The squat installation of Allentown Base did not leave you with a lot of room to yourself. Far less again if you just so happened to be a man of the hour.
In all the corridors, the watering hole, work areas, hangars and engineering, there was always at least one entertained scrapper or smuggler that gave a round of applause, a whoop or a pat on the back to the man who placed in second for the race that had been held in the rings of Pennsylvania's massive gas giant. A large and stocky gentleman still blessed with youth, short black hair briskly combed, beet-red in the cheeks with bushy mutton chops for a beard, and sporting a thick mustache that looked as though it lurched into position on its own. Adorned in a dark green greatcoat more suitable to the chill of Hamburg than spacer life, the man paced with a sneer on his face, getting fed up with waiting for the Junker crew chief to finish ogling his ship and clear him to depart.
That's where it stung. It wasn't his performance they were cheering on. He didn't place first, after all. That accolade was pulled out from under him. Worse still, by a Kusarian.
What the Junkers were actually so enthused by was his Tiger Shark and its maneuvers on the field. Namely, the engine mods. The Rheinlander VP series was notoriously difficult for foreign mechanics to service, but his contacts among the Junkers of New Berlin were now masterful at making not-necessarily-legal changes that pushed the engine's drive capability far beyond what licensed equipment dealers would recommend, at cost of being liable to explode if not managed obsessively. "The Kreuzberg Special", Dietrich had taken to calling it.
He was not averse to dealing with grey marketeers below his station as one of Rheinland's elite, if it meant guaranteeing the rush of victory. It had let him make a mockery of the Hegemon "obstacle" they had left out, after all. Being forced to avoid it typically bled speed from lesser ships, but with those tweaks, he never even noticed any deceleration, so swept up in the sheer power at his back. What man wouldn't feel invincible?
It didn't matter in the end. It's now just a bitter reminder.
They weren't cheering for him. They were cheering for their Rheinlander cousins' work. Cheering for the machine, not the meat.
Dietrich's insides churned with bile at the thought. Outrageous.
--
Finally, he had pried his ship from the hands of the local grease monkeys, and traffic control set Dietrich on his way. Free and clear of the station, the Tiger Shark burned for the New York jump gate, the pilot already expecting that he'd have to prepare a hell of an explanation for why he'd been skipping out on his duties as CFO. While Dietrich was more than happy to delegate, indulging in the rights of status, his father would likely have preferred a more direct hand in the family business.
Maybe an investment to the tune of many millions of credits would silence the old man. The money's of little matter to him, anyway. What matters is making his name known. And the next time these foreign companies have a score to settle that's ripe to capitalize on, he knows he'll have his eyes on the participants.
There are accounts of his own that must be settled too.
