Chapter 7

The lights went out and Geda engaged thrusters. The pod leapt forward, only the harness system and light inertial dampeners keeping her neck from breaking. Geda hung back, in last place, and she was content to be there until they got through desolation alley. The racers approached the anti-grav tunnels; a series of four tunnels that forked out in different directions but converged back in the same place. As Bam had alluded to, back in the days of the underground circuit these tunnels would be full of floating balls of ore.

Without gravity it was deadly for two pods to enter the same tube at the same time, and on lap 1 everyone was close together…except for Geda. The Gran, Zheal Taal, entered the middle tube first with the Devaronian, Vohmak quickly peeling off to take the next tube to the right. The older Tatooinian, Jobe Calwell, taking the same tube right behind Vohmark. The Twi'lek, Bileema, took the tube to the left, and the younger Human, Jerek Darklighter, veered off and took tube 1 all the way to the left. Geda coolly aimed for tube 4 a second later.

When she entered the grav generator that kept her pod close to the ground was nullified and she began floating upwards towards the ceiling of the massive durasteel chamber. She gunned her overdrive to negate that natural drift, and a second later she was exiting back into the main track tunnel. As the track began to bend to the right heading towards Desolation Alley, she could just make out the purple and gold of Darklighter's pod's and light blue of Bileema's just behind the forest green and white of Taal's. the echoes of 'oohs' and 'aahs' from the crowd overpowering the whine of repulsors told her all she needed to know about what happened to Calwell and Vohmark. She reengaged thrusters and powered into the sharp turns of the Alley, more excited than ever at the thought of a podium finish in her first race.

Alas, the time she yielded on lap 1 could not be recovered easily but by the final lap she had closed to within a second of Darklighter. They both took tube 3 at the anti-grav tunnels, and she felt like she closed another couple tenths as she appeared to engage overdrive a split second before he did in the tunnels. The appearances were accurate and for the first time her starboard pod was level with the other human's purple and gold carriage. She wanted to force him wide in the tunnel so she could pass on the inside headed into the alley, but as she pressed her pod against his carriage, the duster turned into the contact, pushing her starboard pod closer to its twin. More importantly, he turned the carriage perfectly into the front of the pod, twisting the stream of energy out to starboard. He pod lurched into the side of the durasteel wall and the resulting screech of metal and shower of sparks provided an injection of fear and adrenaline that death stick junkies back home would sell their freedom for.

She got it off the wall but now as they entered the alley she was back to a second behind. The Executioner had two routes back to the start finish. But nobody took the 2nd. The primary route, called Searchlights, went wide to the left. It was dark and flooded with artificial pot lights which gave the home stretch its name. However, the alternate route lurched right on a more direct path back to the finish line and easily shaved off a half a kilometer.

"Bam!" she yelled into her comm.

"go ahead!"

"I'm taking the surface!"

"what!? No! do not take the surface route! I repeat do not take-"

Geda cut off her strategist with a wink of her left eye that cut the comm connection. As Darklighter sped off to the darkened path to the left, she stayed right. She thought she heard a collective gasp from the crowd.

The path began to slowly incline upwards and an unnatural purplish light bathed the track ahead. All of the sudden she rocketed out of the tunnel and out onto an open plain of rocky asteroid. It was the first moment in the race that Geda thought of anything other than the race, and that quick interruption was only to take in the beauty around her. The Old Republic asteroid prison they were racing in orbited the gas giant of Oovo. And now that yellow gas giant felt close enough to touch. The rest of the Oovo asteroid belt surrounded her and for a girl who had never been off Corellia, she now felt like she was uncovered through space. The atmosphere was kept in by an energy shield, but that shield did not keep out the radiation from the system's giant blue star.

A moment later the wrecklessness of her decision began to play out before her eyes. First the port side engine began to smoke. She flipped some vents and the smoke stopped.

"Ok. I'm gonna do this". No sooner did the last word leave her lips than the port side engine tether snapped. Her carriage slammed to the right, and everything else slammed to the left; her against the harness, and her organs against the left side of her body. Only the instincts and reflexes that got her here saved her from going through the energy shield and out into the void. She flipped the emergency switch that released the starboard engine and the artificial atmosphere did its job as her momentum died in the rocky gravel of Oovo IV…as did her race…and possibly her relationship with her race strategist.