Space Race (Space Race 1) Nathan Hystad (ebooks children's books free .TXT) 📖

decked him.” I didn’t want to taunt him, but he was giving me no choice. Plus, it was kind of fun.

I wasn’t going to let him disrupt our victory. Tomorrow was another day, and the Race would continue with seven of us. Unfortunately, Sage was one of the teams moving on.

“Watch yourself. You weren’t supposed to make it this far.” He poked me in the chest as he walked by.

I took a chance. “What’s your company building out here?”

He stopped, turning slowly as the rest of his team arrived. The pilot was on a hovering stretcher, but she looked responsive as they moved her toward a medical station near the crowd’s edge. “What are you talking about?”

“Never mind. Say hi to Frank Under for me.”

 

 

 

Eighteen

“Why did you let me stay up so late?” Luther asked the rest of us.

“Hey, I told you to go easy on the caffeine,” Jade told him, saving me the trouble.

“That doesn’t help me now,” Luther mumbled.

This felt good. Not just the win, but the camaraderie. Holland was feeling much better, but he’d lost a bit of his boisterous energy from early in the Race. He’d been preparing for that moment his whole life, and a possible sabotage from another team had ruined the moment. He’d recover, but I expected it to take some time.

“Lotus is gone.” I watched their Racer depart the Martian starting line. The fanfare was still present, with dozens of corporate vessels watching this leg of the Race continue. There were only seven teams at this point, but unexpectedly, our win last night had been enough to push us into third, giving us a head start on the last four teams. I checked the screen, using my rear camera to watch Luna Corp wait idly behind.

“It’ll be strange without Espace and Barret,” Holland admitted.

“Not to me,” Jade countered. “Espace tried to screw us over early on, and I won’t forget that. I’m glad they’re eliminated. Barret too. Everyone we outlast is one more we don’t have to contend with in the future.”

“How great would it be at the end, defeating our old employers?” Luther laughed lightly.

Four of the teams had been linked to the three of us. Me with Sage, then Oasis; Jade with Luna Corp; and Luther with Lotus. We had conflicting emotions tied up with them, because when you worked for the Primaries, you weren’t only an employee. You lived there. You relied on them to house you and feed you. It created an unhealthy bond of dependence that shouldn’t be natural to mankind.

Yet here I was again, loyal to SeaTech, another Primary, and I was as reliant on them as any of the others. The difference was, they seemed to care. I’d been able to see my father off as he’d departed on a rented transport. Soon he’d return to Earth, to stay with my mother in their new retirement condo. It sounded too good to be true. Your value was determined by how much you could do for a CEO, and I was making a promising show of expanding SeaTech’s reach, so I considered this a success.

With a touch of the screen, and the activation of our Core, I brought Pilgrim to half speed, chasing after Lotus, who was twenty minutes ahead. The next Ring was five hours away, which gave us a break to regroup. We hadn’t slept much, and Luther looked ready to drop in his seat.

“Captain Lewis, a word, please,” R11 called.

I was at his console a moment later, and he explained that he’d gotten close to a translation on the alien text, when he hit a roadblock. He was running the program through something he dubbed a splitter, which took the math equations and flipped them. They ran from end to start and in any possible variation, stating that not all problems might look the same, though the rudimentary systems would be equal.

I half understood what he was suggesting, but I nodded along, encouraging him, and he continued, the screen flashing through hundreds of intricate calculations.

“Holland, take my chair,” I said, and he hopped up, smiling as he jumped into the lead pilot’s seat.

“Yes, sir.”

The Racer wasn’t overly large, but I was beginning to find its clean interior and smooth lines a nice change from Capricious. She’d been a reliable hauler, but being aboard a fresh and newly minted ship was a huge step up. I glanced at the floor, remembering my own was patched up from a Core leak seven years ago.

I bypassed the kitchen and headed for my bunk.

I didn’t remember falling asleep, but the sinking mattress woke me an hour later.

It was Jade. “You awake?”

“I am now.” She was sitting on my bed in the dark, and I could tell something was on her mind.

“What is it?” I propped myself up, and she turned toward me with glistening eyes.

“This is real, Arlo. What if there are distant planets with real civilizations beyond our solar system?”

I was drowsy, and I rubbed at my eyes while responding. “We don’t know what the message says. It might be from a long-vanished race, or it could be fabricated by one of the Primaries. All we can do is wait until R11 figures it out.”

“Then what? What if they’re real? Attempting to make contact?”

I stared at her and was hit with a revelation. “I think you’re more afraid of finding out they don’t exist, aren’t you?”

She smiled as a single tear fell down her cheek. I wiped it away with a thumb, and she nodded. “This can’t be our destiny. You said Sage is creating mass weapons, and we both know what this means. War is coming. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“We can win this Space Race.”

“And sneak away to Proxima? What will happen to our people?” she asked. “We leave them to die in a fight?”

Most of my life, I’d been forced to look out for numero uno, and the few times I’d acted for the greater good, I’d been