Airith- the Kentilan War Read online

  “Airith,” Rapha whispered, but she responded bodily, bending over to thrust her glutes against him. He pressed hard into the crack of her ass as she ascended again. His hand squeezed her into him, and his other hand threaded through her hair as he snapped her around in one deft move. She was in his face now and she could see the inferno of sensations burning in his eyes.

  “Airith. You’re mine,” he said, before burying his face in her neck.

  *

  “Wake up.” Rapha nibbled softly at her ear lobe.

  She purred in her sleep, her lids flickering and closing again, her features settling back into that motionless peace he had been absorbing for the past ten minutes. She had slept rough through the night. Her legs and arms had been everywhere, leaving little cramped space on a bed that wasn’t more than three inches thick, barely kept above ground by the rickety springs that creaked with every turn. Their surroundings were bare and filthy; the room was barely big enough for Rapha to stretch both his legs, and the beds were relics from a different world. He could tell by the flakes of metal that crumbled off the bars every time he moved.

  Phara had balled herself up like a desert beetle, with her hands wrapped around her body so tight it made Rapha wince to stare long at her. He wondered if she had spent long nights of tarrying and prayer wrapped that way. Airith moved again, but not the sudden onslaught of fists and knees he had become used to at night. She turned softly and her doe eyes fluttered open. Her dark pupils gazed with an intensity, one that quickly melted the anxiety that stretched his nerves and held his eyes open through most of the night. He leaned in to kiss her. A soft peck that met no resistance, so he moved in for the kill… and his chest imploded as she shoved hard at him. He fell off the edge of the bed.

  “We have a race to win today. We need that hack. Mother awaits me, I wouldn’t want to fall short of her expectations,” she grumbled as she propped herself up with one arm, reaching for her scabbard with the other.

  “Good morning to you too.” Rapha smiled wryly.

  “I intend to help you kill Mother as well. I think she’d be pleased to see me after so long.”

  Phara’s sudden input startled them both. They turned to find her upright and fully aware. The moment registered with her and she tried a smirk. It was an unnatural gesture for her face. Her lips had only tried it out a few times before, and every time, they failed woefully.

  “This would have been a sure win if I was using my crafts.” Rapha grimaced, wondering about his wavers; and his leg. He gazed down at the metal stump that was his left foot. His gas pedals had been modified for this cause and he had Cymaga boosts in his engines; a fail-safe that only he possessed on the track, it had never let him down. Last he had seen the Penelope and the Katalina, they had been abandoned in one of the lots outside the Fang. Mox assured him they would be safe and returned after the race, but for now they had been dragged off to an impound. The screeching of burnished metal against the asphalt, was a horror that still lingered, loud and clear. Mox, the asshole.

  “I will support you from the sidelines. I will do my best, but I fear it will not be enough. I have watched a few of these races. The life expectancy for a death race driver is an average of three minutes, the chances of making it the finish line after that, however, increase favorably.”

  It was true; the first few minutes of the race were the most brutal; death row convicts from the four sectors of Homecity, armed to the teeth with high-tier tech, raving mad with lust for triumph, would be sardined into a tight race track, forced to battle it out for dibs on first place in the first three minutes of the race, the exact time needed for turbo recharge and ejection. The driver in first place at the end of this time was as good as the winner.

  “We’ll make the first three minutes count,” Airith hissed as she drew her sword ever so slightly, marveling at the frenzy of electrons that instantly came to life. She put the sword back.

  “Wakey, wakey my darlings! It is time to shine like starlings!”

  Mox’s yap got them to their feet and they all glared in the sound’s direction. A holoscreen projected from nothing onto the walls, and Mox sat with his legs crossed and his staff in one hand, chuckling through the visual at them.

  “How is he seeing us? How?” Airith’s eyes searched the room. There was nothing out of place.

  “The race is to begin in the next two hours. As soon as this feed goes off, you will follow the guards that have come to collect you. They will lead you to the garages, where you may pick any waver of your choosing for this race.” Mox curtsied grandly with a gesture of his staff. “And don’t worry, babe, they’re all prepped the way you like them, top-tier tech and armor. I think you will like your options, and I’m sure you’ll repay me grandly by giving off a good show.”

  “I know a snake when I hear one,” Phara whispered.

  “Shut up, darling, no one’s talking to you.” Mox rolled his eyes, then returned his full focus to Rapha. “Like I promised, you are at ease to inspect your choice for any faults, but I’ll save you the time by telling you there will be none.” He faded into the pale paint of the walls and the silence returned.

  No one moved in that moment, until the chamber door slammed open, when they all flew into attack position. Just as Mox had said, two nude guards stood in their doorway, armed with semi-automatic weapons.

  “Mox has need of you,” one said, stepping out of the way and gesturing with the muzzle of his gun that they should emerge. Rapha took the lead, Airith following closely behind him. They rode the elevator back up to ground level and a tunnel that led out to the back quarters of the Fang. The lowest floors of the Fang served as storage units and a circuit of cells the Mox used to store valuable merchandise, hot or cold, ranging from precious metals to oils and crafts. The guards led them to a row of garages, littered with working chop-shop robots. The abrasive grating of high-powered metal on metal sounded out in the background as mechanical arms whirred as they worked, splitting and welding crafts. The guards stopped at the end of the room, a little way from the rest of the noise, where a row of gleaming masterpieces sat finished and still latched.

