“Don’t worry,” Rigel said to me, patting me gently on the forearm. “Few more days, and it’ll be over for another three years.”
“Not a moment too soon,” I said.
Behind me, I heard Rigel sigh. “Can I say something without you getting mad?”
“Doubtful,” I said. This was sure to be an interesting conversation.
“I honestly don’t think you hate the race as much as you say you do,” Rigel said blankly.
I turned in my seat so that I could look down at him. “Are you kidding me?” I said, feeling my anger bubbling up under my skin. “How much has that stupid race cost me, Rigel?”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said, holding up a hand defensively. “You know I know all about that. I didn’t mean that.”
I scoffed and turned to face the front windscreen. “Then please…clarify.”
I could hear him fidgeting where he sat. “I just mean that I know you see the other side of it, too. You see the opportunity. You see the…the draw of it. You can see how it’s a window to escape.”
“If by ‘escape’ you mean ‘death’, then yes. I agree with you,” I said, unable to let go of my aggravation.
“I know you know what I mean,” he said, sounding a little annoyed himself. “That’s why so many people enter. They know it’s dangerous, but there’s something else. There’s the prize money, which would mean freedom for anybody.”
Poor Rigel. He had always been a dreamer, an idealist. He only ever saw the sky, and never the clouds. Yes, there was prize money. A ludicrous amount of prize money. But the odds of winning were so slim, and the chances of death were so high, it just wasn’t worth it. Several generations of my bloodline had all lost their lives chasing the same tiny spark of hope that Rigel was talking about. I was suddenly very glad that Rigel didn’t have a ship of his own. The way he was talking, I would have had to knock him out to keep him from entering the race.
“We should talk about something else,” I said shortly.
Rigel exhaled. “Sure.”
But we didn’t talk about anything else. We didn’t talk at all for about ten long minutes. Rigel sat quietly behind me, lost in his mind full of pipe dreams. I focused on flying, and watching the traffic around me. Off my port wing, I noticed a sleek, shining ship glinting in the sun. I watched it apprehensively as it slowly tilted toward me, getting closer and closer until it was only a few yards from me.
“You’d better check your space, buddy,” I said to myself. I was tempted to get on my radio and give the pilot an earful. As the fancy ship slipped a little bit closer, however, I could see into the perfectly sloped cockpit windscreen, and I felt my jaw clench.
Audra Carina. She must have been on her way to Rainier for the night. No doubt she would be first to line up for the start of the race in the morning.
As we flew, she looked over at me, a smug grin plastered on her perfect face. Holding my gaze, she quickly sped up and then slowed down, matching pace with me once more. She did this twice more before I understood what she was doing. She was challenging me to a race. Scowling at her, I reached over for my throttle. She was in desperate need of a lesson, and I would be all too happy to teach it. I was about to punch the accelerator, but another hand atop mine stopped me.
“Don’t do it,” Rigel said as I looked over at him in confusion. “You don’t have anything to prove to her.”
“Do you know who that is?” I asked, feeling adrenaline ebbing into my bloodstream.
Rigel nodded. “I do. And I know you don’t owe her anything.”
“Let go,” I ordered, looking into his eyes. He looked forlorn, like the last thing he wanted was to see me race against Audra. Why? Did he have that little faith in me? What was he afraid of?
After a long moment, he slowly released his grip on my hand and sat back. Immediately, I hammered down on the throttle and took off, watching with glee as Audra was suddenly struggling to keep up. After a second, she was with me again, and even beginning to pull ahead. Her ship was very fast. I could see the air rippling with heat coming off her engines. She was at max throttle like I was, but she was quickly pulling away.
“No, you don’t!” I shouted, stomping on the valve for my thrusters. Instantly, I felt myself pushed back in my seat, and Rigel gave a cry of surprise next to me. I ignored him, though, and gritted my teeth, holding the trembling yoke in my hands as I started gaining on her. I was making some progress, but it wouldn’t be enough. If we had miles and miles of open air, I could probably overtake her with my thrusters, but I just didn’t have that much hydro. I did, however, have one more trick up my sleeve, one that would shoot me past her.
