“Your schedule for the day is as follows,” Izzy’s assistant, Pearl, shared a document to Izzy’s chip, “you have a press conference for the upcoming race from six a.m. till ten a.m., followed by general fitness from ten a.m. till twelve p.m.– Coach Abram wants you to do a 2km light run. From two p.m. until five p.m., you have G-force training, and then you have dinner with your parents and sponsors at seven p.m. Your Mother urges that you arrive on time and with your best attitude.”
Izzy sighed, a long, drawn-out exhale as she put on an outfit, somewhat fashionable, but not really her style. The cropped turquoise and white pufferjacket went well with her light tan skin and the dark brown curls that draped around her cheeks and down to her shoulders. Q-Luxury was a sponsor of the racing team, but it wasn’t the worst one she’d dealt with, considering she rather enjoyed the clothing they gave her. Another long day, she exhaled excitedly. A schedule packed with shit she wasn’t in the mood for.
“Is the dinner necessary?” She asked, hoping she could weasel her way out of it.
“Yes,” Pearl answered, going through her emails without passing Izzy even a sympathetic glance.
“Fuck sake,” Izzy mumbled under her breath.
“I don’t make the rules,” Pearl shrugged in her tight-fitting royal blue dress and round glasses. The black ponytail with streaks of blue wobbled with her attitude.
Puppets enjoy the hand up their ass. Izzy passed Pearl a glare that she didn’t even notice. She may be her parents’ head secretary, but she felt like Izzy’s supervisor more than anything else.
“Oh, and Coach Abram wanted me to mention another important detail,” Peal said as she pulled up the data from Izzy’s chip.
“The goal for the next few months is to improve your resistance to G-force,” Pearl said as she highlighted Izzy’s recent performance. “He noticed that your breathing was inconsistent under eight seconds of exposure to ten G’s. So drills will be stamina-focused from here on out.”
“Well, it’s been a while since I was exposed to it for that long,”
“Yes, it seemed the Thermosphere of planet AKTI was a few kilometres deeper than our data showed… Either way, it revealed a weakness in your performance that is best solved before it’s exploited by the competition.”
“I don’t understand how the KII could live in a constant five Gs.” Izzy sighed as she swiped away her stats. “I almost passed out feeling ten for a few seconds.”
“The KII are sensational and whatnot,” Pearl added, uninterested in the topic as she walked to the front door of Izzy’s room. “Time to leave.”
As she finished getting dressed, she followed Pearl to the private monorail station at the base of the hotel she was assigned. The Drop Racing Centre was a large, multi-story spaceship that travelled from planet to planet to host Drop Races around the galaxy. The ship was comprised of three concentric rings, the centre one dedicated to living quarters for all crew- The drop racing teams and all their engineers and management, as well as the broadcast team, operations and engineers for the DRF- The Drop Racing Foundation.
The central ring also contained the crew that operated the Drop Racing Centre and its bridge. The combined crew that travelled with the Drop Race Centre comprised thousands of individuals. The secondary ring consisted of Hotels and VIP experiences for ticket holders as well as facilities for sponsors and the Drop Ship garages, which were somewhat a tourist attraction for passengers of the Drop Racing Centre, where they could watch the engineers at work and get up close to the technological marvel that was the Drop Ships.
The outermost ring was the commercial ring that the general public and ticket holders had access to. It consisted of three large malls, an Entertainment centre and the broadcasting centre, where the Broadcasting of Drop Racing was managed. The third ring could also split into two additional rings, all three of which held the stands for ticket holders to view the drop races.
The Drop Racing Centre was a well-engineered vessel that provided entertainment to all visitors and ticket holders from planet to planet, as well as all of the necessary logistics for the Drop Races. Unfortunately, it was also the place Izzy spent most of her time since she qualified for the league at seventeen.
Despite travelling to so many systems and planets around the galaxy, she’d never been permitted to leave the Drop Racing Centre, and travelling the galaxy was one of the reasons she wanted to be a pilot in the first place. The only city she was familiar with was CATH, an orbital city that was technically her home planet and the home of Drop Racing.
“The Atlas has attended to the disaster on Prion-A, where the death toll is believed to be in the tens of thousands. Reporters on the scene speculate there was a supervision error, but the investigation is still ongoing.”
Izzy disabled the news feed that appeared as a floating screen in her vision. Tired of hearing about Kythera and all their nonsense, she focused on the press conference.
“Just remember to be confident, and if they bring up the stamina issue, tell them you have it under control- we don’t want to concern the sponsors.”
“Yeah… Sure.” Izzy agreed.
“There are journalists from across star systems, so make sure to answer a variety of them- I know you don’t like the ones from back home, but you need to attack them directly before they realise you’re avoiding them.”
Izzy sighed, nodding her head before the conference room doors opened up, and the stagehand directed her inside.
As she entered the room, a strobe of lights pierced her vision as cameras repeatedly flashed. Hundreds of shutters clattered as a murmur rumbled from dozens of journalists. As she reached the top of the stage, she took her seat, which prompted all of the journalists to begin raising their hands, trying to get her attention and calling out her name.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“Izzy! CATH Daily!”
“Question over here, Izzy!”
“Izzy!”
“Question from the Independent!”
“Izzy, right here.”
The camera flashes continued as she squinted her eyes, trying to make out who she wanted to select.
“Yeah,” She pointed. The room suddenly fell silent, but the strobing continued.
“Thanks, Izzy. Thandi, from Centralised Cintri.”
“Hi,” Izzy responded.
