My descent - and my moment of shock with Rigel - had put me a few seconds behind. Above me, I could see the mass of ships beginning to separate and thin out. Several people were jetting off in different directions, which confused me.
“I imagine the contestants are reading their starting clue right about now, trying to discern which direction to head in,” Reed was droning in my ear. I was glad he had said such a thing, though. I had already forgotten about the clue I had been given. Reaching down, I picked it up and tore open the envelope, pulling out the small sliver of paper that was inside. I braced my knees against the yoke to keep my ship steady as I read the clue out loud.
“A bushel would take all day to collect, but a bucket is all you need. Gather them fast, try not be last, for some will trade clues for these seeds.”
I looked down at the piece of rough paper in my fingers, reading it over a second time before staring blankly out my windscreen.
“What the hell does that mean?” I shouted angrily to the clouds. Suddenly feeling my panic return, I read the clue a third time, hoping it would somehow make sense to me. All I could glean from it was that I was supposed to gather some kind of seeds. A bucket of them, to be exact.
Perfect. Just perfect. I had entered the race only to be stumped by the very first clue. Was it too late to turn back? What was I thinking, joining this stupid race? I hated to admit it, but I was in over my head. I had no food or water on board, no idea where to go, but if I went back, the entire crowd would think me a coward. Or an imbecile. Did I really care, though? I sighed. As much as it sickened me, the answer was “yes”. I did care. Where was I supposed to fly, though? I had no heading. The only thing I could do was try and see where everyone else was going. That seemed to be my only option.
As I hunched forward to stare up at the majority of the ships that were still at higher altitude, I noticed even more of a dispersion. People were heading off in all kinds of directions. Which one was the right one? If I guessed wrong, that would pretty much spell the end. I would be lost, and too far behind to catch up. Suddenly, however, a flash of genius struck me.
“Audra,” I said to myself. Yes. If anyone was going to be heading in the right direction, it would be her. She was smart and calculating, and she had been through all of this before. She won the last race, after all.
I pulled back on the stick gently, slowly rising beneath the mass of ships. It only took me a moment to spot the silvery glint of her polished hull. The Mistress was jetting off to the southeast, leaving twin trails of white smoke as she burned her thrusters. Not wanting to lose sight of her, I stomped on my own thruster valve, firing my hydros and relishing the jolt that went through my ship. Underneath the masses, I blazed a trail of my own, making sure to keep the Mistress in the center of my windscreen. As long as I was following Audra Carina, I knew I was going the right way. Once I had pulled within a few clicks of her, I switched off my thrusters and continued on just my engine.
After a few minutes of staring at her shining outline in the sky, I was able to calm down a bit. The feeling began to return to my fingers and toes, and I was no longer feeling cold all over. My adrenaline was wearing off, and I was suddenly feeling sort of drained. I was also hungry, and I was really hating myself for not thinking to bring any provisions.
In my ears, Lex and Reed were swapping racer stats, speaking in normal voices now that the roar of the crowd had died down. Of course, only a minute had passed before my name came up once again.
“I’m telling you,” Lex said adamantly. “That Elana Silver. Did you see the way she took off from that cradle?”
“I sure did, Lex. Impressive.”
“It was outstanding!” Lex exclaimed. “Only seventeen years old and she’s got the chops of a seasoned veteran. I’m pulling for her to win this thing.”
“I’m gonna have to disagree with you there,” Reed interjected. “My money is on Audra Carina. I can’t even recall the last time we had a winner return to compete again. I actually had the chance to interview her for a minute before the race. Do you know what she said to me?”
“What did she say, Reed?”
“She said ‘Anyone can win, but you’re not a true champion until you defend your title…and win again’.”
“She said that?”
“She sure did, Lex,” Reed said. “She’s out to cement her place in Dominion history. She wants to become a legend, and if you ask me, I don’t think anyone’s gonna be able to stop her out there.”
“Well, we will find out in a couple of days, I guess,” Lex relented. “Elana, if you’re listening to this, I’m behind you, girl. There’s a lot of people betting on you. You can do it, Blood Racer!”
Sighing, I yanked the radio cord out of my leather helmet. Perfect. Lex was making me his personal favorite to win. No doubt a lot of other people would follow suit. Pretty soon, everybody in the entire Dominion would know my name. As I thought about it, the notion was a little bit exciting to me. I had some notoriety around the Gap, but nothing spectacular. Nothing like this. I was practically a celebrity, and it had happened in just a few minutes. Apparently, I already had a nickname: the Blood Racer. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I hoped no one discovered that it was born from something I said sarcastically. To be honest, though, I sort of enjoyed it. I wondered how many people back in Adams were listening, hearing me get recognized for my flying. I enjoyed that thought, too.
On the other hand, that was a lot of pressure, a lot of expectations to live up to. Lex had said that a lot of people were betting on me. If I were to lose, they would all lose, too. How many people would be furious at me for that?
I reached up and squeezed my forehead with my hand, questioning my sanity. I had to be insane, after all, throwing myself into the race without any real thought to it. I realized, with a bit of dread, that this would probably be ninety percent of my race, me sitting in the cockpit of the Kicker with nothing but my own thoughts and doubts.
