full virtual view of the universe beyond the cockpit. Wireframe instruments on her HUD reported the status of various systems, forming a virtual cockpit that hung in space around her.
She could glance over her shoulder and see the wings and tail behind as sure A stereo camera mounted on top of, and just behind , the cockpit tracked her head movements exactly.
She cycled through different displays with a roller switch on the stick, selecting individual function through the aid of eye-tracking and a quartet of selector switches mounted to the throttle within finger’s reach.
Hardsuit technology, adapted when some jobsworth from Great Justice decided that cockpit visibility was too poor for certification. Necessity is the mother of invention. There hadn’t been enough time before the homologation cuttoff to redesign the cockpit, so she improvised.
She couldn’t help but feel just a little bit smug for coming up with that.
Her final task before launch was to sync the navigation computer with the control tower,
In front of her, the hangar door split open, revealing Titan, three hundred thousand kilometres away. Her HUD picked it up immediately. Traffic sparked in the space around, kilometres-long thruster plumes reduced to little more than flecks of light.
Silently, the vista spread wide, revealing the straw-coloured clouds of Saturn beyond. It was nothing she hadn’t seen a dozen times or more. Beautiful the first time, but after the third it sort of became part of the background.
Her body fizzed with excitement. This was the culmination of two years of work. The only thing keeping her back was a red light
“Stratos, Control. Clear for launch. The Course is yours.”
“Roger Roger Let’s Go!”
She didn’t crawl out of the hangar, she exploded out into the open space.
-------------------
The Kulbit blasted from the hangar with a roar that shook the windows of the pit-box. It made everyone present in the pit-box jump back from the glass for a moment. They clustered around screens reading out telemetry reported back from the racecraft, or video images from the track cameras.
Chirstopher Marsden had brought along his own hardware to watch, along with Commodore Abriel, and someone else in a Stonewell Bellcom jacket Jet didn’t recognise offhand. A small tag on her HUD identified the man by name, in case she needed to know. They seemed to be watching the engine output screen intently.
A couple of racing fans from Marsbase Sara had their monitors set to follow the course, with one dedicated to track times, and another dedicated, to replaying video of Daryl in her flight suit.
Tiamat Vykos and Michael Weston had found themselves their own private monitor.
The food on the table in back.was going steadily cold. It wasn’t Formula 1 hospitality, but it was an interesting day out for those who’d paid to come along.
Ben dropped into the seat beside her, holding a single one-litre cup of minerals in his cyber-arm.
“It’s a pretty good looking bird.” he said, with an appreciating nod. dragging up an image of it banking between a beacon gate. “I like the way the wings reach forward with that anhedral, like it’s about to swoop down and carry something off like a big black eagle.”
“We’re small fry. We need to make a big impression somehow. It helps to look good,” said Jet.
“That explains the flight suits,” Ben grinned. “Makes Gina’s look almost modest.”
Jet shrugged her armoured shoulders. “It’s a quirk of the suit, but I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a happy bonus. But honestly, it’s 20 kilograms lighter than a conventional flight suit. 30 when you add the usual crash harness.
“It can’t be very comfortable.”
“No worse than the standard racing harness. And you know how tight those have to be. It’s not as tight across the chest. ”
“That wasn’t what I meant.” Ben gave her a slightly “So I’m guessing you put Mackie in one of those?”
“He was the only male on Frigga.”
“And?”
“He hated it. “ Jet smirked at him. “But given the choice between a tight suit, or a single centre strap, and all that G-force spread over the body instead of concentrated in one spot..”
Ben cringed reflexively, obviously resisting the urge to cross his legs.. “That just sounds like a no-win....”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Jet knocked on her chest. Her knuckles made a hollow sound against the hard wave-ceramics.
“But think of all the added weight.”
“Well, we can also remove the life support and navigation systems too, along with most of the instruments. Search and rescue isn’t a problem either when you can just fly to safety. Unfortunately, the rules say no.”
And clearly, this was blatantly unfair.
“Well, it means ordinary people can compete without needing to be full cyborgs,”
“I didn’t say that...” Jet answered quickly.
“But I know you well enough to know where you were going,” Ben grinned back at her.
