Noel DelMonde was frowning.
The tach readings were rising too rapidly. Ion output was higher than it should be. Radiation levels were climbing faster than was good for the already poorly shielded ship. And the sensors showed the small craft was much farther out than should be possible since the time of departure...
When a loud, exultant cry came from the speakers, the Cajun had had enough. He slammed his hand down on the button that would open his comm link.
"I done tol' you NOT t' breach them damn governors!" he shouted.
Sulu's voice was breathless and joyful. "You shouldn't make it so easy to do!"
Beside DelMonde in the control booth, Jer was grinning.
"You'd best wipe that smile off your face 'fore I turn 'roun' an' see it," The Cajun growled.
The Ter-African's grin only widened. "Can I help it if his enthusiasm is infectious?"
"His damn rad poisonin's gonna be infectious," the Maker muttered. "He goin' too fast fo' the shieldin' he let me put on..."
"It's not the speed, it's the power," Jer responded.
DelMonde glanced up sharply, but the look on Jer's face made it clear that he was talking about the needle.
"Who asked you to put governors on my ship anyway?" Sulu's voice rejoined from the speakers.
"It not yours yet," NC replied.
"I hired you, that makes her..."
"Not 'til I done wit' it!" was the fierce answer. "An' I put governors on my ships t' keep racers like you from killin' theyselves 'fore I got 'em tuned up right."
"You're an old woman, Cajun," Sulu returned, clearly grinning.
"An' you a damn suicide pilot!"
And right then and there, DelMonde knew what he was going to name the ship.
There were several different kinds of races at the Clave. The simplest was called Straight Out, and it was, as might be predicted from its name, an uncomplicated race to a specified point. The next most common was Venus Fever, three orbits around Venus and back The types increased in difficulty from there on. Mars Eight was a figure '8' around the moons of Mars and back, which could be tricky due to the size and speed of Phobos and Deimos. A Jupiter Well consisted of a run around the four largest moons of Jupiter, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto and Io, and back, dangerous considering the gas giant's powerful gravity well; hence the name. An Asteroid Arena was a race in the Asteroid Belt for ten minutes and back out, problematic because the racer had to avoid the millions of tumbling rocks of various sizes while traveling at breakneck speeds. There was also the Madman's Run, in which the racer's ship started with full atmosphere and full fuel. The idea then was for the racer to take his or her ship out as far and as fast as s/he could, and turn back only when calculation showed s/he could return and execute a pinpoint landing, finishing with both fuel and 'sphere on empty. A Sol Skate, a slingshot around the Sun, was the most difficult type of race. It was hardly ever attempted because those who did so had, as yet, to return.
"You not doin' no Madman's Run in my ship!" DelMonde exclaimed furiously.
"She's my ship, Cajun!" Sulu shot back just as fiercely.
"Not till I say so!"
"And how many test runs do I have to make before she is mine?" the racer wanted to know.
"You win a few Straight Outs an' we see," was the growling reply.
Sulu snorted. "I could win those in my sleep."
"It is kinda insulting for a pilot like him," Jeremy put in.
The Cajun gave a ferocious frown and a guttural "hmmph." Paget gave his beloved a discreet thumbs up, knowing that the fact the maker hadn't answered his point meant the Cajun actually agreed with him.
Finally, DelMonde took a breath. "I consider a Venus Fever," he offered.
"Hell, Cajun, that's damn near as simple as Straight Out," Sulu complained.
"Mais, you sure not runnin' an Asteroid Arena!" the Maker snapped.
"But that would be a perfect test for..." Sulu began,
Jeremy held up a hand. "Split the difference," he suggested. "Jupiter Well."
"An' have my beauty end up fallin' into th' Giant Red Spot?" the Cajun protested. "No fuckin' way!"
"I know how to handle my ship," Sulu snarled.
"Lissen, shit fo' brains..."
The racer's black eyes became as hard as obsidian. "Do I have to get the financier down here to argue the point with you, Maker?"
DelMonde bristled. "That motherfucker set one damn toe in my bay..." he warned.
