Welcome racing fans, if you're interesting in high speed, high octane, death defying thrills and kills, then you're in luck! Each chapter contains a sharp glimpse of the wonderful and wild world of the Accelerated Racing Association and the many talented drivers that make a living racing for fame and fortune!
Each story below will revolve around a single driver, all of which are aiming for the top and the chance to race in the Caelum Run, the most dangerous race in the Solar System!
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ARA - 01Today's Race!
"And we are back, racing fans! For those just tuning in, welcome to ARA 05.22, the only place to find exclusive news and live feed for everything racing on the wonderful red planet! Today's 5th Martian race is about to start at The Rust Circle and I hope you're as excited as I am! Cliff Chaser, Paula Preen, and Neveah Nitro will be the commentators for today's race, but they aren't the only amazing faces you'll be seeing! The Rust Circle is bringing thirty incredible drivers with some notable names that'll wet even the driest of appetites! Two Diamond Rank drivers are here with us today: Wilts Brack and Valeria Ren, ladies and gentleman! What's more is we are joined by the likes of Duke Odina and Mars' favorite driver Richard Killroy!"
Blowing across the harsh Martian landscape was a Category 6 sandstorm, and every Dome that stood in its path was on lockdown until it passed them by. All civilian travel had been put on a temporary hold until the weather conditions improved which, according to the weather reports, wasn’t soon to come.
And from within Mars’ many domed cities, you could watch as the famously red Martian sand slid and swirled like wet paint across a canvas, moving violently over the glass barrier that protected the people living within from harsh elements without. Manmade machines could weather such a storm, but to step outside in just a protective suit would be fatal. Your visibility would be close to nonexistent in storms like these and your sense of direction would vanish. If you lost your way you’d eventually tire and collapse from fighting against the harsh winds, and search and rescue would find your lifeless body underneath several inches of sand.
And ladies and gentlemen, what a perfect time to host a race!
Welcome to the wild and wonderful world of the Accelerated Racing Association, where there’s no track too dangerous, no road too foul, nor storm too deadly to stop hot wheels from driving across even the hottest asphalt! The ARA prides itself on being the Solar System’s No 1 source of racing entertainment, catering to each and everyone’s particular entertainment needs! Bringing you the hottest action, the finest drivers, and presented to you for free by the sexiest John Does and Jane Dames to ever step before a camera lens.
Today’s race is being hosted on the infamous Rust Circle, the third track to be built on Mars since the Association first signed its agreement with the Martian Government twenty years ago! Now, thirty drivers from all across the Solar System have gathered to test their metal and see if they have what it takes to advance to the 7th Circuit of this year’s Season!
This race has been generously sponsored by Martian Heavy Industries, Star Commerce, and JetSetters, your one stop shop for every musical taste no matter how niche.
All of today’s sponsors are offering discounts on orders and services purchased during today’s race at both corporate and civilian levels. Please visit the ARA’s current discount offerings at: www.AcceleratedRacing.ara/SponsorshipDiscounts/.
As the sandstorm rages across Mars’ northern hemisphere, the pack of thirty drivers down on the surface were racing for their chance to stand in the winner’s circle, and for their very lives! Already eight racers have been eliminated by the elements, and another five by their fellow drivers! Though the wind in a Martian storm doesn’t blow nearly as harsh as the ones on other planets, the danger here comes from the low visibility and the very sand itself! You can’t afford to lose sight of the track when you’re traveling at hundreds of miles per hour, and if the sand gets into your machine, you can expect any number of malfunctions, all of which could turn fatal!
“Look at that!” Shouted Cliff Chaser, one of the three ARA Commentators spectating today’s race, and all from the safety of News Bunker 03.
Though presently retired, the middle-aged cougar had once been a talented driver in his own right. He was most famous for driving one of the fastest bikes to hit the track during his time, the bright blue Soul Stealer, manufactured by Olympus Mechanics! After his retirement in 2213 he was brought in as a commentator by the ARA.
Today, he is being joined by two other veterans of the Association.
Seated to his right is ex-flag girl Paula Preen, a bright blue jay of great beauty and a voice to die for. After serving as a flag girl for more than a decade she’s now been a proud member of the ARA’s family of commentators for fourteen years running and gunning for more!
