Airith- the Kentilan War Page 12

  “Mox, you bitch,” Rapha growled, and punched the craft’s ignition.

  The engine kicked like a wild primate and the dashboard lit up a bright red. In the center of the dash, a small panel slid back, and an antenna emerged from the crevice. The apex of the device blinked with a red light.

  “What is that?” Airith’s question mirrored his thoughts.

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” Rapha retorted.

  He slid his fingers gingerly around the throttle handles, slowly securing them in a steel grip. He loved the feel of the abrasive leather against his palm and how its little suckers clung to his skin. His metal clamp of a foot gingerly probed the pedals beneath the throttle, looking for pressure points to use. He tried to focus his force at the center of the pedals, moving ever so lightly against the gas. The monster lurched forward, and Rapha almost smashed into the throttle. Airith was not so lucky. She groaned, peeling herself from the dash. The waver had covered the space that had been between him and the starting line.

  “Whoa-ho-ho-ho!” His body tingled.

  “Urgh! Cool it, would you?” Airith growled. “So, you know her?” she sneered, referring to the earless driver. The sass in her tone was clear as day, knocking the excitement clean from his mind.

  “Yes, I thought you had better taste, Rapha,” Phara mused softly.

  “Not now, Airith.” Rapha knew what she was edging at, and this was not the place to discuss relationship goals. “You see those tats on her arm?” Rapha focused his attention on the track ahead of them, refusing to look in that direction again.

  “Yeah, so what?” Airith tossed a glance in that direction.

  “The Virginity.” There was a solemnity to Phara’s bland announcement, the heralding of impending doom.

  “NO WAY! RAD!” Airith yipped excitedly. “This race might be interesting after all.”

  The female driver had a signature tattoo on her arm, and in these parts, only one gang bore that mark: a vicious pack of cannibalistic female degenerates. There were rumors about the activities of the Virginity, tales sinister enough to make war-hardened man quiver. And now, Rapha was possibly riding a craft that had belonged to them. Were they all virgins like the name implied? No one really knew, but tales of raped men and floating, dead bodies travelled the back-alley bars in most sectors.

  “Ey!”

  A queasy voice interrupted his thoughts. A voice he knew well. It belonged to Cyclops, a long-time one-eyed death racer. A man whose only organic part was his head and the one good eye he still had left. The other one had been lost in near combat during a race years ago.

  Rapha tossed him a wary gaze. He knew Cyclops as an adrenaline junky; one mystified by the rush of the moment no matter what it cost him. He had seen the guy burst into flames and not bat an eye—well, because his eyelids had burned right off.

  His dappled, patched skin told about the countless fires he had been in, and his one good eye was cupped in a transparent semi disc, a make-shift enhancement for his lost eyelids. His mouth was a lipless opening sealed shut for life and the few strands of hair on his scalp were slicked back with engine grease. The lubricant darkened his scalp and ran down the sides of his face. He spoke through an intubated microphone peeping from a small hole in his throat. It was queer sight, to see the device bob up and down every time his vocal cords moved. The tech behind it made Rapha marvel.

  “Back again, I see! I always knew you and I had something special. The track, it calls to us, doesn’t it, Rapha? We’re not these other chaps racing for the loot or rewards, we just like the pungent fumes of fuel and chaffing of engine smoke down our throats. Ha!” He beamed. “But I might kill you this year.” His expression turned friendly again. “I want you to know we’ve had a few good races together.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Cyclops. Back at you.”

  “Are you ready?” Mox boomed, and a virtual countdown appeared a few feet before the racers, in mid-air. A huge, pixelated number 3 appeared in air.

  “Alright peoples! Let’s make cripples! Count down!” Mox signaled, and the countdown began. The crowd tuned in to shout the numbers in unison as they changed. Rapha had lived this moment many times before. He tightened his grip, bracing for it.

  Three!

  “Unrecognized executive access. Beacon call initiated.” An aggressive, disembodied feminine voice stated in the interlude as one of the monitors came on with a beeping radar. The voice had come from the shiny, useless antenna on the dash. Rapha stared at it, and then stared at Airith.

  Two!

  “Unrecognized executive access. Beacon call initiated.” There it was again.

  “I guess that confirms that this is a stolen craft,” Airith said in her nonchalant tune. “Is it going to go on and on like that during the race?” she grumbled. But Rapha couldn’t be bothered, his leg was already hovering over the gas, just waiting to stomp on it.

  One!

  “Just ig—” The rest of Rapha’s sentence scrambled in his brain as three successive jolts of shocking energy surged through the craft. His vision blurred for just a moment and the sizzling in his head drowned out the thunderous roar of “Go!” and the rumble of the ground beneath them as the crafts flanking them burst forth with near speeds of light.

  He blinked till slowly the feeling gradually returned to his fingertips.

  “Rapha? Rapha! Airith!” The voice was muffled and distant, but strangely familiar.

  ”Ai- Ai- Airith” he stuttered, forcing his body to turn toward her. His limbs weighed a thousand tons.

