“Ready! Set! Davai!” Sirius’ shift lead shouted into the crowded elevator shaft.

In the zero-G, the two racers sprang from their starting positions and shot down the main corridor of the Anna Karenina like missiles. The ramps to the ship’s many levels flew by and Sirius pushed off as many as he could to add to his flight speed. He paid little attention to his opponent, he needed to focus on not crashing into the bulkheads and ramps. Especially since at the speed he was building up, he would probably break something if he collided. He noticed they were approaching the midway point and stole a glance at his opponent who was already slowing down in anticipation of hitting the final bulkhead before the return stretch.

Sirius had a different idea. It would hurt, but he figured he could go a few more meters at this speed before he had to slow down. He flipped so his legs were facing the corridor’s terminal wall with just a few well-timed pushes off the corridor’s handholds. He relaxed his legs a bit, bending them slightly at the knees and tucked his chin into his chest. He’d seen a few videos of emergency parachute landing techniques from one of the Earth’s militaries and planned to try out what he had learned. This was technically falling, after all.

In theory, the physics should work out in his favor. Distributing the force of the impact over the whole body by a carefully sequenced roll would prevent him from taking the full force of the collision on any one part of his body. Of course, that was all theory. Sirius had never applied it in real life. He had no choice but to try it now, he had already flown way past the point of no return. At this distance and velocity, he could never bleed off enough of his speed in time for the impact to be easy.

The final bulkhead grew closer and closer fast. Sirius could hear people shouting at him to slow down. His opponent, now several meters and more behind him, was shouting too. But despite the din, he could barely hear it. Sirius could feel a strange sense of euphoria mixed with fear as he neared the immovable wall of the bulkhead.

After what felt like forever, he reached out his arms and started bleeding off some of his speed by running his hands on the bulkhead walls and grabbing the ramps as he passed. He was decelerating fast but he would still be in for a rough stop by the time he made contact with the bulkhead. He just needed to hit it right, dissipate what force he could and tank the rest, then turn around before his opponent had the chance to do the same. He just had to hope that he wouldn’t break his legs – or worse. Internal bleeds got bad in zero G.

His feet made impact with the bulkhead, his legs crumpled, and he twisted himself to the side into a sort of roll. In that same instant his shoulder impacted violently and then his head. His vision flashed white, but he was already pushing off the bulkhead back in the direction he came, the reaction almost automatic. His vision was slightly blurred, and he guessed that wasn’t a good thing.

He was almost halfway back to the starting point when his opponent finally started the return journey, the race was won. He could hear his crewmembers shouting and yelling on the other side. He couldn’t hear things very clearly and his mind was feeling fuzzy, but he was approaching the finish line and fast.

Too fast.

He crashed into a knot of crewmembers waiting at the end of the corridor, they whooped and hollered and dragged him upright. Someone shoved a flask of an indeterminate alcohol into his hand which he took a few large sips of. It only made the room spin more. The ship’s medic snatched it from his grasp.

“You shouldn’t be drinking that! You have a head injury!”, the woman yelled at him and pulled him aside.

“Let ‘im have it, he broke the fuckin’ record!” A very drunk crewmate yelled back. The drunk crewmate pulled Sirius away from her and practically shouted in his face. “51.23 seconds!! 51.23 seconds!!”

“Eh, looks like he broke a lot more than that”, the medic deadpanned as she pushed the crewmate away.

It was only then that Sirius noticed several large spheres of blood floating beside his head and trailing through the corridor along the path he had taken. He allowed the medic to guide him to the medical center, while behind the two trailed a few drunk merrymakers who cheered him on. He was glad that once they reached the medical center, the revelers were shut out. The noise was only worsening his headache and the attention was getting to be too much. They’d forget about him after a day or two, which suited him perfectly.

“Bozhe Moi, ship full of fucking idiots”, the medic said as she washed her hands and prepared her sutures, “Fucking suicidal idiots”.

Sirius floated nearby and shrugged. The woman was right. From an entirely objective perspective their game was stupid. But it was exactly the kind of game a bunch of bored, 20-something at best, men would come up with using the limited materials available. The alternatives were playing durak or American-style poker. The latter was often resulted in more injury than racing did depending on how outrageous the losing conditions were.

The medic rinsed off Sirius’ headwound with a sharp smelling disinfectant then had Sirius turn his head so that the overhead light could illuminate the affected area better. From the corner of his eye, he could see the medic nod.

“Could be worse”, then she dug the suturing needle into the edge of the wound. Sirius grimaced but kept still over the next few uncomfortable minutes until the medic looked satisfied with the work she’d done.

“Can I go now?” Sirius asked.

“I’m going to need to fill out a concussion assessment”, she said while cleaning up her materials, “So you stay put”.

They spent the next 15 minutes going through the highly detailed concussion assessment card. No matter what Sirius answered, the medic always seemed unconvinced. They kept circling back to answers he’d already given as if the medic was looking to catch him in a lie. It was like being interrogated. It took ten minutes before Sirius had enough and refused to answer questions twice. After that, things went by much faster and the medic had no choice but to release him because he’d only scored ‘low-risk’ on the assessment.

“If you go back to the race, I will kill you before your next concussion does”, the medic threatened. She keyed in a passcode to a medicine locker and took out two small bags of pills. She passed Sirius one of the bags containing ten white capsules. “This one’s a painkiller, take as needed but not more than twice an hour. And this one’s for sleep”, she said as she passed him a small bag with a single light blue capsule, “which is what you should be doing instead of the stupid stunts that got you here. Now go”.

Sirius complied without protest. He had enough attention for the day. He returned to the small crew cabin his bunk was in and found to his relief that it was empty. He crawled into his bunk and let the drugs knock him out.