After a moment, the weight in the nose tilted the ship downward and I was once again falling straight down. I cut the Leap engine. The docks were right there in front of my face. I was seconds away from impact. Somehow, my brain still had the capacity to make me flip on the VTOL turbines one last time. Just as before, only the ones in front whirred to life, roaring from the pipes behind me. Their force was just enough, though, just enough to bring the nose up so that I could crash belly first on the docks below.
The impact was tremendous. As the Kicker slammed hard onto the Rainier docks, I felt the horrible shockwave shoot up my spinal cord as I held onto my safety belts for dear life. Metal crunched and glass shattered, detonating together like a bomb exploding around me. Things were hitting me, small, sharp things that dug into my skin. I felt something land on my head, but it wasn’t heavy enough to cause much pain. I couldn’t even guess as to what it was because my eyes were shut tighter than a bulkhead seal. All I could do was wait for the chaos to end.
Once the movement had ceased, I gave it a few more seconds before I slowly opened my eyes. Only now did I realize that I was hanging from my seat. The fuselage had bent in the middle from the force of the crash and the cockpit was now facing downward toward the ground. Against my better judgment, I took a look at my surroundings.
It was the Cloud Kicker, all right, but it was virtually destroyed. The windscreen was completely gone. The instrument panel and my chair were still relatively unharmed, but the frame of the cockpit had been contorted by the impact. Something behind me was hissing and I had the terrible sensation that it was a leaking hydro tank. I needed to escape the wreckage before it went up in a fireball.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, baby!” I moaned softly, feeling the tears in my eyes. “I’ll fix you up, I promise!” My heart was breaking more with every second, realizing that I had destroyed my ship, the one thing in the world that I could always rely on.
After taking a moment to stuff my pistol back into the cubby hole in the instrument panel, I hit the clasp of my safety belts and immediately tumbled out of the open windscreen, landing hard on the tarmac of the docks with a loud groan.
Before I could be glad of the fact that I wasn’t paralyzed, a sudden and colossal explosion of cheering startled me so badly that I had to cover my ears. After hearing the cheers, it took only a second for me to remember that I was still in a race. I rolled over onto my stomach and slowly pushed myself to my feet, staying hunched over to prevent my seeping wound from tearing open even further. As it was, I was covered in my own blood. Glass shards had cut me in a dozen places, my hands and knees were scraped from falling on the docks, and the wound on my ribs had stained the entire left side of my hip and abdomen. Rather fitting for the Blood Racer, really.
The crowd was certainly in agreement. Signs with my name on them, young children with tiny wooden carvings of my ship, even the catcalls from middle-aged men, it was all in support of me. They wanted me to win. They wanted me to finish what my great-great grandfather had started all those decades ago, and I was so close.
As I began walking, I noticed that my left knee wouldn’t support my weight. I couldn’t even bend it properly. Each step shot daggers of pain through my entire leg. I didn’t know if it was broken or just sprained, but I knew I would surely be hobbling to the finish line. Ahead of me, the blue velvet podium stood serenely just beyond the docks, framed by an elevated stage and surrounded on every other side by screaming citizens. From the pocket of my pinstriped slacks, I pulled the heavy brass medallion that I had picked up in Adams and started toward it.
“Go, Elana!” Someone shouted at me.
“Come on!”
Fifteen yards away, now. I could almost feel that blue velvet under my fingers.
“It’s right there!”
“Hurry!”
“Here comes Audra!”
Out of the thousands of voices, that one caught my attention. With my eyes wide, I spun around to face the direction I had come, just in time to see her ship sputtering into one of the docking cradles. She would be upon me in a matter of seconds. I couldn’t let her catch me now. With every cell in my body screaming at me to stop and rest, I turned back toward the podium and limped as fast as I could, crying out in anguish every time I had to set my left foot down. The crowd was unbelievably loud. It seemed like every person in the Dominion was roaring in my ears. I chanced another glance behind me and saw Audra, her sleek body tilted forward in a sprint, heading right for me.
