"So this is a headcount," Pach said. "Who will be using Southport equipment for race prep, logging their flight plans through our systems, things like that. You can still do last minute touch-ups at your home port, if you have one, but if you're registering through us, get on the list today. It has to be turned in tomorrow morning."
The head test flight coordinator -- who, for the next two weeks, would be only a pilot like us -- stood on a shipping crate beside the refreshments buffet, a tablet in his hand. He wore a sand-coloured shirt that nearly matched his hair, and a muted teal cooling jacket with the logo of a fuel company on the shoulder.
I looked at the crowd, milling around in the centre of a circle of parked ships on the Southport tarmac. The daylight was patchworked with thin clouds, and the low insistent breeze blew the smell of sea salt into my hair. It was exciting, and intimidating, to see so many people ready to race.
I had locked the Trium's message deep inside my heart. It felt like contraband, here in the humming normality of the port. As much as I wanted to obsess over what the hell it meant, there was too much to do. The ships had to be prepped and moved to Damor.
"I'll give about five minutes for everyone to find their teams, and then I'll start around and explain the registration," Pach went on. "Pilots, the forms are at the top of your port record, if you want to start getting everyone together."
Pach stepped down and started talking quietly with Lili, the assistant test coordinator. They'd be taking over for him, so he could focus on racing. Several people around me pulled out their tablets to bring up the registration pages. Who all was there? Eli and Jaya, I'd spotted as soon as I arrived. Jaya had her back to me, but her hair was unmistakable. Eli was tall and thin, with a wry smile and darker skin than mine.
I walked a little ways around the broad collection of ships, working out the ratio of how many I knew by sight, versus those unfamiliar to me. I'd missed the last race, of course. It had been held right as my final term began at university. I had watched it on a tablet at my lab table in Damor, as the wall screens had been entirely covered in charts and data.
I had said I'd watch it while I worked. In the end I'd only pretended to work, and sat transfixed by the action, hoping against hope that I could make it to today.
Remembering that made the air taste fresher and put energy into my steps. I looked around for where Pach had parked his ship, the Yanakoya. It sat off to one side, closer to the hangar than the crowd. It was a simple shape compared to many of the other racing ships, just a domed disk with a flat stern covered in thrusters. As I walked closer to it, though, it got bigger and bigger. Most of the viewports circled along the bottom half of the craft. I could see the standby lights glowing dimly in the cockpit.
Around the other side, the mounting steps already reached down to the ground. I took them two at a time and leaned in. (At your ship,) I said to Pach in a queued message, so as not to interrupt.
Pach had raced a year and a half ago, and placed third. That was as close as anyone from Southport had come to the victory. It had also been the first year I'd officially teamed. I had divided my effort between Pach's maintenance crew, and wiring in a new communications system for a pilot named Kelle, who had since moved to Roxi. Last summer, in the break before my final year of university, Jaya and I run supplies for the Saturnus for Raila Akeyo, and helped rebuild part of its stern and tail.
This year, I had a completely different role.
I spun slowly in the co-pilot chair while I waited. Pach's preferred arrangement of controls made sense to me. Most modern ships allowed the layout to be customised, both in placement and interface type, and almost every pilot got creative. One thing remained the same, though. In the starboard side of the cockpit, somewhere between the main readouts and the forward screen, an alien tree would appear to grow in a three-dimensional image tank. The nav drive in the Yanakoya looked like it had tiny clouds for branches.
I stretched my hands both to the side-stick and the secondary throttle bar, touching them lightly and imagining the sloping grassland in the viewscreen before me was the barely-terraformed surface of an unknown world. What gravity would the ship have to contend with? What type of air --
Pach's footsteps approached from outside, and I withdrew my hands and tried to sit like a professional.
"Hey, sorry it took so long. I think I got everybody. Probably go back around before everyone leaves and check." He set three tablets on the pullout desk at the pilot's chair. With a sigh, he dropped into the seat. "Lili's taken over. Any non-race stuff, ask them."
"What do you want to do first?"
"If you would, check off the inspection list while I read it out. It's mostly done." He handed me one of the tablets, already opened to the second page of the inspection. I swiped back to the first page. "There's two or three things I'll need to get done next week when we head to the city and meet up with the rest of the team."
"Alright. I'm ready," I told him.
Pach ran down the basics, and I touched the check-boxes on the list. The first section of an inspection was deceptively easy -- basically, does everything turn on, link properly to the pilot's inner tech, and send alerts in whatever way they've set up? We do it every time we fly, and it can be tempting to skim it. The screw-ups it prevents are the type you wouldn't want to admit to having made.
The mechanical inspection took longer. For part of it I had to get out of the cockpit and walk all the way around the enormous machine. Pach called out the parts of the ship in Linear, and I watched to make sure they moved correctly. He also worked tests of our actual mind-link into the process. It would be amplified by satellites along the race route. But he always calibrated for the least possible power, just to be sure.
Finally, we had to check the in-flight troubleshooting process. He'd have a small crew, including a backup pilot in case of emergencies. But making sure the fail-safes and diagnostics worked, fast and well, would give him oversight into anything they did.
Like he said, a few things had to wait. Two of the boosters needed fuel that could only be bought in Damor, and there was a running light on the stern of the ship that had needed replacing since the last race.
"I'll get those later. Everything else look alright?" he asked.
"So far. That, and you wanted to get some lubricant into the port-side ailerons." I signed my name on the inspection tablet with a stylus.
"Yeah. Alright, that's not too bad," Pach said. "We'll have time to get inside and let me show you the nav system upgrades." He pulled his hair back and tied it with an elastic. "Open up that hatch while I go check on the others for a minute."
He disappeared out of the cockpit door, and I got on my knees behind the pilot's seat to enter the code on the engine hatch release. A distant thunk sounded on the outside of the ship to my right.
He didn't say I couldn't start looking.
I leaned out of the cockpit door, and stepped up onto the narrow gunwale that ran around the widest part of the ship's disk. It was a long drop to the tarmac, so I ran my hand along the side of the ship for balance as I made my way towards the open section of hull. There, in the darkness beyond, was the narrow passage into the inner labyrinth of the starship. I stepped over the gap and perched on the other side, dangling my legs over the edge of the ship's bow.
From here I could look over at the other craft, and down on the teams bustling around them. Most had at least one person crawling around the outside as I was. It thrilled me to see how many ships dotted the yard. This region was growing.
I gripped the sun-warmed edge of the ship. The cream-coloured paint was textured here for footing, but most of the Yanakoya was sleek as satin. It would glide through the fire of reentry nearly as easily as it slipped through the void.
I wanted Pach to win. If this was as close as I could get to that finish line, then I'd help him get over it first.
"Got it open?" he asked below me.
"All ready, Captain," I said.
A moment later, he approached along the gunwale. "Brought you a drink," he said, tossing me a pouch with a straw. It was juice, exactly what I wanted. Pach crouched on the edge, balancing with a hand on the hull. "Twenty-five crews this year," he murmured. "Remember when it was seven?"
I nodded. "You can take 'em."
He gave me a grin. Then, without a word, slipped inside his ship, beckoning for me to follow.