“You got to admit, it is kinda cool. Being able to put on a whole spacecraft as easily as a human would put on a suit. There’s some really nice art in an old Evangelion artbook, where the riders of futuristic motorcycles are cybernetic extensions of the motorcycle itself.”
And it was clearly more than just a passing technological interest... the excitement in her voice was plain.
Ben gave her an amused snort. “Well, the vast majority of pilots don’t want to get full cyborg conversions so I think the rules are going to favour the Mk I human for the time being.”
Jet sat back in her seat, crossing her legs. “Their loss.”
The Stratos streaked past, leaving a trail of blue ionised gas behind it. Beacons flashed as it launched into its first timed lap. It was little more than a blue streak of burning exhaust.
Ben stared out at it, “You do know what a bird like that means for the sport, don’t you?”
“I know what it means for us,” she answered, flatly.
His shoulders fell. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“I know we worked for two years on it. And that it gives us a real shot.”
“I don’t want to be the guy from the major race team, or with the business interest in the status quo crushing a new idea, I don’t.... It’s just. I don’t like what stuff like this leads to.”
“What’s that?”
“Politics.” He practically spat on the word. “When races are decided by the person interpreting the rules, rather than out on the track. The rules aren’t that strict, but so long as everyone stuck to the spirit of the rules, that was fine.”
“We’re still well within the rules,” Jet pointed out. “Just from the other direction.”
Ben drew on a deep breath “ Well. If that thing dominates the next season then I can tell you what'll happen. We all have to compete, so we spend the next three months developing our own homologation specials, and a whole new and expensive arms race begins while everyone looks for the most creative interpretation of the rules. Then people start protesting these interpretations and you end up with something like the last F1 season where the Championship was decided by lawyers and a judge.”
Jet nodded. “That was shit. But you could argue that homologation rules gave us some of the most iconic road cars too. That’s where the Ferrari GTO, Shelby Cobra Daytona, Dodge Charger Daytona, Lancia Stratos and Audi Quattro came from. Those cars are still legends forty years later.”
Hadn’t she had the chance to get inside two of them herself back at Motorcon. Wasn’t the Kulbit prototype registered as the S.C. Stratos?
“Yeah, I read that blog post too.” Ben admitted with a smile. “Don’t get me wrong... it’s not that I don’t want you to run the thing. I’m not trying to talk you out of it, I swear. I’m just venting a few worries. The best thing about the ARRR is that there’s pretty much none of that FIA bullshit, we’re all here to race because we want to race, not because we want to market something.”
Jet drew down a long breath, blue eyes watching through the windows. She could see it racing along the back of the course. “Honestly, we were just trying to build something that anyone could buy as a turn-key racer and be competitive, rather than buying a Valkyrie for the same price, then going through the effort to tune and fit it out for racing. It drops the barrier to entry for teams, especially smaller privateers.”
“And that’s why there’s nobody pitching a public fit about it.” said Benjamin. He glanced at the monitors, confirming something that’d given him a moment’s surprise. “But I’m not the only one worried about it being the first sign of a looming issue. If the Kulbit is as good as it is on paper, then everyone else is going to have to jump on the bandwagon or be left behind, and that makes it harder for small builders.”
He didn’t have to point out the obvious...
“I mean, it took you what, two years to build that?”
“About that.” She confirmed. “But we had cash problems. And engine problems. And computer problems. And homologation problems”
And a rueful grin that expected more problems to crop up before it ever made a starting formation.
“Yeah.... well I’ve got a good idea how much it cost to build and I’d guess it’d probably cost eight times as much to build inside 6 months. Now, can you imagine doing that every year, putting it through the homologation, and then never even getting close to making that money back? We’d have to do it just to keep from looking bad, but it’d break anyone’s back. It might end up breaking the sport.” The sombre mask was cracked by another white-toothed grin. “And that’s not mentioning that the racing will suck this year if one team keeps winning all the time.”
Jet sat back in her chair, pursing her lips together. She glanced at him, gauging his expression as she pondered her answer.
