Peas in a Pod Racer

Posted on Tue Jun 9, 2020 @ 11:26pm by Lieutenant Penelope Naroot & Lieutenant Arashi Tanaka Mr. & Lieutenant JG Camille Lévesque PhD

1,805 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: The Binary Suns
Location: Occarator's Reclaimed Salvage Yard (Junk shop)

Penny looked through the fence at the piles of parts and whistled. "It's an organized mess, but it's a pretty one." The machine parts were piled high in some areas, stacked neatly in others, and a few piles were just hodgepodges of stuff. She could make out what appeared to be engine pods in the largest piles, fuselages, kilometers of wiring, assorted nuts and bolts, et cetera. Overall it was a bit gruesome to look at in its way, but she tried to see the potential in the salvage.

She nodded to Arashi to follow and walked through the entrance in the fence, looking through the yard. "If you see anything you like, shout out," she said.

"Sounds like fun. I will let you know if I find anything that I like." Arashi said as he started rummaging through the parts. He found an intermix chamber and a couple of engines. "Here is something that we could use, Penny. Did you find anything?"

"I'm seeing a ton," Penny said, starting to assemble a pile of scrap. She was fitting two pieces together when she felt a strong tap on her shoulder. She turned and saw a small planet in front of her. It took a second to realize it was just the stomach of a very tall, rotund junk dealer. She gulped and looked up, and up into the frowning face above her. "Hi," she said, smiling weakly. "We um...saw the scrap and was curious about it."

"Hmph," the dealer said. "Is some of best recovery on planet," he said. "We have parts from champion racers here. Not cheap."

"Yeah....I can tell it's grade-A stuff," Penny said, a small amount of excitement creeping back in, then paused. "Racers?"

The dealer nodded. "The arena send only best wrecks to my yard, and I charge fair price for quality."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Penny said, her eyes lighting up. "Explain the race please?"

The dealer looked at her, confused why someone would come to a planet known for Hover-racing, but have no idea about that sport. "Racers construct their pods and submit them to the race authorities," he said, then gave a terse laugh. "Of course, exceptionally rich folk simply purchase ones that are professional. There is track outside of settlement that go several miles. If you and your racer survive to the finish line after three laps, you win."

"And they use these floaty-jet things?" Penny said, looking at the anti-grav generator she'd put at the top of her pile.

"Hover-converters for pods, yes," the dealer said.

"How much to assemble my own racer?" Penny said, lighting up.

"That depend on pieces you choose," the dealer said, shrugging. "Find me when you finish. I determine compensation."

"Deal!" Penny said, grinning and bouncing on her toes. As the scrap dealer turned and headed back to his office, Penny turned back to Arashi and the scrap pile. "Let's build a floaty-jet!" she said, excitedly.

"All right! Let's do this!" Arashi shouted

Penny practically dove into the piles of parts and began tossing things out towards their little pile. "See if you can find a power distribution resequencer!" she shouted from inside a large engine pod.

He found a resequencer he brought it over to Penny. He watched as she put the pod together and smiled. The only time that he had ever done anything like this was helping his father build a boat.

Penny carried the engine pod down to her treasure pile and found its mate a few meters away. She flicked her wrist and her silver wand slipped out. She began scanning the pieces, looking for ones that would bring her vision to life. She stopped as a storage bin opened and she lit up. Inside the bin was a dirty, slightly rusted box, but inside the box were all the tools she'd need to assemble the parts.

She hauled the toolbox out and brought it down to the pile of parts. She re-tuned her wand, giving a small power boost to the tools and juicing them up, and then set to work welding the pieces together.

He handed the intermixer to Penny. "We are going to have to install this to control the fuel mix so we don't stallout or explode or whatever. I do not want my part strewn over the track" Arashi said with a grim smile.

"Oh, fair point," Penny said, taking it and looking where she could safely integrate it. She adjusted the plans in her head and began fitting it into the control matrix. "I've got enough nuts and bolts in this thing that nothing short of a quantum torpedo should blast it apart, though."

She continued crawling over it, taking parts from Arashi and having him hold things in place while she assembled. It took the better part of an hour but the ship was coming to life fairly rapidly. Finally, she and Arashi connected the last of the drive coils and they stepped back.

Penny looked at the finished product and squealed with delight, hugging Arashi. "It's amazing! once we get it powered up, we're going to be the fastest contender in two sectors, I bet! Oo! I should tell Camille about this! She'll love the technical stuff, I bet!"

Penny tapped her combadge quickly. "Naroot to Lévesque!" Penny said, excitedly

Camille's voice came back clear. “Lévesque here.”