  Airith was also recovering, eye wide with fear and understanding.

  “Rapha! Airith!” The indigo light across the dashboard flickered, and Rapha could recognize the voice.

  “Phara?” Rapha bolted upright, eye wide with disbelief, but leaned in closer just to be sure. “Are you in the waver?”

  “My mind got scrambled as well. But I’m fine, thank you for asking.” Millions of tiny indigo pixels floated up from the dash to form Phara’s face. Her usually grim countenance was now an obscure representation of the real thing, and the heat in her gaze left nothing to the imagine. “We’re last. We must move. Now.”

  “What’s wrong, Rapha? You’re still at the starting line. Having electrical difficulties? That’s bad, I was hoping for an electric start!” Mox scoffed from a nearby drone, hovering at eye level to the car.

  “You’ll get yours, Mox. I promise,” Rapha groaned, grimacing and quickly realizing his waver was the only craft left. He punched the ignition. The waver bucked and they all tossed forward. The engine caught… and ceased.

  “As it stands, that beacon call was a radio wave that has pinpointed your location to all nearby Virginity members, as well as alerted the other drivers to the treasure underneath your bonnet,” Mox cackled. “Oh, I’m sure you know this belongs to the Virginity?” Mox clapped his hands excitedly, his monstrous image jumped in glee like a little girl. “Three of which are currently in this race. Guess what their reaction was!”

  The hovering drone projected a hologram of a bounty APB with the waver’s description and a whooping sum that could give a heart attack. Those six zeroes gaped back at Rapha.

  “Rapha, I think this craft has an integrated teleport function, and no wonder it’s got what it’s got under the hood.” It was Phara, and her indigo light flickered in a monitor that displayed the track’s map, scaled in degrees and integrated with a keyboard pad. The moving red signatures signaled the moving positions of the other racers. Strange markers were pinpointed across the map as well.

  “I’m projecting a safe location for us to teleport to. See if it works.” She didn’t sound confident, but Rapha was desperate. “Start the waver one more time.”

  Rapha smashed the ignition one last time, and everything hung in space, a freeze in time that held them in an airless stupefy. But it lasted just a second. The sudden jerk back to real time slammed his head back into the head rest with a force that pinned him to the seat. Their surroundings had warped
for just a moment, and the colors had raced to the corners of his vision. Now they were travelling at blinding speed, a thousand feet above ground, as the tops of scrapers raced past them in minute blurs.

  “What the fuck!” Rapha blared, feeling the onset of the rush. He tasted the metallic tang before he felt the warm liquid running from his nose. “Airith, are you okay?” His voice tremored. He thought he had seen her head bounce hard off the dash.

  “’Phara, are you okay,’ would be nice for once,” Phara snapped from the dash. Rapha couldn’t look at her, but she sounded shaken, down to her toe nails.

  “Did we just fucken warp?” Airith almost sobbed.

  “No wonder the zeroes were so many,” Rapha chuckled, latching onto the throttle, pressing down on the gas, and forcing the beast to its limits, feeling the forces float over and under him as they flew. “Airith, check the radar, tell me how far behind we are!” Rapha kept his eyes on the winding track ahead. A sharp corner was coming up. Silence from his side and his rear.

  “Airith?”

  “Ra-pha. Ra-pha, we’re i-in first place.”

  Rapha’s head snapped in her direction like a vice. He needed eye contact to affirm what he had just heard. He saw the same disbelief in her eyes. His eyes darted to the radar. The wavers were marked by heat sensors integrated in the tracks, and Rapha’s beast was in first place.

  The car jerked forward with extreme force and Rapha smashed face-first into the throttle and slammed back into his seat, the horizon swooning away from them as they teetered dangerously over a side. The flashing of red and yellow from warning monitors was all Rapha could see. He spared a second to read the warning. Body sensors were detecting foreign intrusion at the rear of the craft.

  “Rapha, someone just harpooned us!” Phara’s announcement accompanied another jerk that yanked Rapha back hard, and waver teetered until Rapha could see the thousand-foot drop below them and the frenzied layer of electrons that was the track.

  “I got us!” Phara cried as an indigo tentacle flashed before his eyes. It latched onto a track magnet and pushed back. The waver lurched back, balancing itself.

  “He’s still latched on,” Airith warned, glaring back over her shoulder.

  Rapha spared a glimpse. The attacking driver was gaining on them, reeling them in with his harpoon as they slowed considerably. The waver groaned; the strain was making the power flicker across the dash. The driver was bent over his throttle with dark, glazed goggles, laughing hysterically.

  “We’ll try to snap the cord.” Rapha stomped the pedal, pushing the accelerator, and the waver leaped to its limit, which was no different from crawling as the strain made the beast heave, dragging on laboriously.

  “The other racers are gaining on us!” Phara warned.

  “I’m manning the cannons.” Airith was gone in one swift move, slinking to the back and grabbing the gun controls. At the back of the beast, two mega blasters popped up.

