Uhm yes

Adam sighed and lowered his knife. "Fine. We'll race." He jabbed a finger at the Zenthari's ocular cluster. "But if *any* of those cryo-pods get shipped out before we qualify, I start removing limbs alphabetically."

The mechanic's mandibles clattered in something resembling laughter. "Agreed." It scuttled backward, already transmitting their registration to the orbital track. "Qualifiers begin at dawn. Try not to liquefy your spines before then."

Eris's fingers danced across the holographic race schematics, her quicksilver fingertips leaving glowing afterimages where she tapped. The projected orbital track spun lazily between them, its danger zones pulsing crimson. "Biometric scanners here, here, and—" her finger stabbed through a blinking node near the finish line "—here. All linked to the cryo-pods' release protocols."

Susan traced the scanner's connection lines with a grease-stained fingertip, smearing the hologram. "So we fake six deaths simultaneously?"

"No." Eris's smile revealed too many teeth. "We fake sixty."

Adam choked on his synth-ale. "The entire goddamn roster?"

Eris's form shimmered as she accessed the race database, her body briefly resolving into streams of data. "Zenthari harvest protocols require confirmation from three scanners before activating cryo-retrieval." She reassembled, straddling the holographic track with predatory grace. "But their security has a... quirk." Her hand plunged into the projection, twisting a section of code that made the scanners flicker erratically. "Scanners 47 through 52 share the same authentication buffer."

Susan whistled low. "One death pings six scanners." She leaned in, tracing the flawed connection lines with her knife tip. "So we blow one racer's biometrics at the merge point—"

"—and every scanner in the cluster registers a fatality," Adam finished, grinning. "Clever bitch."