Low Flyer, page 10
Following each run, Golan pored over his baby, checking the engines, the fuel supply, the tint job. Aden brought the hover back with a tiny, itty-bitty little scratch, the sort you could practically buff out with a shirtsleeve, and got himself disqualified. There might have been a fight over it had Aden been atop the leaderboard, but at 16 seconds off the pace, the DQ was a mere formality.
The whine rose yet again. Brad slurped the last drops of a grape EnerJuice and scurried over to watch for the racer to return.
Kids jockeyed for position to see Martin’s datapad, where a listing of finish times had been frozen in place below the current, ever-shifting score of the current racer: Anji Williams.
It felt bad rooting against her, but Brad was counting on her not being able to top the mark posted by Blake. Because frankly, it felt poetic if Brad were the only one to beat the loudmouth.
As he watched the mouth of the Echo Canyon, the hover looped into view, banking slightly around what amounted to the first and last turn, depending on which way the racer was heading.
The ion engines shrieked as the pilot opened up the throttle with nothing left but a straight shot to the finish line. Plumes of dust blew in an ever-expanding cloud behind the dusky blue racer.
Everyone scattered to give room for an error in maneuvering right at the end. Not everyone was as stylish as Blake, who’d flipped a 180 to brake with the main engines once he was across. Most of the other racers Brad wouldn’t trust not to wipe out half of the spectators trying the stunt.
Anji played it straight. She blazed across the finish nine seconds off the pace.
There was something to be said for the spirit of competition and vying for victory. But for most of the young nomads, just getting to race was worth their entry fee. Anji let out a whoop. The spectators cheered. Martin called out her time, but everyone realized she hadn’t even placed top three with half the field left to go.
Brad didn’t try to be one of the well-wishers who helped her out of the hover. He left that for the suckers.
As soon as Anji had her feet on the ground and her goggles off, she pulled her pendant from the pocket of her midriff-baring jacket. Twirling it around her finger like a propeller, she walked over to present it to Martin.
“Good race,” Martin congratulated her perfunctorily. It was politeness, good sportsmanship, all that nonsense.
Anji nodded her acceptance of the faint praise, then blew a long, cheek-puffing breath and thumped a fist against her stomach. “Oof. Shouldn’t have eaten before my turn. Don’t hold up on my account.” Holding a hand over her stomach, she headed for the latrine area off behind a cluster of boulders.
Brad cleared his throat. Just loud enough that a few of the guys would hear him, but not enough to make a public service announcement of it. “Umm… Good idea. I better hit the head, too.”
Trying to avoid scrutiny, he slunk off in the same direction.
By attempting to sneak away quietly, he drew even more attention.
“Hey, it’s you next, Ramsey,” Golan shouted after him. “Back in five or we skip you.”
“Ramsey? Five minutes? Anji could be so lucky,” Martin taunted to a general chorus of laughs. “Oh, who’m I kidding? Ramsey’s gonna get shot down before he even gets in the cockpit.”
More laughs.
Dad’s advice kept the words from stinging quite so badly. Suckers laugh. It’s how they get through life. Sharps smirk, and they do it when no one’s looking.
Dad was always with the old-timey slang, stuff Brad had to look up on the omni when the great Chuck Ramsey couldn’t put a term into modern words. A sharp wasn’t a shark, which he thought Dad had meant at the time. A sharp was a card cheat, someone playing a different game than the honest players at the table. Dad carried that attitude into every aspect of life, and it was possibly his most admirable trait. Certainly, it was the only subject Dad was worth a damn teaching.
With his back to the group, Brad allowed himself a smirk as he disappeared behind the boulders.
The young nomads had designated boys’ and girls’ sections of the latrine area, marked by crudely spray-tinted symbols on the giant rocks. Brad avoided the one with the cartoonishly sprayed boobies and followed the sign with the penis.
Anji stood there waiting for him, arms hugged to her body as if wary of accidentally touching anything.
“You sure this is going to work?” she demanded.
Brad held out a palm. “Did you get it or not?”
