by Logan Jacobs
Chapter 1
I glared at the combination lock, as if I could simply stare the blasted thing into submission. The numbers had been right. I’d run my scanners twice just to double-check, since messing up could mean getting locked out of the garage completely or worse, having the cops called down on me.
After I glanced around to make sure no one was watching, I raised my hand to my sunglasses and closed my eyes again to let the scanners run the numbers one more time. It wasn’t like I really had to worry about someone sneaking up on me, but it didn’t hurt to check. Anyone important was already in the stands to watch the race, and anyone else important was warming up the ships inside the garage.
It could have been useful to be in the garage earlier, before they locked it down just before the start of the race. But I had a plan, like I always did, and that plan required the most delicate of timing. I had to sneak in after everyone was already in position so there wouldn’t be any security mucking things up and asking for pesky things like ID and clearance. But I also had to be in early enough that all the pilots wouldn’t already be in their ships. Otherwise, I’d stick out like a fox in a henhouse.
And speaking of henhouses, there had been a very good and very redheaded reason I’d been two minutes late to the garage. I grinned even as my scanners tisked gently in my head. A redhead was always worth being late.
My chip hissed above my ear to let off steam when she finished running the numbers.
“We were right,” she hummed inside my skull. Her voice was clear like a bell but as precise as a droid’s.
“Then what’s the problem?” I growled. My fingers were ready to punch in the numbers again, but getting them wrong again was a sure-fire way to lose out on both the ship and payday.
“Too slow,” the chip seethed. “Too human.”
I hoped the chip felt my eyes roll toward the back of my skull, even though that seemed unlikely. It was hard to roll your eyes when the fronts of them were as blank and silver as the backs were.
I typed the same streak of numbers in but more quickly this time, and the lock on the racing garage gave three inconveniently loud beeps before clicking open. They really should have hired better security. After all, it was the Abn Presa. Not that anyone else had a super powerful processing chip implanted in their brain to help run the numbers, of course. But that wasn’t the point. The point was even I liked a bit of a challenge, and I didn’t appreciate when things were just a little too straightforward.
I slipped into the garage and eased the door shut behind me. Enough members of various pit crews were still teeming about, so it was easy enough to walk with purpose and blend into the crowd of workers. Twenty loading docks spread out before me like a feast, but even with a machine taking up what felt like half my brain, I could only steal one ship at a time.
“Camera, ten o’clock, panorama in three, two--”
I ducked behind a storage crate before my chip finished her warning countdown. While I waited for the all-clear, I studied the ships in the loading docks all prepping for the race. These were some damn fine ships, that was for sure. The redheads of the racing world. I would have been ecstatic to nab any of them, but there was only one in particular I had my eye on.
The Alfaromero-31. Queen of the Abn Presa Race for two years running, and as expensive as she looked. The great thing about the Abn Presa, and all Granix races, really, was that none of the racing ships had to withstand the pressures of space or entering and leaving the planetary atmosphere. They were purely on-world beauties, which meant their design could be whatever the owners damn well pleased.
Like the Alfaromero-31, for instance. She was a sleek minx, with a titanium hull angled back to form a perfect triangle at the rear. Twin thrusters dominated the bottom half of the triangle, with an impulse exhaust centered in the top half. Blue jozhium metal reinforced her seams along the sides like the bones of a corset, and the only window to the outside was just at the front, a rounded curve that gave the impression that the pilot was looking out the window to fly, when really, that asshole was probably just looking at the control screen.
She needed somebody who understood her, and if there was one language I talked, it was ships.
“Clear,” the chip laughed in my ear.
I popped up from my hiding place and strode toward the third dock from the left as if I owned the place. It was irritating that the chip read my thoughts, but the times it was helpful usually outweighed the irritation.
Usually.
Most of the pilots were already in the ships to warm up the engines. Even with the exhausts going in the garage, the smell of ultra high octane fuel was near blinding. Stars forbid they open up the gates to let some air in. But that meant the crowd would see the ships before the race started, and that would ruin the announcers’ grand build-up.
My target was already in the cockpit too, but his pit crew was still milling around the ship to make sure everything was ready to go. There was a lot of money riding on this race, and nobody wanted to lose a leg because they forgot to triple-check the part of the ship they were responsible for.
But even gambling on the Abn Presa was small change for small-timers when compared with what the Alfaromero-31 was worth. That was why of all the security guarding all the ships, the Alfaromero-31 had a dozen men and two androids guarding its dock.
Rumor had it, the owner didn’t even come to the races any more. Instead, he just sat back and watched from the comfort of his private space station while he sipped ginger twists and was waited on hand and foot by anyone he wanted.
Lucky bastard.
I moved toward my target ship’s security team with the confidence of a man who already owned a space station.
“One day,” she chittered in my ear, and I almost swatted at the chip before I remembered she couldn’t feel anything.
“He already in?” I asked the biggest security guard, with a nod at the ship.
“Yeah,” he answered. His voice sounded as thick as his skull. “Who’s asking?”
“Your mother.” I grinned.
