Drone Racer

by Andy Briggs

  Proper leagues had strict rules to ensure all the drones had the same specs, like Formula One racing, to make sure the racers were evenly matched.

  “Ours is definitely different,” Eddie said, without looking up from the game he was playing on his tablet. “It can’t fly.”

  Carson tapped the poster. “Look, it’s got a thousand-pound prize! We’d be rich!”

  Eddie finally looked up as his game abruptly ended. “Well, one, we didn’t even finish the Carpark League race. Two, we no longer have a drone to enter with.”

  Carson jumped from his bed and crossed to Trix. “Are you kidding? Trix’ll have this flying in no time.”

  Trix cracked open the drone’s plastic body. It had caught fire during the collision, melting the case like cheese on to most of the circuits inside. She used her fingers to pry a board free. Instead of the familiar green, it was as black as a piece of overcooked toast.

  “Not this time.” She tossed it to him. Carson tried to catch it, but it bounced from his palm to the floor. “The circuits are fried. The propellers have all shattered. Two of the three remaining motors are burned out. On the other hand, the RC receiver may be salvageable, and the camera still works.”

  Carson nudged the blackened circuit board with the toe of his battered Converse trainer, then stared at the table on which Trix had dismantled their drone like a surgeon, a skill he reckoned she’d inherited from her dad, who really was one. He picked up the camera lens, half the size of his little fingernail. It still had the ribbon cable dangling from it.

  “So, this is all the drone we have left working?”

  “Yeah, although I’m not entirely sure that it works.” Her dark eyes sparkled mischievously. “I was just trying to cheer you up. I need my laptop to check it. If you want me to be brutally honest, I think our drone racing days are over. The Carsonators are dead.”

  “Stupid team name anyway,” mumbled Eddie as he inched his glasses up to rub his eyes before restarting his game.

  Carson put the camera back on the desk. “We’ll build a new one.”

  Eddie peeked at them over his tablet. “Do you have a magic box of spare parts?”

  “No. But we must have some…?”

  Trix grabbed her backpack off the floor. “Not any more. We used most of them after Eddie flew into a wall.”

  “How was I supposed to see that?”

  “It was the side of a warehouse. It had always been there, Edward.” She ignored his scowl. “Then we had that race in the sports hall when the engine-management system burnt itself out. The other one on that sports weekend when you clipped two rotors on a tree. And we used the last spares in tonight’s race. Besides, they were all spare parts – not a spare drone.”

  “And do we have any money?” His hand went to his jeans pocket and found a single pound coin hiding there.

  “Zero!” Trix nudged Carson. “We could ask your dad.”

  Carson looked away, and smoothed his floppy hair back from his eyes. He didn’t really talk to his dad. The very idea of asking him for anything was unthinkable. Not that it mattered. His dad was seldom at home and he wouldn’t understand that drone racing was a legitimate, cutting-edge sport. Carson knew his dad wouldn’t understand how exciting it was flying through obstacle courses at high speeds against others. And when flown through a pair of virtual reality goggles, Carson felt as if he was flying like Superman.

  Flying…

  The freedom, the adrenaline, the thrills … he couldn’t think of any other sport like it.

  Trix patted him on the shoulder. “Well, it was good while it lasted.” She opened the door to leave.

  “Wait!” Carson picked up the wrecked ViperLyte and turned it in his hand to examine it from every angle. “What if we build another one?”

  Trix rolled her eyes. “Duh. We’ve just been through that. We have no spare parts or money to buy anything.”

  Carson wagged the drone at her. “No. I mean build another one from scratch, with parts not meant for drones. Bigger, better, faster than ever before.”

  The comment distracted Eddie enough for him to lose his last life. He lowered the tablet and frowned at Carson. “Is that possible?”

  Carson shrugged and they both turned to Trix, who hesitated by the door. “Well … I suppose it is. But where would we get the parts from?”

  “The scrapyard just off the bypass. I’ve seen bits of old planes in there from the local airfield. There must be tons of cool things we can use.”

