Alpha One - Chris Burton [95]
Thirty minutes later, the position remained the same. Jake glanced up at his ceiling display which monitored key systems, the NAVCOM, and the drive systems to ensure optimum performance. It was bit more than a cursory glance as the ship suddenly felt heavier. All systems worked within normal parameters. Just being paranoid, he told himself and he took his attention back to the race.
She was certainly being sluggish. Something was definitely wrong.
Sure enough, he was losing ground to Steve, plus the fourth and fifth placed candidates caught up with him. He tried not to panic and ran a series of ship wide diagnostic and health checks to see if he could determine the problem. The main drive ran at eighty-five percent and he was caught by everyone. His race was over unless he diagnosed and corrected the problem quickly.
The diagnostic revealed a faulty circuit in his stellar drive. The ease involved to resolve the problem depended on where the circuit was. He set a further diagnostic enquiry in more specific detail and found it at the business end of the stellar drive, out of maintenance range. The circuit controlled a valve which allowed plasma to vent from the drive mechanism periodically. The valve sealed shut and a huge level of plasma built up within the drive mechanism. Jake took the ships stellar drive offline and sighed. His race was over.
There was never any question Jake would make it to the Top Gun final. He amassed more than enough points to ensure he would be one of the final twelve. As it turned out, he finished in third place overall, but the final places were largely irrelevant for the final candidates as they would all start with zero points in the first race of the final. Jake felt disappointed. He knew he could have won the race today and this would have gone some way to alleviate the guilt he felt about Hilliard’s untimely demise. He had the disappointment of not completing the race, as well as, the guilt.
Jake suffered the further humiliation of his Rapier being towed to Mars by an Eagle. The Rapier was a write-off. The buildup of plasma caused huge damage to the stellar drive, the auxiliary drive as well as the main infrastructure. Alpha engineers would get to the bottom of why it happened.
So he qualified for the final. He could concentrate on the one thing which really mattered. He must see Carla, before she left.
There was passion. Both of them were aware of their strong feelings for each other. It would be some weeks before they would see each other again. Carla showered, dressed and was ready to leave by nine o’clock the next morning but Jake lay there almost in disbelief—that they were together, and that it took them four long years to realize their feelings for each other. After holding each other close for what seemed an eternity, they said their goodbyes and Carla took her bag and left Jake’s apartment. He lay there not certain exactly what he was feeling.
* * * *
He must have drifted off to sleep again. An hour passed since he last looked at his watch. It was Christmas Eve and he had his own journey to make. He needed to get a move on.
Before the Top Gun event, Jake asked Steve to join him and his family for Christmas Day. His friend declined citing that Christmas was an Earth celebration and that, as a Titan, it meant little to him, especially that he was no longer with Carla.
Christmas was not the festival it once was. The religious festival, over time, largely reverted to its origins: a mid-winter festival celebrating the end of the year and the start of the next. The giving of presents still continued, but in a less materialistic way. It was usual for someone to buy their loved one a token present and children still awaited their presents from Santa Claus on Christmas Day, but the ‘old