The crowd roared in excitement as the race started, and the VR system's sensors portrayed the noise as spectators lined up in the audience, watching the start of the race. They couldn't actually affect the race in any way or pass messages, but the sensors were designed to pass on the excitement and let the players know that they had an audience, which was the primary reason for playing here in the Games Room instead of at home or in a smaller VR café.
The music was dimmed even further, replaced with in game audio on this side of the club as the audience grew, and the countdown to the green light began.
"He's totally going to have his tentacles in a knot when this race finishes. No way does he have a chance." The Researcher on Max's left laughed, borrowing an Innu euphemism for frustration.
Two more gamers managed to load in during the countdown, and the crowd erupted in good-natured jeers and laughter about how they were going to get humbled for their hubris.
The green light flashed, and the four shuttles were off at maximum throttle. They weren't warp drive equipped, but through an obstacle course of asteroids it didn't matter. The shuttles were fragile, and the corners were tight, so there was a very real risk of disaster if they miscalculated even a fraction coming into the first corner, where all four identical shuttles would be crammed together and vying for limited space.
To everyone's surprise, Nico fell back a fraction while the others surged forward into the corner. They were all well versed in the course, whereas Nico hadn't seen it before, but that didn't matter. She didn't fall back out of fear, she was riding tight on the tail of another shuttle, and when he had to cut power to make the corner without overloading the shuttle's structural integrity, she gave him a gentle nudge from behind and put him into the asteroids.
That left Nico in third place as the contenders ducked down through a narrow channel in the asteroid field and raced to the next switchback, unaware of what had happened behind them.
"Trust Nico to go for the kill in the first corner. That was brutal." The Innu Researcher on Max's right laughed.
"You've met her in person, then?" The human girl on Max's left asked.
"I'm from Terminus originally. I came here with the first Innu recruitment, but I was on the Terminus Research Team for three months before that, and she was in the lab nearly every day. Mercy is not in her vocabulary, she is totally relentless." The Innu replied with a laugh.
And she was gaining on the other two, who had cut power a bit to avoid the randomly moving small rocks that floated across the course.
Nico had no fear of such miniscule obstacles, and she rapidly overtook the other two as they reversed thrust to make the switchback.
Instead of slowing and cornering, Nico flipped the ship over and went back to full throttle, seeming to come to a stop for an instant as the ship's forward momentum went sideways and then in reverse.
Everyone gasped as all the structural integrity lights on her display went to a very dark orange, nearly to one hundred percent overload, where the ship would self-destruct, and then it was off like a torpedo, spiralling between obstacles in an insane evasive pattern that made Max laugh.
The key to getting through this portion of the course was the footwork to the Julian Knife Dance.
"Back and right and left and flip. Right and left and forward and back." Max sang along as the shuttle twisted insanely through the rocks.
"Dammit, I knew there was an Easter Egg in here, but I couldn't figure it out, it was the dancing rocks." A gamer near the displays complained, but most of the others didn't manage to correlate Max's singing with the events on the screen.
The Innu researcher pulled Max to his feet, and the two of them continued the dance for the whole two minutes that Nico raced through the obstacles called the Dancing Rocks. The other researchers slowly caught on, and those who knew the dance began to move along in time with it, laughing and drinking as they spun around the room.
For most people, this dance was easier to do in fractional gravity, but the Innu were notoriously agile, and many of the other Researchers were from Kepler, and had the advantage of a System to help them out.
Max returned to his drink as the obstacles ended, quenching his thirst and settling back into his chair while the staff brought over a pitcher of juice.
Even from the centre of the table, he could smell the Rum in what must be the local version of a Rum Runner, a popular Reaver cocktail.
After being crashed out, the fourth contestant had to restart at the beginning of the race, but as he was knocked out at the first corner, he was beginning to gain on the other two, and while Nico's precision piloting had entranced the crowd, the battle between the other three was beginning to heat up.
They couldn't see her anymore, as she had gotten too far ahead of them through the dancing rocks, but with the three of them all seconds apart and in the tight confines of those same rocks themselves, it was a thrilling race for second place.
"We should have set this for three laps and not one. I bet she could have lapped them if we had more time." One of the watchers teased the friends of the men inside the VR simulation.
"No doubt. Making it only one lap was a mercy to the other contestants. Look, she's already almost to the finish line, and the others are still two checkpoints away." One of the onlookers laughed.
"At least she didn't have any weapons on the shuttle, or they would still be at the starting line." One of the others joked.
"Waitress, we need another jug full of this Rum Runner juice. I don't know what fruit that is, but it's amazing." One of the Innu shouted, while Max laughed at the drunk researchers. Innu were not good at holding their liquor.