“It had to have cost me five extra seconds,” Anji replied. She dug a hand into her bra. Brad averted his eyes, which a hormone or two insisted was a mistake. Withdrawing a closed fist, she pressed something into Brad’s palm before releasing it.
He relished the touch of her hand on his.
With a quick check to verify its authenticity, Brad shoved the pendant into his pants pocket.
“Super smooth,” Brad said with a smirk. He licked his lips. “Um. You know what they’re probably saying back at the—”
“Yeah,” Anji snapped. “I knew when I agreed to this plan. If this doesn’t work—”
“It’ll work,” Brad promised. He wanted to sweep her off her feet, but this wasn’t the time. He had a race to win. She needed to see him as a guy who could deliver. For now, he needed to save face. “Now… if you don’t mind… I really do need to take a piss.”
Brad had come back too late. Argruu had gone out in his stead.
The eyndar had topped Blake on the leaderboard by a thin 0.2-second margin. To Brad’s surprise, the cocky bastard had laughed it off and congratulated the brawny xeno.
If I had fangs that could rip Blake’s throat out, he wouldn’t give me half the crap I get…
Eyndar fell into a weird no-man’s-land. Unarmed, more dangerous than a human. Armed, they were hampered by slower reflexes and generally lower tech aptitude. Violent by nature and culture, restrained by life in human-dominated space. They mostly didn’t compete in zero-G cage fights. While they could have been contenders in Bronze League, they were rated for Silver League. That lumped them in with azrin, who dominated the bracket.
But, as they said, every dog had his day. And so far, today was looking to be Argruu’s.
Golan performed his routine maintenance on the vehicle, giving it the OK despite making a joke about the eyndar pissing in the seat. He waved a hand in front of his nose and blinked faux-watery eyes. Everyone laughed, even Argruu. Only Garlaa seemed offended, and she’d taken being quietly offended to an art form.
Then, once the hover was deemed ready, it was his turn.
The hover bobbed ever so slightly as Brad climbed aboard. He gave it an experimental wiggle to see how responsive the repulsors would be.
“Hey,” Golan snapped. “Repulsors are fine. Ass. Just take it easy and don’t wreck it.”
The other first-timers to the race had received similar warnings. This one felt personal, though.
“Hey,” Brad said, spreading his hands. “Wanna put money on it? I could stop to wax the finish and still win.”
“Can it, weenie,” Blake warned.
With a growling laugh, Argruu slapped Blake on the shoulder. “Don’t lose badly. You’ll still be f-f-faster than the runt.”
Donning his goggles and checking the console layout, Brad prepped for his run.
“Stuff’s in all the usual places, Mr. Race Champion,” Golan said. Apparently, his boasting had made the rounds of the nomads since last night. No one else had mentioned it, but there it simmered, right beneath the surface. Golan pointed to a custom readout. “That’s the official time. It’s synced to Martin’s datapad.”
“Right,” Brad agreed as he buckled the safety harness and pulled the loose straps tight. Damn, was Argruu big. He could have slipped right out of the harness if he’d left it the brute’s size.
“All you,” Golan said with a less-than-certain vibe.
Brad gave the engines a flare and coasted up to the starting line.
“Timer starts when you fully cross the starting line. Ends when your nose touches on the way back.”
Right… like a few milliseconds were going to matter. Brad nodded along.
“On your mark,” Martin announced. “Set. GO!”
Brad hammered the throttle open. The ion engines packed a kick, flattening him against the seat. Echo Canyon yawned before him, growing wider and taller by the second until the walls closed him in on both sides.
He resisted the urge to let out a whoop. The con rested on them believing he was a low-key pro riding the borderlands until he was old enough to move out and hit the core world circuits. Heck, that persona might not even have been part of the deception. He could make it big if he put in the time and effort. He was a natural, after all.
No time for wandering thoughts, Brad focused in on the first turn. Ducking low behind the dashboard, just able to peek over the top, he kept up his speed and banked at the last second. He cut it so close that the canyon wall would have brushed his hair if he was sitting upright.