"Yeah, yeah, you'll fry his shit-for-brains," Sulu interrupted with a nasty grin. "But he'll put a blackball on you so fast it'll make your gorgeous, over-inflated head spin."
"Cajun," Paget said in his best conciliatory tone, "Let's compromise. He'll do a Mars Eight for the first run, and if all the specs look good to you, he can go on to Jupiter."
DelMonde growled in his throat, then caught the pleading, worried emanations coming from Jeremy's brain.
Don't fuck with him when he's like this,Paget's mind begged. You don't know what he might do.
"A damn hurricane," the Maker grumbled. He glared at Sulu. "All right, but if you fuck up my ship, I not buildin' you another."
Sulu's grin was triumphant and wicked enough to make NC's pulse race. "You won't have to," he assured, then swiftly moved forward, giving the surprised Cajun a hard, passionate kiss. "I'm gonna ride her like the galaxy-class shit-kickin', ass-chappin', junkyard bitch she is." His grin widened. "And she's gonna love me for it."
As it turned out, there was no one willing to do a Mars Eight against Sulu as a first race. Sulu was surprisingly compliant about this. He confessed to Jeremy that, having won his argument with NC, he no longer had anything to prove. Therefore, the Kamikaze's first official race was what the Maker had wanted - a simple Straight Out to a point just beyond Mars and back - which convinced NC that he had won the argument with the pilot. Which, as far as Jeremy was concerned, was a wonderful way to end a disagreement.
Sulu felt like he was dreaming. It was natural, he supposed. After all, the majority of his sleeping and waking thoughts had been centered on delicious anticipation of what he was doing at this very moment - racing in his beautiful new ship. However he knew himself to be completely and vividly awake. The dreamlike feel to the scene was entirely due to the fact that his lovely silver ship was so incredibly responsive and perfectly tuned to his unique piloting style that he could control her a bit faster than his conscious mind could articulate thought. When the needle was functioning at peak efficiency in a familiar setting like this, Sulu could let his brain ease into a glorious flow state. His mind was intensely active and focused, but simultaneously relaxed and calm. He was piloting as if by instinct, trusting himself and his ship to make correct responses at every turn.
In this state of Zen-like calm, his mind was open and in perfect tune with the rhythm of the galaxy around him. He was one with his ship and with the universe. No apology. No regret. No shadows. Only the bright clear stars and his swift silver ship...
The moment had the resonance of destiny. It was as if he were born for the sole purpose of soaring through the open black skies of the universe unfettered as a bird of prey, encased in a protective armor of noble silver.
Praise be to my Maker, he thought, with an ironic grin. Surly son of a bitch that he is.
He knew he would love the Cajun forever for giving him the chance to experience the bliss that was this moment in this ship. Every slight or offense that had ever dropped off the young Maker's sharp tongue was a small price to pay for the exquisite clarity of this moment - even if he were to wind up dealing with the Cajun's foul temper every day until they were both old and grey.
Throughout the build, other racers who had their own Cajun-designed ship had kept smiling and telling him, "Wait 'til you fly your own."
They were right. Any fool with eyes in his head could look at one of the young Maker's needles and know that they were expertly crafted vessels. It was not until a pilot sat down behind the controls of his or her very own ship that they could begin to grasp the Cajun's true alchemy. In flight, under the hands of the fortunate soul they were created for, his ships were like living beings with a loving heart and proud will of their own.
Despite the Cajun's arrogance, there was sweet submission in the design of his needles. At every branching of opinion or procedure, despite all the Maker's obscene growling, he had consistently deferred to Sulu's judgment and preference. "Not my will, but thine" was invisibly inscribed on every strut and bolt of the vessel. The ship accommodated all Sulu's habits and quirks of reasoning. It acquiesced gracefully to all his impulses - the good as well as the bad. Its engines did not register a single note of protest as he pressed them for even more speed than they were designed to yield.
Take me, it seemed to murmur in his mind. Use me. Push me to my limit and yours...
"You motherfuckin', stubborn-assed, shit-brained, motherfuckin' jackass!" a familiar voice swore loudly over the ship's comm system, breaking into Sulu's reverie. "I done told you you can't be firin' off those aft thrusters when you tryin' to pull outta an attenuated roll!"