“We can’t afford not to race at this stage. We’ve got to go ahead, we’ve got to do as well as . we said we would, or nobody will ever take anything we try to do seriously. We’re right at the point where we’ve got a spark. It just needs to catch on something. We won’t make it big,” It seemed to make her physically uncomfortable in her seat to admit that, “ - we’re too late to the party for that, but we might get something.”
The Kulbit passed the final set of gates, rolling down through a tight spiral turn before blasting towards the timing beacons at full throttle.
“It’s coming,” Jet said.
The whole box fell silent. Every eye focused on the monitors. Beacons flashes as the Kulbit streaked by. Nobody dared breath. Jet stared at it, willing it to be quick.
“Four minutes forty seven and change!” the course controller announced. The exact time came up onscreen for all to read.
Nobody said a word.
“If I read this right, that’s outside last year’s 105 percent qualifying time,” Ben said, checking the statistics to confirm. “Yup. Three tenths of a second out.”
Bronwyn Foulkes seemed almost relieved. All eyes fell upon Jet. A dozen hard gazes loaded with an implicit accusation
“You didn’t think we’d set records on the first time out, did you now?” she demanded, staring them down.
The Bellecom group shared glances, as if discussing their eventual answer by telepathy.
“We sorta did, actually,” came the answer from the Weston
At least, that’s the way it worked for normal fen. The anti-climax was so....undramatic it bordered on disappointing. It was almost anti-fen...
------------------------
The pit area streaked past as little more than a blur of light. Beacons that might've been hundreds of kilometres apart flickered by one every second. Her lap time chimed up onscreen.
She didn’t even think she had the time to read it.
It was a blur. The universe was zipping by like an old Dvd on fast-forward. Snapshots in time flicked by faster than her mind could process them. The course was marked out on her HUD by a pair of green lines, projected by the sensors out to the next beacon. Her golf-balled eyes could see the first series of gates gaining rapidly.
She kept the throttled firewalled as long as she dared.
Daryl couldn’t even look at her speed. It was a number that her mind lacked the resources to comprehend.
A heartbeat later, and she was on top of the gate.
She yanked the throttle back hard. It clicked in the idle position, locking for an instant before coming back further. Her thumb deployed the speedbrakes.
Wing leading edges split open, spoilers raising across the top of the foil. The drive field contracted, energy spilling through turbulent eddies that send shudders rippling through
The Kulbit lost speed like a Cessna hitting a cliff. Daryl felt like all her internal organs try to burst straight out through her ribcage. The suit creaked tighter, forcing everything to stay in place, squeezing the breath out of her lungs.
Forced air pumped her back up like a meat balloon. It would’ve been called torture, if she hadn’t willingly signed up for it.
Her mind caught up. She was still hundreds of kilometres short of her turn in point.
Fuck
She pushed the throttles forward, closing the speedbrakes. She maintained steady speed as she rolled to the right, before raising the nose to make the turn.
It still didn’t pitch in.
She backed off further on instinct, finally allowing the nose to rotate around. She guided it through the centre of each gate, following the course.
“Jet, This thing’s a pig!”
She had enough time to glance at her speed. Barely faster than her own Silver Arrow. A waved Alitalia Starfighter.
“What’s the problem”
Clear of the final gate, she hauled the Berkut around on course for the next, before punching it to full throttle. It took a heartbeat to spool up before kicking her hard in the back, squeezing her down into the seat.
“Can’t turn. Too slow through gates.”
Brake!
It came to a hault in mid-space. Again, it hauled around like it was dragging a anchor behind. She snatched a deep gulp of air before punching hard out .
“You’re going to slow.”
“What?” Wasn’t that what she just said.“Yeah. Won’t turn in.”
“Okay! Go faster to go faster.”
“What!?”
Easy for her to say wasn’t it? She wasn’t the one getting crushed in a cockpit, with rocky relativistic death awaiting the smallest of screwups. It was on the ragged edge... it felt fast. It felt ready to ear away
“Turn 5. Don’t lift. Full throttle bank. Trust me.”
Turn 3. Pull up hard ninety degrees. Feel like an old tube of toothpaste as the suits squeezed tight. The G-meter flashed yellow at 9.
