Reborn as a Spaceship

It was time for the finals. I'd been monitoring the betting markets with casual detachment, my awareness sifting odds shifts and fragmented messages filtering through the local, unsecured network. No clear patterns emerged, though I had hoped analysis might reveal a pre-ordained winner amongst the syndicates.

Most competitors showed expected fluctuations, perhaps some minor syndicate bias or insider hedging, but only our entry stood out with peculiar volatility. We'd opened at 200:1 odds which were outlandish but fitting the perception we'd cultivated of rich-kid tourists with a makeshift drone that had somehow lucked its way through the heats. Then, someone made a heavy bet. Odds tightened fast. 50:1. Still generous, but no longer an impossible long shot.

Tempting. Very tempting. A quick, anonymous injection of Telk into the right betting pool could yield a significant return. Untraceable, clean. But I resisted. The moment I placed a personal wager, I'd sacrifice the thin veneer of neutrality I might need later. If things went sideways, which they almost certainly would if everything went according to plan. I required deniability. Not for legal protection; concepts like legality were fluid at best out here. For leverage. I had… plans… for this lawless little system long after the smoke from this race cleared.

Stewie, for his part, was practically bouncing in the drone pilot's chair we had installed on the bridge, vibrating with excitement. The final was the big stage, the culmination of his and Mira's frantic design work, and he was ready. Our drone, affectionately nicknamed 'The Greased Bolt' by Mira after its surprisingly slippery performance in the heats, had been fully prepped. I honestly had to stop her from naming things.

Laia's dedicated mini-clone was embedded deep within its core systems, ready to act as both a co-pilot and an onboard defence system. Nanite repair protocols were live, capable of sealing breaches on the fly and also altering the drone's shape. The dimensional shielding emitter was armed, and calibrated, but its miniaturized power source held capacity for only one brief activation. It would have to count.

Laia, monitoring passively from her station, reported four distinct intrusion attempts against the drone's systems while it sat on the launch pad with two attempting signal hijacking, one trying to plant malware, and a fourth probing for structural weaknesses. All had been neutralized cleanly, quietly, leaving no trace. Whoever thought they'd sabotage us pre-race had severely underestimated Laia's defensive elegance.

Mira joined me on the bridge proper for the event, abandoning her usual post in hydroponics. She leaned forward in her seat, eyes locked on the primary viewscreen displaying a composite feed from our external arrays and the drone's high-fidelity sensors. A controlled slice of chaos was about to unfold below and I wanted to capture it in full detail. Maybe even show it to the others.

Laia stood beside me in her avatar form, arms folded, expression serene, though I could feel the undercurrent of her focus within our shared space. "Background chatter is volatile," she reported privately. "Network traffic spikes indicate multiple factions repositioning assets. All the friction points we seeded are active. False odds are circulating in three major betting pools, encouraging poor wagers. Wayfarer's predictive model estimates an 82% probability of system-wide factional retaliation erupting within the next standard hour, triggered by the race's outcome."

"And Stewie and Mira?" I queried internally.

"Remain unaware of the larger context," she assured me. "As far as they know, this is just a dangerous, high-stakes race."

Good. Let them have their focus, their adrenaline, their uncomplicated victory.

The starter signal flared with a blinding pulse of green light across the track starting line. The race began.

And immediately, everything went according to a chaotic plan.

An external barrage lit up the course before the ten finalist drones had even fully cleared their launch tubes. Heavy plasma bolts and kinetic slugs were not the work of competitors jockeying for position, this was heavier ordnance, fired from concealed positions outside the designated race zone. Outside interference. Laia's sensor feeds instantly painted trajectory lines back to several asteroids overlooking the start.

Most competing drones reacted as expected, shields flaring directionally, pre-programmed evasive routines kicking in. Ours didn't flinch either; we had our own countermeasures. Stewie hadn't been briefed on this specific threat, focusing only on the race itself, but his reflexes, honed by countless simulator hours, were razor-sharp. He slammed the throttle forward, blasting 'The Greased Bolt' out of the launch tube with maximum acceleration, tearing past the opening volley just as the first plasma bolts impacted the starting line.

Which turned out to be a very fortunate, if unintended, choice.

A split second later, our launch tube erupted in a blinding flash, reduced to molten slag and rapidly expanding thermal residue. A precisely targeted strike. They'd expected us to hesitate, perhaps anticipating another cautious start like we'd displayed in the heats. Someone wanted us erased before the race even began.

But we were already gone.

Mira let out a strangled gasp beside me. "They… they blew up our launch tube!"

"That was likely the idea," I said dryly.

Stewie, oblivious to his near-demise, had already pushed the drone to the dangerous outer edge of the designated track, skimming through unstable, alien-made gravitational distortions that forced most pilots to pull back towards the safer, slower center lane. Not ours. The overpowered, experimental engine I'd insisted they install and kept throttled down during the heats was burning hot now.

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"Engaging clone," Laia's thought echoed beside mine. Inside the drone's core, her mini-clone seamlessly took over higher functions. I could feel the shift, a subtle change in the drone's flight characteristics transmitted back they were smoother, impossibly precise. She danced the drone on a knife's edge of the chaotic gravity currents, each micro-adjustment maximizing velocity, exploiting fluctuations no remote organic pilot could possibly anticipate or react to in time. She even transmitted a flicker of… amusement? Delight? Back through our link.

Wayfarer chimed in coolly over the bridge comms, his voice a calm counterpoint to the visual chaos. "Ten seconds elapsed. Four primary competitors eliminated by external ordnance splash damage or collision during evasive maneuvers. External interference has ceased but has successfully triggered open hostilities between the Three-Three Syndicate and the Blackgrass Fleet detachments near relay point Gamma. Accusations are… numerous."