And sitting to Cliff’s left is fellow retired driver, and his one-time rival, Neveah Nitro!
Neveah was best known for her performance in the lead up to 2208’s Caelum Run where she ended her career early after crashing out on the Earth racetrack, Zeus’ Gambit, located in Athens, Greece.
With her bike, the Blind Justice, totaled and herself in the ICU, Racing’s favorite hyena chose to retire instead of pursuing any other races. She was lightning fast and had a great eye for strategy, and the ARA made sure she wasn’t going to leave racing without a fight, and ever since then she’s been a strong member of their family of commentators for the last fourteen years!
As today’s race explodes on the track, the trio of commentators were gawking at their array of television screens, each feeding them live video footage taken by the ARA’s expert team of drone pilots. Dozens of state-of-the-art drones were now flying through the harsh storm to make sure that everyone at home got as close to the action as possible in both standard and infrared vision!
It’s unbelievable how much effort and expense is put into every race to make sure that everyone at home feels like they’ve got the best seat in the house, no matter what or where!
“I can’t believe he pulled that off!” Paula shouted, too, covering her mouth with worry. The blue jay was antsy in her seat, feathers ruffling at the action unfolding in front of her. Sometimes hiding her eyes from the carnage she was witnessing on screen. Though she was a veteran to the ARA, she was no driver and had no taste for the blood and danger of the track, only for the glitz and tinsel of stardom.
Her counterparts were both on the edges of their seats, watching intently, understanding the danger and skill on equal display as the remaining drivers struggled to gain and maintain position. They were now in the final lap, and there were no more second chances. With only five days left in the 6th Circuit, most of the drivers out there today were fighting tooth and nail so they could claw their way into the 7th Circuit of this year’s season!
But, to understand the race, and its many dangers, you needed to know a little about the track itself, The Rust Circle.
The starting line was located at the north exit of ARA-D 01, a protective micro-Dome designed and built by the ARA for their exclusive use on Martian soil. It was a large structure that had garage space for as many as sixty bikes and plentiful housing for both their crews and drivers. The Association spares no expense for its diverse teams of racers! Staying on ARA property was like staying at a resort if you had the skill to earn your place there!
And from the starting line the racers exited out into what was nicknamed ‘the Barrens’, a six-mile stretch of flat track that led to another much smaller micro-Dome, ARA-D 02, that housed emergency crews should they be needed, and they always were. Racing in the Association was often as dangerous as a war zone!
And after passing through the center of ARA-D 02 drivers would emerge out into the aptly named ‘Death Valley’, an eighteen mile stretch of track that dove into a narrow manmade crevasse that threatened to devour any driver that wasn’t as good as they boasted, and once free of the Valley there was the final micro-Dome, ARA-D 03, built the same as the previous and populated with additional emergency personnel.
Then, there at the end was the final stretch: the Pillars of Salt.
Here, the track suddenly opened up to a flat field of manmade stone pillars, each carved from imported stone that was strong enough to withstand the constant battering of Martian storms with little need for maintenance. Without any flagging or reflective signage to aid a driver in spotting the pillars in a sandstorm, it was up to every racer to duck and weave their own way through the Pillars.
And right now, the remaining drivers were scattered across the track with some so far behind that they were doomed to fall short of what they needed to qualify for the 7th Circuit. If they hadn’t already secured their place in today’s race, then they’d be forced to sit the rest of the Season out. Better luck next year!
But in the lead was Mars’ own fan favorite, Richard Killroy of Dome 18! Richard, an eight-year veteran of the Professional Circuit, was driving his famously gaudy yellow and teal monster, the Fair Duke, manufactured by the Tellis Motor Company! And right behind him was Charles Lawson, the Ganymede born, yet Luna raised, veteran with eleven years of racing experience, driving the Ruby Rocket, manufactured by Mortis Freni Industries!
