Lady in the Fast Lane

The Chronicles of Vazkelt

Volume 1

Lady in the Fast Lane

by Aaron Apollo Camp

Copyright ©2019 by Aaron Apollo Camp.

All Rights Reserved.

This book is intended for the private reading of those who have purchased the book. Any reuse or republishing of this book without the express written consent of the author is prohibited.

All content in the body of this book is fictional. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locations, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This book depicts the sport of automobile racing. Like other forms of motorsport, automobile racing is an inherently dangerous sport. Automobile racing should only be practiced on a closed course by those who are trained automobile racers. When driving on public roads, always observe speed limits and all other traffic laws, always wear seat belts, and never, under any circumstances, race other motorists on public roads.

Table of Contents

The End of the War

Buying a Special Car

Saving a Palace of Speed

Rebuilding a Palace of Speed

Building Performance

The Pre-Rookie Test

The Rookie Test

Practice Adventures

Qualification Trials

Qualification Races

The Day Before the Race

The Start of the Whitesand Race

The Finish of the Whitesand Race

Production Car Adventures

The First Race at East Ridge

The Second Race at East Ridge

Preface

Like all stories that will be part of The Chronicles of Vazkelt, Lady in the Fast Lane is set on a fictional planet, Gyrd. Gyrd is similar to real-life Earth, with some key differences that are noted in this preface.

Gyrd is located in a fictional universe, rotating around a star, Hysb, that is similar to, but slightly larger than, the real-life Sun. Unlike the real-life Sun, Hysb is part of a binary star system that also includes the star Zorl. Gyrd is the fifth planet from Hysb, and the furthest away of three livable planets from Hysb.

Gyrd's mean radius is approximately twice as much as that of Earth. Additionally, Gyrd is somewhat less dense than Earth. As a result, the surface gravity of Gyrd is slightly stronger than that of real-life Earth.

The mean length of a day on Gyrd, from midnight of one day to the following midnight, is approximately 30 hours, or approximately 6 hours longer than an Earth day. The mean length of a year on Gyrd is slightly more than 472 Gyrdian days, or slightly more than 590 Earth days, in length.

In real-life, there is, at the time this work was written, no known extraterrestrial planet capable of being inhabited by human life. Humanity should take steps to solve the climate crisis that is endangering life on Earth.

The End of the War

On a fateful late fall day, forces from the Empire of Fozear, one of the Four Colonizing Powers, viciously attacked Vazkelt, one of the 38 island areas that formed the Outer Islands that surrounded the supercontinent of Lahyrnt, with little warning. The Fozearian suicide pilots flew their aircraft into Lahyrntian naval ships docked at ports on the western and eastern coasts of Grand Vazkelt Island, destroying multiple ships of the Lahyrntian Navy and Lahyrntian Special Forces fleets.

As Vazkelt was part of the Lahyrntian Imperial Democratic Republic, Lahyrnt declared war against Fozear and the other Colonizing Powers. In doing so, Lahyrnt effectively sided with the Allies, which included other lands that had been attacked by the Four Colonizing Powers.

In declaring war, the Lahyrntian Government, using wartime powers vested in the Lahyrntian Wartime Government Commission, temporarily banned all forms of motorsport, including automobile racing, for the duration of the war. This was because a massive effort was needed by Lahyrnt's large manufacturing industry to build ships, tanks, airplanes, vehicles, and other items that the Lahyrntian Armed Forces needed to fight the war.

The ban on motorsports was part of a much larger wartime rationing scheme. Items which the Government deemed to be not designed for use by the Armed Forces and not a personal necessity were prohibited from being manufactured for the duration of the war. Many items considered personal necessities, including food and over-the-counter medication, were subject to rationing.

The war effort required a major sacrifice on the part of Lahyrntians, but they were more than willing to sacrifice things deemed non-necessary during a time of war. One of many things that were sacrificed for the duration of the war was motorsports. Such sacrifices would have not been possible without the overwhelming majority of Lahyrntians supporting the war effort.

For nearly five long years, Lahyrnt, united with the Allies by necessity rather than by choice, had been at war with Fozear, Eiqung, Mozikl, and Xanrur, collectively known as the Four Colonizing Powers. By this point, Eiqung, Mozikl, and Xanrur had already surrendered to Allied forces, which left Fozear as the last of the Colonizing Powers still fighting. However, the Fozearian Navy, once thought to be the most indestructible armed force to have ever existed, was in tatters. The Fozerian Navy had been forced to retreat to waters near the coasts of their homeland after losing a series of bruising battles to the Lahyrntians.