If it worked.
“All right, Rigel,” I said. “Let’s kick the tires!”
Bracing myself for the next acceleration, I slapped the button for the Leap engine and held on…but nothing happened.
“No, no, no!” I cried, hammering the button with my fist. I tried priming the fuel line, but it was working fine. The Leap just didn’t want to function. I growled in anger and punched an empty spot on the console.
“Ellie,” Rigel said, his voice soft and sympathetic. “It’s okay. We’re almost there, anyway.”
I huffed an enormous sigh and kicked off my thrusters, watching up ahead as Audra pulled away, doing a celebratory barrel roll just to taunt me. Both Rigel and I were silent for the rest of the ride. Even when we had landed and were strolling up the Rainier docks, we only exchanged muted parting words before I took off towards the center of town. I didn’t know where Rigel was off to, and I wasn’t really in the mood to ask.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I didn’t know exactly where I was going. I hadn’t bothered to check the address. Lifting up the box in my hands, I located the address scrawled in Nichols’ handwriting and felt a small jolt of surprise. This particular package was going to Grace Buchannon, daughter of the Archon Merrick Buchannon, the man who ran the city of Rainier. I wondered what Grace had ordered from Nichols that she couldn’t have got from her wealthy hometown. As the daughter of an Archon, she had more money than just about anyone, so what had she ordered from a town like Adams?
I made my way through the city streets, sticking to the center, where there seemed to be fewer people. I had to dodge the occasional rickshaw, but it wasn’t so bad. The worst part was the decoration. Rainier was a city that was always shining. Bright lights in windows, polished metals on the towers, it always had a glimmer about it. But now, the clean sparkle of lights had been replaced with a mind-numbing hodge-podge of colors and banners. Cloth posters hung from storefronts, and massive flags with pilot and ship names waved in the wind from tower windows. The cobblestone streets, which were always so clean and spotless, had been attacked with colored chalk, and featured all sorts of drawings and words that the local children had no doubt had a hand in. People here loved the race, and with the commencement only one day away, they were at the height of their madness. I wondered how much money in bets was currently being wagered. More than I could imagine, surely.
After a bit, I reached the address of Grace’s apartment, which was in a ten-story building made of glass and stone. It was one of the most opulent structures I had ever seen, and I couldn’t believe that people actually lived there. There were pillars and carved molding, and windows high enough to stand in. This was one of the reasons I hated coming to Rainier. I always ended up feeling inadequate in some way. Even the back half of the city, which always smelled like livestock and manure, was nicer than anything the Gap had to offer. Those acres of animals were smelly, yes. But the meat they provided was the main reason for Rainier’s wealth. Maybe if Adams had something like that, we wouldn’t have to all live in tin shacks.
As I stepped up to Grace Buchannon’s building, I could see it was locked. The only way to gain access would be if the security officers inside remotely unlocked the door. I rang the buzzer on the outside and leaned down close to the speaker. As Adams had no such security featu
res, I only had limited experience dealing with this kind of thing.
“State your business,” a voice said. It was almost mechanical sounding, like a robot.
I cleared my throat. “Um…my name is Elana Silver. I have a package delivery for one of your…uh….residents.”
“What is the name?” asked the voice.
“It’s Grace Buchannon,” I told it. Suite number ten.”
The voice paused for a long few seconds. “There is no answer in her loft. She must be out. You could leave it for her, if you’d like.”
I sighed. Great. Just what I needed. “I wish I could,” I said honestly. “I need her signature, though.”
“Try her parents’ place,” the voice told me. “She is likely there in preparation for the race.”
I nodded. “Copy that. I will. Thank you.”
“Good day.”
