Lennox freezes, a here-and-gone absence of movement. “You talk with Val Dumond?”
Shit. Val and Lennox don’t get along; Engel mentioned weeks ago that they’ve been cited by the FIC for public disagreements. Of course Lennox won’t be thrilled that Clarke counts Val as a friend/mentor. “Sometimes. Not often.”
“You can talk to whoever you want, Clarke, but at the risk of sounding cliché, be careful with Val.”
Clarke frowns. “What do you mean?”
Lennox breathes in, holds it, and breathes out through pursed lips. It’s the same technique Clarke uses mid-race. “This is all public record, why not? About two years ago, Delphine and Oliver’s marriage was falling apart. Val encouraged her to stay, to keep trying.”
Clarke doesn’t know the details of Delphine and Oliver’s divorce, just that it got nasty toward the end. “And you thought they should just split up?”
“People’s interpersonal relationships are none of my business unless they impact what’s happening on the track, but they started to. When Oliver and Delphine were fighting to keep their marriage together, they were distracted. They flew likeshit, and Provenance suffered for it. They fell behind Chronicle in the team bracket. And Val was right there in Delphine’s ear, telling her to stay with him. To drag out that uncertainty.”
Clarke’s mind skips around, theoreticals and half-formed conclusions blurring into each other. “Provenance ended up taking the lead back, though. They still ended up winning.”
“Not by much. It would’ve been a lot more of a gap if they’d had their heads on straight, the way they might have if Delphine had done what she initially intended and ended things earlier. And Val hadn’t so much as glanced in Delphine’s direction after Delphine left Chronicle, until then. I asked about the timing of her getting involved. She didn’t appreciate the implication.”
No, Clarke can’t imagine she would have. But she can’t imagine Val messing with someone’s marriage to throw a competitor off their game, either.Some things are more important than the leaderboard, that’s what Val had said.
Clarke needs to think about this. Later, when she’s alone and can process, and maybe get Julian’s take on his team principal. Not when she’s due at team breakfast in ten minutes. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll, uh—I’ll be careful. For Enclave, though, what can I do? How can I prove myself?”
Lennox looks like she maybe isn’t done talking about Val yet, but she checks the time and finishes her last caff cubes quickly. “I’m not going to give you a playbook. I don’t want you molding yourself into who you think I want you to be.” She retrieves the mugs she’d brought from the floor, sets Clarke’s second beverage on the bench, and slots her own into the empty cup of the first. “The window’s closing on major design decisions for next year’s ship, and I’d like to know who’s going to be flying it besides Thierry sooner rather than later. If you want it to be you, show me it should be. And hey, good luck this weekend.”
“You too,” Clarke manages, feeling somewhere between detached and disappointed as Lennox walks away. It wasn’t like she thought she’d come out of this conversation with a firm offer, but she did think it’d be more solid than this. It’s not Yves telling her that she has to get first to keep her seat, but at least that was specific. There was a clear expectation, however unrealistic. This is Lennox asking who Clarkeis, not what she can do.
How can she show that?
37
Stupid question, really. She showsit by racing.
Clarke is a racer, down to her core. Her building blocks are competition and speed and finding the next limit so she can break through it. Wormhole Wonderland is a great place to showcase what Clarke can do, and she wakes up on Grand Prix day with a fire burning in her belly.
The fire roars higher when she realizes that Yves doctored the FIC parc fermé assessment again.
He must think she’s a total idiot. That, or he’s praying that because she didn’t say anything about the discrepancy last time, she doesn’t know there’s a discrepancy at all. Maybe he doesn’t realize that she cross-referenced against the full report? He’s got to be able to tellsomethinghas changed based on how Clarke’s been acting, but maybe he thinks it’s about the failing contract negotiations?
Clarke puzzles over it during breakfast. She spins it around in her head during warm-up laps. She marinates on it while docking her ship at the grid in P9, to be tended to by mechanics until the anthems play and the marquee lights come on.
Then she goes to her prep room and puts it out of her mind. Off-track drama has no place in the immediate run-up to a race.She clears out everything but thinking through the course, hands up in front of her and feet jamming into the floor, mocking the controls she’ll use during each element. Turn 1; a banked descent; chicane at a 110-degree angle; turn 2; wormhole 1; quick, hard hairpin into a quicker, harder, spiraling ascent.
Someone knocks on the door. Clarke swings it open, mildly peeved at the interruption, and is surprised to find Maki waiting in the hall. “Shouldn’t you be with the ship?”
Maki looks markedly uncomfortable. “I still have a few minutes. I just—you said that you always wanted to know, if there was something weird.”
Clarke freezes midway through wiggling the top half of her racing suit up over her fireproofs. The split second of surprise and terror she’d had at Monza before other ships crashed into her seizes her lungs in a tight grip. “The start-up glitch?”
Maki gnaws on his lip. “It’s still there, yeah, but this is something else. I think something happened during parc fermé.”
Clarke forces her remembered fear away and zips up her suit. “What sort of something?”
“The assessment. There’s something weird about it.”
Relief washes over Clarke like stepping into a warm shower after being out in the cold. “Oh. Yeah, that’s okay, Maki, I already know about it.”
“You do?”
“I do.” Clarke pokes her earpieces into place. “Wait. How doyouknow about it?”
