Epsilon Major ||| Race One
a novel
Epsilon Major
by Ophelia Everfall
Race One
Sunspots speckled vibrating gravel below race one’s starting line.
Clouds were ships. Skylines had been littered in countless arrays of arrivals from throughout The Sprawl. Every person on the ground was thumping in their heart as moments grew nearest the flare-shot seen by visualizations-all for such time ahead.
Opening Day of the Arbiter’s Cup was chance to live anew; the first race; the beacon. Each and every competitor knew their spot on-line as an opportunity to begin their whole life anew.
I’m going to be perfect from now. I’m the champ. This is where it starts. I’ll never stop winning.
People are going to understand. I’m going to show them.
Kyrra was breathing in her Luminos Mark III; a floated thing, hovering behind the rearmost starting gridline, its paintwork reflecting all that its specs would see. Each inch became a lesson to those in sight. Heat was felt within every molecule of a human body over surface upon Epsilon Major. That bore back in witness of ambered gold from Kyrra’s ride.
Atmosphere grasping the planet would form it into a furnace. Its population was underground, minimal, of temporality.
Kyrra’s place won in the cup was earned only through her fighting for strict compliance to the law. She’d taken her right to ride by force of truths unutilized before, wielded ferociously by her heart, without an ally but one.
Fearful legions would hate her for the way she’d wield it to fullness against ignorance, only to forge alliances with those who had minds capable of thinking it through. Joining her in completeness of spirit had yet to be understood as wise, even for Loa, her peers’ own demons proved too encompassing for witnessing her fullest truth.
Kyrra was born upon Gekkari. Not herself until that first time flying a Luminos. Her Mark III was an era behind. The only of its kind left flying — let alone competing. Craving for witness beyond superficial notions, Kyrra, a lightful wound of malice, in a contest of such grandeur, was a singular gift of lifetimes spent searching peace through action.
No one had been strictly unallowed. Yet social conditioning towards culture around the Arbiter’s Cup led people into ceding towards fear of her augmented kind.
Kyrra’s feelings were burnt up and thrown out upon Gekkari. Her journey towards freedom had been made alone, through loneliness, of most unseen sorting, some torturous rebirthing process of overlong unbecoming, stoked by needs to change from how she’d been made, and violently.
Fathoming that to completeness — her battle for survival of all humankind — was a helpless thing for any another to know the reality of. Arbiter’s Cup participants weren’t previously aware of someone grafted by her competence and fortitude. They’d chose not to see Kyrra, and forget the choice, then blame her for the distaste of whatever was left behind. Luck was a thing she never had before. Kyrra fought for every scrap of her nothing. Process had proven her more capable than most.
Life was of faithful falling. Kyrra had been burning brightly, while she would never blame a soul going forward. Instead, it was everything, and everyone who failed by walking too tamely; those choosing towards bother for lack of understanding in themselves, who Kyrra did love best. She took space in the cup alone, misunderstood, seen as exploitive, known of intelligence, thought towards most as a psychopath, left out for insecure belief which others forced themselves into as some misnomer of wisdom.
Sand was thrown in gusts which blew towards the sky as engine throats blared. Her crowd was above and below. Those hundreds of thousands of human lives beneath were all watching. Every carrier within and outside atmospheric boundaries around Epsilon Major had been as well.
Kyrra wasn’t herself for failing to know anyone. Not anymore, without Loa as an earnest friend.
Loa would wish towards supporting from the shadows, moments hidden within Kyrra’s past, while both bared hopes of futures too tangled, forward and back. Kyrra’s crew was legal and of intelligence. She felt holy so expanded and retracted at once. Her very movement was driven by fate of the body’s needs to heal — she was made for winning races, claiming some spot as the best.
Xion would be the one to break her first. They’ would want her worst at sight. She would witness it plainly upon his lazy liar’s face. He wasn’t anyone’s fool. Kyrra would like them the least of those she loved. It was a special kind of fire. Xion would make Kyrra a ghost in their heart. To show them down before, taking place within The Arbiter’s Cup at the fore, was one part of Kyrra’s goals of unknown targets to scorch.
They were the others, who didn’t belong.
Kyrra Teivult was a legend and she knew it.