  Eddie and Trix burst into laughter. Eddie shook his head.

  “You think we can just walk in there and buy them with our invisible money? Unless you mean stealing them?” He laughed again … then stopped when he saw the earnest look on Carson’s face. “We can’t nick them! That’s not right!”

  “It’s just scrap!” Carson insisted as he put the battered drone down. “Where’s the harm? It’s not like it’s being used. And after we win, we’ll pay for whatever we took.” He saw the doubt in their faces. “Come on, it’s the middle of the summer. Do you want to go the rest of the holidays without a single race? Do you want to give it all up when we’re this close –” he held up a thumb and forefinger millimetres apart “– to victory? We’re a good team. We deserve a shot.”

  The silence in the room became thicker. Finally, Trix spoke up.

  “You want us to risk life and limb to break into a scrapyard. Steal stuff to make our own drone from nothing, just so we can enter a race?”

  Carson nodded.

  “That sounds like the most stupid plan I have ever heard.”

  Carson grinned. “Yeah. But wouldn’t it be fun?”

  Chapter 4

  SCRAPYARD CHALLENGE

  “The secret is not to show you’re afraid!”

  That was all right for Eddie to say, thought Carson, but he wasn’t the one balanced on a wobbly chain-link fence with a snarling Dobermann pacing on the other side, looking like it hadn’t eaten all summer. His heart was pounding in his chest.

  “You can always jump back down?” suggested Trix as she eyed the drooling dog. She had yet to dismount her bicycle since they had arrived. Her foot was still on the raised pedal, ready for a fast getaway.

  Carson didn’t need convincing, but his legs felt like jelly and he was unable to move.

  “I know, I’ll distract him with a stick,” Eddie said, shining his torch on the ground around him. He slackened his hoodie so he could better move his head. In a desperate attempt to conceal his face, he’d pulled the hood so tight that only his glasses poked out like some kind of cheap space monster. “Then you just jump down. He won’t bother you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m a dog person. Dog people know these things.” Eddie found a crooked stick and, without pause, lobbed it over the fence. “Fetch!”

  Carson took a deep breath and dropped down into the scrapyard. Only when he was mid-air did he realize the dog hadn’t chased the stick. With a bored expression, it had merely watched it vanish into the darkness.

  He landed in a crouch that knocked the breath from him, but his legs were already moving, propelling him forward. Behind, he heard claws scrabble on the concrete and the dog’s wild barking.

  He heard both Trix and Eddie yell behind him. “Run!”

  Carson sprinted as fast as he was able, with his torch pointed ahead like a sword slicing through the darkness. The black shadows of cars, a boat, old cookers and even fragments of tails and wings from old aircraft and other twisted metallic relics formed a towering canyon, forcing him down an aisle of mud. He splashed through puddles, his feet slipping.

  His heart was pounding so hard, Carson was afraid it would break a rib. As the scurry of claws on the ground drew closer, his legs turned to jelly. Blood pounded in his ears, blotting out any other sound. Now not hearing the dog was somehow more terrifying, as if it had turned into a stealth dog. Was it still behind him? He dared not look.

  Then something nudged his bum and he guessed
the animal had just tried to take a silent bite from him. Fearing his legs were about to give in, Carson sharply changed direction. He sprang to the side, landing on a sheet of metal which buckled and – with a pop – catapulted him a little into the air. He hadn’t been prepared for the boost and his arms and legs flailed uselessly. And with it, he lost his grip on the torch – and could only watch it sail into the junk.

  Carson landed on the bonnet of a rusting car just in time to see the last light of his torch vanish in a crevasse of trash. Then the world around him was plunged into darkness. A waning moon provided just enough light to make out the jagged peaks of the rubbish piles against the grey clouds, but that was about it. Beneath him the Dobermann broke its silence and woofed furiously at him. He could hear claws scrabbling against metal, followed by a whimper as the mutt slid back down.

  Any relief Carson felt for not being mauled to death vanished when he realized he was stuck on top of a heap of junk in the dark. Then it started to rain.

