Chapter One

Rosey took one last walk all the way around the latest speedship she’d built. She’d designed it with sleek lines, though aerodynamics really didn’t matter when it came to spaceships.

However, this was a racing ship. Messing with your opponents’ perceptions, getting inside their heads, was part of the race.

If you looked slick, fast, and deadly, your opponents would unconsciously fear you. It might give you that very slight edge that you needed to win.

This speedship had a stereotypical cylindrical rocket shape and length, about sixteen feet long. The front end narrowed down to a needle-sharp point. The middle held a small cockpit, big enough for a single person to be strapped into, sitting up, their legs stretched out. A transparent bubble covered the top of the cockpit, just above the pilot’s head, so that she could see out if she wanted to. Most pilots didn’t care, as they were dependent on the display projected inside their helmet as well as on their dashboard.

Rosey had always wanted to be able to see out when she’d raced, so unless specified otherwise in the contract, she included the ability to view the space around the racer through their eyes and not just relying on the computer displays.

A large red ring encircled the rear of the ship, connected to the body with a series of black S-shaped fan blades. She’d designed them so that they’d looked as though they were in motion, an imaginary wind blowing through them. The ring contained most of the ship’s pulsers and gyros. Stubby red wings along the sides of the ship’s body worked in concert with the pulsers, giving the ship a better turning radius.

A specialized porcelain alloy covered the ship, which gave it a pretty gray sheen, like burnished steel. As this was for a client Rosey liked, she’d used a factory standard color, though personally, she would have gone for something flashier.

In certain circles, racers still talked of the shimmering pink monstrosity that Rosey had built for a client who’d been an asshole.

He’d won his race, of course. Rosey’s sense of personal pride wouldn’t allow her to build a shoddy speedship.

However, that contract hadn’t specified a color for the ship, so Rosey had gotten…creative. The exterior was hot pink and sparkling. Plush red-velvet covered the pilot’s chair, pink shag-carpet enveloped the cockpit, and purple- and gold-colored paisleys decorated every other surface. In addition, she’d done a custom job on the lighting scheme for the controls, so that they continually cycled from cool blue up to garish orange and back again.

The asshole couldn’t merely paint the exterior either, not without ruining the alloy Rosey had used. He’d have to completely reskin the speedship.

Eventually the asshole did, but he never won another race with that ship once he’d changed the color.

His opponents all knew he had fear. And they took advantage of that.

As Rosey completed her inspection of her latest creation, a call came through her bonephone. It was hardwired into her collarbone, allowing her to communicate both subvocally as well as read texts sent via the contact she wore on her right eye.

Jamaal had another ship he wanted her to go investigate.

Rosey couldn’t help but roll her eyes. She let the call go through to her automated answering system.

“Aren’t you going to respond to that?”

Though the words came through the bonephone, and she still heard them as if they’d been spoken out loud.

They came from Dennis, the AI who ran her starship, and in many ways, her life.

“I’ll talk with Jamaal later,” Rosey promised. And she would. Jamaal was someone she’d consider a friend, not a client or even a prospect. He was a trader of sorts: if you had a need, he generally had a friend who knew someone who knew someone who could fix you up.

For a fee, of course.

“But it might be important,” Dennis said.

“It’s just about his latest find,” Rosey said as she whistled a ladder over to her.

Jamaal was obsessed with finding an alien spaceship. On planets, people searched for sentient oceans, ghosts, or even Bigfoot. In space, that same type of person searched for aliens. With about the same amount of luck.

Sure, Humans had run across two planets that contained the remains of alien civilizations. First they’d found evidence of the Harmaiz, a tall, skeletal, insect-like being on the planet Zonami. Later, they’d found the Atoylee, a more plant-based alien likened to sunflowers, on the planet Niani.

No one had yet to meet an actual, living alien.

Whatever Jamaal had thought he’d found, it wasn’t alive and kicking, and so it could wait.

The speedship rested on risers in Rosey’s drydock workshop. The shop was big enough to hold four ships with enough room to work around them, as well as Rosey’s fabrication facility and engine station. While she could build speedship engines from scratch, the racing circuit rules were persnickety about materials and design. Instead of hassling with them, she ordered top-of-the=line pre-built cores, then adjusted everything she could, eking out every last ounce of speed and control while staying within the guidelines.

The back of Rosey’s workshop connected to the space station Lorenzo, while the front of it had a specialized airlock that she used for direct access to space. It was only big enough for one speedship at a time, though Rosey had thought about widening it more than once.

Rosey’s personal quarters were aboard her own starship. The workshop, just on its own, was bigger than most people’s apartments on the space station. Since Rosey traveled a lot, she preferred to take her home with her. The additional space didn’t hurt either.