"Cajun." Sulu smiled dreamily as he stabilized his craft without cutting any speed. "Is that you? I was just thinking about you."
"You best be t'inkin' 'bout how I gonna beat th' shit out o' you soon as you crawl out that cockpit - assumin' your shit-fo'-brains ass live that long," the Cajun retorted hotly. "Motherfucker, you tryin' to tear th' ship up or what?"
Sulu couldn't stop smiling. "You know I'm in love with you, don't you, Cajun?"
"Motherfucker, I gonna kill you if you don't cut thrust," the Maker promised. "You blow that gravimetric boost assembly I done sweated over fo' three fuckin' straight days an' nights an' you best be able to fix it yourself, 'cause I swear to God I not gonna touch th' pile o' shit you fixin' t' melt it into. Sweet Mary, why was I born fool enough t' waste my time on puttin' together a ship fo' the shit-brained likes o' you t' take out an' collapse into a fuckin' black hole as quick as you can? I swear 'fore Mary, Joseph, all the disciples, an' 15 o' Saint Peter's cousins I gonna kick your stupid, suicide-pilot ass out that cockpit an' put that ship up on blocks fo' sure th' very second you land."
"So, you're planning to meet me in the hangar deck when I touch down?"
"You bet your shit-brained ass I will," the Cajun growled. "I gonna drain every drop o' fuel out th' tanks o' that ship, unbolt th' engine, an' throw th' ignition switch out th' airlock 'til you learn some damned sense."
"You can wait for me in the third little room to the right off Hangar bay 3." Sulu mischievously accompanied the invitation with a sensuous sigh designed to make the already outraged Maker's blood pressure hit tilt. "I want to show you just how I'm feeling right now."
"Fuck you," the Cajun spat back.
"Not exactly my plan," Sulu replied devilishly. "But I think you're gettin' the gist of what I've got in mind..."
"Guys," Cobra's calm voice broke in. "I hate to break up this lovefest, but Kamikaze needs to change course and head back to base right now."
The mere suggestion that this ecstasy of flight might be drawing to an end made Sulu infinitely sad. "Why?"
"You're about thirty seconds from flying into a Martian shipping lane," Paget informed his lover gently but urgently.
Sulu blinked at the starscape around him. "Oh?"
"Yeah, ya crazy-ass, speed-lovin', space-obsessed motherfucker." Behind the insult, he could hear a note of pride in his Maker's voice. "You won th' damned race ten minutes ago."
The rest of the test races against Clavists whose names would never be remembered (except by them when they recounted how they had raced the great Kamikaze before he became King) went as swimmingly as had the first: Sulu pushing the limits of his silver lady, DelMonde snarling at him, promising to take the ship back, then tweaking the mechanics to match up with Sulu's desires. It was, of course, completely predictable that pilot and maker would eventually clash in an apparently final confrontation. What wasn't predictable was the source of the interference that would defuse it.
Jeremy Paget hated it when his friends could not agree.
"No, motherfucker," Noel DelMonde was shouting a few feet away from him. "Glare all you want, but that not change th' fuckin' facts..."
Jer supposed that this was part of the price he paid for so dearly loving so many beautiful, brilliant, gifted eccentrics.
Sulu stood in front of his gleaming new needle with his feet firmly planted and his eyes full of fury. "It's my fucking ship," he spat.
"Oh, is it?" The Cajun folded his arms and smiled nastily. "Then I guess you can jus' hop in it an' fly th' fuck away."
Paget suppressed a wince. He would have dearly loved to break in and mediate between the two but had already been silenced with a variety of obscene variations on the title of "busy-body" or "matchmaker" from both directions.
Sulu's upper lip was curling dangerously. "You've disconnected the ignition assembly."
"Mais that not gonna be no problem fo' you," the Cajun taunted. "Since you know so fuck-all much more 'bout puttin' together a ship than I do."
The racer frowned. "I've got a race in seven minutes."
"Good fo' fuckin' you," the maker retorted. "I myself gonna be fixin' th' gyros in th' starboard stabilizers in this ship right here."