Once he was out of view of the spectators, he blew a sigh that deflated the tension from his muscles. Keeping the throttle at max, he drifted up higher in the canyon. The headwind was the difficulty factor in the challenge Jamie had cooked up years back. The lower route was technically a little longer due to a narrower, more central path through the canyon complex. But higher up, the rock walls caught and funneled high winds that buffeted and fought against the racers.
So long as the engines kept whining, Brad was fine with the speed it cost him.
He watched the clock.
A minute and a half out, he kicked in the reverse thrusters, squeezing the hover between forward and braking thrust, slowing him and wasting fuel. Around the two-minute mark, he cut power and idled down to the canyon floor.
The low hum of the waiting engines would have been a dead giveaway if he’d been close enough for the other racers to hear. Brad unbuckled from the pilot’s seat and hopped out. It was kilometers still to the far end of the course, but this was as far as he planned to go.
Out came the pendant. RAMSEY on one side. DUMBASS on the other. “Funny, looks like I got to the far end after all…” He smirked proudly, hoping to get the guilty looks off his face by granting them free rein until it mattered.
But there was one order of business he still needed to sell the story. Walking up to the rocky canyon wall, Brad gritted his teeth and took a barehanded swipe across the rock. Rough, untamed stone met tender flesh.
Five hundred terras, he reminded himself as the sting made him instantly regret this added realism.
Swearing under his breath even with Mom kilometers out of hearing, he made his way back to the hover.
Buckling in was tricky. He managed it mostly one-handed. Brad wrapped the cord around his injured hand and gripped the flight yoke. “Couple minutes,” he promised himself. Belatedly, he wondered if anyone had brought along a med kit to the racing campground.
The clock continued its tracking of the race. Math had never been Brad’s best subject, but he’d run the numbers through his datapad the night before. With a couple quick bursts of the maneuvering thrusters, he swung around to face the other direction.
When the clock hit 3:07, he’d be safe to start back. Three-minute mark passed, and he took a breath, his good hand ready on the throttle.
3:05…
3:06…
3:07!
The race began anew and in earnest. Ion engines howled as he rocketed back down Echo Canyon toward his friends.
And a few rivals.
And Anji.
Brad could never date a sucker. Dad would disown him. Mom would be disappointed that he’d gotten a girl under false pretenses. But if he could assure them that she was a sharp, how could they object? All the parents were friends. Everyone had their own version of the lifestyle, but that’s all they were, slight variations.
Live on the outskirts. Siphon terras from suckers. Live the easy life.
Him and Anji. Forever.
Echo Canyon twisted and bent. He’d never flown it before, but Jamie had taken him enough times that he knew the way. That was the story. All that mattered was selling the possibility.
Before he knew it, the exit of the canyon opened ahead of him.
Bearing down, Brad made the last turn look good. It had to seem as if he’d been gunning the engines and clipping every turn the whole way.
The spectators scattered to give him room.
Brad wasn’t done yet.
As soon as he crossed the finish line, Brad cut the main engines, gave a quick burst from the front-left and rear-right maneuvering jets, then hammered open the throttle until he drifted backward to a halt.
“Bullshit!” Blake called out.
“Not possible,” Argruu snarled.
The spectators closed in around him as Brad unbuckled himself gingerly. Standing in the cockpit, he let the looped cord unravel from his injured hand until he swung it like a hypnotist’s medallion. It had the same effect on the crowd. He held the pendant out toward Blake, the one he’d really been hoping to dethrone, anyway. “Read it and weep. Dumbass.”
Anji raced up and planted the question that was on the mind of anyone who might be giving him the benefit of the doubt. “How’d you cut seven seconds off the best time?”
Seven? EEP! Either he’d mathed it wrong, or he was a better pilot than he was giving himself credit for. No time to hedge. He presented his scraped and bloody fingertips. “You all stopped to grab yours.”
Golan raced over to check the hull. “You’d better not have—”
“Relax,” Brad assured him loudly enough that everyone heard. “It was a slow inverted roll. I came way closer to scratching the hull on the tuning fork.”