As Rosey climbed the ladder to get into the cockpit of her latest speedship, Dennis spoke up again. “What are you doing?”

“Gotta test this ship,” Rosey said, trying to sound reasonable. “It’s in the contract.”

The expressive sigh from Dennis made her grin. She could reprogram him to be less of a nag, but where was the fun in that?

“Tell me that you at least are wearing your stretchsuit,” came Dennis’s long suffering reply.

“Yes, Mother, I am,” Rosey said. Her stretchsuit was custom made, of course. The fabric stretched over her body tightly, showing off the muscles she’d maintained by doing so much manual labor and martial arts, even though she was in her mid-fifties. The color was a deep, rich, and frankly, rosy red. Over the chest were her initials, embroidered in white—RDV—Rosey De Vries.

The name for a stretchsuit didn’t necessarily come from the stretchy material, but from the fact that a stretchsuit was supposed to protect you in case of an accident in space, stretching out your life so that you could survive long enough for someone to rescue you. In a standard stretchsuit, you could technically survive in pure space for up to twenty minutes, but Rosey never liked to push it.

A backpack came built into the suit. It contained air and heat elements. It was about two inches thick and covered her entire back. Rosey’s ships always had extra air cylinders and batteries built into the cockpit, on either side of the pilot’s chair, that could be attached to a stretchsuit and thereby extend that twenty minutes of life substantially.

The backpack also contained the helmet that Rosey activated, covering her head and sealing the suit. She kept her gray curls short so they would stay out of the way of the helmet. Not spacer-short: the people who lived in actual EVA suits tended to shave their heads down to stubble. She kept hers long enough that she had hair she could actually run her fingers through, maybe even put gel in when she was feeling feisty, but short enough to not get in the way.

Though the contract specified exact dimensions for the cockpit and the pilot’s chair, Rosey always made the chairs slightly adjustable, so that when the speedship had finished its racing career, it could be sold and the next buyer didn’t have to be the exact same height as the original pilot Or have to rip out the pilot’s seat and replace it.

Plus, that way, she could always take the ships out for one final test run, adjusting the seat forward. She was five seven, and all her height was in her torso like a guy, not her legs.

Rosey ran through the initial flight checklist, never skimping corners on that.

Sometimes, you could rush through a checklist. Particularly in an emergency, when you needed to get off planet before some angry local sheriff came after you. (Not that she’d ever had any experience with that. No, really. Those stories were just that. Made-up tales.)

However, the initial flight of any ship was not the time.

This particular speedship had been exposed to pure space, more than once, to ensure that it was airtight. Rosey wasn’t worried about it suddenly springing a leak, losing pressure, or whatnot. Her checklist was as much superstition as anything else.

Finally, Rosey was ready. She lightly touched the pulsers to raise the ship up, off the risers, then pointed its nose toward the airlock and through the first set of doors.

As she waited for the pressure to equalize and the second set of doors to open, she set up the obstacle course she wanted to race on the ship’s computer.

All Rosey did was give the course parameters, such as two straightaways, two sets of sharp curves, a turnaround midway, and a slalom section.

The computer then randomly generated the course for her to follow, adding in two random elements.

She could have had the computer completely generate the entire course, or she could have specified everything.

For official races, a special computer created the virtual course nanoseconds before the race began, ensuring that each courses was different and that no one had the opportunity to learn the course beforehand.

The exterior doors of her workshop opened as the display in the cockpit showed the start of the course.

A second ship appeared beside hers on her display.

“Really, Dennis?” Rosey asked with an exaggerated sigh.

“Aren’t you the one who always says test everything? Don’t merely rely on simulations?” Dennis replied smugly.

“Fine,” Rosey said with an eyeroll.

“We could make it interesting, you know. Spice it up with a bet,” Dennis said.

“You know I don’t bet on winning,” Rosey said. If too many credits were involved, she might be tempted to cut corners and fly an unsafe race.

Well, cut more corners than necessary.

“You’re the boss,” Dennis said, sounding suspiciously cheerful.

What did that sneaky AI of hers have planned?

Rosey just grinned as she felt her heart rate accelerate.

“All right then. Let’s race.”

* * *

Of course, Dennis was first across the starting line when the lights on her display all shone GO.

He would have that edge on her, his artificial reflexes more finely tuned. In many ways, he represented youth and skill.

Whereas all Rosey had was old age and treachery.

She’d just have to make do with those.

The slalom portion was the first hazard on the race course, and appeared immediately after the initial straightaway. As Rosey hadn’t specified, this one was done as a series of six markers, set high and low, not side to side.

