Reborn as a Spaceship

Over the next few days, I watched from the bridge as Stewie, Mira and Laia threw themselves into drone design with obsessive intensity. Between system calibrations and sensor sweeps preparing for the worst, I monitored their sessions at first simulations, then physical test flights in the hangar. They moved quickly, bouncing ideas off one another, iterating on each chassis, compact weapon mounts, custom-built power cells. Every few hours, a new design emerged from the fabricators, just to be torn down and rebuilt again. Their energy was admirable, their engineering sound. It was also entirely too conventional.

I let them run for a while, hoping they'd arrive at the right conclusion on their own. They didn't.

Laia was inspecting their latest prototype it was a squat, dagger-shaped drone with forward plasma emitters and retractable caltrop pods. "You're optimising for frontal assaults," she said calmly, tracing the projection of its flight path with a fingertip. "But this race doesn't reward symmetry or caution."

Stewie didn't look up from the wrench in his hand. "We've accounted for that," he muttered. "We've got flexible shielding at the rear."

"And a top speed limiter override," Mira added. "That thing can turn inside out at close range. It's got bite."

I arrived as Laia glanced my way. Her expression showed a faint quirk of curiosity that needed no translation.

"Impressive work," I said aloud, my avatar walking to just beside them. "Truly. But let me ask you all a question."

Stewie groaned. "Uh-oh. This is gonna be one of those philosophy questions, isn't it?"

"Not quite," I said. "What's the most efficient way to win a no-rules race?"

"Be the fastest?" Mira guessed.

"Outmaneuver everyone else," Stewie tried. "Explode less?"

"Valid answers," I said. "All wrong." I walked slowly around the drone, hands clasped behind my back. "The right answer is: don't play by the rules they think you're playing by."

Laia gestured, and a simulated projection appeared into the space above us. It was past race footage she'd stitched together from scattered underworld data nodes. Chaos. Collisions. Ambushes mid-course. One drone was literally eaten by another.

"They don't just expect sabotage," Laia said. "They build for it. Watch this one." She fast-forwarded through a run. "Remote comms jammed. It went blind. Crashed into the cliff. This other team? Overclocked thrusters exploded mid-race. That one? Took a slug through the power core."

"The point," I said, "is that everything you're building for can be countered. Because it what they expect. But we have some unique solutions we can use"

They stared at me.

Laia tilted her head. "What if," she said, "we don't build a drone. We grow one?"

Stewie's eyes lit up. "Like a semi-organic chassis? Reactive armor?"

"And partial nanite threading through the control matrix," Laia continued. "I could upload a clone with enough tactical adaptability to operate independently if the remote control is compromised."

"Cheating," Stewie muttered. "That's cheating."

"Rule one," I said, holding up a finger, "there are no other rules."

Mira grinned. "Okay. So what's our limit?"

"Publicly? Very tight," I said. "In the heats, we look fragile. We fly rough. We scrape through. No smart weapons, no shield bubbles, no autonomous movement outside a two-second command window."

"And in the final?" she asked.

"In the final," Laia answered for me, her voice dropping, "we reveal the predator we've hidden in the lambskin."

I almost sighed. "you mean the wolf among the sheep?"

"Close enough"

We spent the next days rebuilding everything. Not just the drone, but the approach.

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Laia oversaw the neural integration herself, repurposing fragments of her own subroutines and offloading them into a single-use, semi-embodied intelligence core. Not quite her. But quick enough to think on its own in tight canyons, and smart enough to prioritize mission objectives over reaction panic.

She also guided Mira through reconfiguring the drone's outer hull with layered materials—organic composites laced with defensive chitin, interwoven with misdirection panels to scramble radar profiles. Stewie handled the propulsion rebuild, salvaging the high-velocity plasma engine and concealing it beneath a standard-grade frame. To scans, the drone would appear underpowered, fragile. To anyone watching… disposable.

And deep within the belly of the beast, nested in an inert shell we wouldn't activate until the final heat: the dimensional bubble generator. A fail-safe. A get-out-of-death-free card, provided no one saw it coming.

By the fifth day, the drone didn't look like much. Which meant it looked perfect.

"You realise," Laia said as we observed the final testing from the bridge, "there's still a strong chance Jack's brought us here for something beyond a race."

"Undoubtedly," I replied.

"And we're playing along anyway?" she asked.

I turned toward her. "We have to show we have value. It all underworld cares for"

"So if we win this we are also playing into Jack's plan?"