"Good," I muttered. Phase one accomplished.

Back on the course, Stewie was back in control for the moment, Laia's clone handling micro-adjustments and threat assessment, allowing him to focus on piloting. He skillfully weaved through potshots exchanged between the remaining five competitors. Spotting an opening, he put the drone into a steep dive. Not following the main route, but plunging into a narrow asteroid crevice. A shortcut we'd meticulously mapped with stealth drones before the race, one most racers avoided due to severe signal disruption and treacherous geometry. The path twisted like a corkscrew through the asteroid's fractured heart, fast and nearly impossible to navigate without continuous line-of-sight telemetry.

Which, of course, was fine for us. Our drone didn't need a clear signal back to The Arbiter.

Inside the drone's core, Laia's clone adjusted the hull plating using the integrated nanites, micro-flexing surfaces, subtly altering the drone's shape to minimize drag in the tight corners, tweaking thrust vectors at impossible angles. A pursuing competitor, trying to follow, clipped the wall and detonated in a silent flash, sending jagged fragments spiralling into another drone that had been attempting to lay proximity mines along the shortcut exit. Two more down.

Stewie whooped, his voice high with adrenaline over the comm. "Laz, Mira, are you seeing this? Laia just folded the braking flaps mid-roll while skimming a ridge at nearly 900kph! That shouldn't even be physically possible!"

"Go Laia!" Mira cheered, eyes wide, gripping the arms of her chair.

We burst from the asteroid. Stewie immediately throttled up the main engine again. Even with the shortcut and Laia's impossible maneuvers, two drones remained ahead, holding a significant lead, flying in close formation. Their maximum speed on the straightaways simply outclassed ours.

Clearly allies. A quick resonance scan confirmed Laia's suspicion. One bore the distinct energy signature of Madeye Merc's custom tech. Figures he'd be involved.

One of the lead drones fired but not a weapon, but a web-like energy net designed to overload an AI pilot's decision-making loops with cascading, nonsensical threat signals. A standard anti-AI tactic. A typical drone AI would stall, be overwhelmed and likely cause a crash. Except Stewie was still handling primary flight while Laia's clone adapted, weaponising the incoming nonsense.

She pulsed tuned and mirrored versions back through our own layered jamming system. The corrupted echo wave struck the attackers' command systems. One drone, likely the one employing an AI co-pilot, immediately spiralled out of control, its own logic circuits feeding it garbage data until it slammed into a nearby asteroid.

The other lead drone, presumably another of Madeye's but with an organic pilot in control, visibly panicked at its wingman's sudden demise, momentarily falling out of the optimal flight path. We surged past them.

But they weren't done. Madeye's drone recovered quickly and launched a microburst of electrically charged mist directly towards our engine power system. A classic maneuver designed to short out power conduits or gum up energy flow.

Stewie reacted instantly, but Laia was already ahead of him. The drone's primary power systems were decoys; a secondary system hidden behind shielding handled the real power flow. The electrical charge grounded harmlessly against the decorative plating. As the mist dissipated behind us, Stewie, anticipating the move Laia fed him, fired a tight-beam, directional EMP back towards Madeye.

"EMP pulse successful," Laia reported serenely through our link. "Madeye systems temporarily offline. Non-critical damage. But sufficient."

On the viewscreen, Madeye's drone stuttered, jerked erratically, lost control, and then spun sideways, impacting silently against one of the track's many navigational asteroids, collapsing into drifting debris.

Stewie took the final leg in full control now, Laia monitoring, as he navigated past scattered wreckage. Only one competitor remained, far behind, struggling with damage sustained earlier. It should have been an easy victory cruise to the finish line.

"External fleet movements intensifying," Laia noted internally. "Multiple factions converging near Sector Gamma. Our false betting data and the race incidents appear to have successfully escalated pre-existing tensions, as predicted by Wayfarer's model."

The plan was unfolding. Behind us, the carefully sown seeds of discord were sprouting into open conflict among the system's criminal elements.

But ahead? Ahead was the finish line.

Except, as sensors resolved the final stretch, it wasn't clear. The entire approach vector, hundreds of meters wide, was saturated with mines. All types – kinetic, plasma, radiation, antimatter triggers, even some exotic signatures our systems couldn't immediately identify. A dense, lethal field ensuring no one could simply coast to victory.

But we had anticipated this possibility too. "Now, Stewie!" I commanded.

He didn't hesitate. Pushing the throttle to maximum, he aimed 'The Greased Bolt' straight through the densest part of the minefield. Just as the first proximity warnings shrieked, he hit the auxiliary control. For a fraction of a second, the drone shimmered, surrounded by a faint, localised distortion as the dimensional shield activated, consuming its entire power reserve in one burst, letting the storm of detonations wash harmlessly over its protected bubble of spacetime. It emerged on the other side, shield collapsing, coasting silently over the finish line marker.

Silence fell on the bridge for a heartbeat as we watched the feed display the 'WINNER' notification.

"Finals complete," Laia stated, her voice light, almost amused.

Stewie leaned back heavily in the pilot's chair, letting out a whoop of pure exhilaration. "That," he panted, grinning ear-to-ear, "was the best ten minutes of my life." When he finally got out of the chair flushed and still buzzing, Mira was waiting with a freshly baked cookie.

I allowed myself a small, internal smile of satisfaction. Phase two complete. Then, turning my attention to the tactical display showing the escalating chaos near Sector Gamma, I addressed Laia privately. "It's time. Detonate the first sequence of charges we planted. Target the minor syndicate vessels near the disputed refinery asteroid. Let's add some fuel to this fire." It was time to light the match.