TURBO Racers

by Austin Aslan

  “Would you mind waiting a few minutes?” Mom said. “We’re on a web conference. But it’s wrapping up. Can I get you anything? Sandwiches?”

  “No, thanks. We’re good on food.” Mace grabbed hold of a lapel on Dex’s fancy vest and herded him into his bedroom. “So, what’s going on?” Mace asked.

  Dex closed the door behind him. Dex began in a low voice, checking over his shoulders. “I was in a sim in Tucson, and—”

  “You don’t have to whisper,” Mace pointed out.

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” Dex cleared his throat and started over. “I was in Tucson, and this text popped up on the simulator displays: ‘Dex, is that you?’ And I was like, ‘Uh, yeah.’ And the texts kept coming. ‘This is Ahmed. We need to talk. Can you track down Mace? I can’t get ahold of him.’”

  “Yeah, I’ve kind of been avoiding everything since the Philippines,” Mace admitted. “I’ve barely turned on the TV. I’ve just been sleeping and wandering around. I don’t know—today was my first time back to the arcade.”

  “I know the feeling.” Dex sat down on the edge of Mace’s messy bed. “But this sounds urgent. Ahmed didn’t say more. He gave me a private video call line, told me to call once I found you.”

  “Did you hear the news about Aya?”

  “Yeah, I saw. You guys really made an impression in the Philippines showcase, dude!”

  “You know what really happened, right?” Mace asked pointedly.

  Dex frowned. “I could guess.”

  “Henryk shorted my circuits at the last second. Locked up my wheels.”

  “That’s what he did to me!” Dex exclaimed.

  “I figured. But here’s the crazy thing: I still finished before him. I was the pilot of trimorpher 88. I won that race.”

  “Wait. Seriously?” Dex shook his head.

  “Tempest had a booby trap installed on my ride, too. She told me to use it on him. I refused. So when I won anyway, she just pretended Henryk was in car 88 all along. It’s all a lie. It was always a lie. She’s looking for a crook, not a TURBOnaut.”

  They sat in silence until a knock came at the door. Dex opened it and Mom handed over her laptop. “Sure you don’t want something to eat?” she asked.

  “We’re all right. Thank you,” Dex said. Mom read his lips.

  “Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.” She left, closing the door softly.

  Mace fired up the laptop and called the number Dex had given him. The video feed connected immediately. A blank screen was replaced with a fish-eye image of Ahmed, framed by a backdrop of server banks and blinking diodes.

  “Perfect timing,” Ahmed whispered. Mace was rattled by how nervous he looked. “Tempest is topside at the moment. Still, I don’t have a lot of time.”

  Ahmed’s words appeared in a text bubble beside the video. Mom hadn’t turned off the dictation software, but Mace was so used to this that he was able to ignore it.

  “What’s going on, Ahmed?”

  He took a deep breath, thought for a moment before launching into his answer. “What happened to you in the Philippines—it wasn’t right. Tempest is changing everything. She’s going to ruin the sport if she has her way. TURBO racing will become a street fight. Oil slicks, smoke screens, grappling hooks, tire shredders, pulse drives, energy shields—she wants to make it all legal.”

  “Bigger tennis rackets,” agreed Mace. “She’s been going on about finding the gaps in the rules—and making all the products that’ll go in tomorrow’s trimorphers.”

  “And the name Hollande will be everywhere we turn. . . .” Ahmed trailed off for a second. Mace glimpsed in his expression the same frustration he had been feeling. Ahmed continued. “I’ve been instructed to put all sorts of tricks up Henryk’s sleeve. He could accidently kill someone out there. And if Aya qualifies for the Prix, she’ll be one of his targets.”

  Mace squeezed a fist. “You need to warn her, Ahmed!”

  “I have! But she brushes me off. I think Tempest has told her not to worry about Henryk. She believes the lie. She’s so focused on proving herself. It’s a blind spot for her.”

  “Then go to the authorities,” Dex suggested.

  “She’ll pay them off, if she hasn’t already,” Ahmed answered. “I don’t know who to trust. And if she finds out I’m going behind her back, she’ll just replace me with someone more reliable. We’re all better off with me on the inside.”