Using every ounce of adrenaline I could muster, I dove forward, smacking hard into the podium. It took all of the upper body strength I had left just to hold myself up, but there, in front of thousands, with my blood smearing all over the legendary blue velvet, I slammed my medallion into the slot on that podium…
And won the race.
The crowd’s roar became no more than a mind-numbing static as I slowly slumped down against the podium. It seemed like every man, woman, and child was jumping up and down with joy, enormous smiles plastered on their faces. Some had tears running down their cheeks, some looked disappointed and angry, and some were throwing papers at me, covered in names and private radio frequencies. I did the best that I could by giving them waves and weak smiles, but they vanished quickly as Audra came dashing toward me. Instinctively, I reached to my right hip for the gun, but it was no longer there. All I could do was watch her jog up to me, her face turned down in an ugly grimace. As she reached me, the crowd quieted down considerably, all of them waiting for some sort of final climactic confrontation.
I cleared my throat, making sure she would hear me before I spoke. “That,” I said loudly, “was for my mother.”
With a smile that almost seemed sad, Audra extended her finger and grazed it along the velvet podium, nodding her head. She knew she had no choice but to accept it, to accept that I had withstood every terrible thing that was thrown at me. She had ridiculed me, she had knocked me down, she had shot me, she had tried to kill me a dozen times in a dozen different ways…and I had still defeated her.
As she set her medallion on top of the podium, I couldn’t suppress the tiny spark of respect I had for her. She had lost, but still felt the need to officially finish. She wasn’t crying about it, she wasn’t throwing a tantrum over it…as cutthroat as she was, she was a true competitor. So, when she bent down and offered me her hand, I only stared up at her for a few short seconds before taking it.
The crowd cheered again, relishing the sight of the sportsmanship as she helped hoist me to my feet, a move that brought me immense pain and – more than likely – a fair amount of satisfaction from her. As the audience applauded, she pulled me in close, staring into me with her cold, black eyes, and pressed her lips to my ear.
Here we go, I thought. Here it is, the final insult before she pushes a knife into my gut.
Instead, she spoke only six words, none of them threatening, but all of them laced with venomous foreboding. Her lips lingered at my ear for a moment, allowing me to absorb what she had said. When she saw that I had no reaction to give, she slowly pulled away, giving me a devious wink. As the crowd and radio reporters closed in, she let my hand slip from hers and backed away, worming her way back through the excited horde of people.
In an instant, they were on top of me, shoving large microphones in my face, patting me on the back, shaking my limp, blood-covered hands. I didn’t want to deal with this. I couldn’t handle this right now. I needed to lie down. I needed to rest. Also, I was pretty sure I needed a transfusion. I was too weak to fight my way through them, though. I could only stand there and let them surround me.
Hundreds of bright, beaming faces needed me, though. They needed me to say something, do something to satisfy them. If I did that, maybe they would leave me alone. Maybe they would let me go away. I gave my head a shake, focusing my attention and allowing my ears to actually hear what they were saying. I saw Reed and Lex at the front of the radio hosts
“Elana!” from behind them, one woman
shouted at me, trying her best to keep her platinum curls under her large bonnet hat. “Elana, what happened to your transponder signal? Everyone thought you had gone down!”
I nodded. “Oh. No, that…that was a storm. A lightning bolt hit me…knocked out my electrical systems. I was able to fix it eventually.”
The crowd loved this answer, despite the fact that it was partially a lie. None of them knew that, though. They all loved knowing that I took a bolt of lightning and kept going. It was an answer vague enough to avoid suspicion and complete enough to pacify them. How I was able to come up with it in my woozy stupor was beyond me.
“Miss Silver!” Lex shouted, cramming a microphone in front of my mouth. “I knew you could do it! How does this feel? How does it feel to finally win the honor that your family has been trying to achieve for…for generations?”
The audience fell quite silent at this, all of them eager to hear my response to the question. It was clear they had all been waiting for a way to ask me the same thing. I looked out at them, gazing into all the eyes that were staring back at me. How did I feel?