“You still top the leaderboard by six points to Team Veyn, who you managed to beat for first despite a fourth-seat start. Was there anything specific to your strategy?”
“Uhh, Yeah.” She responded, “Recover to about second place on the drop and take Veyn on the straights.”
“Was there a reason for this strategy?”
“We didn’t want them to get too far ahead. If Veyn gets enough space, they’ll run away with it, so the idea was to apply consistent pressure.”
“Thanks,” The interviewer nodded.
Izzy passed her a smile before the callouts began again, dozens of journalists vying for Izzy’s attention before she chose another one, and they fell silent again.
“You said you were in good form, but it seemed as though you struggled with the AKTI atmosphere. Any comment?”
“Uhh, who am I speaking to?” She squinted among the lights.
“Bale, from CATH Daily.”
“Always with the aggressive questions,” She chuckled, prompting the rest of the room to chuckle too. “It’s not what you, or your analysts, think it is. I just mistimed my breathing.”
“That’s exactly it,” He rebuttaled. “They believe your lapse in concentration was evidence of a larger issue.”
“Well, if I can still win with poor concentration, then I say the issue probably isn’t very large, is it?”
The reporter sat back down, without another word, before the journalists unpaused. She looked around briefly, having gotten more comfortable with the camera flashes before selecting another question.
“You,” She pointed.
“A question from the Independent,” The journalist noted.
“Okay,” Izzy nodded.
“What are your comments on the disaster on Prion-A?”
The room, somehow, fell more silent than during the previous questions, and the lights stopped in anticipation of her response.
Izzy paused for a moment, contemplating her response before looking back up at the reporter.
“What happened on Prion-A is horrifying. I don’t know anything more than you, but I hope families of the miners who lost their lives are compensated for their loss, and whoever is responsible for what happened sees the full extent of the law.”
“Any comment on KYTHERA’s actions. Claiming it was the error of a Supervisor?”
Oh boy, did Izzy have comments on Kythera. But, considering it was her team's primary sponsor and largest shareholder, there wasn’t much she could say without upsetting everyone around her.
“I hope they do what’s right.” She nodded.
“Thanks, Izzy.” The journalist smiled, taking their seat.
Like clockwork, the back and forth of questions continued, and Izzy did her best to answer them according to everyone’s expectations. Some were about drop racing, others about politics and sponsors. Something she’d been doing every week of her life since she was seventeen.
It was rather easy at this point, and the persona that she’d developed was often aired as her confidence being the best in the world, but in reality, she knew the source of it was often her frustration. Her exhaustion usually got the best of her, making her rather intolerant of questions and opinions that challenged her. People loved the cocky attitude she exuded at every conference, making them one of the most-watched broadcasts outside of the races. It was one of the few places she could express how she really felt… Well, most of the time.
The Kythera question really got to her because she knew how incidents like these played out. The general public and The Atlas always wanted their pound of flesh, and corporations had no hesitation in throwing whoever they needed to into the abyss if it meant getting away with it.
“Good job. You handled the conference well.” Pearl commented with her attention on the invisible screen of her chip. “We’ll head to training and then make our way to dinner.”
Izzy nodded to mask her irritation- Pearl’s compliments only came when Izzy complied with the orders she was given, and it irked her. But what bothered her most was how the compliments made her feel… They felt good. I shouldn’t give a fuck about what she says, she thought to herself as she stared out the window of the tram.
The rest of Izzy’s day comprised a light, two-kilometre run and the Press conference. She’d still had to do her G-force training in the team’s centrifuge and attend dinner with her parents. Even though she'd found a slot of alone time between her sessions, she was exhausted, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t done before.
Once she was alone in her apartment, she saw a box on her counter– a delivery of a custom augmentation she’d ordered a few months ago. Finally, she felt an excitement grow within her. Upon opening the box, she saw the MOTO corporation’s logo plastered all over the packaging with a card that read-
The greatest tech, for the greatest Drop Racer. Enjoy
- MOTO Augmentations CEO
The package consisted of four drones. Each one was three times the size of her fist and was designed with her team colours- honey and dark grey. A few years ago, Izzy read about a historic creature from an unknown world. They were called ‘bees’, and their ways fascinated her.
It always seemed like humanity was becoming a hive mind with their connectivity of chips, and her research into flying insects led her to the small creatures that lived off the natural environment around them. All four of the drones represented a small bee, with carbon fibre bodies and a honey coloured liquid within their abdomens that sloshed above the jet at their belly. She activated them all with an ecstatic grin, and as their near-silent motors began humming, they took flight– hovering in place as they awaited synchronisation.
_AUGMENTATION DETECTED_
_DRONE SWARM B33s
_INSTALLING DEPENDENCIES…
She took a curious glance at her bees as she watched the liquid within them shift from side to side with the micro vibrations of tof the silent air jet at the bottom. The dark, grey tone that lined the lightweight edges was satisfying to see after waiting so long. Money well spent, she fawned over them.
_DEPENDENCIES INSTALLED…
_QUEEN ASSIGNED: IZZY MONTOYA
_ENGAGING…
_AUGMENTATION LIST:
Premium BCI Chipset
Enhanced Spine
G-force regulator
Drone Swarm [NEW]
She took out a booklet with an explanation of the swarm’s features, and she was immediately taken aback by the extent of the list. Their capabilities exceeded the ones she’d simply requested, and it was clear the MOTO engineers took their own liberties in adding significantly more than what was necessary. They must have enjoyed making this one, she smiled. Time to do some reading.