  Dex and Mace shared a desperate look. “What do you want us to do?” Mace asked.

  Ahmed glanced over his own shoulders nervously, leaned in close. “I want you to race again, Mace.”

  Mace shook his head. He surprised himself with what he said. “I can’t. I’m done.”

  Ahmed’s eyes grew large. “Please, Mace. You’re the only ’naut who can beat Henryk in spite of the advantages he’ll have. And Tempest has to lose if we’re going to save the sport—and protect Aya.”

  “How? I’ve got no racer, no team, and not nearly enough money.”

  “I sent the Event Horizon chassis to the Boulder airport. It was stripped of its engine, a few other accessories, but almost everything else is there. If you can get to it . . . If the two of you can figure out how to fix her up . . . I can make sure on my end that you’ve got a spot waiting for you in the San Fran Pro-Am. Win that, and you automatically—”

  “Go on to the Gauntlet Prix—” declared Dex, excitement rising in his voice.

  Mace finished the sentence for him, his heart pounding in his chest. “Where we put a stop to Tempest’s nonsense.”

  “And save this sport,” added Ahmed. “With Dex’s help, you can do it, Mace. I believe in you.”

  Mace took a deep breath.

  Henryk could accidently kill someone out there.

  “This is crazy, you know,” said Mace.

  “It’s the only way,” Ahmed argued.

  Mace looked at Dex. “He’s right,” Dex agreed. “You’re the only one good enough to beat a cheater fair and square.”

  “All right,” he said. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “That’s all I can ask,” said Ahmed. “We have to do this legit. And only you can pull that off.”

  There was a noise off camera. Ahmed’s head whipped around, then darted back. “I have to go. We can’t talk again. Too risky. I’m going to scrub this IP. But if you file with the Association by the end of next week, a slot will be waiting. That’s my promise. Good luck. And make every morph matter.”

  The screen went blank, though the dictation software lagged behind, and was still typing out Ahmed’s comments. Mace and Dex watched his final words repeat themselves in text form, as if they needed extra help translating what had just gone down.

  Mace sat at the edge of his seat, his palms sweaty.

  “Ahmed wants us to rebuild Event Horizon. In less than two weeks. How is that possible? There’s no engine. The landing system . . . Electrical . . . Not to mention jet fuel prices! It’s impossible.” He clenched his fists. He was . . . so close and so far away.

  “There has to be a way to do this,” Dex insisted, pacing the room. He absently picked up Mace’s scale model of Iron Dragon and examined it as he paced.

  “I’m not sneaking into the airport again. I barely escaped last time, and my dad still works there. He loves that job. No more breaking the rules—for anything.”

  A knock came at the door, startling both of them. Dex reached over and pulled it open. Mace’s mom and dad stood in the doorway. They looked uncertain and studied their son closely for a moment. Finally, Dad signed, “M. This wasn’t on purpose. But we saw your conversation.”

  Mom placed the second laptop, open, on the bed. Mace’s eyes widened. It was showing an exact duplicate image of the other laptop.

  Mace explained to Dex. “They saw the whole thing.”

  Even as he spoke, his words were dictated to text on both computers, making the situation obvious to both of them.

  I’m not sneaking into the airport again.
>
  I barely escaped last time, and my dad

  still works there.

  He loves that job. No more breaking

  the rules—for anything.

  Dad continued to sign. “We were on a web conference together. We weren’t trying to spy.”

  Mace watched his parents, realizing that they’d figured out everything.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mace signed to them. “I don’t know how—”

  His father signed, “You haven’t been the same since you got home. This explains why.”

  Mace nodded in agreement. “Dad,” he started. “Mom.” He was scared to say the wrong thing. He didn’t want to get into more trouble than he already was. “I’ve been so selfish and stupid.”

  “Stupid?” signed Mom. “No. You’re just . . . out in front of everybody. It’s where you belong.”

  Dad’s eyes were soft. “You hid this because we would have said no. We never understood how good you are at what you do.”