“Dragging an anchor. Like no RCS”
Turn 4. Three seconds away. Titan loomed large.
“RCS fine. Steer with throttle.”
“What?” She grunted through clenched teeth as g-forces took hold.
“Thrust vectoring is offline below cruise power.”
Saturn looped overhead. Her stomach tried to catch it.
“Fuck!”
It was just a matter of having the guts to run right up to the corner. Stop as late as she dared, then punch it to full throttle all the way around.
Turn 5 appeared ahead in space. A long, 2 Dimensional curve in space. She felt her hands clench. on the throttle and stick.
“Go!”
Every spark in her body screamed her to throttle back. She was going spearing straight into the black. Track markers blurred into sync with the guidance markers on her HUD.
14 G and starting to go orange on her meter. It seemed to come from everywhere, crushing from all around. Down through her stomach. Along her spine. The suit crushed down tight, creaking as it rolled up her legs, before compressing her torso.
In a moment, she wondered if this was what old tubes of glue felt like.
Primary colours drained away to shades of grey, lights blooming into starbusts on the controls. She pushed back against it. Apex marker flickered. Next marker..
Then the next. The mask on fer faced punced air down her throat, inflating her body like a balloon. She had to push to exhale.
Her world narrowed down to a pair of electronically generated track boundaries, and a velocity vector spearing straight through the centre of them. A horizontal bar represented the craft’s wings. All she had to do was keep them between the lines.
This was the sum total of her awareness. 4 lines on a HUD, and the screaming pressure on her body, like she was about to pop out the top of the suit and burst across the cockpit canopy.
Look. Where. You. Want to go. Keep the vector in that direction. Let the plane do the rest.
The pressure fell
The release was ecstatic. It rippled through her body. Colour flooded back into the world.
“G-....” She gasped for a breath. “Almost lost it...”
The next corner - effectively an Immelman turn through four gates - was already on top of her.
Breather over. Daryl slammed on the brakes. It all began again.
-----
On the monitors, the Kulbit seemed to side slip around the corner. It looked more like a rally car drifting than a banking fighter,. It teetered on the edge of control, electronics adjusting and manipulating the craft’s attitude to maintain the vector.
It appeared that whomever had chosen the name Kulbit, had chosen well.
Benjamin whistled, then doublechecked the numbers.
“They don’t let Top Flites go through there that fast anymore. They put a chicane in to keep pilot’s from breaking ribs or G-LOC’ing four years ago. Then banned engine thrust vectoring.”
“Yeah...” Jet began. “That’s why...”
“I’ve got it!” Bronwyn announced, leaping from her seat like she’d won the lottery. Everyone stared at her. “You can’t use a fully supine or prone pilot like the Top Flites, so they use a reclined seat and a high sideslip angle so that the component of the acceleration vector acting perpendicular to the pilot’s spine is increased. It’s not as efficient using engine thrust, but the limiting factor isn’t thrust is it? It’s the pilot. Their initial corner exit acceleration is slower, but the cornering speed advantage makes up for it.”
Jet stared, her mouth open. “Basically that...” she managed to say.
“Excuse me for not being a fighter buff, but why aren’t all planes built like that.?”
The question came from the Sara contingent.... specifically from the sandy-haired man sitting right beside the monitor relaying a live feed of the cockpit.
“You don’t use a reclined seat with a combat plane because it ruins the visibility,” Bronwyn began, building her momentum. “We trade a little G-tolerance for being able to spot the enemy., or just plain see where you’re going if you’re landing with battle damage. It lets you have a smaller cockpit.” She compressed the air between her hands.”It also makes it easier to reach flight instruments and that’s a big deal when the difference between a firing solution and an escaping enemy is a half a second.” She punched at imaginary switches in the air in front of her. ” Not to mention having legs clear of the instrument panel when ejecting.... that’s always a plus.”
She dangled her booted foot in the air. A few people winced visibly.
“We actually took it a bit too far. GJ demanded we redesign the whole cockpit. We nearly did until Daryl came up with the idea of raiding the Stingray Project for a solution.”
Jet tried to smile like a salesman. It came off just a little bit plastic.
“Isn’t there a GPL problem with doing that?” Abriel asked.
