Lonely Out in Space: A Collection of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Short Stories
Page 5
blowing dust until it was completely buried. He had done it. Though he had failed his test and become the problem he was trying to eradicate, he would be staying on Mars after all. There would no deportation of Dr. William Marblight.
Echoing Freedom
A crowd of men and women jostled each other and argued in between taking swigs of pure alcohol. They were standing in front of a gigantic screen displaying a pack of motorcycles tearing across a desert plain. Two men were having a hushed conversation on a balcony above the din as they watched the screen. They were the Masters of Ceremonies in the illegal gambling parlor.
“She’s gonna clear it.”
“No, she’s fuckin’ not. Give me twenty against.”
“You’re dreamin’… Look at her! Give me fifty on.”
One hundred miles away, a young woman named Kendra was tucked tightly over the tank of a rusted motorcycle. A trail of dust rose from her tires. It was the same trail of dust that was being displayed on that far away screen.
"She might as well be ridin' a damn dinosaur... there's no way that ancient chunk of metal is going to clear the jump."
It was true that her motorcycle was quite outdated when compared to the others she was racing against. It was outdated by several millennia in fact. It had been an advanced piece of machinery in its time on Earth, the planet it had been purchased from by a historical vehicle collector and affluent slave owner named Percy. On Echo, however, it was by far the oldest and least technologically advanced machine involved in the illegal races held on the planet.
"How did she even get permission to race that hunk of junk? She's one of Percy's right? I know that has to be one of his bikes... It must have cost him a fortune."
"Have you seen Kendra? I bet she gets anything she asks for from old man Percy."
Kendra had indeed done some things she was not proud of in order to use this unique motorcycle for this race, but it was not the particular biological diversion that the Masters of Ceremonies were now fantasizing about. What she had done was necessary for her means, however bloody it had been. She was willing to do whatever it took to fulfill her goal.
"Pssht... She's a slave! It doesn't matter how fuckin' pretty she is. If you want something from a slave, you take it. That’s it. It's not supposed to work the other way around.”
"Whatever, man. Hush up, they're coming to the jump."
A crowd of carbon-fiber bodied and advanced-plastic bound motorcycles glided along the desert sand in relative silence, their electric motors propelling them ever closer to the main jump in the race. Kendra lagged behind although her engine roared like a lion. She was only at half-throttle and she did not yet want to reveal how much speed the bike had on tap for when she would need it. She did not want to lay all her cards on the table until the proper moment. A pack of drones surrounded the enslaved racers to broadcast the race and prevent potential escapes.
"Why is it so damn loud?"
"Huh?"
"Are you fuckin' deaf? Kendra's bike... Why's it so damn loud?"
"You haven't heard? It runs on booze! She modified it herself apparently… Straight booze, can you believe it?" one of the Masters said to the other as he raised his own glass and swilled some of its contents.
"I guess me and that bike have somethin' in common then..."
"You ought to watch the pre-race sometime... That bike you called a dinosaur earlier? Back on Earth, it actually ran on dinosaur fuel..."
"What do you mean it ran on dinosaur fuel? That sounds like some shit the announcers made up to pass time before the race."
"That’s what they ran their vehicles on! Old liquefied dinosaurs and plants... They'd dredge it up from the ground and the sea, boil it down or something, and then put it in their vehicles as fuel."
"That's preposterous. It's a wonder our ancestors ever got off that backwater planet…"
"Well they did. Can't say they'll ever be as civilized as we are though," one of the Masters of Ceremonies said as he watched the illegal slave race while drinking pure grain alcohol on the otherwise deserted planet.
The first racer hit the jump and began to sail through the air on his motorcycle. Kendra raised her left hand shakily from her handlebars and quickly rubbed the dust away from the lenses of her goggles as she watched him fly through the air in the distance. More bikes were flying through the air far in front of her. She stopped watching them, focusing only on the stretch of sand immediately in front of her. Though her engine wailed she hardly noticed it. All she was aware of was the steady rise and fall of her chest against the steel tank of the motorcycle and the continuous whistling of air through her helmet. It sounded like one long, perpetual owl hoot.