“Honor…” I muttered, searching my mind for what I really wanted to say. “No. No, there’s no honor in this. There’s no honor in this race.” I looked up into Reed’s and Lex’s surprised faces. “There’s no honor in something that costs so many people their lives. I never wanted to bring my family honor. I only wanted to bring them justice…and that’s what I just did. They kept me going through everything, through the worst of it. I had to win for them, for my brother and sister…for my mom and my dad.”
I couldn’t stop the tears this time. Thinking of my parents, seeing their faces in my mind, it was too much to hold back. “I wanted…to make them proud,” I spluttered, my voice cracking noticeably. The crowd was now looking at me with empathy, every pair of eyes full of sympathetic sorrow for the Blood Racer who had finally justified her family line.
I gave a sniff and wiped the tears from my face, not caring that I smeared blood across my cheeks as I did so. “I won for my friends. The new ones and the old ones. Nichols, Darby, Killian…and Rigel. I won for every person in the Gap that has to worry about where their next meal comes from. Alice, Jack, Dr. Pinbacker, Mayor Westward, everyone! This is for you!” Pointing toward Adams, I shouted the last line, still unable to quell the tears that were falling. Fortunately, the sound of the crowd exploding once more into cheering was enough to drown out my sobbing.
After a long minute in which I received a hundred comforting pats on my back and shoulders, Reed came back in towards me with a final question, his hugely tall frame bending down to me. “Elana,” he said to quiet the onlookers. “Elana, what’s the first thing you’re going to do with your prize money?” He asked.
I gave a watery laugh and sniffed loudly. “Fix my ship,” I replied, drawing a loud round of laughter from the spectators as a white-clad medical team finally made their way through. Mercifully, the fans and reporters all stepped aside as a very comfortable looking gurney was wheeled up to me by a group of medical personnel. I wasted no time in lying down on it, sighing with relief as I nestled into the padding.
“We need to get fluids in her right now,” I heard one of the medics say. I didn’t care what they had to do. I was already losing consciousness. Darkness was pressing in upon me. It felt like I was back in the Veil, being swallowed up by the black fog. From somewhere very far away, I heard someone calling my name, but I didn’t care. I was too far gone to come back.
When I finally forced my eyelids open again, I was in another place entirely. Everything around me looked brand new. The metal walls were smooth and polished, the instruments and packages of things that lined the shelves to my right were all neatly organized, and even the thin sheet that covered me was blindingly white and clean. Combined with the unmistakable scent of sterility, I could only assume that I was in a hospital. A real hospital. Not the ramshackle toolshed that served as Dr. Pinbacker’s clinic.
I blinked my eyes, opening them wide to convince myself to wake up. Letting out a strained whimper, I raised myself up to a sitting position, feeling the bolts of pain coursing from my bullet wound. As the memories of the race finale returned to me, I lifted the thin, cotton undershirt that I had been dressed in and looked down at my ribcage. The wound had been fused together. It wasn’t open or bleeding, it wasn’t even scabbed. It appeared as though it had been cauterized, leaving just an ugly, discolored scar that looked to be about four inches long. I didn’t relish the thought of living the rest of my life with it, but it was a small price to pay. I lowered my shirt and sighed, taking another deep breath before summoning the strength to swing my legs over the side of the bed. This movement also hurt more than I thought it would, but the strange, metal brace on my left knee caught my attention.
I stared down at it, remembering that I wasn’t able to fully walk on it after my ship had crashed. It felt fine now, but I was slightly concerned that it might also be scarred for life. As my mind wandered back to the Cloud Kicker, I could only hang my head. I still felt an odd sense of guilt for destroying it. That ship had carried me through everything. It had saved my life in every way, and I had just left it in ruin on the docks of Rainier. I wondered where it was now. What was happening to it? I suddenly felt very anxious. If someone had scrapped my ship, I would be devastated. I needed to make sure it was safe. Before I could even hop down from my bed, though, the door to my small room creaked open and a familiar, bald-headed, goatee-wearing face poked through.
“Sparks!” I exclaimed with a smile.
