DELTΔ HYPER

Episode 18: Ticking Hourglass

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Bea was already excited when she was told by the Delta Hyper production team to bring a helmet along, but she was actually bouncing with excitement as soon as she saw the trucks.

For Bellatrix, this was new, Rally was not something she had ever seriously done. She had her name, branding and a quick applied with decals to a pale blue rally helmet under her arm. It was throwing Bellatrix off a little so used to the extra stuff the AG helmets had. This was a pure analogue bar with a small driver's eye view camera mounted on it.

"Ever seen these before? We think the audience might appreciate just how big the dunes are here that AG ships sail over, with something a bit more grounded!" Rosie asked, looking to them, looking for answers, before continuing.

”Of course, they’re not all that different from lower rally classes, except built from pickups instead of hatchbacks and coupes.”

"And well, you know how this works. We wouldn't introduce them if we didn't think you couldn't have a go..." She teased, slapping the bonnet of one of them, looking at Beatrix in particular.

Bea’s excited grin could blind people. Bellatrix was a little quieter, even after the break the American thing had rattled her a bit so was a little slower to change into her media gear than normal and letting Bea have this one mostly. ”It can go fast, I'm sure we can make them work out and have fun.” Bellatrix said confidently, finding her feet again with the interview.

”We're putting the boys against the girls, Paul and Bellatrix in the driver's seats, and Beatrix and Kais in the co-driver's seats. Keeps things fair to keep a WRC winner, don't we think? ”

Bea visibly deflated.

”Oh, and one little twist. We're going to put you up against a WRC driver, who's going to start two minutes behind, without navigation aids.”

Well, if they got Dan Ogier again, this would make them sweat despite the relatively cool weather, at least as far as deserts in daytime go.

”You may recognize her.”

There were many talented women who could be described as ‘a WRC driver.’ But in the wake of a recent string of ‘and then it got worse…’ in her life, something was nagging at Bea in the back of her mind…

She always relished any opportunity to bring her old rally helmets out of retirement, choosing her WRC, Tatra-branded red and white one for this shoot. It must have been fate, given that Delta Hyper chose to bring in one of her former competitors from 2090.

Bea’s jaw visibly clenched.

”Oh, thank you for having me. I mean, they are rather good, but I'd love to see them in a WRC car! I intend to absolutely relish chasing after my old rival.” The Countess smiled.

”Well, you are used to chasing after me, lucky breaks notwithstanding.“ Bea said, her voice a picture of innocence but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. ”Maybe it’ll finally work out now that I’m not driving. My real race is on Sunday.”

Bellatrix slotted herself naturally into the flow as the camera panned to her off to the side. ”Its nice to meet you, your record is impressive Countess. Good luck." Bellatrix stayed polite, somewhat a fish out of water but remained calm and followed her steady breathing and anchored herself.

Bea picked up the provided map, making a point of holding it upside down at first while the camera was on her while watching Bellatrix’ face out the corner of her eye for her own amusement.

But Bellatrix would also see something in Bea’s expression.

She was absolutely going to treat this with the seriousness of a life or death situation.

”Alright, let’s see what we’re working with.” Bea pulled Trix aside, laying the map out on the hood of their provided car. ”Possibly a stupid question, but can you drive a wheeled manual off-road, or do you want a crash course? Quick course, not crash course!” She quickly corrected herself, despite it not being necessary. ”We’re not crashing. That insufferable knob would never stop being smug about it…” She added quietly.

”Bloody Citroën, seriously? Not Kamaz, not Tatra, not KrAZ, not even a Kenworth… Citroën. What is this, 2006?” She grumbled as she bent over the map.