The pilot’s yoke turned the ship, as well as rasing and lowering its nose. Buttons under Rosey’s fingers controlled gyros and thrusters, while her feet managed general speed and deceleration.

Though Dennis had gotten a two-second head start, Rosey caught up with him on the first set of slalom markers. She used the perfect combination of thrust and abrupt deceleration to get her up above the marker, then headed back down again.

Mind you, she might only have a fraction of an inch between the belly of her ship and the marker. But as it was just a point on the course set by the computer, not an actual physical buoy, so that sort of skimming was legal.

At the next marker, she pulled back hard on the yoke, thrusters at max, then cut everything so she didn’t level out, but instead, hinged. That sent her down the far side of the marker quickly, her nose still slightly ahead of the ship racing beside her.

The next marker was set further out, and Rosey let Dennis pull ahead of her. She didn’t accelerate abruptly, but steadily, riding up over the next marker like surfing a wave, up and down gradually.

It wasn’t until the last marker that she pulled out all the stops, hinging up and over it as she had the first couple of slalom markers.

Dennis was caught by surprise, which was the point. She left him behind her as they entered into the first of the sharp curves.

The speedship shimmied as she turned, the rear end pivoting out slightly, as she’d anticipated. She rode that inertia and went into the next curve with fractions of an inch to spare, just clearing the markers.

This time, Dennis caught onto her tricks quickly, and once they were through the curves, they were nose and nose again on another straightaway section, one of the two random bits that the computer had added, just before the midway turn.

As it wasn’t a real ship beside her, Rosey may have possibly drifted a slight bit closer. Just enough to get Dennis to back away. And slow down.

She grinned when he growled at her. Those automatic systems of his were both an advantage as well as a disadvantage. Any new behavior would spark an automated response until he learned better.

She could probably slow him down by getting too close at least once more before those systems of his figured it out. The trick wouldn’t work a third time.

The midway turn was a point that separated the amateurs from the pros. How much you slowed down, how quickly you could overcome your forward momentum, were as much pilot skill as mechanical ability.

Rosey had something special planned for this one. Instead of trying to turn sideways and go around the marker on a single plane, she dove down, going under it, then yanked back hard enough on her yoke to pull her up abruptly on the other side.

She flew over the top of the turnaround point upside down, leaving behind a grumbling Dennis, who’d flown the safer route, going around it instead.

The third straightaway led out of the midpoint turn, giving Dennis a chance to almost catch up.

Almost.

Another slalom course showed up next, the second random element generated by the computer. This one was a side-to-side hazard.

Dennis appeared to have caught on to Rosey’s tricks by now, and was shaving the distance he used going around the markers, bringing the nose of his ship closer to hers, particularly as they made their way through the last straightaway.

Then it was the final set of sharp curves. Rosey had hoped that this would be the case. She drifted again as she had in the first set, allowing her rear end to shimmy out slightly.

Dennis was prepared for that, giving her space, but not slowing down.

Then Rosey drifted further out.

Dennis had no choice but to pull away as Rosey slammed everything home.

During the last curve, Rosey didn’t drift in the slightest, keeping everything tight, giving her that slight advantage as they raced down the final section, back toward the finish line that the computer had set up a good distance from the space station, giving her time to slow down and not run into anything.

Rosey’s ship passed across the line first, at least a full half second before Dennis.

“You’re not supposed to be able to do that,” were the sour words from Dennis when they’d finished. “How can you judge the markers so accurately? You were closer to the buoy markers than you should have been able to get. You should have gone through them, or brushed them, or something.”

Rosey just laughed. “Experience,” she told him.

“But I have experience,” Dennis whined. “I’ve been following you and your races for years.”

“All you have is programming,” Rosey said, sobering. “You don’t have instinct.”

The long-suffering sigh from Dennis told her everything. It was an argument they’d have before, that he should be able to be as good as the best of the Human pilots given all his processing and skills.

However, he didn’t have instinct. He couldn’t just know where a marker was, intuitively, and how a ship would respond, when pushed to its limits.

It was what had won Rosey so many medals and races, reaching the top level of her class of speedship, before she’d left the circuit.

As Rosey drifted toward her airlock, another call from Jamaal came through her bonephone.

She let it go to her answering system again, but she promised herself that she’d call him back as soon as she got back to the station.

She didn’t have to personally deliver this speedship, so she could use a company to send it to her client. Plus, she had over a month before the next speedship needed to be completed. Plenty of time to go on whatever wild goose chase Jamaal had in mind.

Because she was pretty certain that whatever Jamaal thought he had found, it wouldn’t be truly alien.

Sure, there were live aliens out there. Somewhere. However, the chances of finding them were smaller than Dennis winning a race against her.