Upon seeing me conscious, he grinned and shoved the door open the rest of the way, appraising me with his sharp eyes. “Hope you can handle some visitors,” he said merrily.
From the hallway, Zanna – still dressed in my father’s old clothes – stepped into the room, followed by Echo, who immediately dashed toward me and hugged my legs. Seeing my pained expression, Sparks reached down and hoisted my young brother up to sit beside me. “There you go, Little Bit,” he said.
“Thanks for that,” I said to him. With one arm around a giggling Echo, Zanna looked up at me with tears in her eyes, shifting her weight nervously. She must have still been worried about the fight we’d had. I could hardly even remember what it had been about, really. It seemed like a hundred years ago, and couldn’t have mattered less.
“Will you come here?” I said to her with a comforting smile.
Letting out an embarrassed laugh, Zanna lurched forward and threw her arms around my neck. The force hurt me, but I couldn’t care at all. I sighed with relief as I held them both in my arms, feeling Zanna’s hair in my face, Echo’s little hands clutched around my waist.
“Thank you,” I whispered to my sister.
She let out a small laugh, glad that I had learned the lesson she’d intended. “You’re welcome.”
I felt the tears coming, but I held them back. I wanted to keep the mood happy and light. This was easy to accomplish once Sparks wrapped his thick arms around us.
“I want in on this!” he shouted, drawing laughter from all of us. We shared a collective hug for a few more moments before we separated, still chuckling.
“Thanks for bringing them,” I said to Sparks, blinking away the mist from my eyes.
Sparks gave me a nod. “No trouble. By the way, Rigel came with a barge. Took the Kicker back to Adams. Cradle eleven.”
I tilted my head back and groaned with extraordinary relief. My ship was safe. It was in shambles, yes...but I would fix it. I would make it better than before. I had the money, now. I could do anything to it, make any upgrade I wanted, order any part that I felt like from any smith in the Dominion. The idea of this excited me. I suddenly couldn’t wait to get to work on it. Unfortunately, I knew that many other things would have to come first. The least of which was finding some real clothes to change into.
“They said you dislocated your knee,” Zanna said, staring down at the black, metal bracing on my leg.
“Oh,” I s
aid. “I wasn’t sure. That’s not so bad, right? Just dislocated?”
Sparks shook his head. “No. They’ll tell you to wear that brace for a week, maybe. But, you’ll be fine.”
I nodded, feeling even more relief.
“You got cut, too!” Echo exclaimed. “I heard the doctor man say it.”
I looked down at my brother. “I got cut?”
“Your ribs,” Sparks clarified. “They said you must have gotten sliced by something when you crashed.”
“Oh!” I chirped. “No, that was a gunshot. Audra shot me when I tried to pass her on that last leg.”
Sparks’ eyebrows raised slowly, Zanna’s mouth dropped open slightly, and Echo just blinked up at me. It didn’t occur to me that they had no idea about the gunfight in the air between the Gap and Rainier. They didn’t know just how close I’d come to death…or how close I’d come to killing Audra. I decided then that they would never know. At least not Zanna or Echo. I was sure Sparks understood without even asking.
“Well,” he said, exhaling slowly. “Glad it…wasn’t more serious.”
I laughed. “Me, too. Now, I would really like to get out of here. Has anyone seen my pants?”
As Sparks had predicted, the doctor recommended that I wear my knee brace for a week. He insisted the soreness would dissipate shortly after that, but my knee would be fine. I was informed that my ribcage wound still had a great deal of bruised flesh around it, even bruised bone, and that nerve pain would likely plague me off and on for months. I was less excited about this, but at least it wouldn’t be forever. With a final recommendation to rest for next couple of days, the doctor finally allowed me to check out and leave. My bloodstained pants and shirt had been thrown away by the medical staff, but they returned my helmet, goggles, jacket, and boots, which all looked rather silly overtop my thin hospital outfit. As I put it on, the jacket, despite the large hole where Audra’s bullet had pierced through, was comforting to me. It reminded me of home, of the causeway and the plant, the docks and the shops, and of work and Old Man Nichols.
The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) Page 33