Paget glanced around the hangar bay. The volume as well as the vehemence of his friends' discussion was beginning to draw a crowd.
"For the last fucking time -- There's nothing wrong with the stabilizers!" Sulu thundered.
"If you say so," NC retorted faux-merrily. "Far be it fo' me t' argue wit' your oh-so-fuckin' complete mastery o' ship design. In fact, it be an insult fo' me t' presume t' reconnect th' starter o' any vessel belongin' to a Galaxy-Class Maker such as yourself."
"Listen, you wet-brained grounder..." Sulu began viciously.
"He's right, you know."
Both combatants turned to gape at the audacity of the bystander daring to add his voice to their fray.
Barak folded his arms calmly. "Unless you can figure out a way to run a Mars Eight without making any starboard turns, you're gonna lose."
"I'm gonna lose?" Sulu's laugh was like a knife. "To you?"
"In that ship?" Barak ran his eyes over the glistening Kamikaze with impious scorn. "Yeah. It's overbalanced." The racer cast the edge of a dismissive glance at the needle's Maker. "Typical."
Jeremy Paget held his breath.
It seemed very much as though at the time of their respective births, the Fates had looked down on Cajun and Barak and decided, "These guys need to hate each other."
For starters, they gifted each with a personality designed to annoy the other. Barak was a decent enough guy. He was more than a touch egotistical and rather self-involved... but that didn't make him any different than the average racer. He was possessed of a sharp mind and cool demeanor. Barak tended to make decisions with his head rather than his heart. That quality alone put him into sharp contrast with NC - who, although possessed of an equally keen intellect, was the poster boy for raw emotion on the hoof.
Barak's clear-eyed rationality made him a great fellow to have on your side. Rare was the crisis that could disturb his cool, calculating calm. Conversely, though, if you found yourself opposing him, these same qualities were equally likely to make you think of him as a cold-blooded, conniving prick.
The Fates had seemed to fore-ordain that the Cajun would never end up on the same side of any issue or project as Barak. Their first significant dust-up had come when at a party to celebrate a racing victory Barak had managed to pull off against the odds. Although dismissive comments and even outright trash-talking were perfectly acceptable in the hangar bay or at most Clave gatherings, by unspoken agreement, racers usually observed an informal detente for the duration of a victory party. The Cajun -- who didn't pay attention to the rules people shouted at him, let alone the unspoken ones - had, when his opinion was solicited, publicly disparaged the quality of Barak's needle (in terms of it being "a pitiful piece o' shit") as well as the racer's skill (with reference to Barak's head being permanently located up his ass).
Like almost everyone else who found themselves the target of the Cajun's unsparing critique, Barak's first impulse had been to reciprocate by voicing an equally negative evaluation of NC -- his words, actions, and creations. When, (like everyone else,) he found this only succeeded in spawning vituperative rejoinders of impressive venom and surprisingly painful accuracy from the Cajun, he (unlike everyone else) was not content to merely withdraw from the field of combat pronouncing NC a hopelessly foul-tempered son of a bitch (although he did do that too). Barak was actually able to come up with a workable plot to revenge himself on the Cajun.
NC was an indifferent pilot who usually raced to test ship designs rather than to win. Barak -- through the heeding of insightful observations from his bookie/girlfriend and generally paying more attention to when, where, why, and with whom the Cajun raced than NC did himself -- learned to read the many subtle signs that differentiated the times when the young Maker was most likely to throw a race rather than ruin his needle's engine from the times he was test-driving a hot new design that would be unbeatable until all the other Makers were able to copy the innovation he'd come up with. Barak, therefore, was able to rack up an impressive win/loss ratio against the Cajun before NC had even noticed what was going on.
His smug satisfaction over his carefully achieved superior record was a constant irritant to the Cajun... but not so constant that NC would remember to pay attention to who he was racing against (or even the race itself) when he was once again in the obsessive, exhilarating throes of the proving of a new design.