Bellatrix picked up the tension between the two of the former Rally drivers, they called them drivers not pilots. Oddly AG was a ship but this was a car, it all was strange to her but snapped back to the present as she saw the map on the bonnet walking over through the sandy rock that mushed under her feet. ”OK straight to it. Yes, I have used an older car about this old. It was an old combustion Rolls Royce we kept in the old carriage house, and a Triumph motor bike. I can handle that part.” Bellatrix did not think the combination was unusual growing up in a castle. The old car was by far less than your home having towers, a dungeon and whole fireplace that you could park in. ”Off road I need a quick lesson. I have never done this style before.” Bellatrix admitted, this was not her element and she knew it.

Determined but also with a sense of humour, Bellatrix could get on and race with Beatrix for this, she was all business and Bellatrix could find that easy enough to work with. ”I absolutely am not in this to lose. It's got far more power, but that's only one factor." Bellatrix already had worked out weight, momentum and exploiting how their little old fashioned racer behaved would win or lose it.”Hmm” Bellatrix thought to herself trying to impress the map main features to memory as a metallic tendril snaked out her sleeve tracing the largest of the elements.

”A motorbike?” Bea paused, ”Brave soul…” She muttered, seemingly oblivious to the irony and cavernous divide between what normal people considered insane and what she did. ”So what other interesting things are hiding in your garage?” Bea was briefly distracted before the sight of the Monaguesque marnis in her peripheral vision brought her back to reality.

”Alright, quick course time: You will love this. These things have really soft suspension with long travel and stiff front sway bars - floor it hard coming out of a turn on a hard surface and you will lift the outside front wheel off the ground. This is normal, do not panic, keep her pinned.” Bea started counting on her fingers, ”Six speed sequential - forward to shift down, back to shift up, clutch is only to get going or stop. The center of mass is slightly to the rear, so as long as you hit jumps head-on, we’ll land level. Expect oversteer, but it’s four-wheel drive so it’s easy to manage. Lots of body roll though. Oh, learn to get out quickly before we get going, these things have no doors.”

”Oh, and you’re about to learn what a proper engine sounds lik-” Bre grinned, only then noticing Bellatrix’ mechanical tendrils. ”Uhh, pardon me?” She pointed at one, taking a step back, confusion written across her face.

Bellatrix shrugged her shoulders and gave a cooked eye brow at the idea that an old fuel fired motorbike was a problem to people who considered multiple hundred MPH racing normal at G forces that would kill unaugmented persons. Caught slightly off guard by question she carried on. “Oh.. a old Bentley from 1920, bunch of old bikes, an old quattro Rally from a isle of man record my… great great grandfather helped fund. Nothing museum worthy..” Bellatrix said with an unsure calculation and such. The family had kept stuff about and well.. just kept putting it back in storage over the decades… not really a deliberate collection.

Bellatrix turned to face Beatrix fully as she talked about how different this was, gears, 6 speed, pretty much having to trust in flooring it. Her crash course crashed into the Welsh woman's brain and slammed into quickly. She had to work to keep up but managed to make sense of enough that the blocks clicked together. ”Keep it floored, trust the car… so long as i do not panic and keep this thing in a line and power on. It's ok, right.” Bellatrix tried to make sense of the machine she had been given to race, old, every dial was manual, every system was not unlinked or melded. Bellatrix had to see, and trust the sound of the engine and the feel of the wheel.
”High shift? Im guessing keep the power high and if we move fast enough we not sink?” Bellatrix did her best to try and make the best of all this. This was racing like the old days and she had not raced anything even like this in years.

The cut in Beatrix voice as she switched From good nature humour to stopping and changing topics faster than places changed in the last races. The merchadrite hid again before peaking out and she turned her hand calming as she let it lay flat on her palm nervously. She knew that look… she had let it slip out again and probably thought Bellatrix was some kind of mutant even among this odd group.
”Ok.. hear me out please.” Bellatrix said nervous tick audible in her accent.

