The Golden Comet
Aren Vellin grew up among broken things.
The Vellin repair yard was hardly remarkable by Ord Mantell standards. Wedged between scrapyards, freight depots and rows of workshops on the outskirts of a sprawling industrial settlement, it survived by taking the jobs larger outfits couldn't be bothered with. Damaged speeders, temperamental power generators, old droids, cargo haulers that should have been retired years ago - if it could be dragged through the gates, someone in the Vellin family would try to make it work again.
Aren was raised there.
Some of his earliest memories were of sitting on the workshop floor sorting fasteners into battered containers while machinery screamed and sparked around him. As soon as he was old enough to hold a hydrospanner properly, someone found a use for him. By adolescence, Aren could diagnose a failing repulsor by sound and knew precisely how far an engine could be pushed beyond its manufacturer's tolerances before something important started melting.
The Vellins were never destitute, but there was rarely much left over. New parts were a luxury. Replacement usually meant salvage, repair or improvisation, and Aren became particularly good at all three.
It was also where he learned to go fast.
At first, it was speeders. Customers occasionally discovered their vehicles had somehow acquired considerably more responsive engines after being left in Aren's care. Then came informal races with other local kids: dangerous little contests through industrial lots, abandoned freight routes and stretches of wasteland where nobody particularly cared what they were doing.
Aren had an instinct for it.
More importantly, he understood the machine beneath him.
Where other racers knew how to drive, Aren knew what every vibration through the controls meant. He could feel an engine beginning to overheat before the instruments registered it, knew exactly how much more power he could steal from a struggling component, and had spent his entire life learning the difference between a machine that sounded unhappy and one that was about to come apart.
Podracing was the inevitable next step.
His first machine was assembled rather than purchased. Aren scavenged the Vellin yard for anything useful, bartered for what he couldn't find, and rebuilt components other mechanics had already written off. One of the engines at the heart of that first machine had sat in the yard for years beneath a faded inventory marking:
LOT 213.
The number stayed.
What began as local races became legitimate amateur events. Amateur events became regional competitions. The machines around him became faster, the pilots more experienced and the consequences of mistakes considerably worse.
Yet Aren kept winning anyway.
Not every race. Not even most of them at first. His equipment saw to that. There were races he led until something broke, races he finished with half his controls failing, and at least one where crossing the finish line was immediately followed by his engine becoming several separate pieces.
But people began noticing that when number 213 actually held together, the skinny blond mechanic from Ord Mantell was remarkably difficult to catch.
Eventually, the right person noticed.
Aurek Racing Group was everything the Vellin yard wasn't: professional, wealthy and meticulously polished. ARG competed with equipment Aren previously would have hesitated to touch without washing his hands first. Their engineers had resources he had only ever read about, and their sponsors spent more credits on a single racing season than Aren could comfortably comprehend.
They offered him a professional contract.
Aren initially assumed there had been some mistake.
There hadn't.
ARG wasn't simply buying his talent. Aren was eighteen, good-looking, personable when he wasn't being shoved in front of a holocamera without warning, and came with the sort of story sponsors adored. The repair-yard kid from Ord Mantell who had built his own racer from scrap was remarkably easy to sell.
Suddenly, Aren Vellin was marketable.
The transformation happened almost overnight.
His battered racing clothes disappeared beneath an immaculate cobalt-and-gold ARG uniform. Media training appeared on his schedule alongside race preparation. People began fussing with his hair before interviews. His face appeared on promotional material. Companies he'd never heard of sent him things simply because they wanted him photographed using them.
And then there was Afterburn.
For the first time in Aren's life, someone handed him a racing machine in which every component worked.
Afterburn was new, beautiful and terrifyingly fast: a sponsor-funded blue-and-gold machine built with components Aren could never have afforded himself. There were professional engineers whose entire job was keeping it running.
Aren still found excuses to work on it.
Some habits were harder to break than others.
He kept 213, despite suggestions that a new professional career deserved something more carefully marketable. It had been painted on his first salvaged engine. It had followed him through every race that mattered. As far as Aren was concerned, there was nothing to discuss.
His first professional races brought attention quickly.
The nickname came shortly afterward.
A commentator watching the brilliant blue-and-gold number 213 tear through the field called Aren "the Golden Comet." It was probably intended as a throwaway line.
ARG's marketing department had merchandise designed before the next race.
Aren maintains that he thinks the nickname is ridiculous.
Nobody particularly believes him.
For all the publicity surrounding him, Aren remains an unknown quantity on the professional circuit. He is talented - perhaps exceptionally so - but talent at amateur level does not guarantee survival among the best racers in the galaxy. Some veterans resent the attention he receives. Others dismiss him as a sponsor-built celebrity whose equipment is better than his experience deserves.
Sponsor boy has already become one of the less imaginative insults thrown his way.
The accusation bothers Aren more than he admits.
Because there is a fragment of truth buried inside it.
Aren knows exactly what Afterburn costs. He knows he couldn't afford one of its engines, much less the entire machine. He knows another young racer somewhere could be every bit as talented as he is and never receive the opportunity that landed unexpectedly in his lap.
For most of Aren's life, he could blame the machine.
If he lost because an engine failed, a coupling broke or an improvised repair finally gave out, there was always the comforting possibility that he might have won with better equipment.
Now he has better equipment.
Possibly some of the best he's ever touched.
There are professional mechanics behind him, sponsors paying his expenses, crowds beginning to recognize his number, and an entire racing organization betting that the kid they found in an Ord Mantell repair yard can become something extraordinary.
For the first time, the machine isn't holding Aren Vellin back.
Now he has to find out how fast he really is.
