He finished his second run with four points again, making the third ring but skipping the last one, which was hardest. That put him at eight points, and me at only seven. FM, playing it safe, would be at six. I wasn’t sure about Morningtide, but she tried the last ring and missed, so I was probably ahead of her.

The four of us remaining swooped around for our final run. Again, Jerkface hung back, waiting for the rest of us to go first. Fine. I thought, hitting overburn and zipping through the first ring. I had to hit every one of these to have a chance. FM, notably, didn’t try to fly through even the first ring. She just zoomed carefully over the top of the course.

“FM, what are you doing?” Cobb asked.

“I figure these clowns will all get themselves killed, sir. I could probably win without any points at all.”

No. I thought, streaking through the second ring. He said we keep our points if we crash—we merely can’t get any more. So she wouldn’t win, careful or not. Cobb had accounted for that.

I approached the third ring, hands sweating. Come on… Go! I launched the light-lance and hit the debris square-on, but didn’t push into the throttle the right way, so I ended up swinging around, but missed the ring.

I gritted my teeth, but disengaged the light-lance and managed to pull out of the turn without smashing into anything. Morningtide tried the ring, and almost made it, but ended up crashing. Jerkface still waited outside, watching to see exactly how many rings he’d need to win. Clever. Again.

Scud, I hated that boy.

I was so distracted that I actually missed the fourth ring, which was one of the easy ones. Furious, my face growing cold, I used my light-line to spear the big square piece of debris, then spun downward—curving straight through the fifth ring, which so far as I’d seen, nobody had hit.

That left me with a total of ten points, while Jerkface was at eight. He would close that gap easily. I felt my anger boil as he finally started toward the course. Who did he think he was, sitting back there like some ancient king, watching the plebes scramble before him? He was so arrogant. But worse, he’d been right to wait. He’d been smarter than I had, and he’d gained a distinct advantage. He was going to win.

Unless…

A terrible idea took root in my mind. I spun and hit my over-burn, accelerating to Mag-5 and sprinting back toward the starting line. Above me, Jerkface went through the first ring at a leisurely pace, at exactly the minimum speed.

“Hey, Spin?” Nedd asked. “Whatcha doing?”

I ignored him, turning upward, dodging through floating pieces of debris. Ahead of me, Jerkface approached the second ring, an easy one—and the one that would bring him to ten points.

Straight on…, I thought, overburning. Pushing my acceleration to the red line of where—in a climb like this—I’d risk dropping unconscious.