A drone appeared directly in front of her, filming her face and broadcasting her back to the betting screens. She waved her left arm, motioning for it to move. The amount of influence a small amount of motion like that had at high speed was astonishing. She swerved in the sand, and released the throttle until her course was righted again. The drone had stayed on course, however, and was no longer in front of her.
"Did you see that? There's no way she finishes this race. She can hardly even steer that thing."
"Huh? Oh, I barely even noticed. Geez, she even looks sexy in that helmet and goggles..."
"She won't be lookin' sexy after she wrecks that heap."
"Get the drone back on her, I want to see this."
"Alright, but I'll get her from the side this time."
Kendra was now the last racer that had not yet hit the jump. She could hear the sixteen propellers of the drone flying nearby directly to her right, but she did not turn to look at it. This jump, and the moments immediately after, would require her full attention. She raised her chest off the tank and sat straight up as she mounted the earthen ramp. The wind felt as though it was punching and pushing her torso. It was a perturbing sensation, but not nearly as bad as the sensation of nose-diving into the canyon she was now sailing above would have been.
She had jumped over this canyon on a motorcycle many times before but it was a sensation that she could never get used to. She glanced at the river snaking its way through the gorge a thousand or so feet below her. On occasions she had half-heartedly hoped that she would not make the jump and would finally come to rest at the bottom of the canyon, but that was not her hope on this day. It appeared, by the plume of smoke rising from the ground far beneath her, that it had been another slave-racer's fate.
The lip of the canyon fast approached. She was going to make it, but her worries were far from ceasing. The motorcycle she was on had no rear suspension. If she did not land properly the rear half of the bike could snap cleanly in two, or she could bounce right off of the bike from the impact. The ground was below her now and both of her wheels met the sand at the same time. Although it was the best case scenario, the jolt still caused her to raise a full foot from her seat. The rear of the bike held together, but the front suspension springs bottomed out, sending a jolt through the handlebars that caused an intense stinging sensation in the palms of her hands.
She wanted to take her hands off of the handlebars, feeling that only a moments rest would give her some relief, but it was out of the question. She deftly dodged several slaves that had not landed the jump properly. She tried not to notice who was down. Kendra did not want to be attached to anything on this rotten planet. She exited the enormous cloud of dust at the end of the jump, shifted the bike into high gear, and pinned back the throttle once more, still far behind the leaders of the race. One hundred miles away in the betting room, some cheered and some groaned and cursed when they saw Kendra exit the dust cloud safely on the other side of the jump.
"I told you she'd clear it. You can transfer my fifty Units whenever you please."
"Fine. You were right about the jump, but there's no way she wins this one. Her streak ends today, I'm telling you."
"I agree that there is very little logic in her choice of that bike... Why would she choose that? And where is Percy? It's
strange enough that he'd miss one of his slaves’ race, but especially when they're racing one of his supposedly "priceless" bikes."
"Who cares where he is? That guy is a jerk."
That “jerk” was dead. He lied face up, eyes open wide in shock, on his bed orbiting Echo. He had a bullet in his head that Kendra had put there the night before the race. A number of his remaining slaves waited on the coast of a sea only a few miles away from the race area, though no one was yet aware of that. They all waited hopefully with bated breath for their savior Kendra as they idled in a jump-ship waiting to enter orbit. They were under strict orders from Kendra to leave if she was not there by 14:22. She had seven minutes to reach them.
The landscape around them was changing. The land had begun to slope downward toward the sea they were nearing. In the distance, Kendra could see the thin strip of trees that stood between the desert and the ocean where her escape ship and her comrades lied in wait. She glanced at Percy's stolen wristwatch which she had strung around the handlebars. She had six minutes remaining. It was time to go full out.
Kendra reached into her jacket and retrieved the small pistol she had used to kill her owner, Percy. There was one drone that had a weapon mounted to it. There always was. That was the one she needed to take out first. The one that was trailing her did not have a weapon attached. She put the gun between her legs on the