  “Mox wants you to choose one. Only two people can board each craft.” The first guard raised his gun, motioning at them. “You have only thirty minutes to inspect and then you must get in. You and your co-driver will be transported to Sierra Ave for the race.”

  Rapha was already feasting upon the beauties. The gleam of burnished aerinite reeled him in to the first one, and instantly he knew she was the one. His fingers trailed the glassy surface, over the dips and curves of refined art. Her tapered ends and streamlined form angled perfectly for aerodynamic lift. Rapha rushed to the front of the craft and spread out his arms in the crude way he always measured for width. She was sizeable, with enough surface area to act as down force. He dropped to one knee and crawled along the length of the car, searching to confirm his findings. The craft nose-dived to a satisfying degree toward the front, having the same ground clearance as the rear, except for the raking that was styled to his taste. The calculations ran in his head; the down pull from the front and the up thrust toward the back was perfect. His heart almost stopped. Could she be the one?

  “I just have to see what she’s running on first.” He got back up and peered into the waver. The dashboard was neon lit with minimalistic monitoring. His eyes probed the dash—a gear change timer, precision technology that would give him edge, a radar monitor great for targeting and reading incoming threats, heat sensors, three channel inter comms, caution displays for the engine, control panels for the ammo pods, with lasers and cannons fitted in the rear. His mind hinted it, but he refused to accept it yet; could this be Penelope and Katalina’s birth child?

  He reached in and pressed a familiar button. On the sides of the waver, two cannons popped into view. Rapha went blank. These were the latest model cannons, with simple and automated targeting and less cool down, and heat tracking for better precision. A primal madness stirred in his gu
t.

  “It’s almost as if Mox is begging me to win.” Rapha smirked. “I doubt you would have to do anything from the sidelines, Phara.”

  “You’ll still run out of ammo. Then. you’ll need a human gun,” Airith mused.

  “Did you see this, babe?” Rapha popped another button and storage pods slid out from under the craft. A dozen rows of cannon plasma glowed sickly. “This could be a joyride for you and me, you wouldn’t have to do shit.”

  “How fast can it go?”

  “Yeah, what about turbo?” Phara chipped in.

  Rapha peered through to the back of the interior. The boosters were usually cannisters of nitro-nuclear fuel. But he saw nothing. His excitement waned. No turbo? So, what type of engine was she running? He reached in and popped the hood. His eyes couldn’t believe it. The craft ran on a split hybrid engine, the massive monster consuming the cramped space meant for a common engine. Its monstrous conduits supplied two split chambers and Rapha felt the shivers hit his toes. He latched onto the edges of the engine and sucked in a breath. This was at least a 128-core nova engine. There was no common combustible fuel that could supply these babies, so what was she running on? His eyes traced the source to the where the fuel tank should have been. What he saw was sickly green, transparent tubes, held tight in a clean row. His eyes widened and his thoughts nulled.

  “It can’t be,” Airith said over his ear. Rapha barely nodded. “People would kill if they so much as smell this on you. The race would turn to a full-out war. Mox wouldn’t just let you race with it on a platter of garmenium. It never smelt right from the beginning, but now its stinks through and through.”

  “She’s right. Let’s pick another craft, one of the other vessels,” Phara advised.

  Rapha spent close to ten minutes going over the remaining two options, subconsciously comparing and contrasting to the insane beauty he had set his eyes on. They came up short, miserably.

  “This one. This is safer.” Airith tapped the hood of one of the other wavers, a lithe craft with average features.

  Rapha gazed forlornly at the beast; he had already nicknamed her from the start and all roads still led to her. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he sauntered back over to her, ignoring the heated glaze in Airith’s stare.

  “You have just three minutes more. Pick one. Now,” the guard from earlier said, almost startling them. They had forgotten the two nude men standing by and armed to the teeth.

  “This one,” Rapha said, and hopped in.

  “What? Are you mad?” Airith gasped.

  “Airith, if we’re going to win this thing, we’re only going to do it using our best options.” Rapha shrugged, squirming to settle into the leather driver’s seat. “We can either go hard or go home, and in my case, the latter is dire. So…” He paused, hoping to convey the severity of the situation with his eyes. “Are you with me on this one?”

  *

  The steady hum came through his fingers and reached his thoughts, which were empty, voiceless visions from his past; his origins from the tall towers within the ruins, the sickening cracking of his bones, and the pain. The ambience of it, the suffocating memories of the horrors he had gone through. Airith’s fingers dug into his thighs. She was sitting next to him in the co-driver’s seat and it was dark on all sides, with the only light coming from the dashboard before them and the narrow beam of light from a slit in the host vehicle.

  They were being transported onto the elevated racetracks of Sierra Ave in a crawler, a large transport vehicle that crawled on cogs and wheels, grinding its path through the desolate lands. Mox used these carriers to smuggle heavy loot, cars included. Rapha didn’t like the dark. It reminded him of the cramped, airtight box he had been shipped into the dumping site. The place where Mother discarded her rejects.