"You need to come to Occarator's Reclaimed Salvage Yard and see this!" Penny said, dancing on her toes.

“C’est quoi?“ Camille asked.

"Just get over here! It's so cool!" Penny said, then closed the channel.

A few minutes later, Camille entered the salvage yard, walked past several small machines which walked on two thin legs, carrying large pieces of machinery, and whose most prominent feature was the large button on their ‘noses’. It didn’t take long for her to find Penny and Arashi. She nodded to both as she worked her way towards them. “What did you want me to see?”

Penny took her arm and pulled her around to the open area in the yard she'd squared away and held out her hands. "Ta-da!" she said, grinning ear-to-ear. "I present to you, one custom-built, made-to-order, guaranteed winning hover-racer!"

“Oh wow!” Camille studied the machine. “Hover-racer? Is racing engines towing a little cockpit something they do here?”

"Yup! It turns out there's races all the time here! It's their main sport! Bit if a gambling problem, probably, but no one seems to mind. And since anyone can enter....so can we! I just need to fuel it up and we're off to the races!" She bounced on her toes with excitement.

“C’est don ben cool, Camille agreed. “What’s the fuel?”

"It runs on a heated plasma exchange with a shared electrical field, like our engines, but finding the plasma is going to be hard. It looks like everything here is tapped dry. I'm going to go see if I can still salvage a drop or two. Be right back."

While Penny looked around for more components for fueling the engine, Camille sidled next to Arashi. “Salut Monsieur Tanaka. I hope you’ve found this as interesting has she has.”

"Bonjour, Madamoiselle Camille. I just kind of got roped into this but it does seem interesting. Never did a race like this before so I am looking forward to it.”

“I’ve not been to one either,” she said. “Not quite like this, at least. An Academy friend of mine used to race shuttle-sized craft but that was usually in space, not meters off the ground.”

Penny came back with the junk dealer in tow, who was carrying a large canister with him. "Okay, found fuel!"

The dealer set the canister down and surveyed Penny and Arashi's work. He grunted in surprise and pulled out a small scanner, assessing the hodgepodge before him. Finally he stood up and totaled up their bill. "Twelve-hundred," he said.

Penny's jaw dropped. "Twelve-hundred?" she said, incredulously. "That's ridiculous!"

"You take all best parts," he harumphed. "I am entitled to charge premium prices for premium products. You take dozens of pieces! You wish to buy a whole racer! Most racers cost this!"

"Most racers are fueled and aren't made of scrap!" Penny countered. "You can't charge me a new racer price for a used racer!"

"You built this before?" he said.

"No..." she admitted.

"Then is new," he said.

"That's not the same!" Penny shouted.

"You have price," the dealer said, folding his arms.

Penny fumed. "All right, there has to be some way to negotiate this. Surely there's something we can do to compensate for the credits? I can upgrade your systems, or something?"

The dealer stroked his chin when his value scanner went off. He looked at it, then at Penny's hands. "What is that?" he said, pointing to her wand.

"My...probe," she said.

"Where did you get it?" he said, staring at it with interest.

"I made it," she said, clutching it tighter. "I like to cobble things together, obviously."

"Is quite interesting," he said, scanning it again, making Penny reflexively pull it back a bit. "I'll offer you trade."

"No way!" Penny said, indignantly. "It's not for sale!"

"It would be more than fair trade," he said.

"It's not for trade either!" she said.

The dealer folded his arms. "A wager then," he said. "And perhaps you win big, eh?"

Penny looked at him sideways. "What do you mean?"

"You want hover-racer for tomorrow's race, yes?" he said slowly. "You leave device with me as collateral. You race. You win? You keep racer, use prize money to pay me, you get your probe back. You lose? I keep probe, you get racer as compensation. That is fair."

Penny bit her lip, thinking. "How do I know you won't just run off with it?"

"We give to bet maker. He keep both honest," the dealer said.

Penny folded her arms, looking at her first creation and her latest. The question came down to, did she have any idea what she was doing. Constructing? Yes. Actually racing it? That was another question. She knew nothing of the race, the course, or the contestants. But in all her observations of humanity, there was one thing they did better than almost any species, something she admired and hoped to be able to do one day: gamble on themselves.

"Deal," she said.

Arashi was busy admiring the handywork of theirs. "This is a good looking racer but who is going to pilot it?" He asked. He wanted to pilot it but he wasn't sure of the track or who their opponents were.

"I get the feeling you'll need to physically pry Penny out of the pilot seat," Camille said with a smirk.

 

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