On the home front in Vazkelt, Karen Yellowdragon, then 27 years of age, was working in a factory. The factory was located on Grand Vazkelt Island, which is, by far, the largest island of Vazkelt, and the factory made radar equipment for the Lahyrntian Navy. She stood six feet and four inches tall and had a somewhat muscular build. She was a single, unmarried woman who lived on an oat farm that was located near the tiny Vazkeltian village of Eight Pines. Her farm was relatively small, being slightly more than six acres in area. She lived alone; in fact, she didn't even own any farm animals or pets.

Located on tiny Notched Peak Island, which is one of the many smaller islands of Vazkelt, Eight Pines was a small, quiet village near the center of the island. Located in a deep, and relatively narrow, valley, Eight Pines was home to 40 single-family residences, one gasoline station, one small grocery store, one grain mill, one small diner, a post office, a two-room schoolhouse, and the village council building. Most of the houses in Eight Pines were modest houses with only one full above-ground story, although many of them had finished basements and finished attics. Only a total of 185 residents called Eight Pines home, and the population of the village never exceeded 200 people at any point in its long history.

Before the war, most factories in Lahyrnt wouldn't even consider hiring women, because, at that time, manufacturing was considered a job for men by the traditional gender roles of Lahyrntian society. Before the war, a married woman in Lahyrnt was not legally allowed to be gainfully employed by an employer if her husband was employed. Additionally, other legal restrictions on the economic empowerment of married women existed before the war. Before the war, unmarried women were employed fairly commonly as elementary school teachers, as receptionists, as file clerks, as nurses, and in other similar professions. However, women were almost never employed in blue-collar fields like manufacturing.

Traditional gender roles were another thing that had to be sacrificed by Lahyrntian society for the duration of the war. Most of Lahyrnt's young, able-bodied adult men were conscripted into service in the Armed Forces. This meant that women, married and unmarried, were employed in massive numbers by manufacturers who were making everything the Armed Forces needed for the war effort. This became known as the home front, and the women of Lahyrnt were, by and large, the people who made the war effort happen. Without the women of Lahyrnt, the war effort would have simply not been possible.

Karen enjoyed making naval radar equipment. While the learning curve for most of her co-workers was quite steep, she was very quick to learn how to make radar equipment. If a co-worker had a question on how to do something, she was usually able to assist her co-worker before a supervisor could assist.

Karen's work on the home front had made her a celebrity during the war. She was one of several women featured as part of the Government's Women Build the War Effort poster campaign, which featured women working in various war manufacturing jobs during the war. Posters featuring her building naval radar equipment were among those posted prominently in public spaces across Lahyrnt, especially across Vazkelt and some of the other island areas that are part of the Outer Islands.

However, Karen's life was about to change dramatically, and in a bittersweet way.

On a sunny and warm, but windy, late summer day, Karen clocked out at the end of her shift in the late afternoon, as she had done every single work day for the duration of the war. Timing her trip home so that she could board the ferry to Notched Peak Island, she drove home in her violet-colored pickup truck.

After walking into her living room, she turned the radio on. Although radio broadcasts were heavily curtailed by the Government during the war, she was not a particularly avid radio listener in any case. However, like a typical Lahyrntian in her era, she listened to the radio from time to time. She primarily spoke the Yeg language, the native language of the people of Notched Peak Island, but the radio broadcasts were in the Vazkeltian language. However, as a multilingual person, she could understand and speak Vazkeltian very well.

Less than a minute after Karen turned the radio on, the radio station that she was listening to interrupted its scheduled programming to broadcast a special news bulletin. The news anchor announced that the Fozearian forces had agreed to surrender to Lahyrnt and its Allies. The Lahyrntian Navy and Lahyrntian Special Forces had surrounded the Fozearian homeland. The Fozearians surrendered to prevent a large-scale ground invasion of Fozear. The last of the Colonizing Forces had surrendered, and the war was over.

Karen had mixed emotions about the end of the war.

Karen, in part, felt a great sense of pride about the end of the war. Part of her felt like she helped win the war. However, as she was