  Mace’s eyes stung but he held the tears back. “TURBO racing isn’t what I do,” he told them. “It’s who I am.”

  “A big-T TURBOnaut,” Dex agreed.

  Dad looked at each of the boys in turn, thinking. Dex’s comment appeared on the computer screens and seemed to jar something loose in Dad’s head. He and Mom shared a long glance. Mom nodded. Dad turned back to his son. He fished a security badge out of his blazer pocket and lassoed it around his neck.

  “Time’s wasting,” he signed. “Let’s go to the airport.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mace’s dad navigated his sedan through the security checkpoint without a hitch. He drove along the restricted-access lot and parked behind the flight-training school, the nearest he could get to the cargo terminal in an unofficial vehicle.

  The boys peeked out from under a tarp in the back of the car. Dad signed, “Let me have a look. I’ll see if I can locate this thing. Is it boxed?”

  “I have no idea,” Mace responded.

  The door banged shut. The minutes dragged on. And on. Mace started to worry that his dad had found trouble instead of Event Horizon. How much had Dad risked to come here and snoop around? What was his cover story? But Mace’s worries were unfounded. Dad finally returned, filled with childish excitement, and opened the rear passenger door so quickly that Mace spilled onto the concrete before he could brace himself.

  “Stay down,” Dad ordered. “Wait till the security camera turns.”

  A few seconds later, he hurried Mace and Dex along the flight school wall and around the corner. The airport was in operation but not very busy. A few employees shuffled to and fro, and a couple trucks and specialized vehicles carried out their business. Dad handed each of the boys an employee ball cap and giant orange earmuffs. “Wear these. Act like you belong here. Stand straight. No one will bother with you unless they see you up close.”

  Mace relayed the instructions to Dex, and they both nodded.

  “In here.” Dad beckoned to them.

  They entered the cargo facility through a side door. Dad led them through a series of carpeted hallways and stopped at a metal door with a window. Beyond was a warehouse space lit only by natural sunlight coming in through small, high windows. “Look in there. There’re several vehicle-sized crates on pallets. Could one of them be it?”

  Dex poked into the storage area and glanced around. He gave the “all clear.” The three of them fanned out to inspect the five crates.

  None of the wooden containers were marked with descriptions that meant anything. Giant barcodes, stenciled letters that said This Side Up, and that was it. They were all nailed shut, except for one, which had a lid with hinges and was secured with combination padlocks.

  “That’s the one,” Mace said.

  “How can you tell?” asked Dex.

  “Because Ahmed knows I’m good with combo locks.”

  Mace gripped the first lock gently and turned the dial clockwise and counterclockwise. Click. Tap. Clack. Yank.

  It opened, no problem.

  “I don’t remember Ahmed giving you codes,” said Dex.

  “He didn’t. There’s no need,” Mace told him. He winked, opened the next lock without ever looking at it, having fun.

  It took all three of them to open the lid. A quick glance inside revealed that Mace was right.

  “There she is,” Mace whistled. The black trimorpher was tucked into submersible form, its most compact configuration. The fold-up job was far from seamless, though. The damage to the hull prevented a tight fit. The glass canopy was new. Totally intact. A gift from Ahmed, Mace figured. But the rest of it looked more banged up than he had remembered. He wondered if they’d be able to fix it.

  They quietly dropped the lid back into place. Mace looped the locks through their latches but didn’t close them. “How are we going to get this out of here?” he whispered and signed.

  “I have an idea,” signed Dad. “Wait here.”

  A few minutes later, he was backing a scuffed, unlabeled delivery truck into the storage bay. He cut the engine, jumped down, and rolled up the back door. “We’re inside a restricted area,” he explained. “Keys to these things are always on the dash. I’ll be right back with the forklift,” he said. “Climb inside the truck to stay out of sight.”

  The boys obeyed. Mace felt a bit useless as they watched Dad trot off and return a minute later, behind the wheel of a large forklift. Just as he secured the prongs through the pallet spacers, a guy in a hard hat strolled into view and raised his hand.