However, the true favorite for today’s race that’s got the ratings shooting sky high is the one and the only, Valeria Ren! The daughter of the legend, Maximillian Fairchild, is back with us again driving her ivory white beauty, the Noblisse Oblige! She’s setting the net ablaze with her performance today, starting in the middle of the pack at reaching the front before the first lap had even finished! Mrs. Ren has already qualified for the 7th Circuit, and it’s expected she’ll sail clear through to the 8th as a finalist!
“What is Michael doing! What the hell is he doing!” Neveah slapped both hands to the desk, the hyena pushing herself to her feet to gawk with awe at the young Michael Daggers, currently in 7th place and playing a deadly game of chance with his fellow racer, Felicity Dare.
“That was a lot more than paint just now, there’s sparks flying!” Cliff shouted, standing up alongside his cohost to get a better look at the center screen.
What they were watching were two bikes, powerful machines each, fighting for dominance in the hungry maw of Death Valley. Michael Daggers was playing it risky by trying to force his way through the narrow openings between the rock face and Felicity Dare’s bike.
“Oh my God, there are!” Cried Paula out, still covering her mouth as they watched Michael tap his Nitro, the sudden burst of speed forcing his way ahead in a mad gamble to overtake the older, more seasoned Felicity. The Death Valley section of the track featured two sheer rock faces that widened and narrowed so fast at these crazy speeds that it would look like the walls were vibrating as you flew through the gaps!
Driving the newest gen model of a Tauros chassis, manufactured Tauros Unlimited, Michael was teetering on the edge of disaster as his bright green Total Recall darted through the narrow gap between Felicity’s own Dour Behemoth, manufactured by Terran Machine Solutions.
His bike scraped against the rock wall of the Valley, sheering off paint and metal alike as he collided into Felicity in an attempt to shove her bike to the side. Both bikes lost speed, but the Dour Behemoth was a much heavier machine and hardly moved in response to the push from Michael’s own. Though he had the acceleration to recover faster than her, and in turn take the lead, the Total Recall was forced to scrape yet again into the rock wall to his side, the Dour Behemoth’s weight and bulk keeping him pinched between a rock and a hard place.
Even more sparks were spitting out the side of the Total Recall as the end point of Death Valley finally came into view. Emerging out into the storm, both machines exited the valley at the same time and broke away from each other.
Michael’s bike was instantly buffeted by the high winds and biting grit of sand. More sparks exploded out the side of the Total Recall as sand entered in through the fresh holes in his chassis, and like the Titanic of old the sand broke through wall after wall, sinking the bike from the inside as sand worked its way into places it didn’t belong, grinding and gnashing deep into the Total Recall’s rear axle.
By the time both drivers were entering ARA-D 03, Michael Daggers was flying out of control through the micro-Dome, fire belching out the rear of his machine until a single pop was heard by all the on-site personnel, followed by a flash of light from inside the rear wheel well. His back wheel ripped free and went flying, slamming into a wall inside the dome, destroying everything in its path. What was left of Michael’s bike spun and skidded across the smooth asphalt until it, too, slammed into the wall on the opposite side of the Dome at more than 150mph.
“Oh my God, what a wreck! I hope there wasn’t anyone in the way of that!” Cliff shouted, retaking his seat as he held his breath, Paula Preen covering her eyes with her hands while Neveah stood and watched silently, making the sign of the cross over her chest with a grim look on her face.
What was left of the Total Recall was now on fire, Felicity Dare zipping past him with only minor damage from her earlier collision with him. Seconds later the rest of the pack began to fly by the wreckage in ones and twos, and thirty seconds after that emergency personnel were on the scene and working to put out the fire and free the driver from his bike.
On the rightmost video screen one of the EMTs turned to look at the CCTV camera and shook his head as they removed the broken body of Michael Daggers. Neveah sat down solemnly. He was deceased, time of death 2:31 PM. He was only 23.
Meanwhile, far ahead of the carnage at ARA-D 03 the contenders for 1st through 3rd were in heated debate. In first place now was Charles Lawson with his Ruby Rocket, having only just overtaken Richard Killroy’s Fair Duke with a well-timed burst of Nitro fueled speed. As they wove through the Pillars of Salt in their pursuit for 1st place the threat of collision hung like a specter around all three drivers.