“No one’s supposed to take that route. It’s too narrow,” Aden spoke up.
“I was joking. Jeez. Blake skipped that part, but I remember Jamie’s whole safety spiel. The rolling grab was her maneuver, too. She wore gloves, which would have been a good idea, now that I’m thinking of it. Now, how about we finish the races so I can get my money.”
Anji tried to make eye contact with him, but Brad steeled himself. He had a whole lifetime to look into those eyes. And it was all predicated on holding his smooth until they could split the winnings.
On the outskirts of Seca Mesa, another hover blazed across the desert.
“You could have commed,” Calvin griped over the rushing wind. He had his blaster out, checking the charge in its power pack and setting the selector switch to stun.
Good thing checking on that blaster. Dead deadbeats never paid.
“Woulda shoulda coulda,” Buddy snapped. “You don’t own a hover, so I was pickin’ your worthless ass up anyhow.”
“Wanna swap? I can fly.”
“Siddown and shut your hole. What was so important you hopped all the way out to North Bend, anyway?”
Calvin squirmed in his seat.
“What?” Buddy demanded.
Reluctantly, Calvin shifted in his seat and lifted the back of his vest.
Taking his eyes from the flat, cracked landscape ahead of them, Buddy scowled at the tangle of lines emblazoned on his brother-in-law’s flesh. “What’m I lookin’ at?”
“Gonna be phoenix rising from the ashes of the desert.”
Buddy squinted. Then, leaning closer and causing the hover to veer slightly, he squinted harder. “I don’t see it.”
“On account of you commed me before Orlando was done.”
“Who?”
“Orlando Gauthier. Best tattoo guy in the sector. Real artiste.”
Buddy grunted. He corrected their course, placing the Seca Mesa townscape dead ahead of them on the horizon.
“Don’t be like that. It’s art you can’t lose to thieves or pirates.”
“Can to slavers…”
“Besides, if you knew where Ramsey’s at, why not just grab him? He’s a wet mop.”
Buddy shook his head. “There’s quick and there’s right. All it would take is Ramsey coming out the wrong side of the holotheater, and we’d be back to scrounging.”
“Funny, a guy looking to fly low just buys a ticket and sees a holo.”
Buddy pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Never wondered whether he paid for the ticket. Might be I can arrest him proper. That’d make the data entry cleaner.” He cleared his throat. “Point is, we got about twenty-five minutes before the holo ends.”
“If he stays to the end.”
“It’s Cable to Mars. It’s about a guy who wants to tether Earth and Mars together to start a cheap tram service.”
“Sounds dumb.”
“Supposed to be hilarious. Burt Brannock is in it.”
“Not a Brannock guy,” Calvin said with a shrug.
“Course you’re not. Brannock’s subtle. Nuanced. He’s not the kind who sets up a holo-recorder at a skating rink to watch first-timers fall on their ass. There’s politics. Societal critique.”
“Can’t a guy lampoon modern life and still make appealing comedy for all social classes?”
Buddy raised an eyebrow. With a 20-minute run across empty desert, he had time to win this argument. “Oh yeah? How about Cinderosa McGuire?”
Calvin brightened and sat up straight in his seat. “Really? She the love interest?”
“I haven’t seen it,” Buddy replied. He’d hoped that the red-headed starlet would have been enough to get his brother-in-law to accept the holo as worth watching. “But by the promos, I gather it’s a love triangle with her and Drew Anson.”
“Martian or Earth-made?”
“Straight out of Hollyworld,” Buddy proclaimed with certainty. There was just something about the glitz and crisp perfection of an Earth-made holo. Impossible to confuse with even other Sol productions. Martian holo producers kept a gritty feel, used lesser-known actors, tried artsy flair and experimental techniques. Earth made Earth holos. They could make a toothsoap advert cost millions of terras and look every last coin of it.
“Pass,” Calvin said, waving Buddy off. “He’ll get together with Drew. It’s just how Hollyworld works.”