I turned and strode away. Her parents’ place was none other than Buchannon Terrace. It wasn’t a tower, or anything of the sort, it was just a large dome on the south end of the city. It was as big as two dozen homes in Adams, and was surrounded by twenty yards of empty space on all sides. No garden, no other homes, nothing. Just flat, metal ground. I had been there once or twice before, but I never enjoyed it. The people in the house/dome could see you coming from a long way off, and I got the distinct feeling that there could easily be some sort of gun turret that could pop out of the metal and destroy me at any moment. Even then, as I walked toward the squat, wide dome, I wondered just what was beneath the metal under my boots. I had heard stories that there were portions of Rainier that went underground, and I had no doubt it was true. That’s probably why the Buchannon’s home didn’t look huge and ridiculous like every other rich person’s. Because the rest of it was under the surface.
Now at the dome, I knocked on the oversized door, ready to get this delivery over with. At once, a speaker to the left of the door crackled to life. “Who is it?” asked a feminine voice. She sounded young and impatient, and I knew at once that it was Grace. Behind her, however, I could hear two male voices speaking quietly to one another. It must have been her father holding some sort of meeting.
“I have a delivery for you,” I said, readying the box under my arm.
The speaker clicked off without a response, and I thought for moment I had spoken to the wrong person. But after a few long seconds, the door slid sideways with a quiet hiss and Grace stood in front of me.
She was dressed like she was already about to enter the race. Her hair, which was cropped very short like mine and dyed blonde, was swept back neatly on top of her head. She wore a pair of fingerless leather gloves, which went well with the series of thin, black belts and buckles that laid in a pattern over her grey tanktop. It looked unnecessary to me, but then again, she was wealthy. Unnecessary and excess was the way they lived their lives. She also wore black slacks that tucked into a pair of shiny black leather boots. She stood, leaning a toned arm against the door jamb, and looked me over until her eyes fell on the package.
“Ooh! I knew that old man could pull it off,” she said, holding her hand out for the box. I handed it to her and winced as she wrenched the lid open. “Yes!” she exclaimed, removing a brand new, immaculate pair of goggles from the inside.
I could feel my jaw dropping slightly at the sight of them. They were incredible. Perfect crafting around the lenses, thick glass housing, rich, dark leather straps. The way she angled them to the light, I could tell they also had an automatic tint feature. It was very difficult to hide my jealousy.
Grace slipped them over her head and popped them in place, rotating the edges of her lenses with her fingertips. “Oh, yeah. There’s the zoom I wanted.”
They had a telescopic feature? Come on. Unfair.
Grace looked around her with the goggles still over her eyes, and then finally settled on me. “Jeez, Adams. Cheer up a little.”
Instead of replying with something snarky, I just cleared my throat. “There’s a slip…on the box, there. If you could just sign that for me…”
Grace suddenly pulled off the goggles and narrowed her eyes at me, pulling a toothpick from her pocket and popping it into her mouth. “I know you. Don’t I? You seem really familiar to me.”
Of course I knew why this was. Not only had I seen her on a delivery or two, but she had been there on both of my trips to Shiloh. She was five years older than I was, but she had come with her parents both times to the Wall of the Fallen, where the memory of my mother and father now rested in stone. We had even shaken hands, but I doubt she remembered that. Even then, she had acted like being stuck there was the worst kind of torture. Rather than make the conversation awkward by bringing those memories up, I just shrugged.
“I’m in Rainier a lot,” I said. “You’ve probably seen me around.”
She continued to stare at me, her mind working hard behind her brown eyes. I, on the other hand, could only stand there like an idiot until she signed my delivery slip. “So there’s a paper there, on the box. Could you-”
“You’ve met her twice,” came a voice from the hallway. From behind Grace, her father, the Archon Merrick Buchannon, stepped into view. Instantly, I straightened up a bit, trying to furtively smooth out the creases in my shirt hem.
“Twice?” Grace asked, toying with the goggles in her hands.