He almost took a swing at me, but he knew better than to do anything that might take him away from his post. Instead, he just shifted his stance so the light would catch the vast array of weaponry he was packing. Like I hadn’t already made a careful notation of both blasters strapped to his chest, the two projectile guns holstered at his waist, and the automatic rifle draped over his back like a sash.
“Seriously, though, I need to talk to him,” I exhaled. “Boss man sent me special.”
The guard glanced at the other members of the security team. “I must have missed the memo,” he grunted. “What’s your name again?”
“Trevor Onyx,” I declared, with a little bow. The easiest lie to tell was always the truth. Nobody on this planet knew me by name, at least, not yet, so I might as well use my real one. It was less work to keep up with than to invent a fictitious name as well as a backstory.
“Why aren’t you on my list, Trevor?” the thick-headed guard asked.
“Because.” I glared. “The. Boss. Man. Sent. Me. Special.” I poked him in the chest after each word to emphasize my point.
The security guard glanced down at my finger, and I let it stay poked into his chest a second longer before I dropped it back to my side.
“I think you might be lying to me, Trevor,” he muttered.
“Now would I lie to someone as pretty as you?” I smiled.
The man frowned but then realized I had shifted my gaze to the serious-faced female security guard beside him.
“Hey there,” I said to the pretty blonde. “I know what you’re thinking.”
She narrowed her
eyes but kept her gaze straight ahead.
“Don’t worry, I’m not like these lunks,” I added, and then I stepped in front of her while the head of the security team tried to call in to check my name and clearance.
“I’m sure,” she answered, with an exaggerated eye roll I envied.
The fact that she responded at all told me I was in.
“So anyway,” I continued, “I know what you’re thinking. And the answer is yes. Why yes, this blond is in fact my natural color.”
She broke her gaze from staring straight ahead to look at me. I smiled and patted my shoulder-length blond hair.
“But—” she started.
“I know, I know. It’s hard to believe, with hair this shiny and this blond. But I’m telling you, it’s as natural as the day I was born.” I glanced at her own blonde hair, tucked into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. “I bet yours is too, ain’t it?”
The corners of her mouth twitched ever so slightly, but I didn’t have time to explore that road any further. There was a job to finish. And a quick glance at the countdown clock on the hangar doors in front of the racing docks told me there was little time left to finish it.
“Look, Trevor,” the head of the security team grunted. He paused, as if trying to figure out what words came next.
“Look, Lumpkin,” I sighed and redirected my attention back to the thick-skulled guard. “I get it, you want to do your job. You work hard for your money and you don’t want to muck things up for the boss-man. That’s fair.”
The smell of exhaust from twenty universe-class racing ships was making my hair twitch.
“But I also know the boss-man sent me down here to tell his pilot something private and confidential-like, and since I’ve got two minutes to do that before this whole shindig kicks off, I’d appreciate you just letting me do my job so we don’t both get canned.” I gave a heavy sigh. “Or worse. Poor Theo.”
“What happened to Theo?” the pretty blonde asked.
I kept my smile to myself. It was a common enough name on Deltulu, and I was quite pleased with myself that I’d sounded convincing.
“They took his legs first, you know,” I whispered, with another glance at the clock. One minute, forty-three seconds to go. “He tried to get work at first, but nobody wants to hire a messenger who was so bad at his job they chopped off his legs.”
“I haven’t heard of a Theo on the team,” the thick guard interrupted, just as I was getting into the swing of my story.
I was starting to get irritated. One minute, thirty-two seconds until the doors opened. “Well now, don’t you think they made sure you didn’t know about him? What, like they’re gonna advertise if you don’t do your job right, you’ll get chopped up? Not exactly good for team morale there, is it? Anyway, as I was saying, I’ve gotta get this message to old Jer, or my ass is burnt toast, so I think I’ll—”
I paused dramatically and pointed at a spot on the underside of the Alfaromero-31. “What, in the name of all the stars, is that?”
I didn’t wait for an answer. I pushed past the guards, who all turned with me to see what I had pointed out.
“What is this?” I demanded and pointed to a nonexistent blemish on the jhozium blue seam. “What? Is? This? What, is this a spot? You mean to tell me that the boss-man is gonna be looking down on this pretty-ass ship that he paid more than any of us will make in our lifetimes combined, and not only will I not have delivered my message to his jockey, but he’ll also be staring straight at a fucking spot you all failed to see?” I was practically jumping up and down at this point. “Did no one pay attention to what happened to Theo?”
The pit crew rushed over to see what I was talking about, buffers in hand.
One minute, nine seconds to go.
“Stars above, you’re welcome for saving all your asses,” I groaned. “Now if you’ll be so kind, I think I’ll just go save my own, thank you very much.”
I sauntered toward the cockpit, and I grabbed the pit crew’s ladder that they had already pulled away. One minute, one second until the bay doors opened.
“Hey, now look here, you can’t just—” the thick-skulled guard whined.
“What, steal the spaceship while you’re all watching?” I laughed. “I just need to deliver a message, Lumpkin.”
I flew up the ladder and banged on the cockpit window.
“But what happened to Theo?” the blonde security guard murmured from the ground below.
I turned back to the pit crew and security team, as the pilot opened the cockpit window to hear my message.