Although Clavists were not a respectful lot in general, NC's lack of deference probably annoyed Barak even more than it annoyed the average racer because it undercut the role of elder statesman he had deliberately carved out for himself. Barak was several years older than the Cajun. In fact, he was older than Jer, Sulu, and even Castor (the Clave's reigning King, who was nineteen). Barak had become a Clavist's Clavist. He was a walking repository of racing lore and traditions. If a newcomer was in doubt about how any given situation was usually handled, it was wise to seek out Barak. He had become an arbiter of taste as well. Barak didn't set trends, but if he began to repeat your new favorite catchphrase, drink your new favorite cocktail, smoke the blend of Rigellian you'd recently discovered, or wear your flashy new style of boots, then everyone recognized that it was now officially something that Clavists said, drank, smoked, or wore.
At heart, Barak was a realist and did not expect to be fawned over by all the other racers because of his superior experience. A modicum of respect and attention to his words of advice when offered went a long way with him. What did not fly with him at all was being publicly referred to as "Papaw" -- as a certain young Cajun was wont to do. Comments about his "Lolita Complex" were also not appreciated either by Barak or his fifteen-year-old sometimes girlfriend.
The sometimes girlfriend was another major obstacle thrown down by the Fates.
As fitted a connoisseur of all things Clavist, Barak's chosen consort was the perfect groupie. Pretty, smart, sarcastic, witty, voracious, and as caustic as she was canny, Barak's Groupie could out-drink, out-talk, and out-screw any three other Clavists. In addition to these accomplishments, she also possessed the two most stunningly practical outside-the-bedroom hobbies ever cultivated by any needle-racing camp-follower - she was an expert odds-maker and an excellent amateur chemist who could concoct designer drugs as novel and satisfying as anything the Havens could supply. Together, they were the ultimate Clavist power couple.
Unfortunately, however, their perfect compatibility evaporated on the other side of the hangar bay doors of the Clave. Outside that rarefied context, Barak's perfect Groupie appeared to be just a foul-mouthed, precociously decadent, teenaged runaway. Try as she might, she could not morph into the sleek, arm-candy confection appropriate to accompany the upwardly mobile young executive Barak saw his "real world" self to be.
This unfortunate tendency of his Clavist Cinderella to transform into a corporate world pumpkin was putting a greater and greater strain on their relationship with each passing day. Adding to this tension was the fact that Barak's Groupie was spending an increasing amount of "off again" interludes of their on again/off again relationship with the Cajun. Worst of all was the fact that since casual, commitment-free sex was every groupie's God-given right by Clavist As-Close-As-They-Got-To-Law, there was nothing that Barak, paragon of racerly virtue that he'd set himself up to be, could do about it.
Groupie and Cajun hadn't even liked each other at first. They were only drawn together by their mutual resentment of Barak. Since Groupie's tempestuous break-ups were usually followed by equally passionate make-ups a week or so later, most Clavists were hesitant to join in her venomous condemnations of Barak lest their jibes be repeated to the racer in happier days to come. Cajun alone had what could either be positively labeled as the courage or negatively identified as the lack foresight and/or mastery of elementary social skills to bluntly add his own sneering assessment of Barak's lack of good qualities to his sometimes lover's complaints.
Although familiarity had given each a deepening appreciation for the other's finer qualities, Groupie and the Cajun were not in love. She would be Barak's again any time he wanted her. However, during the times when he did not seem to want her, she was almost certain to head straight for the Clavist he most despised.
And so things stood between Barak and the Cajun. Their relationship steadily worsened on auto-pilot now. Neither had to put forth noticeable effort any longer to conform to the perpetual mutual animosity that the Fates had long ago decreed for them.
All this bitter history between them was neatly packed into Barak offhanded sneer of, "Typical."
The Cajun narrowed his eyes. "Here," he said, tossing the control card that would reconnect Kamikaze's ignition switch to Sulu. "Get your ass in that cockpit. You got a race t' win."
Jeremy Paget released a long breath. He hated it when his friends did not get along... except for the times when he absolutely loved it.
Daffy Gollub leaned in close under the guise of adjusting the collar of Barak's pressure suit to ask, "Are you sure about this?
