A Friendly Race

Posted on Sat Dec 27th, 2025 @ 5:25am by Lieutenant JG Rala & Lieutenant JG Raven Windancer
Edited on on Sat Dec 27th, 2025 @ 5:29am

Mission: Lower Decks
Location: Holodeck 4

The holodeck door slid open as Raven approached, admitting her to a shuttlebay-like hangar, open to ‘space’ along one side save for the faint shimmer of an atmosphere containment field. A fairly diverse selection of small craft were scattered around, seemingly being serviced; one of them, suspended less than half a meter off the floor from an overhead gantry, had a pair of light purple legs and a reptilian tail sticking out from under it.

"Um...hhello? Permission to approach?" Raven asked, carefully stepping closer to the purple thing.

Rala slid out from under the ship and stood up, waving. She was wearing grease-stained blue-gray coveralls with legs that were torn off just below her knees and sleeves rolled up above her elbows. “Hey, Raven! Glad you could make it,” she said, then grinned and continued, “I heard you enjoy racing?”

"Me too. You bet I do! Whatchya working on there?" Raven asked, not quite sure what she was looking at...and that was saying something!

“I told the computer to recreate a random selection of single-pilot spacecraft from works of fiction,” Rala said, “and to extrapolate additional designs that would be plausible within those works—all in mild-to-moderate states of disrepair, because sometimes fixing things is fun.”

She gestured at the craft she’d just crawled out from under. It had a spherical cockpit at the front with a saddle-like seat, clearly designed for the pilot to be leaning forward as if riding a motorcycle. A stubby fuselage came off the back of the cockpit, with one engine at the rear. Four angular wings swept back from the fuselage to a quartet of swiveling thrusters, then swept forward to pointed tips. “This one is one of the extrapolated designs, based on some piece of twentieth-century Earth media that I forget the name of.”

"Oh man! That's a...and I don't remember the name of it either but it's so AWESOME!" Raven's eye's widened in excitement as she looked first at the machine Rala indicated, then all the other amazing machines. Several machines caught Raven's eye's before she spoted her absolute favorite vehicle poking out from behind a sky blue, 1954 Thunderbird, was a Dragonewt Racer (OCC: partially based off of the Dragonfly subs from the Spy Kid's movies and the Star Wars X Wing and it's shaped like a dragonfly with the head as the cockpit and the wings open and close for different speeds/taking corners...making things up so might not be possible).

Rala smiled. “And then I thought, ‘A lot of these would be decent for racing. Who do I know who might be interested in that?’ And here we are. So I thought I’d try to come up with something you might find both fun and challenging.”

Raven smirked quietly as her eyes continued to rove over all the coolness.

Rala gestured for Raven to follow her over to the side of the hangar, where a floating translucent hologram showed a large, dense cluster of...space junk. Everything from loose scraps of hull plating to mangled but mostly-intact frigates floated there. At the center of the debris field was a nearly pristine, roughly rectangular ship even larger than Chimera herself—or at least, it would have been, had its bow and most of its stern not been missing, seemingly sheared off with an impossibly sharp blade.

“I’m thinking of a simple out-and-back. The starting point is a marker buoy just outside the debris field.” She poked the holo-display with a clawtip, and a green bubble appeared around a tiny speck outside the collection of junk. “We start there from a relative stop, race in to the center, and pass within fifty meters of this marker on the far side of the big derelict.” Another bubble appeared on the surface of the large ship at the center of the field, on the side facing away from the starting point. “First one to pass that checkpoint and get back within fifty meters of the starting point wins.”

"Whistle! This track's SICK!" Raven howled, her adrenaline spiking in anticipation.

The young woman’s enthusiasm was infectious, and Rala found herself grinning along with her. “Okay then. I believe I saw one of these ships catch your eye.” She turned, facing the collection of craft in the hangar, and raised her voice slightly. “Computer,” she called, “for the next two of these craft either myself or Lieutenant Windancer enters the cockpit of, instantly complete all simulated damage repair and maintenance tasks.” Without waiting for the confirmation chirp, she looked back at Raven and said, “No sense risking an unfair race just because I like to tinker.”

With Rala talking over it, neither of them noticed a slight distortion in the computer’s confirmation tone.