  Mace and Dex shrank back into the delivery truck’s interior. Mace could hear his heartbeat in his ears.

  Dad shut off the engine and climbed down. The employee asked him what he was doing. Dad silently signed back to him. They went back and forth, not understanding each other, for a good twenty seconds, before the guy embraced the fact that he was trying to talk to someone who couldn’t hear. He scratched under his hard hat.

  Dad showed him his security clearance. He escorted the guy over to the crate and demonstrated how the combination locks were all open. He signed at the guy, “It’s scrap metal. Just taking it to the junk heap.” The man in the hard hat didn’t understand a word. He shoved a clipboard at Dad, gestured for Dad to write it down. Dad retold his story on paper.

  The hardhat man stared at the dangling locks.

  “Okay, okay.” He waved Dad off. “Go on. Sorry to bother.”

  Dad patted him on the back and promptly jumped up behind the wheel of the forklift. A moment later, the boys were squeezing out of the way as the crate was guided into the back of the truck.

  “No one’s going to miss this shipment, right?” his father asked.

  Mace shrugged. “Ahmed’s not going to report it missing.”

  Dad closed the truck door, moving quickly. “Stay back here. Once we get to the house we’ll push the crate out on the curb. If I get the truck back here before the next cargo plane needs unloading at two, no one will be the wiser.”

  Twenty minutes later, Mom was helping the three of them shove the wooden crate out of the delivery truck. Trimophers were designed to be relatively light. Even so, Event Horizon, empty of fuel and missing its engine, was lighter than Mace expected. The wood slid nicely along the aluminum siding of the truck interior. Gravity did the rest.

  The box slammed down onto the street. Dex winced, but Mace laughed. “It’s not like it’s in mint condition.”

  Dad peeled away in the delivery truck, racing the clock.

  Mom stood with her arms crossed, inspecting the giant crate that had been dumped half on, half off the sidewalk in front of their house. Neighbors were peering out their barred windows. A small kid on a bike rode by, staring, and almost slammed into a mailbox. Mom unfolded her arms to say, “Mace, we can’t leave this here. You can’t keep it at the house. What are you going to do with it?”

  Mace had been wondering the same thing. It was impractical and insecure to think of rebuilding a trimorpher streetside. If the news caught wind
of what they were up to, if Tempest heard about it . . .

  But then he had an idea.

  “Mom, can you text your boss for me?”

  “I suppose. What for?”

  “Ask him where he keeps Brown Trout.”

  She reached into her pocket but stopped, giving him a quizzical look.

  “Trust me, just ask him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Robert Gerber’s head emerged from behind the crumpled hood of Event Horizon. “Oh, man,” he said. “Someone pinch me.”

  The workbench-lined room wasn’t large by any means, but it was spacious enough to fit the damaged chassis and allow a few people enough room to maneuver. “This thing’s a beaut. I can’t even begin to process all this, Mace.”

  They were inside the Gerbers’ old barn, which had been converted into a stand-alone garage behind their large home. The property had once been a working farm. It was perfect for Mace. He and Dex would have tons of privacy, a full suite of tools, and the enthusiasm of a man who built trimorphers in his spare time. Brown Trout, carefully covered in a fine tarpaulin cloth, had been shoved into a side nook of the former barn to give Event Horizon center stage.

  Mace circled around to Mr. Gerber, brushing his fingertips along the hull. “So, is it doable?” he asked.

  Mr. Gerber stroked his mustache, making calculations. “We’re short a few tools. I can fix the landing gear, get everything wired up right. But the frame is bent. I don’t have what it takes to straighten her, or to smooth out the hull. Normally I’d send away for new panels, have them welded in town, but you don’t have time for that.”

  “I’m working on a solution for the structural damage,” Mace said. “But you’re okay with helping us out, giving the other repairs a shot?”

  Mr. Gerber laughed. “I already had my secretary clear my calendar straight through the Pro-Am. Not going to miss this for the world. I still can’t get over it, Mace. I can’t believe that was you behind the wheel, blowing past me over the seas with that barrel roll! I laughed so hard when that happened. I knew I was witnessing real talent.”