”It is a maintenance system, they help me stay alive and racing, my augments are… complicated and I was very… deep part of me.” Bellatrix said letting her augmented hand skin tone camouflage turn off to show the sculpted metal and also turned lifting to show where metal vanished down the back of her neck into her suit. ”It saved my life. I tend to keep it hidden unless I'm comfortable.. ” Bellatrix admitted and made the little mechanical part lift absolutely wave walking slowly to the other pilot. ”They are super handy for getting my hair done up for fancy events to.” She said trying to humanise things, Bellatrix was Bellatrix just with some complicated augments.

”We good?” Bellatrix asked quietly.

”Okay.” Bea simply nodded the moment Trix said the words ‘they help me stay alive,’ voice back to her usual cheerful self. Not ‘Layla^2’ levels of unhinged, life-saving medical equipment.

”Also, never let the public know your family has a car collection like that.” Bea flashed a vicious grin, ”Vintage cars are one of Paul’s big things, the internet would marry you two and you’re on thin ice as is.” She stepped back to where she stood before, playfully poking Trix with an elbow, the hard metal of her own prosthetics clearly felt through the fabric of the firesuit.

”Okay, route. Paul is good and Kais has even less sense of self preservation than I do, we’ll need to get brave here.” Bea drummed her fingers on the map, ”Hmm, idea.” She grabbed a dry-erase pencil and started drawing a line cutting through several narrow canyons at a few spots. ”How does this look to you? It’s not the simplest route, but it’s the shortest I see. Problem points could be here, here and here.” Bea pointed out the narrow passage at the left hand turn taking them away from the Um Frouth Rock Arch, the passage bringing them back to the Abu Khasaba Canyon and the last one right by the Mushroom Rock. ”And if they pick the same route and we arrive to any of these at the same time, we’ll need sharp elbows.
Thoughts?”

Bellatrix's heart lightened that Bea took it well and visually relaxed, she was fine, it was good. Concentrate on the racing and get her head into the game. ”Thanks, not everyone takes it so well.” Bellatrix said kindly before snapping back towards the race in her mind.

OK now she was laughing at the idea of the Internet saying they had secretly got married and made out like it was some kind of novel romance, clichés included by bucketload and activities… ”I have had enough of Gossip to last me for a while! I'll keep that quiet.” Bellatrix said and thought. ”Come Silverstone,i might try and get the Benttley shipped over though, and we can always try to get the Rally car fixed, let you give it a run, 1 of 1 build from factory, i think 2018 era… zero uplinks.” Bellatrix dropped what probably would make Bea have a heart palpitations. The offer was to try and show she was not some stuck up princess bitch despite the nickname they gave her.

Back to business.

The route seemed pretty aggressive, risky and it came to a few right spots. The fact Paul was driving was gonna cause a headache but they could deal with that later. She thought Delta hyper was being..deliberate. ”Boys… and their toys. Guess we need to remind them what our dust is early on.”

Bellatrix decided to agree, for one Bea was a former Rally driver so knew this a lot better, and B, Bellatrix was really wanting to beat Paul after the last race. Good natured or not all the pilots were here to be Hyper competitive. ”Its gonna be difficult, but I'm up for the challenge. As long as you can call out where I need to go, I'm gonna have enough work trying to race like this without some practice time. But that's the whole point ain't it.” Bellatrix nodded at the plan not seeing her idea was any really different, just took the odd different points, but had the same problems. Though Humble enough to know that an utterly unfamiliar form of racing would take all her effort to keep driving than also navigate too.

Oh she knew Delta Hyper had plans… She respected that.

”Ugh, don’t remind me.” Bea groaned at the mention of Gossip with a capital ‘G’ ”I’m all for freedom of speech, but Gossip should be banned. It’s not even speech, it’s mental diorrhea.”

Bea perked up at the mention of the rally car. ”Well, it just so happens I know a bunch of rally mechanics. And you know they’re good ones, they kept my race car in working condition.” Bea grinned, ”Despite her attempts at making it not so.” She inclined her head toward Caroline. ”They take payment in favors though. I think I’m responsible for that, I spoiled them a little bit.”