"YEEHAA! You're so ON!" Raven whooped, bolting for the Dragonewt Racer and started flipping switches and shivered as the engine spooled up.

Rala made it to the craft she’d been working on and leapt into the cockpit, beginning the startup sequence even before she was fully settled on the saddle-like seat. As the engine thrummed to life, she took a deep breath and settled her hands on the four handlebar-like grips, each with a cluster of buttons and switches near it. She keyed in a sequence, opening a comms channel to the craft Raven had chosen. “Rala to Raven,” she said as she gently lifted her ship off the hangar floor and flipped a switch to retract its landing gear. “The race hasn’t started yet, so take your time,” she said, a bemused smirk evident in her voice. “You mess up your ship just getting out of the hangar, and that’s on you.”

"Copy that...but oooo this thing is AWESOME!" Raven squealed, feathering the controls to lift the craft off the ground and guide it out of the hanger.

Rala chuckled, nudging her ship through the atmosphere shield and into simulated vacuum, making sure to compensate for the sudden lack of gravity. She waited for Raven to do the same, then said, “Alright, the starting point’s over here.” She tapped another sequence of keys to send a navigation waypoint to Raven’s ship, marking the beacon at the edge of the debris field a few kilometers away, and headed for it at moderate speed.

"Copy that and...whoops! Almost forgot about the grav lack! Headed thataway now!" Raven giggled, resetting her controls as she guided her ship to the starting point.

“If you want to pull a few maneuvers, to get a feel for your ship, out here in open space is the place to do it,” Rala said. “Line up next to me at the starting buoy when you’re ready.”

"Ok. The controls feel a bit different in this puppy than I'm used to." Raven did a few warm-up swings, then floated her ship over to where Rala waited.

Rala waited until Raven had lined up on the opposite side of the marker buoy from her. “Okay,” she said, grinning as she pulled up the marker on the far side of the derelict, setting its ‘reached’ range to fifty meters and forwarding that to Raven’s craft. “When you’re ready, I’ll start the countdown.”

"Let's do this." Raven grinned, tightening her hands on the controls.

Rala nodded to herself. “Here we go,” she said, settling herself more comfortably in the cockpit. “Three...two...one...go.”

Raven gunned the engine, and her Dragonewt Racer shot forward, stretching out to it's full length as it raced through the course.

Rala likewise opened her throttle all the way, diving into the collection of floating junk, but fairly quickly had to reduce speed in favor of maneuverability as the debris field got denser. “Stars, Raven,” she called over the comm, “you’re gonna have trouble if you keep up that speed too long.”

"Sorry. WHEWY, I guess I was missing the track more than I realized." Raven adjusted her speed and trajectory.

Rala chuckled as the pair twisted and turned through the debris field. The clutter was dense enough ahead of them that they couldn’t directly see the large derelict they were trying to reach, forcing them to rely on the waypoint in their nav systems to stay generally on course as they dodged around floating chunks of metal, many of which were larger than their own ships were.

Had the derelict been the only object in the area, they could have made it there and back to the starting point in fifteen or twenty seconds. As it was, it took them nearly a full minute before they started catching glimpses of it through the debris. At a minute twenty, Raven finally broke out into the relative clear area immediately surrounding the derelict and started circling it to reach the waypoint, with Rala a few seconds behind.

"Wooo! This is so much FUN!" Raven whooped, swooping a bit just for the thrill of it! The debris field was tricky, but Raven was running on instincts now, adrenaline pumping through her veins.

Rala was having nearly as much fun as she broke out of the debris field and slammed her throttle open, angling the maneuvering thrusters aft for an extra bit of acceleration. She swung wide below the derelict’s bulk so she could get a better angle on its far side, before pulling up and nearly skimming the surface as she headed for the waypoint.

She and Raven passed it at nearly the same time, coming from different angles and missing each other by less than ten meters. As soon as Rala could, she pitched over back toward the start-now-finish line, waiting until the last moment to slow down as she dove back into the debris field.

"Alright home stretch! Hey, Rala, do you wanna..."

"BOOM! SCREECH! WAK! WAK! WAK!" A piece of debris caught the Dragonewt and sent it spinning, slamming into and through debris like a drunken bull through a China shop!

"Rala! Something got the Newt! My systems are wigging out and..." Raven's head slammed into the side of the cockpit, rendering her unconscious.