  The cord yanked at the waver again and Rapha steadied the throttle in a steel grip, trying to keep the craft from losing its balance. “Airith, take him out!”

  “My pleasure!” were her last words before the cacophony of blasting plasma shells sounded out. It only took a split second for the explosion behind them to slap their craft forward as the wire snapped. The jerk threw Airith against Rapha’s seat, but Rapha kept the craft level as they took flight again. In the side mirror, he saw the inferno rage and the scorched and mangled remnant of the enemy waver fall from the track.

  “Sharp turn ahead!” Phara warned.

  The bend snaked around a skyscraper, and as far as they could see, the building was just a few feet from the track and only a mile out from Rapha’s beast.

  “Another driver is gaining on us,” Airith warned.

  A monitor lit up with warning signals. Rapha couldn’t look at it. “What is that?”

  “Missiles. Three of them.” Airith sounded frantic, her short, rasping breaths scraping at Rapha’s ears.

  “How many seconds do we have?”

  “Just five seconds in between each!” Phara screamed.

  The oddity of the occurrence was lost in the heat of the moment. The hairs were erect on Rapha’s neck. There was no dodging a target-locked missile. “Airith, can you take them out with the cannons?”

  Three incoming signatures lit the radar, coming at lightning speeds. Airith leaped back into action. The volleys of blasts drowned Rapha’s senses, except the tightness in his grip and the eagle focus of his eyes. He eyed the radar and the incoming scraper; there was no way they could make that bend before the missile.

  An explosion shook the track and Rapha eyed the video feed to the rear of the craft. Airith had got one, leaving puffs of fiery clouds in its wake. But the other two? The second missile made contact; the second explosion rocked the waver hard. It tossed unsteadily and wickedly toward the edge. But Rapha was busy wondering why he wasn’t burning alive. He tossed his head about wildly and realized a faded indigo color enveloped the car. Phara’s shield.

  “My shield won’t be able to take another explosion; I can only divide so much of myself,” Phara warned.

  “Phara, you’re the shit.”

  The bend was just before them, and so was the scraper. Rapha yanked the throttle to the right, straying close to the building as the craft skidded close to the edge, making a sharp 90 degree turn around the bend.

  The third missile hit the building. The explosion blew through it, spraying chunks of debris and smoke across the track as the upper half of the building exploded. Rapha kept his focus tight, his body in tune with the rest of the craft as he yanked hard rights and lefts, maneuvering around the falling obstacles until they were home free.

  “That was wicked!” he ranted, keeping his eyes on the rear video feed. He saw two wavers vanish in the havoc and fall from the tracks. Satisfaction tingled down his back. “Looks like we already won th—”

  His body went cold when a familiar waver zoomed out of the smoke and dust. A Virginity waver. The one-eared driver.

  “Oh look, it’s your estranged girlfriend,” Airith scoffed.

  “Yeah well, she’s about to kill us.” Rapha kicked at the pedal. The accelerator hit higher speed and the craft lurched forward, getting away from the incoming driver. Rapha smirked to himself; there were a few things he could totally scrap off this ride. In the rear feed, though, he saw the Virginity waver swallowing space between them like he was merely walking. His chest clenched.

  “Airith, take her out!”

  Airith was already on it. The din of cannon fire filled the waver and to Rapha’s dismay, the Virginity craft diced through each volley like it was merely practice. Rapha eyed the dash and found another tactic. Mines. A big, shiny red button labelled Mines. He smashed it and glanced at the rear feed. Silver pebbles the size of fists deployed from the rear and hung inches above the track. The Virginity waver didn’t get close enough to make contact before a flush of heat erupted. Sizzling waves swept over a wide radius. The beast was in that radius. Phara’s shield cracked like an egg, but that was before it had absorbed most of the shock.

  After the heat lash came the whip lash, an implosion that sucked in everything in that radius. The force yanked at the beast, but not before Rapha worked the pedals. The waver tossed like an animal, merely escaping his own trap.

  “What the fuck was that?” Airith was shaken.

  “It said ‘mines.’” He glanced at the rear feed. The implosion had sucked itself in, leaving behind no trace of the catastrophic event. Not even a single waver in sight… until three Virginity wavers morphed from thin air.

  “What the fuck?”

  “I’m sensing an unexplained surge in an energy source similar to that in this waver. They must have warped as well,” Phara stated.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Airith resumed her onslaught with the cannons. Again, the wavers expertly dodged each blast, heaving and curving, three halves in perfect sync. “Rapha, we’re running out of shells. Any
bright idea? Now would be the time.”

  Rapha searched the road ahead, eyes darting for an answer. The track had begun to dip, sloping down into the city and disappearing into a subway tunnel underground. The entrance to the tunnel was a narrow passage that could only fit one craft.

  “It’ll be easier to take them out in the tunnel. Don’t waste any more shells, Airith!” he warned.

  “Not going to be possible! They’re manning their cannons!” Airith retorted.