Blades of Winter

by G T Almasi

  The tires throw out a massive cloud of scorched rubber, and we exit Turn Three at eighty-eight miles per hour.

  “Hah!” I wipe the back of my hand across my forehead. “Okay, El Brando, what’s next?”

  We’re so far ahead of the time we need that I only drive like Maniac Junior for the next five turns. Still plenty of excitement, but nothing like the heroics in Turn Three.

  We come off Turn Eight and enter the main straightaway, ready for Lap Two. Before we pass by the hangar we receive a comm from the Training Control Center. “Scarlet and Darwin, switch seats before Turn One. Lap Two will be a target lap.”

  Brando calls out, “Chinese fire drill!” and grabs the steering wheel. I take my feet off the pedals, crouch up on my seat, and haul my partner bodily across the center console. He keeps his eyes forward as his legs unfold onto the pedals. Meanwhile I transfer myself to his seat and pluck my pistol out of her holster.

  I snap Li’l Bertha’s neural contact into the pad in my left palm, and she connects to my internal systems. Her status cluster appears in my Eyes-Up display to show me how much ammo she has left and her current ordinance settings. I swivel my head around to see what my field of vision will be for this lap. With the convertible top down, I have clear firing lanes in all directions except to my direct left where my partner sits.

  Brando brakes into Turn One, smoothly clips the apex, and guns the engine out of the corner. The tires barely chirp.

  “You call that driving?” I tease.

  “Hey, Miss Hot-Rodder, I clocked the same time as you did without scrubbing a year off the tires.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll never make the highlight reel!”

  He smiles and then presses his lips together while he sets up for Turn Two. As he brakes into the corner he comms, “Target! Right side, yellow on red.”

  I spin my head and aim Li’l Bertha. A red sign with a big yellow dot has popped out of the ground twenty-five yards away from the pavement. I hit it with a short burst, and the target drops back where it came from.

  Brando races the Cokemobile through the track’s twists and turns and calls out each target. I nail all of them, but I’ve barely got time to aim and fire before I have to get ready for the next one.

  We exit Turn Eight and return to the main straightaway. I sit back, smugly thinking we’re done when Brando looks in his side-view mirror and cries out, “Target far left, yellow on black.” I swing my head around. The yellow-and-black sign is already behind us, plus it’s very low to the ground.

  While Brando says, “Crap, we were almost perfect, too,” I jump out of my seat and clamber onto the car’s trunk. Cold wind hits me like a refrigerated hurricane, but the extra height I get from standing up here gives me a better angle. I hook my foot into the roll bar and sight on our shrinking target. I unload Li’l Bertha at full auto. Just as she clicks empty, the target falls down.

  “Got it!”

  “Scarlet, sit down! We’ve gotta get back inside to finish.”

  We’re too close to the hangar. I don’t have time to sit down normally because I might roll off the car sideways when my partner turns. If Brando brakes I’ll fly off the front. If we overshoot, we’ll fail the exercise—definitely not an option.

  I wrap my arms over my head and dive into the passenger-side foot well. I end up with my legs on the seat and most of my body smooshed under the dash. The engine is much louder down here, and hot air blows into my ear. I feel the car swerve right, accelerate for a few seconds, and then slow to a stop. Past my feet is the hangar’s metal roof, and then my partner’s face as he leans over from his seat.

  “You all right, Hot-Rod?”

  “Did you know there are tiny men down here who make the heater work?

  “How do they do that?”

  “They eat bowls of hot peppers and fart into the ductwork.”

  Brando laughs and tries to extract me from the foot well, but I’m jammed in here so awkwardly that rescuing me requires him and one of the ExOps training administrators to haul me out by my knees.

  “Hey,” I say to the admin as I dust myself off. “What’s with that last target? It didn’t pop up until we were past it!”

  The admin raises one eyebrow. “That’s because it wasn’t actually a firing target.”

  Brando stands behind me and swacks car-floor crumbs off my jacket. “So we weren’t supposed to shoot it?” he asks.

  “You were barely supposed to see it. We use it to record how you’d react to having missed one.”

  “Has anybody ever shot it before?”

  The admin slowly shakes his head back and forth. I hold my hand out behind me and Brando slaps me a low-five.