I waited to be processed at the finish line force field with the rest of the losing half of the field.
This was a new experience for me.
I’d heard rumors about it. After you’re in the huge race hangar and disengaged from the ~dart interface, mech-orgs three times the size of a man pull you from the ~dart, strip you out of your flight suit, brand you with a new category tag and cram you into a slave freighter bound for the outer systems.
As it turned out, it wasn’t that bad. The mech-orgs were only twice the size of a man.
But they were as rough as advertised, and when the one assigned to me – a green-fleshed brute that announced itself as Thale 86 – grabbed my arm to extract me from the ~dart, it nearly ripped it out of the socket.
“Watch it!” I shouted. These guys were not programmed to treat us with the same respect we racers were accustomed to. We may be slaves, but as racers, it was important that we not be damaged in any way. Now we were just fodder for the mines – expendable bodies to be tossed around and used up.
Thale 86 did not respond. It just sliced off my flight suit with a precision laser embedded in its index finger, shooting it right down the middle of my chest and down one leg without me feeling anything more than a tickle. Then it clenched its hand around my neck from the back and steered me toward a corridor that led directly to the slave freighter.
They didn’t waste any time.
An announcement over the Flow indicated we were headed for Moon 171. Didn’t mean much to me – one mining moon was like any other. I felt the engines kick in. With no windows, I could only assume we were on our way to our doom.
The freighter’s gray walls were accented by gray, short-pile carpeting on the floor, and gray support beams running the length of the gray ceiling. A dismal transport to our dismal destination.
A ship of the damned.
Some smaller mech-orgs came through a door into the main chamber and handed out work suits – full-body outfits of dark blue Zeflar fabric – flexible, durable, and sure to outlive me to be used for another thousand slaves of my build. I slipped into mine. It was snug. The Zeflar warmed my skin up to standard room temperature, and would regulate my temperature to remain there no matter what the temperature in the mines or how hard I exerted myself.
I counted about eighty of us on the flight – the losers of over a dozen of today’s races. Nobody looked at anyone else – no one made conversation. They were all too busy contemplating their coming deaths.
I was too busy thinking of Jones. And my brother, now that I had a moment to think about it.
Perhaps there was some way to escape. Just because I’d never heard of it happening before didn’t mean it was impossible. Maybe security out in the mining moons was not as good as the stories – maybe it was just scare tactics and PR. The Elite were not known for their honesty, after all.
Surely there was a way to overcome the mech-org guards – a system-wide power-down, an organized revolt?
About three meters to my left I spotted one of the guys from my race. He was about my height, with a blond buzz-cut and hazel eyes that stared vacantly ahead.
“Is that you, Jordan?”
His eyes turned to stare at me. “Jorgenson.” He stared some more. “I saw on my field display – what you did. Why?”
I swallowed hard, cast my eyes down. “I uh, one of my engine clusters fizzed. My ~dart’s liveware didn’t have time to make the repair before it was all over.”
“That didn’t show on my screen,” he said, his voice deep and hollow sounding, as if he were incapable of speaking up.
I just shrugged, rubbed at the stubble forming on my chin. “You think there’s any way out of this?”
He snorted gently. “No.” A beat. His eyebrows flicked upward. “This is the beginning of the end. They say it’s easier if you just accept it.”
“How’s that coming for you?” I asked.
He repeated his little snorting sound. “Workin’ on it, man.”
The transport shuddered gently.
“We’ve slipped to Planck velocity,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Jorgenson. “We should be in the moon belt in a few hours.” With that, he closed his eyes and entered a sleep cycle.
So much for conversation.
Planck velocity made most people sick, but racers like us were used to it. Eat, sleep, navigate, make repairs – it was all the same to us at Planck. So what if, in the back of your mind, it felt like you were having every atom in your body turned inside out. After enough time, you just learned to ignore the sensation.
In fact, I was going to miss it.
My one-hundred race career had started out a little rocky – I’d won the first half dozen races on sheer luck. Which quickly made me a favorite bet among the Elite. Pretty soon after that I got the hang of it, and was setting records. I placed first in races fifteen through forty-seven, an all-time streak record.
I placed somewhere in the top three for the next forty one races, then started to slip a little off my game in the last few runs.
When they started putting Jones in my class.
I enjoyed the challenge, actually. Even when you’re racing for your life, it can get dull when there’s not much chance you’ll lose. Jones changed all that. She kept me on my toes, forced me to exceed my own self-expectations. Made me feel alive, and gave me a reason to actually think about what I wanted to do with my life once I gained my freedom.
This was not what I had in mind. I’d planned to go out quite gloriously – which is why I’d tried that crazy maneuver that got me killed in the second half of that last race. I had not planned to wind up a mine slave.
I looked around at the gray walls, the sleeping or catatonic ex-racers on their way to a short life of hard labor, and at the four towering mech-orgs standing as sentinels at each end of the chamber with their boxy heads, bovine eyeballs, and stretched-out, cloned flesh over their muscular bodies.
And I started to second guess my decision to lose the race.
Maybe there had been some other way to make it work out.
They say it’s easier if you just accept it.
Maybe Jorgenson was right. Second guessing was enough to drive you crazy.