  As if she had read his thoughts, a soft glow of indigo filled the craft from the back. He glanced gratefully back at Phara and she nodded silently. The sudden lurch signaled that the large vehicle had stopped. The silence that followed was near-debilitating, and the darkness beckoned to them.

  But then blinding light exploded from all sides, and with it, the clamoring of frenzied spectators. Their screams surrounded them, and Rapha opened his eyes to find the walls of the carrier had disappeared. They were in their race waver, on the low bed of the carrier, atop the elevated racetracks of Sierra Ave. The crowds that had gathered to watch clamored from rooftops of scrapers and complexes, and from the lower grounds, which Rapha could not see.

  Sierra Ave was a race circuit that hung a hundred feet above ground level. It was in a real sense an electromagnetic field that sensitized the magnets under the wavers, keeping them level as they sped on horse-powered engines to the finish, engrossed in the onslaught of high-powered guns and lasers. The track wound around skyscrapers in the city and dipped to the subways and even deeper, to the sewers of the city. It ran along the edges of the desert beyond the outskirts of the city and ended back at the starting point in the city. The track was narrow, to ensure dangerous routes, and its sharp bends were meant to kill.

  “Alright racers! You may proceed to the starting line!” Mox blared from the hovering drones capturing the live feed. His image projected onto all the scrapers surrounding the event, his tall, lithe form comprised of the many cells that ran the length of the structures. He grinned menacingly down at the event, a virtual towering giant, gesturing with his staff.

  The roar of high-powered engines drowned out the chattering from the spectating crowds, and almost immediately, Rapha realized ten other carriers had parked in line with his own, each carrying wavers of their own. The metallic luster burned his sight. He glimpsed their streamlined and highly modified bodies. Consumer-modelled crafts had been hacked, sculpted, and hammered to cram in weapons and augment their technicalities.

  “Okay, this is where I bid you guys adieu,” Phara said, stretching forth her hand. Her fingertips began to radiate her indigo light, picking up intensity.

  “What do you mean? What are you doing?”

  Her light beamed from her fingers, blasting the dashboard and creating a steady flow of energy from Phara to the waver, changing in form from the airborne spectrum to a fluid indigo, seeping into the neon lighting of the monitors and controls, changing it to her color. The connection abruptly snapped, and she was finished.

  “I’m integrating a greater part of my consciousness into your controls. That way I can communicate while I help from afar.”

  “You’re just full of surprises,” Airith sneered.

  “I don’t think you’d really have to go; I mean you could just—” Rapha’s statement cut short when he turned into the gaping muzzle of a double barrel gun.

  “Two drivers per waver. One of you must get out,” one of Mox’s henchmen hissed. Rapha saw movement in the corner of his eye; another guard had his gun leveled at Airith.

  “There is no trouble,” Phara stated as she morphed into nothingness and reformed standing outside the waver.

  The guards snapped their aim in her direction, vividly consternated.

  Airith blinked. “You could do that all along?”

  “My gift is not for show and takes a lot charge and focus.” Phara attempted a smile, but her lips failed at the gesture. “I’ll be close.” Her last word came from air as she dissipated again.

  The guards lowered their guns and moved on to the next waver in line.

  Rapha’s couldn’t bring himself to look away from where Phara had stood. He squinted, willing her to be there.

  “Did she really disappear on us?” He cocked his head, lids twitching.

  “Oh, you know, Phara. She could go off and kill Mother if she wanted to, she just likes to hang with us ‘cause you know, she had no friends up in her prayer tower.” Airith sighed, squirming in her seat.

  Rapha frowned at her constant sarcasm. It almost felt like she had some grudge against Phara. Airith moved to lift her legs, but the top of her knees bumped under the dash. Rapha read the frustration on he
r face; she would have probably stretched her legs across the dash if she could. He loved the way that vein popped on her forehead when she was irritated. He shook his thoughts back to the race and turned his attention to sizing up his opponents.

  One of the other ten caught Rapha’s intention. He wasn’t sure why until the two nodes met in his head. This waver mirrored his own; it was almost as if they had the same owner, like could always tell with Penelope and Katalina. A cleanly shaven head poked out the waver’s window—a man with a hole for an ear, a jagged scar leading from it right down to his temple, the strain radiating in taut lines in the surrounding skin like a seam sewn too tight. A shudder rattled Rapha as he tore his eyes away, searching for more Identifiers. The driver’s hand slapped the side of the waver hard. The gloved fingers were lithe and tapered, almost feminine.

  Hey, you’re not that scary.

  Rapha almost snorted to himself as he slowly dragged his eyes back up to the driver’s face but locked instead with distilled hate. Icy grey orbs diced through him wickedly and then swept over the rest of his craft, stopping short and cutting right back to him with a twisted snarl of half a feminine face with an intensity that shook the walls of Rapha’s resolve. He tore his gaze away, looking everywhere but there. It was a woman. The driver was a woman. A woman with half a face, but what sat heavy on his chest was that split moment of recognition he saw in her eyes, when she looked at his craft.