Chapter 34 - The Alpine Forge
The air in the high valley of Saint Moritz tasted entirely of frost, pine, and high-altitude purity. It was a vicious contrast to the rust-and-sulfur breath of our industrial hometown.
We had arrived forty-eight hours earlier, setting up our temporary workshop in an old wooden barn converted into a high-performance training bay at the base of the alpine velodrome. The track here was unlike anything Mia had ever faced: constructed of polished Siberian timber, banked at a dizzying thirty-eight degrees on the turns, designed for speeds exceeding thirty-five miles per hour.
Mia sat in her newly constructed chair.
We had forged it together during two weeks of sleepless nights in our home shop before boarding the plane. We called it *The Phoenix-7*. The frame was crafted from seamless aeronautical titanium, reinforced with honeycombed Kevlar plates along the lower chassis to protect her torso from any lateral impact. The wheels were custom-dished carbon discs, tuned to glide with zero resistance on indoor wood.
"How does the balance feel through the banking?" I asked, wiping sweat from my forehead as I adjusted the torque on her left steering compensator.
Mia leaned into the curve, her muscular arms flexing beneath her thermal compression suit. At ten years old, she had developed the broad, powerful shoulders of an elite athlete, her hands hardened by miles of relentless pushing.
"It wants to drift high in turn three," she said, squinting up at the towering wooden rim of the velodrome. "The wood has more bite than asphalt. If I hit the transition too early, the back end tries to skate."
"Then don't let it skate," a deep, booming voice echoed from the barn entrance.
I spun around. Standing in the doorway was an imposing man with a thick gray beard, leaning heavily on a carved wooden cane. His left leg was a high-tech carbon prosthesis from the knee down. Behind him stood two burly mechanics pushing an equipment crate stamped with the German national crest.
"Klaus Becker," I breathed, recognizing the face instantly from historic racing reels. The three-time world champion whose career had been ended twenty years ago when an experimental frame collapsed beneath him at the Tokyo Grand Prix.
"Herr Miller," Becker said, his voice rumbling like gravel in a chute. He stepped inside, his sharp blue eyes immediately locking onto Mia’s chair. He didn't look at her face; he looked at her machine. He walked around it once, his cane clicking against the floorboards, before extending a gloved finger and tapping the Kevlar weld near the rear fork.
"Too heavy," Becker said flatly.
"It's reinforced for safety," I replied defensively, stepping between Becker and the chair. "She was attacked on the track back home."
"I know what happened in the Capitol Circle," Becker snapped, turning his piercing gaze onto me. "The whole world saw the broadcast, Miller. They saw the bomb. They saw the blood. But this is Saint Moritz. This is the Velodrome of Nations. If you build her a tank because you are afraid of ghosts, she will finish dead last against the German and Japanese sprinters. Speed is not a luxury here. Speed is the only armor that matters."
Mia pulled off her gloves. "He’s right, Dad."
I looked at her, stunned.
"The Kevlar is dragging my acceleration out of the corners," Mia said, her voice steady and unapologetic. "Take the lower armor off. Strip it down to the raw titanium."
"Mia, if someone tries something—"
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"Nobody catches what they can't touch," she declared, her eyes burning with an intensity that silenced every objection in my chest.
Becker let out a short, barking laugh that rattled the rafters. "The girl has the blood of a hawk. Hand me the five-millimeter hex key, Miller. We have thirty hours before the qualifying heats, and your daughter is five kilograms too heavy to fly."
