COMPETE: The Atlantis Grail (Book Two) - Preview

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (draft)

​CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The morning of the Quantum Stream Race finds me in high energy and strangely charged after the previous night. I find I am still angry at Kassiopei for attempting to compel me, and for some reason failing to do so—or at least me being well enough aware of it that it doesn't "take."

Hah! So much for all that fine talk from Gennio and Anu about the compelling power voice being illegal and immoral, not to mention dangerous enough to cause brain damage. So, does that mean that Kassiopei can get away with using it when others can't?

However, I get it. He is concerned, and I, with my Logos voice, am still an asset for Atlantis that must be protected at any cost.

And it's not like he compelled me to do something awful. He merely tried to keep me safe and sedate.

But oh, he is so going to regret it. . . .

I smile grimly to myself as I get dressed and head for breakfast. I have exactly fifteen minutes, before I have to report to Shuttle Bay One at 8:00 AM for the QS Race lineup.

​* * *​

I arrive early, but already the crowd of Cadets in Shuttle Bay One is overwhelming. The mind-blowing fact is, in this exact moment, the same thing is happening in Shuttle Bays Two, Three, and Four, and in every other ark-ship shuttle bay in the Fleet.

Everyone is crisply dressed in sharp clean uniforms, polished boots, and Cadet Star Insignias glittering on chests. Faces look nervous, determined—everyone wants to do well on this flight test, since it will determine a great deal of our futures (for some of us even more so than others, I think). Atlantean guards and officers direct us to our places where we line up to wait near our assigned parked shuttles.

Basically the Quantum Stream Race is a complicated relay. Each shuttle gets a series of six Pilot Pairs over the course of the Race, and each Pair goes up against ten others at a time.

It works like this:

The Fleet formation is made up of three long columns or lines of ships stretching to the horizon—columns #1, #2, and #3. The four Imperial Command Ships are all located in the middle column, which is #2. They are spaced along even intervals throughout the length of the Fleet. ICS-1 is in the very front, while ICS-4 is in the very end. The two long empty channels between the three formation columns are the racing lanes.

Shuttles launch from every ark-ship's four shuttle bays, emerge outside (on the right side of the ship if coming from columns #1 and #2, and on the left if column #3) and wait in a vertical "pancake stack" with ten other shuttles, at the designated starting point near the "racing lane."

The starting point is marked by a hologram light projection that beams out from each ark-ship, casting a wide strip of color light across the racing lane. This holo-strip serves both as the Start and Finish Line for each leg of the relay Race.

Each shuttle begins and ends its turn next to its home ship by crossing the Start/Finish strip. But first it must complete a circle around the Fleet, racing against ten others.

Ten shuttles at a time—each coming from a single vertical pancake stack—enter the racing lane and wait for the start signal. When the signal sounds, off they go. Thirty seconds later, the next vertical stack of ten (from one of the other shuttle bays, rotating in order) enters the racing lane, and so on.

The "racetrack" course stretches along the channel between the formations in a super-elongated circle. You fly straight between formations, streaming in the same direction as the Quantum Stream, until you reach the ICS-1 flagship up at the very head of the Fleet.