Merrick nodded, his square jaw tilting up and down. His mouth, which always seemed a little too wide to me, opened in a perfectly measured smile. “In Shiloh, after the races,” Merrick said to his daughter. “She lost her father six years ago, and her mother three years ago after the last race. We gave her our condolences.”
He spoke so nonchalantly, bringing up the deaths of my parents just to prove a point to his dimwitted daughter. He spoke about my family and me as if I weren’t even there. I really didn’t like it, but even so, this was an Archon, and I couldn’t say an unkind word to him. Not without incurring some sort of punishment.
I folded my hands together in front of my belt buckle. “Mr. Buchannon…It’s good to see you again,” I said, giving him my friendliest smile.
He looked at me for a moment and then grinned, as if my effort was amusing to him. “Miss Silver, the pleasure is all mine.” He offered me his hand and I shook it briefly. “I must apologize for the mention of your mother and father. I’m sure you’ve had too many reminders today.”
Yeah, you could say that, I thought to myself. Merrick’s eyes and lightly creased brow showed the perfect blend of empathy and remorse. I wondered how many times he had practiced that face in the mirror.
“It’s all right,” I said reflexively. “I’ll just be glad when it’s over.”
“Really?” Grace said, still admiring her new goggles. “I always think it’s over too soon.”
I had never made a habit of punching people, but I would have really liked to crack her good right then.
Merrick, on the other hand, was much more aware of my feelings. Though, they weren’t really that hard to read. “I know you must hate the race,” he said. “It would be difficult to overcome anything associated with such pain. You must see it as some sort of monster, rising from its slumber every three years to gobble up loved ones.”
I actually hadn’t ever thought of it quite that way, but his analogy was pretty perfect.
Merrick took a step toward me and put his perfectly manicured hand upon my shoulder. “I know you miss your parents, but you should be proud of them,” he said softly. I couldn’t help but note the tone of sincerity in his voice.
I looked up at him questioningly, but said nothing.
“They knew the risks,” he went on. “They knew how dangerous it could be. They knew what could go wrong. But they went, regardless. They knew what the race represents: hope. The chance to ascend. Just like the Dominion ascended all those years ago. They both knew the perils were great, but the rewards were greater. For that reason, racers will always be the bravest people I can imagine. Your mother and father were among the best of us,
the most courageous, and had the most indomitable spirits. Don’t let the race fill you with dread and anger. Be proud of the loved ones that were bold enough to reach for the stars.”
I blinked and looked away. On one hand, it wasn’t bad advice. I was proud of my parents for what they had tried to do. On the other hand, Merrick’s genuine tone had quickly devolved into a mechanical, rehearsed speech, and I could tell he had given that same one dozens of times, to dozens of jaded people like me. I doubted if he even believed what he’d said. To be fair, he knew the risks of flying as well as anyone. The other Archon that had lived in Rainier, Harrison Keene - along with his son Garrett - had died in a dirigible explosion just a few months ago.
“Thank you,” I muttered, staring at his flawless house shoes, which looked very comfortable and warm.
He gave my shoulder a pat and then stepped back behind Grace, who was finally getting around to signing my delivery slip. “Here you go,” she said quickly. “Thanks.”
I took the slip from her and gave them both a nod before turning around and taking several hurried steps from their door. Behind me, I heard Merrick speak up.
“Miss Silver!” he called.
I turned to him, wondering if the guns were about to come up.
“Remember what I said,” he declared, giving another measured smile.
I gave a simple nod in return before spinning around once more and shuffling away. I didn’t dare look back. I just wanted to leave that place. Merrick’s words were pleasant, but I got a different feel from him, one that I had never liked. I hoped that I never had to see him in a private setting…where he didn’t have to put on any kind of an act.
I wandered through the busy streets of Rainier, still trying to shake off the chill of the conversation, until I ended up back at the docks. Rigel was there waiting for me, grinning placidly at everyone and everything that passed by him.
“What’s got you in such a good mood?” I asked.
The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) Page 6