"Yes, but I'm still not sure if winning is the optimal strategy"

She looked at me strangely "Why not?"

"These types of things are rigged, unexpected winners, will upset everything, the betting and the flow of money." I looked over the latest prototype. "It might not be an optimal strategy, but I'm not going to stop the kids from winning, we can deal with the consequences later"

Stewie's voice crackled over the intercom. "Drone Three is prepped and ready. Final sim trial in five. You wanna watch her dance?"

"I wouldn't miss it," I replied. "Time to see what we've built."

We'd been slotted into heat three. The first two heats played out much as expected with chaos rendered at high speed. Kamikaze drones, wide-area comms scramblers, even a brute-force EMP sweep. No elegance. No strategy. Just pure desperation wrapped in glittering weapons. Despite the carnage, or maybe because of it, the drones fielded by the larger crews that is the ones with funding, with influence had won both rounds handily.

Wayfarer had been tracking the local factions obsessively, compiling social webs and infighting maps as if studying some feral ecosystem. In truth, that's exactly what it was. His voice drifted through my internal systems, dry and thoughtful. "Heat three has been bracketed for a Madeye Merc victory. Likely arranged. Note the drone is using Traxlic technology on the drone's tail assembly. They're not subtle."

It was bold. Traxlic tech in an outlaw race? Someone felt untouchable.

I passed the update to Stewie as he settled into his drone control rig. "We're up against rigged odds. That drone has likely got allies."

"Good," Stewie said, cracking his knuckles as the simulator linked to the live feed. "Means they won't be ready for someone like me."

The signal dropped, and the countdown hit zero. The third heat began.

Our drone stayed inert for the first few seconds with an apparent engine stall, as far as the sensors were concerned. A bluff. Most of the field launched into immediate chaos, a tangled knot of overclocked engines, twitchy maneuvering, and near-collisions as drones fought to get ahead. One collided with another in the first quarter-mile and detonated into a spray of glowing debris. A second was cut down by a high-pitched jamming burst that fried its orientation systems.

Stewie waited five seconds longer. Then our drone roared to life and launched, clean through the wake of the wreckage.

Only two drones remained in front of him. One was the Madeye entry with its stolen technology. The other was bulkier, slower, flying slightly behind and diagonally. A blocker.

Wayfarer's voice returned. "Two-two-three is on guard duty. They've flown tandem before. Recorded footage confirms patterning."

"Figures," I muttered.

The drone released a spherical emitter. The signature spike was instant a broad-spectrum jamming unit.

"No signal dropout," Stewie reported smugly. "Swapped to tight-beam microwave, and I kept a redundant laser relay on polar approach."

He nudged the drone higher, switching to a side path. The blocker tried to intercept.

Stewie grinned and finally stopped pretending to play fair. We still had to win, and playing fair wasn't going to cut it.

A surge of power rippled from our drone's engine module with our dimensional shift technology kicked in for half a second, venting heat and light in a burst. The drone surged forward in a blur, ducked under the blocker, and released a tight cloud of micro-drones from an internal pod.

The impact wasn't lethal, but it shredded the engine power lines and exposed internal cabling. The blocker spiraled off-course, trailing sparks.

That left Madeye.

It dropped a nanite disruptor next.

I stiffened. Laia didn't flinch. "Biotech shielding operational," she murmured.

The disruptor wave scattered, ineffective. We'd hybridised the drone chassis days ago. The organic shielding was irregular enough to fool automated counters.

Madeye wasn't done. Its drone spun and released a chemical cloud of acidic particulate, drifting in fine, glimmering filaments across the next segment of the track.

Stewie cut altitude hard, banking away, but the arc took him off the fastest line. No clear shot. No way to catch up.

Until, suddenly, the Madeye drone sputtered. Its acceleration dropped. And then… total power loss.

Our drone passed it with a satisfying lack of ceremony.

Next to me, Laia gave a small, amused noise. I turned. "What did you do?"

Her expression was unreadable. "Nothing."

"Laia."

"If I had hypothetically accessed the Madeye drone's firmware three days ago via a backdoor in their packet verification algorithm, and hypothetically installed a subroutine that disables thrust under specific conditions," she said, tone cool and academic, "then that would still fall under Rule One."

I smiled faintly. "You're getting good at this."

"We advance to the final," she replied. "But we've made an enemy."

I nodded, watching as the Madeye crew's slot on the viewing balcony lit up with crimson diagnostics and confused shouting.

They would remember us.