Her sometimes boyfriend smiled as he continued his pre-flight checks. "Am I ever wrong?"
"You are if you're expecting me to answer "no" to that question," she retorted.
"Look at him." Barak nodded across the hangar bay to where the Cajun was making furious last-minute adjustments to an open panel in Kamikaze's port side. "He's got the worst case of ship-lust we've ever seen on him."
"Yeah, but you're not racing him." Groupie turned her lover's chin so that instead of being pointed at the near-frantic mechanic it was facing the needle's calm, smiling pilot. "You're racing him."
"I know." Barak kissed her fingertips as he firmly removed them. "And I managed to get those odds down, didn't I?"
"You're sitting at five to one right now," his girlfriend conceded grudgingly. "Which, yes, was enough to get a lot more people interested in betting."
The racer smiled smugly as he double-checked his fuel levels. "You're welcome."
"You could get it down to three to one if you can make the Cajun blow up again, but don't," Groupie continued quietly. "I want a decent payday if you're actually able to make the problem with the stabilizers pay off."
Barak laughed as he pulled her down into a kiss. "That's my girl."
"Prick," the Cajun muttered darkly, casting a venomous glare in the direction of the Barak.
"What now?" Sulu asked, patiently going through the list of pre-flight checks that were giving him the same perfect-perfect readings they had five minutes ago.
The Cajun curled his lip at the challenger as he reached past the pilot to make adjustments to several controls -- although at this point, most of his fine-tuning was too minute to be visible to the human eye. "That bastard t'ink I so crazy in love wit' this ship that I find a way t' sabotage you 'fore I let you do anyt'ing that might risk messin' it up."
"And would you?" Sulu let a little note of menace seep into his voice to warn his Maker of the dire potential consequences of such an affront.
The Cajun narrowed his black eyes. "In a heartbeat."
"Hey, I've got an idea," the pilot replied pleasantly. "Why don't you try trusting me instead?
The maker scowled at him. "What th' fuck you t'ink I doin'?"
Sulu couldn't help smiling. He was in his ship. Soon he would be in flight. Life was inexpressibly sweet. Not even his temperamental maker's ill-humor could spoil the moment.
"Don't I get a kiss?" he requested mischievously as the Cajun finally stopped his obsessive fiddling with the controls and started to withdraw from the cockpit.
The younger man reached out, grabbed the collar of his pressure suit and pulled him in close. "You so much as scratch th' paint," the Cajun promised, "an' I gonna murder your ass."
Taking devilish advantage of the maker's proximity, Sulu kissed the tip of his nose.
"Motherfucker!" the Cajun exclaimed, wiping his face furiously as he beat a hasty retreat.
Sulu laughed as the cockpit canopy closed over him. "That's my Maker!"
Jeremy Paget took a long slow toke of Rigellian. Waiting was hardest. When he was with Sulu, he could endure anything. Nothing was too painful. Nothing was too difficult. There was nothing so bitter that it could not be sweetened by the presence of the one he loved. When they were separated, though...
Jer blew out a long stream of smoke to hide his sigh. Races weren't usually this hard to bear. It was always better when he knew Sulu was doing something he loved... even when there was risk... risk that was made greater by the part of his lover who was never happy and always drove Sulu to take chances he shouldn't...
"Calm th' fuck down," his host demanded, tossing him a bottle of Black Scotch.
The party atmosphere surrounding the viewing of any race did a lot to help Jer keep a lid on his anxiety. This time, however, he'd chosen to follow NC up to the quarters the Cajun kept in a bay above the floor of the hangar where he did most of his work. Unless it was some sort of special occasion, (and it was getting harder and harder to sell any race as being special enough) NC preferred to monitor races from his quarters. Although he had to shake his head at the Cajun's doggedly anti-social attitude, Jer did have to admit that - as was true of all things mechanical - NC's viewing setup was much better. Because of the dangers of having signals from sophisticated monitoring equipment traceable back to the Clave, the crowd usually followed the progress of a race by gathering around no-frills sensor displays. In his workshop/bachelor pad, the Cajun had created an ingenious contraption that composited feedback from several different types of a needle's operating systems into a sort of holographic image of the ship's cockpit.