Behind the front runners, but not by much, was Valeria Ren who was firmly in 3rd place with the 4th place driver a full eighteen seconds behind her.
With only a few miles of track left, the results of this race were going to be decided soon! The storm was doing its best to stop them, the high winds and poor visibility forcing each driver to strain their senses and push their machines to their very limit! Valeria Ren could only just barely see the competition ahead of her, but she had the track memorized.
The maps provided by the Association were always accurate, and she was counting each pillar she drove by, painting a mental image in her mind of where she was and where she needed to go to maintain as straight of a line as possible to cross the finish line.
She didn’t know if it occurred to her opponents to do the same, but it didn’t seem so! She could just barely see them through the sandy storm, the lights on their bikes, the tell-tale sign of sand being thrown up behind them in their wakes. They were drifting further and further towards her righthand side, probably too preoccupied with trying to overtake the other instead of focusing on the most efficient path towards the finish, and that suited her just fine!
Precious seconds were passing. Great pillars of stone flashed past her like bolts of white lightning. To her right side, then left, left, right, left again. Bam, bam, bam, she counted them all and kept the score on her mental map. The storm continued to rage at them all, her hands tight on the handles, her grip holding a steady pressure to keep her bike driving against the wind so she wouldn’t be forced off course and into a Pillar. If she were to crash in the Pillars of Salt it would mean almost certain death, as no emergency crew could get to her fast enough to keep the storm from devouring her if her bike broke its protective seal, venting her only source of oxygen out into the wasteland that was the Martian surface.
A hundred feet to her right side she saw the sudden flash in the sand, the light of an explosion followed by a boom! Had someone crashed? And that wasn’t far away from her either! She let her thumb drift close to the ignition switch for her Nitro. Ahead of her the Pillars were a becoming a dim glow in the storm as the winds picked up around her and threw even more sand into her field of view, everything becoming that much more difficult to make out as her bike sped forward with her last rival hiding somewhere in the red mist around her.
Her odometer was quickly counting up to 153 kilometers after nearly three laps on the track, and that put her too dangerously close to the finish for her to not know where her last opponent was!
Suddenly, to her right side, a yellow blur ripped through the red haze, its reinforced chassis crashing against the side of her bike. Valeria screamed in shock, the Noblisse Oblige getting shoved violently sideways before her tires bit back down into the sandy asphalt. Darting her eyes across her dashboard cameras, she saw the massive bike grinding against her own like a monster. Her tires were barely holding their grip on the asphalt, the rear of her bike fishtailing for a moment before she regained control of her bike. The yellow and teal monster, driven by Richard Killroy, was bigger than Valeria’s own and a full two hundred and thirty pounds heavier!
The collision had lasted only seconds, and then her moment of panic faded. Now Valeria knew she only had one other driver to worry about before making it across the finish line. The explosion from before had to have been Charles Lawson, and she knew he was no longer a threat to her.
Though the Fair Duke was a more powerful machine, it wasn’t as nimble as the Noblisse Oblige!
She pressed her thumb on the ignition switch for her Nitro, dumping the last of her reserves into the engine. There was an instant surge of power roaring up from beneath her seat as her engine rapidly pushed the Noblisse Oblige to its top speed. The G forces hit, pulling her body back and against her safety restraints. Her hands were tightening on the handles like she was clinging for her life, the yellow rival at her side falling behind as her bike now outpaced it by more than 100mph.
As Richard’s bike faded into the storm behind her, the Pillars zipped past her at frightening speeds as the odometer reminded her of how close she was to the finish. A thunderous roar exploded behind her, and her rival suddenly emerged from the storm in hot pursuit. Richard’s bike was now being propelled forward by his own Nitro reserves; his engine roaring red hot to reach its top speed in these last precious moments as the large silhouette of ARA-D 01 crept into view ahead of them through the storm.
Her bike wasn’t as fast as his, and the Fair Duke was now pulling up next to her with nowhere left to go but the finish. She was still pushing the Noblisse Oblige hard at close to 400mph, and two of them were now exiting the Pillars of Salt; the rest of the track would be open asphalt from here on out with no obstacles to face except your fellow driver. Richard was now pulling ahead of her inches at a time as her engine began to flag, the Nitro in the tank now dropping to fumes while her rival was still pumping fresh fuel into his engine to carry him to victory.
