llie Young huffed on the visor of her helmet and gave it one last vigorous rub with her sleeve. After a last critical examination, she was satisfied, and ready to race

She tucked her stray blonde hairs behind her ears, pulled on the helmet, and heard the magnetic latches click into place. She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed to stave off the discomfort caused by the change in air pressure. It never worked. Her ears still popped, but Ellie was ever the optimist.

She wiggled into her seat and tapped a button on the reconditioned control panel to open the channel to her friend, Malachi. That didn't work either, so she pressed it hard with her thumb while she stuck out her tongue unconsciously. This time the channel opened, and Malachi was already speaking.

"—Easy on the bend."

"Huh? Say again?"

While he talked, Ellie's muscle memory took over and she ran through the pre-flight sequence on autopilot. Quick fingers flicked switches and pressed buttons while her mind concentrated on what Malachi was saying. Another part of her mind made a note to ask Malachi again if he could replace this startup process with a single button to do it all for her.

"I said, you can go for it on the straight but take it easy on the bend. Your ship can't handle those tight turns."

Ellie's little racer hummed around her as the flight systems sprang to life. Pre-igniters rumbled behind her, firing up the engine core. The vibrations made her seat shudder.

"It has before."

"When?"

"Last week. Anything else I should know?"

"You should be able to beat him off the line but his engine is still going to give him a greater top speed. Also, we didn't have a race last week."

"Maybe we did?"

"We didn't."

"Maybe you forgot?"

"I remember every race, Ellie. I remember the stress you always put me through. You know you shouldn't race without me."

"If I'm such a worry, then why do you keep working on my ship?"

"Because I know you can win."

"I always win. Oh, and Mal, don't worry so much, it makes you sound like your father."

Ellie felt a change in the vibrations rumbling through her seat, and the pitch of the engine whine increased. The pre-ignition sequence was complete.

She entered the next command without looking. Full power was moments away.

The comms channel was still open but Malachi said nothing. Ellie knew he would be trying to work out if she had just insulted him. In her opinion, he needed to relax. He was too analytical. It was a quality which made him a wonderful engineer and valuable race technician. On the other hand, comparing him to his father tended to end conversations quickly. Not that Theodore Chambers was anything other than a wonderful role model for the young men of New Haven, but he cast a shadow that Malachi Chambers was not yet quite able to step beyond.

The computer chirped once to tell Ellie the ship was ready to launch. It was her favourite sound.

Through the cockpit she watched today's opponent running through his own launch sequence. Santini glanced back at her. She waved and gave him a friendly thumbs-up. Ellie always tried to make friends before a race. Her opponents seemed less interested afterwards. Santini ignored her, pulled on his own helmet, and launched.

"Rude," Ellie muttered to herself.

She took the controls, released her ship from the deck, rose and followed Santini through the bay doors of the Juggernaut and out into space.

More ships were already outside. Eager observers waited just beyond the bay doors, ready to chase the two competitors around the course and get the best possible view of the action.

Eight hundred metres away, four ships slowed over the surface of the city in a square formation. They hovered perpendicular to the Juggernaut's hull to mark the start and finish line of the race.

For the people who had become known as the dispossessed: the refugees, the criminals and the homeless, the Juggernaut was at worst a prison, and at best a bitter reminder that somewhere out there, somewhere else among the Commonwealth planets, was a world they had once called home.

Ellie was too young to remember a life before the Juggernaut, and since being orphaned during a raid six years ago, she had no chance at another home.

Everyone dreamed of escape, but few people ever left. Even if they were fortunate enough to have a ship capable of jumping to another system, they were unlikely to be able to afford the transit fees or have the money to start a new life.

Most of the city operated on a barter system. Honest work was a rare commodity at the best of times. Honest work that paid in hard currency was almost impossible to find, and was almost certainly not going to be lucrative enough to fund a new life elsewhere in the Commonwealth.

An individual fortunate enough to be blessed with both money and a ship had probably obtained it through illicit channels. That meant a bounty existed on a security record somewhere, and that meant the ship's crew would be picked up within hours of arriving in one of the neighbouring, law-abiding, systems.

But bounty hunters rarely followed their leads back to the Juggernaut. The Celato system was lawless and crawling with pirates, so only the highest value marks were chased into the city. Anything less wasn't good business sense.

And if they were that rare citizen with honest credit and the means to travel, then something else was keeping them here. Something so terrible that it made life on the Juggernaut, far away from the civilised worlds of the Commonwealth, their best option.

But none of these things applied to Ellie. She had committed no crime, she simply had no desire to leave. The city was her home.

It was also her playground.

If you were resourceful enough, you could find enough parts in the city to build almost anything you wanted. If you were skilled enough, you could salvage, repair, or construct a small ship, just big enough for one. If you were brave enough, you could race it.

Like anything dangerous, the youth of the city had quickly made it their own. The teenagers of the disparate Juggernaut communities had organised themselves well enough to hold races whenever and wherever they liked.

At least outside the confines of the station you could see the stars. You were free to move.

With almost half a million people on board there was always someone, somewhere, ready to race. The ever-changing surface of the Juggernaut made for an unpredictable course, and the lack of any unified authority within the city or the star system meant that there was no one to stop them. Racing was almost a rite of passage among some of the Juggernaut's communities.

Out here you were free to go as fast as you could, as fast as you wanted. But you were always bound to the Juggernaut. No matter how fast you went, you couldn't escape the city.