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From Incitas to Celerimme

I was very ill when they picked me up from the surface of Incitas. I spent the next two weeks recovering from dehydration and exposure to the polluted atmosphere of Incitas, and while I lay in a hospital bed I had time to think about what I wanted to do next. I could have died on Incitas, after my crew abandoned me, but I survived. The Race used to be everything to me, but only because I knew nothing else. Now I can’t possibly race again, because when your own team turn round and dump you on the surface of a planet to die, you don’t feel much like staying where it happened. You don’t feel much like ever talking to them again. Especially after they shout out of the airlock “No hard feelings Shar-Jen!” But you just know they don’t mean it. I recovered in time to witness the trial of my three crew mates, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing that they would never race again.

I had a small crisis of confidence after that. I am Shar-Jen Sar Gwent, daughter of Kris-Nor Van Gwent, and a great pilot in my own right, but I had been left to die on the arid surface of the planet Incitas. I had mistaken a professional respect for friendship and suffered for my inability to distinguish. It began to become apparent that friendship was something that I had never experienced, perhaps because I was the daughter of such famous parents and thus people stood in awe of me. There was nothing to hold me on

Incitas, or keep me in the races. I finally saw the Race was too commercialised, although I had lived with publicity all my life. To some people, like my crew mates, the Race is everything, but I know it is not; the Race is nothing compared to the vast ocean of other things in the universe. The Race is “good television” and no one should have to die for “good television”. It was time to leave.

I was brought up on Incitas space station, which hangs in the sky above the planet like a diamond earring, glittering with the slogans of sponsoring companies. It wasn’t an easy life, growing up in place where everything is metal and all you can see out of the window are stars. Stars are pretty but boring, and as the cliché goes, once you’ve seen one star, you’ve seen them all. Most of them do look identical. Sometimes a comet would zip past, filling the windows for a couple of weeks. And then the sun would blind you as the station rotated towards the centre of the solar system. When it got too bright all the windows would darken and you couldn’t see anything outside at all. I had never felt rain on my skin and I was used to wearing a pressure suit at all times. The cold vacuum of space is only inches away when you look through a porthole and that sort of continuous stress tends to make people very careful, nervous and strict. Despite all safety precautions, when I was six years old, a girl whom I played with strayed into a restricted zone where she somehow activated an airlock and was killed when it blew her out into space. It was years before I stopped having nightmares. I certainly didn’t want to stay on Incitas Station. Too many bad memories and people I didn’t want to see.

But to leave was not easy. To go to Incitas planet was out of the question because no one lived on Incitas except for those who had to. The atmosphere was polluted by the factories which built the ships for the races and mined the planet’s resources. Incitas had to support itself somehow. Not to Incitas then, but its sister planet Celerimme, that was where I wanted to be. Celerimme the water planet, so far untouched by the races that went on around it, and Celerimme Station, which orbited the planet, was the space port for the star system. It was exactly what I needed at the moment, I had read about the beautiful floating cities and the native sea people of Celerimme.

Finally I had a destination and was ready to leave Incitas for Celerimme. I had been a race pilot since I was eighteen, I had become the icon that my parents had turned me into, I had never been anything else. With some apprehension about what I would find in the unknown universe, I booked on the first passenger ship to Celerimme, knowing that I would have plenty of time to think on the journey. To get to Celerimme on a passenger ship took two months because it was assumed that everyone would want to watch the current race. Almost everyone did, except me. I certainly didn’t have enough money for the two hour journey just to allow myself some extra comfort.

As we lifted off from Cadit space port, I looked back at the dirty yellow desert of Incitas and I was glad to be safe in the passenger compartment rather than on the surface. I tried to keep away from the other passengers, foolishly hoping that no one would recognise the great Shar-Jen Sar Gwent, but it wasn’t long before people began to notice me. The obligatory news men who accompanied such flights pestered me for interviews, passengers pestered me for autographs and everyone pestered me for reasons why I was going to Celerimme, surely I should be racing. Luckily for me, the pilot, Jan-Mor Hal Leeds, took pity upon me and allowed me to go up to the cockpit when the attention became too much for me. I even co-piloted for part of the journey but I couldn’t keep out of the way for ever, and despite trying to avoid it, I couldn’t ignore the race. This ship was specifically designed to allow people to view the race as it was in progress.

