Drawing the Line

Juniper Clay yanked the control stick to port as she emerged from the shadow of the tumbling space rock, a dusty granite chunk left behind when the Nall shattered the colony world of Youngster. Her rockhopper juked and then arced toward the waiting gantlet of blazing holovid billboards – some advertising Fagin Five Hundred corporations and their products; some broadcasting live feeds from throughout the rockhopper rally course.
She checked her time. Still ahead of her best by three seconds. Her eyes shifted to the sensors. Her nearest challenger – Adajovski, from the looks of it – was at least ten seconds behind.
“Not making this easy,” she growled to Cinnamon, her shipboard AI.
There was a clear note of disdain in the female voice of the AI as it responded: “Cheating should never be easy.”
Juniper sighed. “Just one race,” she said, unable to filter out the defensive tone. She didn’t like this any more than Cinnamon, but the AI didn’t have legs or arms to break. The Shareholders knew who they wanted to emerge victorious from this rockhopper race, and it was the young wunderkind, Vladimir Adjajovski.
Whose sensor icon just flared red and then vanished.
“Rear cam zoom,” she said. Cinnamon complied, providing footage of the wreckage of Adajovski’s craft spreading outward from the chunk Juniper just passed.
“Do we still throw the race?” she asked, not really wanting an answer.
She got one anyway.
“The Shareholders might suspect you engineered his demise.”
Juniper frowned. “Who’s next in line to catch up?”
“Dim Colic,” the AI answered, highlighting the hopper that was pulling to about thirteen seconds behind Juniper.
The same Dim Colic who (allegedly) hired a mechanic to knock her landing strut out of alignment so she almost wrecked at the end of the Castori Invitational. The same Dim Colic who (absolutely) punched her in the jaw during a tavern brawl in Freewheeling on Tomin Kora. The same Dim Colic who once (on the record) told an AI journalist that she only got a chance on the rockhopper circuit because she was the legendary Sam Clay’s granddaughter, “and nepotism can’t always make up for a total lack of talent.”
She grunted. “No goddamned way I’m losing to him.”