Péaar was thinking quickly. He felt slowly on purpose. His process worked well to form quite complete opinions of rightness by factually observable estimations and resulting. That made him pleased — to be correct would feel pleasant. Truth was his path to walk. He had mistaken that virtue, and often, before, as a virtue owned in permeance of his fortitude.
He flew like a demon and no one doubted that. It was the depth of his focus and endurance-intelligence kept secret by fates.
That wouldn’t stay true for long.
Pole position at the first horizon-line was a chore. No lights ahead, carving paths through the sprawling blankness, was the meaning of challenge. Péaar was leading the way again, and it remind him of his visit from spirit in childhood.
Something and somewhere, last place to first off, Péaar’s Mark XII was a demon reborn after last epi’s burnout.
Péaar had rebuilt with ingenuity unrealized before, taking leave after falling fast on Ionidé. It went exactly the same to start; his craft had been the fastest before. He was only first to sway into jagged rock in that horrid planet’s own darkness.
Divinely spun planets were a rarest thing.
Belief in retrospect, of faith, was that saved him from a death of panic while diving into Ionidé’s fiery underbelly, so alike what might happen in the valleys due east Epsilon’s cosmic crater, held magnitudes of greatest planetary scope inside its rimmed breadth, ever apparent, and warbling by its position within Epsilon’s light side.
Luminos designs were a namesake of his lineage. Péaar flew with his family — free at speeds for right of knowing carved from within and throughout eras of lifetimes unknown. He was born upon a baren world of dust and mines — its stopgap of workforce so alike that of Epsilon — his abandonment there some anomaly of happenstance — to rise a fighter of fiercest, clarity-fused intelligence. Greatest glories were felt as his, at least, if he could see through the darkness.
Lights were lost in the gravity of shortest distance. Péaar played metal into graphite, peddle to its surface, hull shuddering, firing into ever-stretches of blackness, skimming over the tidal locked dark side. Epsilon Major was a shadow of a speck to the galaxy at large, some hidden place of rarest make. No oxygen would be the challenge. Heat — that ever-burden. The last place a person would choose to live if not for plainest practicality. Regardless of that fact for its people, Epsilon Major’s stop on the Arbiter Cup’s grandest tour was lessened only by those people themselves; liars lied beneath its surface.
Leftovers, they were the star children, faring forces, and settlers to-be of different worlds who came for a show, or some job, and trashed the place while they stayed. A rarest sort lived the life of a pilot in The Sprawl. They’d be demons of speech. Narrow of mind. Broadest of heart. While despising the whole lot of their fandom.
Each stop of twelve on the Arbiter’s Cup, sporting twelve race-day’s each, was a planet its own. Epsilon Major would be known for the worst people in presence going forward. That next visit here would be returned for by only two in the class of pilots slicing through the darkness.
None had made it all the way through the grand circuit to start anew, never before. No one had been allowed to join that wasn’t truly human any longer. Not until Kyrra Teivult would lead herself to do it with another starting fresh on Epsilon.
She had proven her right to fly with science. She used the tournaments laws against itself. They played games of proving and pretention which denied feeling. She worked backwards from her heart while knowing something quite correct. Her kind belonged. Hearts were to speak when preserved in earnestness. That was how things were supposed to work in balance with rational minds of humanity. People had lost half of their balancing leadership. Fear was irrational in the analytical folks of her eras towards the augmented.
Kyrra was more than human, but she was still human. It wasn’t something seen or accepted as what it was, that stigma held against her, to people stuck in limitations of lies. Sintax was proving it.
Kyrra had taken to naming her Mark III; she didn’t like numbers.
Her current posistion, fourteenth place, was a good number for the points. Though it wouldn’t be enough. Kyrra needed a win and off the jump. The Arbiter’s Cup’s field of sixty would narrow each race. Achieved in its record holding number, at Telex’s fourth hosting of the cup, exemplifying the single highest surviving number of pilots to universal time-date on any planet — was a sum of only eleven who had passed that final finish.
People died commonly. Protection was often abandoned by the worthy and unworthy alike. It proved advantages by weights allowed. Racing was a fact of the universe unmeasured except in quality of a human consciousness allowed within its enduros.
