Lunar Raceway - License Roleplay

[Kengplant]

"Alright, I guess it's about time I took this thing." Keng said to herself as she signed her name on the dotted line excusing Spacefleet from all responsibility if bodily injury or death occurred during the test. She was then guided to her spacecraft which she was quite relived to find that, unlike the training shuttles, didn't talk or comment on her hair instead of her driving (her shuttle's AI had insisted she die it bright neon pink with baby blue streaks for some reason).

The ship itself was of relatively simple design (it had to be easy to repair). She climbed into the cockpit and buckled up. She'd already reviewed the course lightly, now it was just a matter of not messing up. She took off and hovered a moment, the spaceship's engines humming reassuringly. The lights began to blink (unfortunately today they were having difficulties and they went backwards, green to red instead of red to green), and then upon the red she was off. She was quite sure she hated loops suspended in the air. They always came up so fast. She especially disliked the ones she had to barrel roll to get. When she was doing those in training the AI kept calling her 'Fox'. Every now and then it would tell her "Do a barrel roll Fox!" for no apparent reason. She didn't mind the loops so much though, and quite enjoyed the feel of the u-turns.

The first few hoops went well, simple and easy, she got her first barrel roll hoop, but sure enough missed the second one and just barely got the third. She swore under her breath then righted herself in time for the next hoop and was well set up to do the loop. Unfortunately following this another barrel roll was required and she over shot the hoop. "Frak." she muttered, but stayed concentrated. The u-turn went smoothly and she smiled at the feeling. Then there was another loop, she was slightly off-centered this time but made it through without touching the hoops, then after a few more turns crossed the finish line and came to a clean stop. She was in the required time at least, but she wasn't sure how badly they would penalize her for those missed barrel rolls. Oh well, all she could do now was wait.

[Fraze]

Fraze was rather disgruntled. He would rather have run the test using his skinsuit. Unfortunately, since the course was based on a moon rather than in space, the gravitational field there was too strong for him to fly using light caught from his suit's wings. He'd have to use the spacecraft. Still, he wore his skinsuit out of habit.

He opened the door to the small shuttle, and sat down in the chair. He stuck his hand in the glove-shaped onmicontroller, felt a slight electric tingle as the controller formed a direct link with him, and commanded the ship to start.

The engines hummed to life. He twitched the glove controller slightly, and the ship lifted up. With another twitch, the ship started moving forward. Fraze accelerated upward and forward, toward the first in a series of holographic rings that he would need to fly through. The ship's display told him that he was now moving at 300 kph. Fast enough for now, he thought.

He passed through the first ring easily, which his ship registered with a "ding!" He looked around for the next one. There, in a crater! Fraze banked to his right and dove for the large crater several klicks across. He was approaching the ring roughly sideways, so he swerved backward for a moment, feeling momentum press him into his seat, then forward, going through the ring at a diagonal. The ship dinged his victory again.
He barely saw the next ring, at the very bottom of the crater. "That's insane...why would they put a checkpoint barely a meter above the ground?" he mumbled to himself. Nonetheless, he swerved again and dove more. The ship beeped alarms at him, telling him either to slow down or go higher, and he leveled off. He passed through the ring head-on.

He had seen the next ring in the course before he went into the crater. It was straight forward, but high up. Fraze slammed the omnicontroller until the ship was going almost vertically upward. He just barely passed through the ring.

There should be one more, he thought. "Where?" He looked around, but could not see it.

Wait--there! Another near-vertical drop. But he was going too quickly, the ship would never make it.

Fraze programmed the ship to land, pulled his right hand out of the omnicontroller, and jammed the "passenger eject" button with his left. This is what we call "pulling a maneuver," he thought with a grin. The top hatch of the ship opened, and he flew out on his chair. Unbuckling himself, he let the chair fall away. Have to pay for that later.
He felt himself in freefall. He looked down--the ring was almost directly under him, but he was still travelling forward. He spread his arms and legs, willing his suit's superthin wings to expand. The weak atmosphere on the moon pushed against them, slowing his horizontal velocity. He contracted the wings, and sped up his freefall. When his suit was screaming at him to slow his descent, he unfurled the suit's wings once more, keeping them over him like a parachute. He felt himself tugged upward as his fall slowed. He fell through the last ring, and landed on the ground a minute later.

He saw several of his Spacefleet colleagues waiting for him. Ordering his wings to rejoin the rest of his suit once more, he gave them a near-maniacal grin. "That last one counts...right?"

[zarikrahia]

Zari frowned. 'It should. The clones- You'll have to watch 'em.'