My old team, team Osikawa, was losing badly. After I broke my contract and quit, so did the second driver, because she reckoned that if I couldn’t trust my crew then she couldn’t either. Sil-Jess Win Leven was one of the best pilots I had ever seen and the only one who had ever come close to beating me. When Sil-Jess left team Osikawa had no more new talent to start racing so they had to make do with what they could get. As the ice stars flashed by like sequins on black velvet, team Osikawa fell further behind. Everyone knew what happened to teams that fell behind, pirates waited, carrion birds hoping to pick up a meal. Pirates are legal in the Race, they want the ship markers, the detachable parts of the hull which show which firms sponsor the ships. The law is that whoever displays the marker is entitled to the sponsor money from the company who sponsors the marker. Pirates steal markers and companies don’t complain so long as their markers are seen, some pirates are almost as famous as the actual racers.

The passengers on the ship crowded around the rear viewing ports and view screens to watch the pirates take the Osikawa ship. The crimson ship of the pirates was larger than the light, long range racer and it was easily out gunned, not fast enough to make the a run for it, although it tried. I couldn’t stand to watch the end of the ship I had piloted so many times and went forward to the pilot. As I entered the cockpit I could feel a tense note in the air and as I sat in the co-pilot’s seat I could see why. The Osikawa ship was broadcasting a mayday on all channels, it blocked out all normal communications.

Jan-Mor flicked on the screen and I saw a picture of Gil-Cath Watt Bow. A red slash fell down the right side of her face and poured blood into matted brown hair. Behind her the rest of the crew manned guns, fought fires and one of them whimpered in terror. The ship shook, fuzzing the communication as Gil-Cath shouted over the noise.

“Mayday! Mayday! This is team Osikawa under attack from pirates, grid reference 873 dash 294. Repeat, under attack from pirates. Help us!” The message began coherently but faded in and out of static as Gil-Cath became more agitated and almost hysterical. “Do you hear me they’re killing us, we’re all going to be killed! Mayday! What’s the use…” she shouted, tailing off on the last remark. She flinched as a circuit on the control board short circuited, sparking at her. She seemed to pull herself together again. “The captain is dead, engineer Rik-Ben is injured, and we are leaking oxygen. We are about to be boarded. If you can hear this, please help us. They’re going to kill us! They’re going …” Then the transmission broke off as Gil-Cath screamed.

I turned to Jan-Mor, looked straight at him and spoke. “I know Gil-Cath and Rik-Ben; I trained them. We have got to help them,” I said calmly, allowing him nothing to start an argument with. I had made a statement not a request.

“Shar-Jen you know as well as I do that I can’t interfere and I could never justify the fuel expense,” replied Jan-Mor. “The sponsors of this ship won’t like it. I’ve had to keep going when this has happened to other ships. We can’t take part in the Race, it’s against the rules.”

“I used to know that, I probably knew that too well. During my first race, my gunner was killed by pirates when we fell behind. I really wished someone had helped us, my gunner might be alive if they had. Gil-Cath doesn’t know what to do, she’s barely out of flight school. She wasn’t good enough to ever come close to my standard, in fact she was a complete disaster as a pilot but I refuse to let her die. I’m no longer a part of the Race, these rules you are talking about no longer apply to my life.” I never raised my voice above its normal volume once, anger never had been of any use to me, even though it was my one emotion at this moment.

Jan-Mor was weakened and before I had finished the sentence he was already about to turn over and head back to the stricken, damaged racer. The ship changed direction easily, sliding through space like the beautiful machine that it was. The viewing ship had little fire power but our presence alone was enough to make the red pirate leave Osikawa to float hurt and bruised. They had already taken one marker from the hull but the others were left untampered with. Two members of the crew from the viewing ship and myself donned space suits to make our way to the Osikawa ship. The state we found when we entered the ship portrayed the battle scene which the ship had obviously been. Gil-Cath and her crew had fought hard for their ship. She and Rik-Ben were unconscious, the captain was indeed dead from a massive chest wound. Only the gunner, Max-Jay Ten Gilphead, was fit and he had a prisoner. A pirate. We brought all the living back to the viewing ship where I did the only decent thing. I sighted Osikawa in the canon sights and destroyed the ship, burying the captain in the old honourable way.

Gil-Cath and Rik-Ben were both badly hurt and confined to sick bay for the rest of the journey, Max-Jay decided to stay with them there but no one knew quite what to do with the pirate. The only thing I could get out of him was his name, Robert De Vista. He obviously had not been born on either Incitas or Celerimme; his name gave it away. Instinctively I hated him, he was the one thing I had truly feared for the last ten years of my life. Once they had nearly caught me but Shar-Jen became far too good a pilot to fall so carelessly behind. Plundered ships were left to float and die, those inside suffering from injuries and suffocating from lack of oxygen. The law allowed pirating but not murder, if people died during an attack by pirates their death was accidental. Murders during the Race went completely unpunished, but I had always pushed it out of my mind. I had always been looking towards the next race, too busy to take notice of minor points of justice. Now I had time to ask questions and wonder.