Kyrra’s heart was stirring through the black. She knew it her time to shine. That way it brought her home towards light, which knew of her humanity despite how people saw to see, bearing ever brighter, was proving some gift. That straight shot of track, one perfect orbit, would prove the hardest leg for many, and in strangest ways.
Disappeared into the black so long — flying too fast — would show people into places of their own shrouding. It taught them of truth.
Kyrra could feel someone behind her. Their echoes weren’t false. It wasn’t more than one. Kyrra hadn’t known and thought it false. It was while being not — Kyrra simply knew. Her technology stowed was helping, tapping intelligence beyond the mind to steer for direction alone and aimed towards feeling. Notions arose from what could only be understood actionably as her human body’s DNA. Within it was more than a human mind could understand. But for glimpses, moments, it told tales.
It felt a being. It showed a way through by force of reflection in her trust alone.
She felt it Rhinestone itself. That their galaxy was in everyone, and their soul had been shared all along. Yet Kyrra felt more. All of the universes had once been a spec. They would be again for renewal. There were epis on epis to be spent, unspent, and splendid into spaces of time unmeasurable.
Kyrra was going to win the Arbiter’s Cup. She was going to be back on Epsilon Major and win again. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind when passing forward by loops off-track, most needed for passing the violence of her opponents, utilizing extreme capacities of velocity achieved through her craft’s weakest frame, and Kyrra was taking those jolts in air, alone.
Sunburnt grills were crinkling on the final stretch.
Xion was humming into the trail of Kyrra’s tail. They couldn’t catch her.
She wasn’t paying attention to their presence. Still, she’d known that Xion wanted her by purest senses registered from his piloting. Kyrra had seen a glance on the grid. It wasn’t of unmoral feeling. There was something about Kyrra’s fighting energy brought out by a fellow needing a chase. They seemed a shrouded heart of furies borne from the wrought tenacity of survival, no doubt, to chase after the woman as she was.
Xion was a steed who didn’t know themself outclassed by the raggedy Mark III, which flew a firing flare-shot into its own gastro-turbines, shorted towards Epsilon, kicking back dust from its earth, in consequence of thrusting lowest by force from its up-jets.
Fourth looked like second, at least, to Kyrra’s eyes when hitting that fullest burn and witnessing, at distance, the velocity-calculations made from her subconscious-unlocked, into simultaneous summations enjoyed.
Deina Gemm and Kayble Cross were dueling at distance ahead, without the speed to hold their lead. They had been keeping each other safe while remaining lock step since emerging from the dark side of Epsilon.
Kayble was become as a keeper of the cup’s captaincy for how respected his insights towards communal rightness would be judged. Kyrra loved the man for his sturdy energy but would have hated his mind, at peak, if accurately understood. He would be more callous towards her than she’d ever expect. It would have actually hurt to hear what he thought of the woman imbued with machine — that rarest happening to them both, of showing some hallowed insecurity.
Kyrra respected the masculine when embodied with toughness and grit, bent towards honor by truth, crafting rational encapsulations of wisdom. Even when it didn’t respect her back. Especially when knowing her reflection of womanhood was too brightly lit to be held. She would be making men by holding heart and letting their minds demean her no matter the cost of feeling. Kyrra would be making friends once they got over how bad it felt that she was forgiving them constantly while knowing the mechanisms lumbering inside their clashing minds.
Ignorance was in everyone, always, inescapable, no matter where or when, who or why, even and especially within Kyrra, despite all expansions, its head forever rearing while existing within the strictness of time.
Kyrra’s Sintax shredded the sidewall of Kayble’s Ionaflow Scion.
It was less than a close call. His mind had not for one moment been surprised, rage burrowing out from within for the blindness to only Kyrra’s cunning ability at pulling it off while unseen until too late.
Buried inside the action was a motive Kayble felt.
Wiping thoughts through just enough to acknowledge; planned. She sent him sidelong, reeling in some shout unheard to anyone but his own embarrassed people, surprised for finding Deina stowing a reserve burst in her eon-fuel drilled afterburners, igniting that next level of speed to skip-forward and fail to cushion his fading line. For she was ever faster, matching speed at the time with Kyrra, remaining at widest birth.
Finish lines were varied, wide to shallow of length, and sometimes obscured from place upon the planet itself. That was wisest. Their tracks were graced for how they would be meant to allow survival forward and into ever-complex artistry of workings.