This was going to be ever so much fun…
The day passed exceedingly slow. I stayed just a few seconds behind Audra, never letting her out of my sight as the sun passed by overhead. Now, as the afternoon was on the verge of turning into the evening, I still had the glinting shape of the Mistress off of my bow. Somewhere just off my tail, I knew Rigel was still there. He hadn’t deciphered the clue, either. I knew Rigel well enough to know that he couldn’t have deciphered that riddle. He had pulled the same strategy that I had. He had waited to see which way I would go, just as I had for Audra.
The hunger was getting to me. I hadn’t eaten a thing all day. I was already feeling tired and drained, like I needed a nap. Even worse than the hunger, though…was the thirst. I also hadn’t had anything to drink since waking up in a rush and flying to Rainier. My lips were dry and beginning to crack, and my throat was feeling raw and course. I needed some water in the worst way. In reality, I knew I could physically survive for a few days, suffering the inevitable effects of dehydration, but I didn’t want that. I really didn’t want that. Maybe it would rain, and I could stick my head out of my roof hatch, or something. Unfortunately, the skies looked as clear as they ever did on a summer afternoon. There were plenty of clouds, but they were all puffy white. As miserable as it was, I was out of luck until I reached whatever destination we were heading for.
I felt the urge to get up and walk around for a minute. I had been sitting in the pilot seat all day, hunched over and staring out at the blue sky through my windscreen. My back was killing me, and my legs had gone numb hours ago. I hadn’t moved for fear of losing sight of Audra. She was my only lifeline in the race so far. If I lost her, I lost it all. But, at the moment, there didn’t appear to be anything on the horizon except the distant line where the sky met the dark grey Veil. I obviously had some time.
Spinning my chair around, I slowly peeled myself out of it, feeling all the joints in my legs cracking and popping. With a loud groan, I held onto the ladder in the center of my cargo bay and str
etched out my back, wincing as the cramped muscles pulled apart. I hadn’t flown this far or this long in quite some time, not since I first finished building the Cloud Kicker. On those days, I would fly out as far as my fuel tanks would go, teetering on the half-full mark. The point of no return, it was called. It was as far as you could go and still make it back home. Plenty of times, I would fly out to that point and contemplate going on, to throw myself to the wind and see where I’d end up. I never did, though. I never had the courage. Besides, I couldn’t just leave Zanna and Echo. They were two of the few things that gave me the will power to wake up in the mornings. As it happened, another of those few things was currently flying somewhere behind me.
I turned my gaze toward the tail of my ship. I had no windows in the bay. They were a structural weakness, after all. Instead, I stared at the metallic walls of my hull, wondering just where Rigel was. How far away was he? As I pondered that thought, it suddenly occurred to me that I was competing against my best friend. We had both entered the race, and that meant that we were facing off against one another. There was only one winner, and he wanted it as much as I did. Maybe more. He had talked for so long about wanting a way out of Adams, a way out of his dead-end future. We had both wished aloud for such a thing. And now, we were both chasing it at the same time. Soon, we’d be fighting over it.
My stomach felt like a hunk of brass had been dropped into it. This is exactly why I hated the race. It creates division, it promotes competition and strife, even amongst friends. What was I going to do? Of course I wanted Rigel to be able to have the life he wanted. He deserved it more than anyone. Even if I were drop out, though, it was still no guarantee he would win. Aside from that, I wanted the prize, too. Selfishly, I also wanted the money that would free me from my life of meagerness. Sighing, I decided that it did no good to dwell on it now. I just needed to get back to the cockpit and keep my eyes peeled for a destination. Giving one final stretch, I shuffled back toward my chair and sat down, spinning around to face the windscreen. Immediately, my face fell in horror.
Audra was gone.
“Are you kidding me?” I shouted, frantically strapping myself in. I blinked my eyes and hunched over toward my windscreen scanning the sky in front of me. I thought maybe I had just missed her, or she had pulled further ahead. Unfortunately, neither was the case. She had vanished. I whipped my head around in every direction, trying to see a trail from her thrusters, or the glint of her hull, anything that would tell me where she had gone. After a moment, about a click above me, there was a small hole in the center of a large cloud, still ruffling from the force of a craft.
“There you are,” I muttered. Without wasting a second, I yanked back on the yoke and stomped on my hydro switch, listening with relish as the thrusters kicked in and shot my ship straight up, and I aimed the nose right for the same hole Audra had made. As I entered the cloud, I immediately began feeling the turbulence, tossing around my guts and rattling my bolts and welds. Thankfully, it only lasted a few seconds before I emerged on the topside of the cloud. Kicking off the thrusters, I cast a glance in every direction again. Sure enough, in the distance to the port side, flying almost perpendicular to the heading she had been on, was the Mistress, speeding away above the clouds. Punching my throttle, I hammered my thrusters once more, until I was just a few seconds behind her.