Bea went silent for a minute after that, transcribing the map route they agreed on into pace notes. ”Right. Since we don’t have a road to follow and can’t scout the route ahead of time, I’ll call out turns as direction and approximate angle of turn. Turns followed by ‘opens’ start sharper and loosen out, those followed by ‘long’ will be shallow all the way through. Callouts ‘crest,’ ‘jump,’ and ‘narrow’ should be self-explanatory. A number is distance, rounded to nearest hundred, so this middle part after the turn away from Um Frouth Rock Arch is ‘left 120 long, 1600, right 170, 500, left 140’ I’ll try to point out the direction with my hand. Make sense?”

She looked around, seeing Paul and Kais still deliberating, Rosie waiting patiently and Caroline stealing air. ”Looks like we have time.” She pointed to the car casually, ”Want to do a few laps around the dune to see how it handles?”

”If i kissed his cheek, they might implode or I could crash their site..” Bellatrix said with a grin, she could implode half of Gossips server in a few seconds.

Bellatrix nodded, they could sort that out later though and the offer to help patch up the Rally car, and get the old car they kept dry under storage running again. It was pretty rare and hard to find people who knew how to work on a Rally car that was old and custom built originally. ”We can sort that out later, it could be fun to out Paul Paul at our home race.” Bellatrix said and left it there, she thought it was a fun idea to make a cool intro / show off at the classic and very famous historical track.

Beatrix went through her briefing of instructions, it might get a little confusing in rapid fire and strange but it was not too crazy. Command, distance, information. Bellatrix could judge distances and take rapid commands, just this was an entirely new style for the red headed pilot. ”Command, distance, information.. nothing too crazy, just give me as much warning as i can get. I'm gonna be pretty wired just keeping it racing.” Bellatrix nodded and hopped towards the truck, which she admitted was a little more difficult when you were 5 feet. Bellatrix managed to get in with an effort and scooted the seat rather forward and high. ”So Glad this is not on camera…” As Bellatrix worked the seat up so she could see over the hood properly and reach pedals.

”Hop on.” Bellatrix answered, simple as she belted into the harness, pulled it snug and locked down her Rally Helmet. The engine started with a rumble and a small lurch as the clutch was a little inexperienced and set into neutral again. She had driven an old manual, just not done so for a while.

It took her about 30 seconds to find all the controls needed, gears, brakes, power, clutch and the control to clear dust from the screen. Nothing more than the bare minimum needed. Lights not now, day time, no need to change any controls otherwise. The first start of a lap about the dune was clunky, her gears were slow and rather less refined, but slowly began to gain more confidence, speed and started to roll more into the car's extreme suspension mode. The dunes began to become more smooth and less jerky as you took them faster cutting across the top than digging into the sand.

Bellatrix was hardly Beatrix level but felt more confident as she worked the car into letting more power loose bringing the revs up and more speed which seemed to help the wheels to pass over the dunes instead of just pummeling through them. ”I .. not too bad…” She said as she probably made the Rally driver wince at her gear changes.

Bea suddenly bent over laughing when Trix suggested her way of dealing with Gossip. ”I’m pretty sure that counts as murder-suicide.” She eventually managed to get out between giggles and gasps for air. ”Bloody Hell, you were this close to tampering with competition with that comment.”

”No worries, there will be plenty of time on the straights. Just ask me to repeat if you miss anything.” She tried to reassure Trix, likely immediately undoing it when she pointed out the helmet cam built into her own helmet that had conveniently seen Trix’ boarding and seat adjustments. ”If you ask really nice, I will not put a gnome hat over your head in post production.” She snickered.