The fact that NC deployed this monitoring strategy only on ships he had built made Jer suspect the maker was bending the Clave's rules concerning onboard monitoring devices. It wasn't like the Cajun had a reputation about being over-scrupulous where rules were concerned... But then again, NC wasn't really interested in any races that didn't involve a ship he'd created anyway...
"Scoot over," the maker ordered, elbowing out a place for himself and his control board in the pile of cushions on the large mattress on the floor where he slept and "entertained" the occasional guest.
Since NC's quarters were also where he kept the bulk of his most prized tools, his normal practice was to keep this room immaculate. However now, as was characteristic of the end of a complex build, the space looked like the typical habitat of a teen-aged boy. Empty bottles and discarded clothing were strewn everywhere. The place stank of engine lubricant, old shoes, and bourbon.
"If you not like it," the Cajun growled, tossing aside an empty bowl that had somehow worked its way between the cushions, "you can get th' hell out."
"Am I complaining?" Jer asked, helping the maker untangle a few trailing wires.
"Not out loud," his friend retorted as he activated the feeds that would combine to form the composite.
The view created was not at all realistic. Instead of a normal starfield, the forward screen of the virtual needle looked out onto a green and black three dimensional version of the sort of sensor feed their fellow Clavists were watching a few decks down. Graphs, bars, and lights showed the readings of various instruments in roughly the same configuration of the real cockpit. The pilot himself was a glowing mass of green, blue, red, and yellow taken from some device on board that was registering heat readings inside the needle.
Jer had to smile, though, when the glowing mass of light in the pilot's seat flicked its wrist in a way that made it unmistakably a representation of his beloved.
The Cajun snorted. "You so goofy for him, man. It embarrassin'."
"Yeah," Paget confessed readily. "Fallin' for something that isn't made of metal and circuits. Imagine that."
"Sweet Mary! Look at him put th' torque t' that flywheel after I done told him not to do that!" the Maker exclaimed, instantly so caught up in the plight of his beloved creation that he forgot to deny he wasn't hopelessly enamored of it. "I not know why I bother t' talk to that motherfucker at all. He never listen to me 'less I jus' happen to be sayin' what he wanna hear at th' moment."
Jer grinned. "So unlike you in that way, right?"
"Motherfucker," the Cajun swore, ignoring him. "Look how high he lettin' th' pressure get. Wonder he not pass out in a minute..."
Paget tried to ignore the sudden miserable tightening in his stomach. "They must be rounding Deimos already."
NC adjusted the holo in front of them so that a wider and more detailed representation of the starfield surrounding the needle would be visible. The Martian moon appeared as a misshapen blue mass studded with colorful dots representing the many mining colonies that the asteroid hosted. "Jesus," the Cajun frowned. "Why he cuttin' in so close?"
"I think I know." Jer directed his friend's attention to another colorful cluster of readings rising from below the Kamikaze's port bow.
The configuration of lines and dots was unmistakably in the shape of another needle. The craft was crowding in so close that blurs of the heat readings from the other pilot were visible.
"I gonna kill that prick," the Cajun growled as the outline of the craft rose more and more dangerously close to Kamikaze.
Sulu did not normally think in Japanese. He understood the language perfectly well, of course. He could even decipher the convoluted idioms his grandfather would mutter in the broad Kansai dialect he only fell into when Sulu's grandmother wasn't around. Beyond being able to know when and how vehemently to utter a respectful, "Hai!" there was simply never much call for him to gain a great deal of proficiency in speaking the language, and even less for him to learn the complex characters that went into the written language.
It was with some surprise, therefore, that Sulu found the character for a specific Japanese word forming in his mind's eye as his needle sped around the curve of a Martian moon.
When sounded, the word "Wa" was the same as a simple, humble word for "is," a hard-working "to be" verb. This word, however, was the oldest name the Japanese had for themselves and the place where they lived. It connoted peace, harmony and balance. This one, plain, little word embraced the infinitely large concept of mindful submission to the eternal Now of existence.