“Alas, poor Theo. I knew him well.” I sighed and then glanced at the blonde. “Oh, uh... well, fact is, Theo didn’t make it.”
Thirty seconds before the doors opened.
“Hey there, Jer.” I grinned. I leaned over into the cockpit and wrapped my arm around his shoulder. “Boss-man needs something special from you this time.”
“It’s twenty seconds to start time,” he spluttered. “What in the actual hell could you--”
I clicked my tongue. “No, now it’s twenty seconds.”
The Abn Presa officials were ushering away all pit crews and security details in preparation for the bay doors to open. Even over the buzz of the exhaust fans and the roar of the engines waiting to be released, I started to hear the shouts of the crowd. This was the arena of gladiators, only with a few extra thousand millennia of technology thrown into the mix.
“Sorry there, Jer,” I said. I slammed the pilot’s head into the control panel and knocked him unconscious.
The security team was screaming at me now, but the officials were shooing them away, and they couldn’t see what I was doing. With fifteen seconds to the hangar doors opening, the officials didn’t much care whether I was sucked into the engines once the race started. They just needed to start on time.
“Anyway, so like I was saying there, Jer old pal, the boss-man wanted you to know he’s real sorry about all this, but them’s the breaks, kid.”
Ten seconds to go. There wasn’t enough space in the cockpit for the two of us, so with five seconds to go before the doors raised, I ripped his jacket off and slid the slick fabric onto my own arms. Then I picked the jockey up with a grunt, plopped him onto the ladder beside my feet, and hopped into his place in the cockpit.
I was mostly sure he wouldn’t get shredded by the extenders when I took off.
Mostly.
I heard my ship’s security yelling at the race officials, but it was too late. Two, one…
The clock hit zero, and the automatic doors blinked neon gold around the sphere connecting the upper and lower doors. With one smooth click, they retracted, half into the floor and half into the ceiling of the hangar. The crowd was breathless, but even though I couldn’t see them as I strapped myself into the cockpit, I almost heard their ragged panting as they waited for the infamous Abn Presa to begin.
I closed the cockpit just as the gun fired to start the race.
I accelerated more slowly than the rest of the ships, even though I knew I could have had their jockey pilots choking on my dust. If this had been a foot race, it would have been a fatal error. Unless, of course, the other runners spent themselves like jackrabbits and then sputtered out. But that wasn’t the case when racing ships, particularly not of the Granix variety. I knew if I hesitated just for a second, I would miss the first mad dash that more often than not ended in damage, if not worse, to at least one ship.
I slammed forward on the accelerator now and zipped off onto the track they had built for us. The roar of the crowd was wild in my ears, even louder than the engines of the Alfaromero-31. I hadn’t felt the ship shudder when I left the dock, so the jockey pilot must still be intact, just unconscious on the hangar floor.
“What we think there, Honey Bee?” I asked.
The chip hissed as she worked to scan the energy shields surrounding the circuit for a weakness she could hack into and then bring them down. They were meant to keep me and all the rest of the
jockeys from flying off with the merchandise, but they were pretty as all get-out to boot. This go-round, Granix officials had set up the course to look like the galaxy itself, an appropriately grand vision for the Abn Presa.
My sensors flared, and I pulled up just in time to avoid the Vetron ship trying to dive under me to regain the ground I’d just taken from it. The fake stars of the race shields glittered all around me, even flaring as I got closer to them to warn me what would happen if I didn’t avoid their obstacles.
The whole galaxy shimmered around the ships as we weaved in and around the obstacles of the Abn Presa course. A false sun appeared on one end of the course to alert the pilots when the course curved around. I blinked to focus my eyes. Even through my shielding glasses, the false sun was so bright it felt like it was drilling through my head. My chip hummed and hissed as it opened the vents along the sides of my glasses to let off the extra heat.
I hung a hard left away from the sun to continue on the circuit and whistled at how easy the ship handled the tight pivot. A crashing sound behind me told me another ship hadn’t been fast enough to avoid scraping the border of the circuit and would now be flying with a clipped wing. I shrugged. One less competitor to worry about.
With my eyes able to breathe again, I shifted into impulse gear and hurtled through the black parts of this false space. As long as I kept to the dark stretches of emptiness between the stars and planets the Granix officials had created, I’d be alright.
It was sad, really. This was the only space some of these people would ever see. Not the people at the actual race, of course. Those tickets were so expensive that the only folks who could afford them had almost for sure been off-world. But for the people watching from their homes, from the bars all across Deltulu, this would be the closest to space they’d ever come.
Unlucky fucks. I had managed to avoid their fate so far, and if I sold the Alfaromero-31 for as much as I thought I could, I’d be one step closer to never being ground-bound.
I made my own luck.
An explosion sounded to the left of the ship, but I flew past it so quickly there was no time to register what happened or what ship it had happened to. Some other poor sap must have slammed into the terrain of Deltulu. To the eager crowd, it would have looked like a ship crashing into a star or a false planet, but the shields of the Abn Presa were advanced enough that they didn’t even flicker. If they had, they would have shown ship and pilot in a broken heap of scrap metal at the base of some Deltulu mountain.