I finally released a breath that I didn’t realize I was holding, and panted with relief, leaning back in my chair. I don’t know how, but she had clearly known I was following her. Looking down at my compass only confirmed it. We were now on a totally different heading than before. There was no doubt in my mind that she had planned it. She allowed me to follow her. Did she know all along that I would? Or did she just assume that there would be someone that would? Either way, she had intentionally led me in the wrong direction, and then tried to lose me before heading somewhere else.
“Good plan,” I admitted aloud. I wish I could have seen her face when she realized it had failed. I wanted to feel smug, to pat myself on the back for staying with her despite her cunning ploy. In reality, though, if I had returned to the cockpit just ten seconds later than I had, she would have been gone, and I would have been irrevocably lost. Was there some way that she was able to see me? Had she known that I was away from the stick when she went booming into the clouds? She almost had to. Her timing was impossibly good. Too good.
With the lowering sun now slightly off my port side, the tinted lenses darkened on the new goggles that Nichols had given me, which shielded my eyes from the ultraviolet rays. I took a few deep breaths, willing my heartbeat to return to normal, and wondered where Rigel had gone. Was he still behind me? If he hadn’t been watching, he was lost. No question. Even so, he should have seen the vapor trails from my thrusters. He would definitely have followed them. I was tempted to climb up to my roof hatch and poke my head out to try and spot him, but there was no way I was leaving this cockpit again. I wasn’t going to give Audra another chance to get away. No matter what kind of pain or discomfort I was in, I was not going to get out of this chair, not until we arrived at our first stop.
As it so happened, our destination was only about twenty minutes away. My legs hadn’t even had the chance to fall asleep when New Eden came into view, emerging from the clouds like a mythical palace. I had only heard stories about the place. From Sparks, mostly. I had seen a few sketches of it, but I had never been there before in person, and I wasn’t prepared for just how magnificent it was.
New Eden had to be roughly two miles across, and was colored completely white, most likely to blend in with the sky. I was glad that the cloud cover was relatively moderate. If it had been any heavier, the city would have been almost impossible to spot. It was circular in shape, just like every other floating city in the Dominion, but it had six massive, white spikes that curved up around the edges of the metropolis with their ends tapered to points at the top. Together, they made the entire city look almost like a colossal, closed tulip flower. In between the ‘petals’, I could see perfectly stacked high-rise buildings, which rose up, becoming narrower in incremental levels. On each level of these buildings, as the sections got smaller, there was space toward the edges, which had been filled by green trees and bushes. The city looked almost like a forest that had ascended into the sky. Aside from the blindingly white façade, green was the only other color visible.
Half of the entire space of the city was dedicated to their arboretum, which grew most of the fruits and vegetables for the entire Dominion. Every city had their own smaller versions of it, and people often kept their own gardens, but the majority of all the crops that were consumed came from this city alone. Where Rainier supplied ore and minerals from the mountain, New Eden supplied the fruits and vegetables that kept most people alive.
I was so busy gawking at the city that I almost lost track of Audra again. She had dipped down below the thin layer of clouds and was rounding the side of the city. I didn’t know just where the docks were in this place, so I had to continue following her. As I went, I began to feel a familiar nervousness creeping into my chest. Reaching up, I pulled my radio cord down and jacked it into my helmet, listening to the chatter that I was picking up.
“The first of the racers are coming in now!” shouted an unfamiliar voice. It wasn’t Lex or Reed, so it had to be some local commentator from New Eden. I didn’t wait around for any of his announcements, though. I immediately reached up and switched off of the civilian band and scanned the tower frequencies. I only had to search for a moment before finding the low, clear voices that I needed.
Flipping on my microphone, I cleared my throat. “New Eden, this is the Cloud Kicker on final approach. Requesting permission to dock.”
At once, a calm, male voice came back to me. “Copy that, Cloud Kicker. We have you on final. Cradle number two is open for you.”
“Roger,” I croaked out, turning my microphone off before I had the chance to let my trepidation show. Still following Audra, since I knew s
he was headed for cradle number one, I spotted the giant “2” that had been painted red to stand out against the white metal of the docks.
I flipped the switch to power up my VTOL turbines, and throttled way back on my main engine before killing it all together. There was a stiff breeze, though, billowing around the edges of the city. It was nothing I hadn’t dealt with before, but it took me a moment longer to properly position the Kicker on the cradle. At last second, I reached down next to my seat and cranked the lever to lower my landing gear. As I was touching down, I saw Audra shooting across the whiteness like an arrow as she cleared the cradle and made her way up onto the docks.
Voices were still in my ears as I shut down my turbines. “New Eden, Foxire is on final approach. May I land in your lovely city?”
Darby, I thought as I pulled the cord from my helmet. I was momentarily glad to hear her voice, but I quickly remembered that she was my competition now. Regardless of how pleasant she was outside of the race, I needed to stay ahead of her. Audra was already pulling too far away.
Spinning around in my chair, I quickly slung open my main hatch and dropped onto the sturdy cradle that I’d been assigned. Immediately, there was a young worker there, giving me a nod with a large mask over his pale face. I assumed it was likely to help filter out the exhaust fumes, a luxury that would probably never be seen in Adams.
“Your ship will be refueled at once,” he said. “Any hydrogen tanks you wish to fill, as well?”
The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) Page 10