Having wrapped up all the hanging threads out there, Fat needs to do something to pad out the rest of his book. Why? It's long enough at 216 pages count as a book. But Fat wanted to keep going, so it's off to the Sling-Races. Theoretically, Fat might have read the books, but given that the series premiered in 2015 and Starship Repo was published in 2019, I see no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt here.
First is sent to repossess a sling-racer. She is doing this on behalf of a legitimate creditor, working for a legitimate repo agency, but somehow cannot simply hand the paperwork over to the authorities in charge of the race and get the ship with no fuss or hassle. For no good reason at all, it has to be run like a heist job.
On the way to the ship, she runs into a human racer, who implies that because she's a woman, she wouldn't be able to race successfully. And, knowing Fat, what do you think happens next?
A.) First learns from her past experiences of going off half-cocked, shows some character growth, brushes off the slight, does her job and goes home
B.) First uses the ship she repo-ed to join the race, but does as well as you'd expect someone whose entire experience with racing amounts to a couple dozen hours in a flight simulator on the way over
or
C.) First wins the race on pure Righteous Fury, because WOMEN! (amirite?)
Just how stupid is this? Let's find out:
As far as anyone in the observation galleries knew, Fullok was once again in his cockpit, eagerly anticipating the light. Some of the other sling pilots knew better, particularly the ones who'd been berthed in the slips to the immediate left or right of First's newest acquisition. But it was apparent Fullok had made more enemies than just the Ish mechanic. If any of the other racers or their crews had concerns about her taking his place on the line, they'd decided to keep them away from the race officials.
Because the truth was, First wasn't a licensed sling racing pilot. She hadn't passed any prerace physicals. She was not insured in the event of a breakdown or a crash.
Other pilots know that some rando has taken the place of an authorized driver and is entering the race. They don't say anything - because they don't like the driver who's being replaced. That's a good reason, right?
NO! Good God, Fat is stupid. Not a single driver would allow some untrained, unknown newb on a race course they were driving, no matter how much they hated the guy who was being replaced. This isn't a marathon where the only potential consequence is that the other racer may be faster or slower than you - this is a life-or-death, high-skilled endeavor. She might lose control of her ship and KILL them. Or leave them paralyzed for life. Or destroy their expensive ship. Even if the worse case didn't happen, she could be a really bad driver and throw them off course trying to steer around her bumbling efforts. In an event where seconds count, they're not going to want to play dice with whether some stranger might slow them down.
And then there's the potential that an unknown racer might actually be better than them. They've had to work hard to get where they are. They had to go through a series of races, proving their skill and earning their place in line. They're not going to sit there like a bunch of pussies and let someone who hasn't earned their place jump ahead of them in line. There's such a thing as professional pride.
All Fat had to do to avoid this problem was to say that no one knew she'd taken Fullok's ship. Granted, she left him conscious, so he could still report it (and should have had plenty of time to get to the authorities beforehand), but that's another problem Fat could have fixed. Instead, he falls back on his usual pattern of making the rest of the universe dumber to make up for the fact that his character is too stupid to avoid problems.
The inputs on Fullok's sling - scratch that, her sling - were more sensitive than the simulation she'd trained on. Coupled with the fact the layout was designed for a Nelihexu's four arms, she had to suffer through a lot of wasted time and movement just to keep it straight and level.
She's racing against trained professionals, whose ships have all been specially designed for their needs, and she's racing in a ship whose controls are calibrated differently than the simulation she'd trained on. That right there is enough for her to lose.
But her first opportunity to really eat up some distance was coming up just around the bend, literally. Races were decided in the turns. Anyone could firewall a throttle in the straights, but banking, breaking late, cutting the inside, and enduring the g's, that's where skill, strategy and boldness came into the picture. She didn't have much of the first and had no experience with the second...
That right there is enough for her to lose. And not just fail to come in first, but come in dead last.
The larger of Percolete's moons grew in the view screen. Ochre, brown, and cream-colored clouds swirled over its surface like the top of a mocha latte, obscuring any topography below. But First wasn't here on a survey mission and blocked it all out. The only two characteristics the moon possessed that she gave a glot about were its mass and circumference... and oh, crap, atmospheric drag was a thing, too.
First threw out her caculations and started fresh to account for plowing through a few hundred kilometers of the moon's ionosphere.
Prior to getting her delicate, feminine ego bruised, First had only planned to drive the ship through the first two turns of the race. That meant she hadn't figured out the mathematics for the rest of the course. Here she is, about to hit the next big turn, and she's got to do all the math from scratch. That is enough that she should lose. How does she solve her problems? If you guessed 'Googling on the job,' then bonus points for you. You know Fat's MO well enough that you should shoot yourself in the head to save yourself the pain of your continued existence.
Far more serious were the damage reports streaming over her display. Two of the twelve high-efficiency counter-grav nodes that powered her drive spike had taken damage and were starting to over-heat. They'd have to be taken offline before they blew out entirely and risked damaging adjacent nodes, cutting her maximum sustainable thrust by a sixth.
Do I really need to say it again? This whole sequence is just an insult to any thinking person. How does she win? By doing one clever trick that certainly no professional racer who's been doing this for years would ever have thought of. Making your turns around the moons to give yourself greater velocity is absolutely not something that someone whose whole job is using the gravity of a moon to speed up your ship would consider.
And for lols:
She might be able to run the rest of them hot for short bursts, but she'd have to run the rest of the race on a sprained ankle.
I guess Fat finally decided to write something from experience! The only thing he missed was having her take an unauthorized short-cut.
