Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

At twenty-two hundred hours, the Apocrypha fleet launched from Alpha Walker. It was the first official race to Aurelius Prime. Apocrypha's undisputed front-runner was the seasoned pilot Cassandra Weatherfield. She had many wins to her credit, and had been a member of the league for over a decade. If she were to complete this mission, it would be more than just a feather in Apocrypha's cap. It would mean international respect, access to top equipment, and all the other benefits of being the quadrant's leading racing club. From the ground, the chief administrators watched and waited.

The race took ten hours and forty-five minutes to conclude. One by one, individual ships pulled out of orbit, docking points from the clubs they represented. The results were calculated as they came in. At o-eight hundred hours and thirty minutes, the Great Warrior racing club was in the lead, their flyer having achieved a distance of just over thirty thousand kilometers from the giant star's surface.

Standing in Great Warrior's way was Apocrypha and Weatherfield. She was the only racer who had chosen to fly alone, and at o-eight hundred thirty, the only racer left in Aurelius' orbit. From within a small vessel her large hazel eyes, though seldom moving from their target, half traced the Great Warrior ship's movements as it flew out of range. She knew exactly what had happened. Hull fracture; warp core breach. It was not an unusual story.

She knew that if she stayed, the same fate would befall her own vessel. There was no point to empty boasts about Apocrypha's crackerjack engineers and pilfering of Starfleet parts. The Aurelius race was hopelessly premature, and everyone knew it. No one could keep it together, certainly not past thirty thousand. But in a matter of years, when all the ships were stronger and more secure, who would even want to try?

"Warning. Hull breach in sixty seconds."

"Apocrypha to all units. Who's still up there?"

"Very funny. I'm all you've got."

"What's your status, Weatherfield?"

"Hull breach. Sixty seconds."

"Can you hang on another minute and a half?"

"Do you even have to ask?"

"Once the breach happens, don't stay in more than thirty seconds. You saw what almost happened to our friends out there."

"Don't have to worry about me."

The breach happened. Aurelius tore at the ship's hull, disengaging it. The star was everywhere, rattling the windows and filling the ship with bitter cold. Still, Weatherfield pursued it. She dug her heels in deeper. The ship sped on.

"Twenty! I've got it!"

"Apocrypha to Weatherfield. Disengage your –"

The communication system gave its last burst of static. She was on her own. The wind roared in her hair. She was once again on a swing set in a park in her hometown, dangerously close to turning over the metal bar.

Aurelius Prime was a beautiful star. With a mass of over three times the solar mass and a radius of fifteen kilometers, it was easily one of the most powerful celestial bodies in the quadrant. To the human eye, it was an immaculate blue sphere radiating through space, a far purer blue than the ocean or the mid-evening sky, infinitely deep and lasting forever.

It was not that she was unduly distressed, or that she had little to live for. It was only that there was in her nature a certain perverse destructiveness that had made her eager as a child to trample down sandcastles she had built. She held firm, and flew unabashedly into the star until it devoured her, until she could see her own ship breaking apart before her eyes, which were now a brilliant blue, like the star.