  “I’ve lost my torch!” Carson called out. “I’m stuck!”

  Surely his friends could still hear him; he hadn’t run for very long, had he? But if they could, he couldn’t hear their reply over the increasing rain that plinked and plonked from the metal hill, and the Dobermann’s steady barking.

  “Hello?” His voice reverberated in the steel canyon. “I’m stuck! Help!”

  …Elp … elp … elp… came the echo.

  A distinct BEE-BOP caught his attention. He turned sharply around, trying to trace where the sound had come from. It was electronic, like an old walkie-talkie bleep, or the battery warning from a phone. Carson wondered if a security guard had been watching his dog encounter all along and was now attempting to sneak up on him.

  “Hello?” he said, a little louder.

  BEE-BOP!

  This time he saw a flicker of light from amongst the junk further up the pile. Perhaps somebody had lost a mobile phone? He scrambled over, shards of metal bruising his shins and arms. If he wasn’t careful he imagined tumbling backwards down the hill and being impaled on a jagged spear of wreckage or falling on to a razor-sharp sheet of metal that could chop his head off.

  He reached the spot where he thought he’d seen the light. The sound of rain drowned almost everything out … except the dog.

  “Hello?” he tried again.

  He was answered by a flicker of light and the beeping tone from a hole in the junk near his feet. The flash left an imprint on his eye like a camera flash, but it was enough to see the circular hole was about the size of a car and he was centimetres from blundering into it in the dark. He knelt at the edge and peered down. Water was pooling on the compacted junk, forming tiny waterfalls that plunged into the pit.

  “Beep if you’re there – aaaarrrrghhh!”

  The lip of the hole gave way under Carson’s hands and he was sent tumbling head first into the pit. In the darkness he had no sense of which way was up, but received a solid answer seconds later…

  Chapter 5

  THE DISCOVERY

  Carson hit several objects on the way down. Each smashed apart under his weight, but at least they slowed his descent enough so that when he landed on his back, only the breath was knocked from him. A large sheet of metal buckled under his weight, but it broke his fall. He gasped for breath as he sat up, noting that he had landed on the side of a large, rusting water tank. Then he realized he could see; everything was now bathed in a harsh blue light that came from under a pile of metal panels that had fallen in with him.

  He was in a cave amongst the junk. Water trickled in above him, cascading down walls lined with crumpled washing machines, industrial tubes, pipes and car grills that resembled grinning faces. He wondered if he could climb out, but it was at least seven metres to the top, and the ceiling curved inwards, making the exit hole inaccessible.

  He was trapped.

  Carson forced himself to remain calm. Panicking would achieve nothing. He rolled from the water tank, splashing into a puddle that was rapidly forming at his feet. Great, he thought, maybe I’ll drown before I starve to death.

  With a grunt he lifted one of the panels. It was interlocked with the others, so in moving one, the others slid away with a clatter that was deafening in the cave. Then the light flared brighter, forcing him to turn away and shield his eyes. When he risked a peek, he saw the illumination had dimmed considerably. He remained motionless to let his eyes adjust to the darkness, hearing nothing more than the sound of his own breathing and the trickling rain.

  Stay calm…

  He blinked a few times and could finally make out more details in the gloom. The light was still there, just fainter and steadily pulsing as if breathing. It came from a sphere about the size of a golf ball. The glass surface was covered in a network of lines that appeared to connect randomly pulsing points of light. Carson moved closer for a better look, and only then realized the orb was attached to something. To his astonishment, he realized it was a small drone, no bigger than a hard-backed book.

  “Wow!” he said aloud. The sound seemed enough to trigger a BEE-BOP and a wave of light rippled through the orb, rapidly changing into a kaleidoscope of colours as it did so. The body of the drone was streamlined like a prime racer and its propellers sat on two pairs of arms that gracefully arced upwards.

  “You’re incredible!” He dropped to his knees for a closer look. “I mean, you’re exactly what I’m looking for. Which is all kinds of weird.” He stopped and looked around, half expecting his friends to step out and declare it was all some stupid stunt for YouTube.