De Vista was locked in a food store room. I persuaded Jan-Mor, surprisingly easily, to allow me to question him, but he did insist on being present. At least this was livening up an otherwise dull and uneventful trip, but the reporters were also getting excited at the chance of meeting a real pirate. For the moment my statements and Jan-Mor’s diplomacy were keeping them at bay, but they regarded this as the story of the century.

Robert De Vista had been born on Gea-Noble, a planet in the vicinity of Cygnus Four, and when civil war had broken out there five or six years ago, he had left Gea-Noble to come to Incitas. He had wanted to be a racer but when he discovered how hard the training was and how young you had to be to stand any chance, he gave up his dream. He found that being a pirate was easier. It was a fairly ordinary story, the Gea-Noble civil war was still raging and had displaced many people. There were things that I needed to know, things I had to know for my own peace of mind. Robert De Vista became my reason to get up in the morning, a reason to keep breathing and a way to find some sort of meaning behind a meaningless race. In fact De Vista said nothing else of interest for a whole week but I had time. Then he let slip that his ship made very little money. There were two things about this statement that I picked up on later; firstly it was his ship, which made me think he was the captain, and secondly if he didn’t make much money how could he afford his ship and pay a crew?

After that De Vista told me he was tired, bored and just didn’t care anymore. He was the captain and he owned the ship. He employed four crew members, two pilots and two gunners, he knew enough to be the engineer himself. As for how he paid them, that was a true revelation.

“The Race authorities pay us,” said De Vista. “Some of it is blackmail money, to keep us quiet, the rest is to make sure we keep running.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “Pirates are a menace to the Race.”

“The great Shar-Jen Sar Gwent doesn’t know everything,” he mocked. “Your own mother pays my bills.” He laughed at me. Liz-Jen Den Gwent, my mother, was on the Race Authority, which amounted to a government position.

“But why?” I asked, incredulously.

“The Race would be boring otherwise. It takes days just to make an overtaking manoeuvre, the races just aren’t that interesting without an element of danger.”

“Racers face enough danger without pirates to contend with,” I said, flatly.

“How often have you crashed, Sar Gwent?” he asked.

“Never.”

“But I know you were nearly caught by a pirate ship. That should tell you something. Without all the publicity and hype no one would watch the races. If no one watched the races, no one would see the publicity, advertising or ship markers. Incitas would collapse from lack of trade. It needs the races and it needs the pirates. Why else would they turn a blind eye to murder and theft? That’s all we do. You of all people should never have believed that we could ever make enough money stealing ship markers. They wouldn’t get seen enough for the companies to pay up the money we need.”

I was shocked. I had been so naïve. I had actually believed that the Race was fair. After the horror of the attack I had just witnessed, to learn that it was effectively sponsored by the government made me glad I had left when I did.

“You can’t do anything,” said Robert De Vista. “That’s the way it is. I’ll be prosecuted as a token gesture, they can’t do anything else now, and that will be the end of it. You can’t say anything because no one will believe you.”

“If I’ve got you, people will have to believe me,” I said, but I had forgotten the presence of Jan-Mor who hadn’t said a word during the whole interview.

“Robert will deny everything, because if he doesn’t I will kill him,” said the previously weak seeming Jan-Mor. He didn’t seem to be so weak now.

“What?” I asked. “You’re a pilot, you’re on my side.”

“Sorry, Shar-Jen, I do whatever the Race Authority wants me to do.”

Robert De Vista had begun to laugh. “You didn’t know he was part of this? He’s the one who gives the money to us. I go to him if I need more money for repairs or new crew members.” He continued to laugh. I couldn’t contain my anger so I left the room before I killed the bastard. Jan-Mor followed me out of the room.

“If you breath one word of what has been said here it will be denied.”

“Why don’t you just kill me like you killed Gil-Cath’s captain. It might as well have been murder,” I spat.

“You’re too well known. I can’t kill you because it would draw too much attention.”

“Fame is useful after all,” I said, more calmly.

“Fame doesn’t last,” he replied. “You will be killed if you say anything. The Race must continue, the Race is everything.”

What could I do? I walked down the corridor to my cabin and wrote a letter. We landed two weeks later at Uscita space port, I posted the letter and boarded the first ship I could find going to Gea-Noble, a troop carrier. I registered under a false name. Gea-Noble was the one place that no one went to willingly and a place where I could get lost easily in the civil war.

The letter told of how the Race Authority paid the pirates, all the corruption of the system. I hoped they would believe it enough for it to get out onto the media network. I couldn’t stay around to find out. I was going to Gea-Noble.

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