“The Stingray project’s LGPL...” Jet explained. She knew, hadn’t she originally decided on the license?
“I’d still be worried about Free Software advocates demanding the release of full design plans over it.”
“LGPL doesn’t work like that. It’s a component, not a derivative work.” Her tone sharpened like a razor.
“Tell that to the Stallmanites. You know how much of a stink they can kick up. There’s no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to using free software in a commercial product.”
She made her point with the tip of her finger.
“And that’s why I make everything public.” Ben interrupted. “It’s the production techniques that’re kept secret.”
“I’m afraid we don’t have that luxury,” said Jet, her voice calming.
“Either way.” Abriel continued. “We prototyped something like it, with a VR helmet. I think just about everyone did. It just doesn’t work for combat spacecraft. The interface is too clunky, even with eyetracking.... it takes too long to properly engage targets. It’s not really something you’d do on a combat spacecraft.” Marsden coughed behind her. She glanced back for a moment, “And you just know somebody’s going to make a case based on that to get the rules changed to ban homologation specials like it.”
“I don’t think that’ll stop either of us designing specials for next year,” Bronwyn remarked.
“But the year after?”
Jet stood with her back to the wall, her eyes darting between all those standing around her. “We didn’t work on this for two years so some gobshite can be a rules-lawyer when we launch it.”
“In fairness now Jet,” Bronwyn spoke with an almost cheeky smile. “it is something of a bit of a munchkin machine itself already. “
“I remember I talked about this when we first wrote the rulebook.” Benjamin began. He stood his ground, backed up by sheer virtue of having been there from the start. “Using the ‘Is it really meant to be a combat spacecraft’ standard is rife for abuse. And I tell you what, you-know-who is going to make a pretty strong case that building these specials is an abuse of the rules. And we’ll have to deal with that...”
He sighed loudly, almost sounding disappointed.
Jet stood there, not sure for a moment whether Ben hadn’t just publicly betrayed her or not. She seemed to freeze, not sure exactly what to make of the situation.
“Can this wait?” Marsden asked dryly. “I came here to watch a plane fly on my day off work, not argue technical regulations.”
------
She passed her first braking marker. It flashed by on the hud warning there was just three hundred kilometres to go before the corner.
She forced herself to wait.
She dared herself to keep the throttle in. Not even a second. Not even a heartbeat.
A moment later she went full on the brakes. The Kulbit stopped in space. He eyes tried to burst out of their sockets.
She went to full throttle as she kicked the jet around with the rudder pedals, hoping the gates were where she expected them to be.
The jet screamed around the corner at a crushing speed, before exploding down the next straight.
That seemed to be the trick.
-------
The tension in the air took minutes to drain.
Jet Jaguar was busy trying to explain some details about the propulsion system to Marsdens group. Abriel seemed to enjoy looking for holes in the design. While Jet was being far more candid that most would when speaking to someone who’d otherwise be leading the competition.
In a way, that was reassuring. In part, it confirmed his original theory about why she’d gone and put the thing together, even if he still wasn’t quite sure what to make of it himself.
On one hand, it was a threat to the easygoing attitude that he liked about the sport. On the other, it was a pretty damned cool machine.
“So, what do you think Bronwyn?”
“I think they need a better pilot to actually win races,” she answered in a caustic tone “It’s a quick bird. But look at the telemetry heading through the gates here, here and here...”
“I see...”
“That’s about three seconds lost, just in that section. She’s catching up quick, but the jet’s a lot faster than she is. We’d need to get a better pilot in there to see what it’s really capable of,.”
“I thought you’d never suggest...”
“I didn’t!”
“It’s only fair. They know exactly what our Valkyries can do. And I think Jet’ll go for it, because I’m going to tell her exactly what I think of it. ”
“Do you really want to wear one of those flight suits?”
He cringed. “A man’s gotta do.... And hell if I’m not just curious.”
“You and me both. ”
“Well then, I might even just order one outright, so we can really test the limits of what it’s capable of. When we know that, we can build something that’ll beat it.”
“Six months?”
“No,” he shook his head. “Last race of the season. Easily. Valkyrie Evolution model. Just in time to get everyone excited for next year. ”
The race was on.