  Nobody appeared. He turned his attention back to the drone.

  “I guess today’s my lucky day. I mean, if I was looking for an old fridge or washing machine –” he gestured to the junk around him “– then I’d be super lucky. Instead … here I am with you. Talking to myself.” He rubbed his head, wondering if he wasn’t in fact imagining all of this and was instead lying unconscious in a puddle. He pinched himself to check.

  “Ow!” That proved he was awake. Unless, of course, he had imagined the pain too.

  Carson could see debris had fallen into the blades. One even had a snarl of electrical wire knotted in it. He ran his hand along the dirty, wet bodywork. Whatever the material was underneath felt soft and warm. It wasn’t metal nor plastic, and he could swear it rippled under his fingertips. At the front of the machine was a camera the size of a bottle top. It was angled to face the floor and mud had splattered the lens. It was the sorriest-looking aircraft he had ever seen.

  “Aren’t you a mess?” He wiped the mud off the camera with the only part of his sleeve that was dry. Then he plucked out the rubbish that had fallen between the propeller blades.

  “Who would throw you away?” he said quietly as he set about unthreading the wire from the rear blades. He pulled the last of it free with a hard yank that set the propeller free-spinning for a few moments. “I suppose we’re both trapped down here.”

  He wondered where his friends were. Surely they would look for him when he didn’t return?

  Knowing Eddie, he’d probably gone home when it started raining.

  Fighting rising panic, Carson stood and tilted his head upwards. The rain was increasing at an alarming rate. He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed.

  “Can anybody hear me? I’m stuck!”

  He strained hard for any response. Maybe his friends had gone to fetch help? He couldn’t even hear the guard dog. He glanced at the drone, realizing it too had stopped making any sounds. Other than the flickering orb, it was utterly dead.

  “I suppose your batteries are almost out,” he sighed as he approached the wall of junk. “Looks like I’m going to have to save myself.”

  He used the wire to form a loop around one of the drone’s wing-arms and fastened the other end to his jeans’ belt loop. Then he began to climb. The first few steps were easy. The mangled wrecks provided easy footholds. However, his hands stung as jagged metal cut into them.

&nbs
p; With a hiss of pain, Carson slipped and fell back down on to the muddy wet ground, and his head banged against something hard. Almost immediately his vision began to swim. He groped the back of his head and found he was bleeding.

  “Oh, no…” The words slurred from his mouth. He tried to stand but his wobbly legs dropped him back down. “Help…” The word was no more than a whisper as he fought to stay conscious despite the rain pouring across his face.

  Carson wasn’t entirely sure what happened next.

  A rising whine echoed through the cave, then everything became silent. Even the rain stopped and was replaced with a constant blast of air from above. He forced his eyes open and saw something hanging just above his head. Thinking a saviour had lowered something to enable him to climb out, he reached for it. His cut hands stung as something looped around his wrist and pulled tight. The very next moment he was plucked into the air at high speed.

  “WWWHHOOOAA!!”

  It felt as if he was flying, but a nagging voice at the back of his mind assured him he was lying dazed in the junk cave.

  Still, it was a very detailed hallucination.

  He looked straight down as his soggy trainers pedalled nothing but air as the mountains of scrap passed centimetres below. He looked up in time to see the hulk of a crashed lorry rush towards him.

  “AARGH!”

  At the very last second he veered aside, so close to pancaking into the cab that he heard the whoosh as he passed by. Then his stomach lurched as he dropped towards the muddy avenue. He was losing consciousness now, knowing this wasn’t real. In the distance he heard the very angry Dobermann resume its chase.

  He forced his eyes open and was surprised to see he was now rushing towards the fence. He decided the world was less confusing with his eyes closed.

  “Are you OK?” Trix asked with concern.

  Carson flicked his eyes open and was puzzled to discover he really was lying on the other side of the fence. The Dobermann was clawing at the chain-link and barking itself into a froth. Carson pushed himself upright. “I think so.”