Sulu was fairly certain that this word was occurring to him at that moment because his opponent was doing everything in his power to make it as difficult as possible to achieve the peaceful state of perfect, harmonious balance with his ship and his universe that he so longed for. "Wa" hung between the stars as an unachievable goal - almost as a taunt.
Sulu couldn't blame Barak. He would have done the same in his place. Barak tended to be more of a smart pilot than a good pilot. He regularly beat pilots with better reflexes in faster ships by figuring out how to exploit their weaknesses. Barak delighted most in exposing blind spots that converted seeming strengths to liabilities.
Conversely, it was possible for Barak get so caught up in playing chessmaster that he wound up in situations he had neither the skill nor power to capitalize on. Sulu had more than once seen Barak thoroughly outwit his opponent and still lose the race. The Cajun was an avid collector of such stories. He took particular delight in hearing about instances of Barak ending up ignobly hoist by his own petard, or as the young Maker liked to put it, "lettin' that stuck-up mouth write checks his lame-ass behind not got no hope o' cashin'." Such stories were few and far between, though. It was usually a better policy to out-race Barak than to pin one's hopes on out-smarting him.
Sulu frowned as his ship shuddered into another turn tighter than he would have attempted if he were not in such close proximity to another needle. Chessmaster Barak seemed to have ferreted out a weakness in his shining, perfect-perfect ship.
No, that wasn't it. "Weakness" was too strong a word. The art of needle design was inevitably an art of compromise. Given the strictures of size and weight, a Maker had to make more tough choices about what to leave out than about what to include. The tiny (but potentially fatal) wobble he was experiencing now was merely a signpost marking the middle ground the Cajun had staked out between what he knew Sulu wanted in a ship and what he knew Sulu needed from his ship. To barter a few more precious degrees of maneuverability, the Maker had decided to accept a little instability into his design.
Sulu laughed aloud despite the fact that warning lights were blinking from all over his cockpit. The Japanese word for instability also connoted crankiness - perfect for the foul-tempered young monster who'd created his lovely shining lady.
It occurred to the pilot that understanding the necessity of instability was a key to understanding the way the Cajun's design worked. The young Maker seemed to have a deep dread of this characteristic - in his creations, in himself, and most definitely in his clients. It wasn't hard to imagine why. "You think I'm crazy?" the Cajun had asked and seemed pleasantly surprised to get a negative answer. As much as he might scorn and seek to avoid it, volatility was as natural to his character as eating or breathing. The Maker's greatest strokes of brilliance seem to come when he ignored the bonds of logic and conformity to make way for his own risky and unpredictable sense of what was possible...
As soon as the pale edge of Phobos began to rise around the corner of Mars, Barak's grand strategy became clear. Sulu shook his head in grudging admiration. The chessmaster-racer had done his homework this time. While Sulu had assumed that all Barak's muscling and crowding had just been aimed at forcing him to make sharper turns than Kamikaze could comfortably handle, it was now apparent that Barak had also been fighting for a very specific approach vector to this small moon. He had perfectly timed their arrival to correspond to this particular phase of the Martian satellite's orbit. As if it were plotted out with giant red dots, Sulu could see the Barak's nose pointing the way to the inside track around Phobos' far side. The moon's orbit was too close to Mars' artificial atmosphere to squeeze past any other way.
Barak had played him well. There was still a chance to win the race, but Sulu would be playing catch-up straight to the finish line... unless...
Sulu tilted his head at the satellite named after the God of War's child, Fear.
No, a near-side pass was too tight. Given the tiny wobble in his stabilizers, an attempt would just be insanity...
Instability.
The racer considered. Perhaps instability could be... should be embraced... Taking in a deep breath, he let his mind expand on his preconceived limits to the concept of Wa that was this eternal moment of Now in all its complexity and contradictions. Changing his course to a planet-side pass of Phobos, he concentrated on releasing himself to a conception of harmony large enough to incorporate discord. Sharpening his angle of descent, he loosened his preconceptions of anarchy to the point where chaos could exist simply as another face of peace. Taking his hand from the stabilizer controls, he abandoned himself and his beautiful ship to a notion of balance untamed enough to welcome free fall...