Still, something in Kyrra and Diena had them turning in.
Diena was a gem to Kyrra’s eyes. Some spirit of lightest balance above depth unwitnessed before. How they spoke and thought seemed too pleasant. Every movement felt of blessing to Kyrra when she’d known them before and too briefly. Seeing them out of the corner of her eye, rocketing forward at speeds incapable of catching, feathering the throttle just enough to let her stay in clearest view, layered with reversals of Xion now left to eat fifth alone, taunting, then wasting Kyrra with fumes thrown back of gravel and salt, tasted like challenge to come.
Kyrra couldn’t wait for to catch them on a turn sometime. There were no rules of civility in the Arbiter’s Cup. Unwritten norms were abandoned wholesale by Kyrra. She got away with everything she could and spit at those who pretended her wrong for it. She said what she meant, she did what she felt, and she acted in understanding of the ownership owed at every moment for her own mistakes in retrospective reflection. It wasn’t wrong to win within the rules.
She would take third place.
For not a single racer to catch Péaar wasn’t expected by any. His focus led him. It would earn him a pass. He would be able to skip any track he wished with it. Every winner got one, and only once. Péaar would be no doubt holding that for race six. Point sacrifices were expected in the strategy of the Arbiter’s Cup. Everyone wanted a win in the first five races after layouts for Epsilon Major’s raceways were revealed.
People weren’t talking about it. The energy was heaviest and recognizably unique to all who’d fought for the cup’s title before.
Péaar Luminos’ win would see him to be some star of the fans. He’d be the first to say it in his victory conference.
“I’m skipping six.” He confirmed after the question came early — blunt, plain, nearly blank of emotion, with only a wriest smile.
Xion didn’t let up. They knew it at Kyrra’s first sight; how they might handle her curves was simply understood in their body. She was a champion in the making. They saw it, and her, for themself at that distance. Xion had approached after the ceremony, and before one too many others for her resisting. They asked Kyrra to join them for a stroll.
Making way from the podium complex, Kyrra’s mind was on Syntax. Work was needed and lots of that. Eventually it was resolved there had been something inside Xion worthy of taking part in beforehand. She was feeling brightly lit in reflection of their eyes.
Xion was showing their inner man out. Kyrra would find herself bringing that forward in people she knew intimately.
Tightness was the notion befitting what they would find in each other’s presence, for their once and only. They were just themselves. So deeply held beneath the planet’s surface, returned into the pilot’s highly segmented village at last, wearing Kyraa’s private room — they’d been gaming each other.
She liked beating people most. Kyrra would make it into a play for community, to lose with grace, as she had by her acceptance of Xion’s hand. There had been strangest recognition in the moment; someone else was understood as plotting an approach when Xion swept in and Kyrra was of strangest, scrambled panic.
Xion had both saved her mind and cursed her heart. There was some man whom she had been seeking to prove herself to. It was all quite beyond the woman.
Kyrra Teivult was secretly obsessed with Kayble Cross, and the situation stowed a chance to scar him for that way he made her feel. It was a chance she would take again.
Gashed she’d been by herself; Kyrra deeply perpetrating, with that action, onto the heart, simultaneously, if only for Deina’s presence and the multitude of feelings and thoughts of jealous warping it tore into her psyche. Kyrra’s heart wanted that woman. Her body wanted Kayble. To leave with Xion, who was less than them both, broken inside her heart, made Kyrra ache for the lack of care found in that knowing uncovered of Deina’s apathy. They wouldn’t have spoken with her at all.
If Kyrra had waited out Kayble it might’ve changed that, and the idea scarred her worst of all.
Xion was paying for it on the screen. It had been lasting too long that way, Arbiter’s Cup Sims would only keep up with the last series. Ionidé’s death drop was unimaginable to Kyrra’s sense of height-felt worry.
Inability to simulate the coming series in any way was a function of the ultimate rule enforced, in strictest observation throughout the series, each racer kept monitored, living together in quarantine from the moment of revealing for each track on the current circuit.
Xion lost too many races. They wanted to take a win in another way, and Kyrra was going to let them have it.
Kyrra and Xion wanted different things in the end.
Right then, they only wanted her.
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