C: Distress

Luck stayed with Rafaela through the long hours spent making small quick maneuvers that often left the scout cutting past rocks massive enough to flatten it so closely that the proximity sensors screamed in protest. Her memory said that both she and the ship's core had been reacting faster and faster with each maneuver. As the obstacles began to clear out near the edge of the belt, time seemed to stretch out lazily in her perception, but it was difficult to judge which sensation was the illusion.

The only ship still ahead of hers was the one that had shot the belt like an ancient plasma weapon. The course the little ship had taken was even more dangerous than her own, but with only three days left the lead it had gained seemed likely to be enough to win the entrant the race, unless she made a mistake or missed some trick available to them at the next checkpoint.

The ship that had tried to blast through one of the deceptively massive rocks had never recovered from the maneuver, and the other ship that had entered the belt ahead of her had fallen behind hours ago. The only other entrants who might still have a chance were actually the ones who had followed her course. None of them had been able to keep up with her, but they were the only entrants close enough for the scout to make optical verification of their positions.

The ship that wasn't an entrant and that the core system suspected of being armed was not far behind the three entrants that were following her, but it was simply maintaining the same general course. Given that they were cutting through the Norse Belt at speeds no commercial vessel would ever attempt, it couldn't be a coincidence, but there was no rule that said the entrants couldn't be followed.

Rafaela was almost clear of the last small asteroids at the edge of the Norse Belt when the distress signal reached the scout. She hesitated for longer than she was proud of before asking for the source of the distress signal. Any delay would probably lose her any chance she still had of winning the Princess Race. And yet…

The plump image of the ship's avatar did not look at all judgemental as it promptly displayed the coordinates and the anim broadcast that had accompanied the distress signal. But Rafaela felt even more guilty as she saw the familiar face of her youngest stepsister. Louise looked pale and frantic, trapped helplessly in the protective bubble that the ship had deployed around her.

Rafaela studied the display. Surprisingly enough, Louise had outpaced her older sister and the others following the scout through the belt. The courier ship SkyWater had leased for Louise had shut down its drive, but it was maintaining its course, and if Rafaela slowed down a little she could easily be the first one to reach her stepsister.

An awful, cold, calculating part of Rafaela insisted that the protective bubble would protect Louise sufficiently until Doris and the others caught up to her. The nearest Eks Corp support ship would no doubt already be moving toward the distress signal as well. The delay would also give the entrant in the lead room to make some small mistake and recover from it.

Probably the only things that kept her from ignoring the beacon and her step sister's distress, were SkyWater and the mental image her mind presented of Doris clumsily trying to connect to her sister's ship and somehow completely wrecking both. The race wasn't over yet, and SkyWater still had three chances to collect a hundred thousand macro credits.

From the data her ship supplied, Louise had probably gotten a micro puncture and ignored or misunderstood the ship's warnings until the safeties engaged. It would only take a few minutes to apply a patch if that were the case, and Louise's ship would probably disengage the safety bubble once her cabin repressurized.

Rafaela couldn't quite justify leaving Louise helpless for the price of a few minutes. A whisper of a curse escaped her as she directed the scout to match the other ship's course.

--

In order to reduce the time it would take, Rafaela started suiting up while leaving the course changes to the ship's core system. When the plump fairy in the corner of the main display waved its little hands and protested that the repair drone could locate and patch an external puncture more safely and quickly, Rafael told her ship sternly, "If you patch the far side while I patch the near side, it will be even faster, and every second still counts."

She had no fear that the ship would accidentally lose her. Their days together had built up a certain amount of trust that had been lacking at the beginning of their journey, and Rafaela trusted that the scout ship's AI would err on the safe side if it erred. It would argue with her to a degree that no other system she'd worked with ever had, but it was always trying to take good care of her.

The icicle that formed where the atmosphere had been leaking out the exit hole was easy to spot, and Rafaela had it patched within moments of exiting the scout. The problem was that the repair drone that the ship had guided to the other side of the courier ship wasn't detecting any sign of an entrance puncture.

"Odds are very high that either you are misidentifying an entrance puncture or that a projectile was fired from the inside of the ship," her ship stated calmly over the too loud sound of her own breath.

Rafaela grimaced. She was nearly certain that she wasn't making a mistake, but it was hard to believe that her younger stepsister would have a weapon capable of holing her own ship aboard.

Louise wasn't being at all helpful either, she seemed completely frantic, and incapable of reading the data her ship could have provided. Rafaela had never seen either of her rather volatile stepsisters freak out to such a degree before. On the other hand, this might be the first time that Louise had ever been in a compartment that lost pressure outside of a safety drill.

"Authorize my entry, and I'll search for the entry hole from the inside," Rafaela instructed Louise rather grimly.

"I can't!" Louise wailed.

"Yes you can," Rafaela replied as calmly as she could manage.

"I'll be disqualified!" Louise protested with a shrillness that rivaled a red flag alarm.

"You don't…" Rafaela began.

Louise shrieked, "You've done enough! It's repressurizing already! Why is it you!? It wasn't supposed to be you! It's not fair!"

Rafaela felt stunned. Even though she felt guilty about her suspicion, her stepsister's words seemed to imply that Louise had actually been faking her terror and distress, and might really have purposefully punched a hole in her own ship. Ship's weren't that fragile, which meant that in order to do so, it would have been planned in advance.

The ship beneath her hands shuddered, and the connection abruptly cut off as a high class escape pod was suddenly kicked free.

For a heart stopping moment, Rafaela bitterly regretted minimizing Louise's terror, and she wondered if the unknown ship that was following them had fired some weapon that the scout hadn't been able to detect, but then her ship spoke calmly into her ears, "Get clear, her main drive has activated."

The little repair drone was headed straight for her as she pushed off, but Rafaela had already activated her own boosters. If the scout hadn't had so much autonomy in its own actions, she might have been in real trouble, but the two ships continued to move neatly in tandem as though linked by the frame that had once held her mother's ship firmly against the SkyWater repair shuttle.

"Can we pick up the pod?" Rafaela asked.

"There is no one inside, just a depleted coil gun. The distress call has been cancelled, and an active scan seemed justified by the urgency of the situation," it added a little defensively.

Rafaela couldn't argue. The pod was probably worth enough to risk a delay, but not with a weapon inside. She silently jetted back to her own airlock as though propelled by the cold anger that swept through her. The drone followed her and settled into its dock even before the lock finished pressurizing.

"The other SkyWater entrant has overtaken us without making any attempt to respond to the distress call," her ship quietly reported.

"Of course it has," Rafaela ground out bitterly.

"I have already adjusted our course to the next checkpoint," the ship added almost cheerfully.

Rafaela couldn't find words at first. After a long moment of silent consideration, she replied simply, "Good work." It really was too. Most autopilots would have had to make a request for each of the actions her ship had taken.

This copy of the beyonder core system running on the discounted experimental core they'd acquired wasn't the partner whom her mother had spoken of fondly. Their shared experiences were lost, or at least still unrecovered, but Rafaela could understand how her mother could have talked about a ship's system like it had been an old friend.

She took a deep breath and released it. The next entrant and the unknown ship were only minutes behind, and her stepsisters were only minutes ahead, it was still the small ship in the lead who had the advantage. Her position wasn't really much different than it had been.

Still… if they hadn't known it was her ahead of them, she wondered what they had thought would make her delay to respond to the beacon. Sure, it was customary to respond to any distress call, but there was no punishment if a ship didn't.