“Raven?” Rala called. The only response she got was a burst of static. Her stomach dropped. “Raven?!” She shouted, abandoning the race and turning to thread her ship through the debris toward the young woman’s last known position. “Computer, confirm status of holodeck safety protocols.”

”Holodeck safety pro-o-otocols are on-on-o-o-of-offline.”

Rala’s widened and her heart rate—already a bit elevated from the race—doubled. “No, nonono, Computer!” she barked. “Freeze program except for my ship, and delete the debris field.”

The computer’s confirmation beep was distorted, as it had been in the hangar, but this time it was clearly audible, and it took an extra second to process the commands, forcing her to keep dodging chunks of simulated—but now actually dangerous—metal.

Then the field disappeared, and Rala saw what was left of the Dragonewt.

The Dragonewt was completely thrashed, the only thing distinguishing it from the rest of the wreckage was Raven sprawled awkwardly across the seat, her head flopped to one side.

“Raven!” Rala called again as she brought her own craft to a halt alongside her ruined opponent’s. She peered closely at the Dragonewt’s cockpit, which was shattered in several places—the center of one web of cracks showing traces of dark liquid—and through it to its pilot. She saw Raven’s chest rise and fall slightly, and let out the breath of her own that she hadn’t realized she was holding. She’s alive, Rala thought, and the fact that she’s breathing with the cockpit shattered like that means the Computer is still only simulating space rather than actually getting rid of the atmosphere.

Even as the thought ran through her head, Rala slapped her combadge, calling “Rala to sickbay, medical emer—” she stopped as she realized the combadge hadn’t given its usual chirp. She tapped it again. Nothing. “Shit. Computer!” she practically shouted, disengaging her restraints and popping the hatch on her own cockpit with a simulated hiss of escaping air, “Open a comm channel to Sickbay!”

”Er-er-err-error, una-a-able to comply,” came the reply as Rala pushed off from her own ship and floated over to Raven’s, grabbing onto its shattered canopy.

Rala almost asked it why not, but realized she had higher priorities than troubleshooting the damned holodeck. “Computer, delete the canopy on Lieutenant Windancer’s ship, along with her restraints.” Another distorted, slightly-too-long confirmation chirp and the canopy and restraints vanished. Rala immediately pulled herself toward Raven in the null gravity, checking the girl’s breathing and pulse, and looking for any other obvious injuries.

Confident that Raven wasn’t going to die in the next few seconds, nor probably in the next few minutes, Rala once again called out, “Computer, delete both ships and the rest of the environment; show me the actual holodeck." Squelch-chirp, pause, and the two were floating in the center of the bare hologrid. Rala carefully pulled Raven to her, taking care not to jostle her head and moving her neck as little as possible, then once more spoke up. “Now, set gravity in here to ten percent.” Chirp-squelch, pause, the two of them gently floated to the floor, where Rala lay the young helmswoman on her back, still taking care to minimize what movement she could.

Once Raven was laid out, Rala spoke up once more. “Computer, increase gravity by twenty percent per second up to standard level, end program, and open the door.” She kept her attention on Raven as weight returned. Finally confident that leaving the other woman for a few seconds was a reasonable course of action, Rala stood and bolted for the door, swinging around in the corridor and slapping a hand on the nearest dormant LCARS panel, which dutifully illuminated at her touch. “Comms,” she commanded it, not entirely trusting her combadge at the moment, “Rala to Transporter Room One, medical emergency; transport Lieutenant Windancer and myself directly to Sickbay. Send her straight to an empty biobed.”

There was a pause—reasonably brief, given the unexpected orders, but one that still felt agonizingly long to Rala—before whoever was on duty at the transporter responded, ”Aye, ma’am,” and she held her breath again as she felt the familiar tingle of the transporter envelop her.

Nothingness. That was the only way Raven could describe what she felt...and it scared her. She couldn't move, couldn't talk, and her sense of...well...EVERYTHING was in disarray. One scarry little thought wormed it's way into her mind...

[Am I gonna die?]

As the corridor around her disappeared in shimmering light, for just an instant Rala almost thought she could clearly hear Raven speak. She dismissed the thought as impossible, but the reply Not if I can help it, still formed in her mind.