The sound of grinding gears during the first attempt to get going elicited a wince, hidden by the helmet. ”Yep, all of the dog clutch gears are there.” She let Trix figure it out on her own, only stepping in if asked to clarify something and using the time to commit the map and pace notes to memory. The former successfully, the latter less so. Yes, she did better with pictures than text, shut up…

All the time, she waited. Waited for the right moment. The right moment to do something that was for safety, that she’d done and had done to her every time she and Gazza switched to a different vehicle, but that she still found entertaining. When Bellatrix stopped the car, Bea reached over to engage the parking brake.

”Fire, fire, get out, go!”

There was no fire, or any other real emergency, but Bea had been serious when she told Trix to learn how to get out quickly. Bea quickly pulled the power cut-off switch in front of her, undid her straps and crawled out of her window, stopping a few steps away from the car to see how Trix was doing.

”Maybe a little Nuclear.” Bellatrix joked about the idea. It was fun to mess with the tabloids though!

Repeat, yeah, she would be fine with that, the helmets had some noise compression to tune out the worst so I could talk freely.”Sounds good.” Was all she could think to say before saw Bea had a red light and her helmet cam was on, the mount was active and … yup. Got all of it.”My brother would try to convince you on Fairy.” She said, deciding whatever Bea did Bea would do and there was no way she would let that go in some way or other.

The first start was rough but it had been a while and I had no muscle memory for this car. Things went along and was about to ask about how she did when the car was stopped dead, engine cut to just ticking over from the heat and fans staying on to cool the engine.. fire. Get out.. there was no fire and Bea was making her own exit far more gracefully than Bellatrix was.

Bellatrix panicked for a second and reached to slam her emergency belt release, on 3rd try she realised it was not a AG ship, her other hand had been trying to blow off the cockpit cover and break the emergency cover for a control that was also not there and just slamming the door for a 4th time. There was no AG cockpit. Taking a second to breathe she looked and visually searched, revising where the harness was and undid it, the unfamiliar clasps took a few seconds to fully remove and pulled herself round to take advantage of her much stronger arm and heavily reinforced shoulder to grip and pull herself free through the window. In her efforts she had left a dent in the door for leverage but fell and rolled and trucked her head in to protect it as she landed and crawled clear.

”What, ummm?” Bellatrix asked, confused at the situation. Her brain was still catching up with her response to get out of the vehicle.

”Exercise over. Sorry about that, it has to be unexpected to work.” Bea walked over and offered Trix a hand up with an expression that clearly said that not all of Bea was sorry. ”Three seconds. Not great, not terrible, but you’re probably alive.”

When Bea noticed the dent in the door panel, she ran her hand along it. ”They’ll probably straighten that out with a decent shove with a foot. But if they go after you, send me half the bill.” She chuckled at the memory of one of her mechanics fixing a crumpled roof by laying on his back between the seats, resting both his feet on the part that had caved in and giving it a shove. “This is a problem that calls for what the textbooks call ‘mighty force,’ and normal people call ‘a hammer.’ “ he used to say.

No wonder they got along so well.

”And hey, looks like the lads are finishing up.” She gestured to their two competitors slowly packing up from where they had their pre-drive briefing set up, her face twisting into a vicious grin. ”Ready to make a countess cry?”

Bellatrix blinked as she was pulled up and dusted her suit off with a free hand to clear the dust off her gear and shook her head to catch her thoughts again. Exercise over? Get out alive, ok, now her brain was catching back up. ”Oof… its fine, oops…” She looked to see the dent in the door, her mechanical grip was pretty strong when adrenaline hit, the former military failed prototype being built for more.. rugged user's. ”I thought I was in my ship,no secret, we have a quick release and can blow the canopy off. Flip the ship if you're upside down.” She said describing the system Nordic had. It was no secret and they did advertise how safe their own ship could be.
”People forget I'm an AG pilot sometimes.” Bellatrix said casually, she was heavily augmented like all of them and even if she was smaller and kept it camouflaged more than others.

”Bring it on.” Bellatrix just said with a grin, competitive and entirely wanting to win. She got the impression that this had more riding on it than mere normal pilot and driver racing nature.