-------
Stratos.
P-037-S4
Daryl was sitting on a chair in the hanger, staring at the name on the tail. Fresh yellow vinyl, stuck on only the night before. It seemed to explode off the carbon-black of the fin, glistening in the overhead lights.
She took another deep breath, forcing the suit to allow her body to expand. It’d been an hour, and she still felt half-dead. She was Knight Saber fit, and it still nearly killed her.
“I’m glad we went with the full suit,” she said, exhaling, “It’s more comfortable than shoulder straps, with better support in hard turns.”
Jet smirked at her. “That’s what happens when it’s a problem the majority of the design team has to worry about.”
Daryl swirled a bottle of neon-yellow energy drink around in her hand for a moment, before taking a swig. It was her second. “So how’d it go in the box? Did they like the show?”
“Well.” Jet sucked on her bottom lip for a moment. Better than I thought. Ben bugged me into letting him take it out for a run when we get back to Frigga. Who’m I to say no?”
“I want to see Benjamin Rhodes in one of these suits....”
Jet grinned wryly at her. ”Hey, I believe in equal opportunities fan-service.”
Daryl snorted through her nose. “So what’d they say?”
“I think we got their attention.” said Jet. “It’s a fast jet, capable of winning races. If the engines hold up, and we can finish, we’ll definitely get trophies. So will anyone else who runs one. Next year, everyone’s going to be doing the same thing - Ben all but admitted they’ve already started building a dedicated racing ‘Evolution’ Valkyrie. If we don’t pick up anything by then it’s going to be tough to keep up.” Jet gave a sigh, staring up at the Kulbit. “Like we expected. We’ll have the run for a season, then after that, we just won’t be able to keep up . Or the rules will be changed to curb the insanity.”
“Insanity is right It’s fast. It’s faster than me. I mean... holy fuck.” Daryl looked at Jet standing beside her, actually built for those speeds, and found herself wondering just how she lived with it. She shifted her gaze up to the cockpit. “It’s that kid in school that makes the snowballs then hands them to you to throw, then blames you for everything when you get in trouble.” She used a fabric pad on the back of the suit glove to wipe the sweat off her face. “It was going so fast that I was still trying to catch up with what happened three corners ago. “
Jet shrugged. “That’s just practice. It’s still a new. ”
“I hope so.” Daryl sighed, before finishing the remains of her drink. “But I was thinking though. I’m going to change the name.”
“To what?”
“S.C. Ranko Mill,” she answered. She was staring up at the existing name on the tail, her gaze hard and determined. “We promised each other that we’d get enough money together to build and hangar our own racer. I built the Silver Arrow to try keep the promise, but I never even made it to the top ten when I raced it. I think.....” she paused, swallowing a lump that’d grown fat in her throat. “If we’re going to win anything I want his name on the trophy somehow.”
“What about the championship trophy?”
The cyber’s face was dead serious.
“Hah!” Daryl barked, then finished off the remains of her drink in one go. “I wish. Eight weeks to the first race. I’d better start figuring out how to train for it.“
Jet smiled at her, “There’s a lot of stuff we need to do. Testing. Sponsorships..... Scaring up a full hangar crew....but the hard part’s over. We’ve got something that can win.“
Daryl closed her eyes, trying for a moment to visualise actually finishing higher than 13th in a race. Pilot: Daryl Haur. Craft: S.C. Ranko Mill. Constructor: Asagiri . First place.
It brought a smile to her face.
Why that name for the spacecraft? Someone was bound to ask. That was the point. Some people deserved more than a line on a wall.
I've still yet to come up with a valid reason for nobody else having done it beforehand.... beyond 'Our existing designs were competitive enough' and people didn't see the need, to the fact that homologation specials are expensive, rarely make their money back for the manufacturer, and are only really worth it to keep the manufacturer from looking bad compared to the others who're doing the same thing.
In actual combat... it doesn't do well.
Well... it's an attempt at a no-bodycount story at any rate.
Ultimately, they're not beating the best... they're just stacking the deck in their favour as best they can. The status quo will resume soon enough.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
