Fly to Survive, Season 84, Episode 7: Showdown at Deneva (Part 1)

Posted on Sun Oct 13th, 2024 @ 4:16am by Lieutenant JG Jane Sinclair

941 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Captains and Contraband
Timeline: 2384

Jane Sinclair, age 23, is sitting on a bar stool. She’s wearing the orange and maroon jumpsuit of her team. A young man is adjusting a small microphone that’s attached near her neck. She’s grinning and giggling at the weird intrusion in her space.

Sinclair: Testing, testing. You can hear me, yeah? (more giggling) Sports Service, am I right?

There is an abrupt cut, and now she’s alone in the frame and looking into the camera.

Sinclair: Hi, it’s me, Jane. (looks to someone on the camera’s left) Oh you wanted more, yeah? Yeah. (back to camera) Jane Sinclair, Number 81, and until the end of this, the 2384, season, I’m racing with Dytallix-McLaren in Interstellar-One.

We hear the voice of long time IS1 reporter Matt Gow, who has been narrating much of this program for years. Imagery follows what he is explaining.

Gow, narrating: This season has been tumultuous for Dytallix-McLaren. First their engineering team was hit with a huge brain drain when ten senior designers and builders left to support major Starfleet projects. Then they were deemed at fault for the crash at Earhart Station, costing them precious points in the Constructors Championship. Pilot Stefan Iliescu in the number twenty-four was placing out of the rankings more and more. By the time of the Deneva Grand Prix, the team’s only saving grace was their second pilot, Jane Sinclair.

A graphic comes up, identifying the program as ‘FLY TO SURVIVE’

A human man is on screen. He is older, with darker skin. His hair is grey and thinning and his cheeks are gaunt. The caption calls him Reynaldo Cruz, Team Manager, Dytallix-McLaren.

Cruz: By this point, Sirius-Ferrari and Proxima-Renault have clinched the first and second positions. But that third place…to say we’d do anything is an understatement.

A score tally comes on the screen and shows the current scores for all ten Interstellar-1 teams. Sirius-Ferrari has 612 points, and Proxima-Renault has 435. Yoyodyne-Toyota, Dytallix-McLaren, and Tellar-Mercedes are at 210, 198, and 171. There is another drop off, and the bottom five teams have low-double digit scores.

Cruz, continued: We just had to do well at Deneva. If we did that, we had a shot. If we do worse than Yoyodyne or Tellar, then it’s impossible.

Gow, from behind the camera: And you need to replace both pilots.

Cruz: Don’t remind me!

The image shifts to footage from a previous race, in which Cruz and Iliescu are screaming in each other’s faces. Every few words, a word is censored. It goes quiet for the narrator.

Gow, narrating: After the Tellar Grand Prix, Cruz made public the decision that many had been speculating on for weeks. It was decided that Stefan Iliescu’s contract would not be renewed for the 2385 season. Effectively a free agent, Iliescu might have been expected to boost his performance and try to appeal to other teams that might recruit him, but instead his motivation dropped off, and in the three races between Tellar and Deneva he went from barely holding tenth to fourteenth.

Cut to Iliescu sitting in his cockpit, his hand in his palms. A caption tells us that this is the end of the Betazed Grand Prix, the most recent race. An exchange over comms between the driver and his lead engineer can be heard.

Engineer: You alright mate?

Iliescu: (pause) Yeah I’m ok. (Pause). How did we finish?

Engineer: You were P-eighteen. That’s P-one-eight.

Iliescu: (pause) And Sinclair?

Engineer: She managed P-four.

Iliescu: (longer pause) Good for her. Just…just give me a minute and I’ll bring it in.

The image is now of Jane Sinclair. She is flying her number 81 craft into the Dytallix-McLaren landing bay to the cheers of her mechanical team. She lands, steps out of the cockpit, and cheers along with them.

Gow, narrating: Meanwhile, it’s the complete opposite for Sinclair. She is hungry. She wants to be on that podium. She wants those trophies. And she’s good enough to get them. At age 12 she won the amateur round of the Centauri Grand Prix, which got her into Interstellar-3. At 16, right after being invited to Interstellar-2, she won the Andorian Sabres, stealing a victory from the equally hungry Tyli Sh'veshron. Two years later, she’s in Interstellar-1, racing for Dytallix-McLaren and in the five years since, she fought her way to the podium fifteen times. Sadly, none of those were wins.

The scene in the landing bay continues, with Cruz pushing through the crowd to give his star pilot a big hug.

Cruz: You almost had it!

Sinclair: Mattys fought me off but good.

Cruz: Next time, girl, next time.

Gow, narrating: She was bearing the team’s weight. In the first seventeen races, she’s never finished below 10th and made the podium four times, including getting second at the Bajor Grand Prix. She’s given the team 151 of its 198 points. Fantastic for Dytallix-McLaren *this* year, but her value has only gone higher and higher, and their ability to retain her was in doubt. Her contract was set to end after the 2384 season as well, and while Iliescu’s departure was very much Reynaldo Cruz’s choice, he’d do anything to renew Sinclair. But it was not meant to be.

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