Unfortunately for Richard Killroy, Valeria took notes on what everyone was driving. The Fair Duke was built using a 5th generation Ulysses Le Grange chassis, and they were notorious for their front heavy engine placement with most of drive coming from the front tire.
Her opponent was an idiot to let himself get this close to her so near the finish line! She leaned forward and stared at her rightmost dash camera and waited. It took only a half second for Richard’s rear wheel to line up flush with her front tire, and when she saw the rubbers line up, Valeria smashed her thumb onto her Nitro ignition, dumping whatever fumes were left in the canister. A small jerk came from her engine, the needle on her speedometer spiking. She slammed her controls hard to the right and smashed her front end right into his backside.
A collision like this at such a high speed, especially for a bike whose center of gravity was set so far forward, forced the Fair Duke to pivot on its front tire. His bike might have been heavier, but not his behind, and Valeria’s pit maneuver sent her opponent into a violent fishtail. She briefly lost control of her own bike, but Richard Killroy was doing worse! He tried to regain control of his bike, but his heavyweight machine caught its grip perpendicular to where he’d started, and all that Nitro fueled speed sent him rocketing sideways across the track. It would take him several precious seconds to steer his bike back towards the finish!
The Noblisse Oblige wobbled briefly, Valeria feathering her brake and handles until she regained full control over her bike. Her loss of speed was considerable, but she floored the pedal and dug ruts beneath her wheels, the Noblisse Oblige rocketing back on track and staking her claim on 1st place. Twenty seconds later she passed the finish line at the entrance to ARA-D 01.
“And there we go!” Cliff Chaser shouted, standing up from his chair to applaud the first person to make it across the finish line with the ARA judges behind the scenes officially declaring Valeria Ren as having claimed 1st place, updating her racing profile in the process for everyone at home watching to see for themselves. With today’s big win her Driver Score increased from 6 to 7, further cementing her odds of being selected to participate in next year’s Caelum Run.
Today’s race drew to a close with all remaining drivers crossing the finish line safely, but it did not come without a cost. Of the thirty drivers that started the race there were fifteen crashes, and four of them resulted in fatalities. The deceased were: Michael Daggers, 23, driving the Total Recall, Nines Drocker, 21, driving the Course Correct, Brum Aslen, 27, driving the Poker Face, and lastly Charles Lawson, 29, driving his Ruby Rocket.
As the race results played out on everyone’s television screens at home the bottom chyron was reporting that riots were now breaking out in several of Mars’ Domed cities. Valeria Ren’s use of a pit maneuver against Martian favorite, Richard Killroy, had left much of the Martian population incensed. Fortunately for all parties involved, Martian civilians are not allowed into the ARA’s Domes, and all personnel hired locally from Martian cities were subjected to rigorous background checks and vetted for their political and social affiliations.
Once all drivers were back inside the safety of ARA-D 01, there were no problems in extracting the drivers from their bikes and delivering them back to the safety of their waiting team members, and the eager gazes of the Association’s news crews.
Apart from some superficial damage to the Noblisse Oblige’s outer hull there wasn’t much to do for refit on the bike apart from the usual post-race maintenance. While she’d been busy with the ARA officials and news crews, her team had been able to quickly assess the condition of her bike and schedule the repairs and cleanup, all of which would be done after they reached their next destination due to time constraints. There simply wasn’t enough time to do it all on Mars before they had to catch their flight off planet.
“Mrs. Ren, I’d like to congratulate you on your victory, although I wish you had chosen a more politically correct method to do so.” The ARA’s Martian liaison told her in the hallway.
The liaison, a tiger, was a tall and lean man, dressed in a black tailored suit with the iconic red and white trim common amongst ARA staff. He hadn’t been the one to escort her and her team from the garages, but he had been the one to greet them in the hallway on their way to the elevators that would take them to the Dome’s upper levels.
“A pit maneuver is hardly impolite when you compare it to what he did to Charles Lawson, don’t you think?” She replied with a smile. Standing at her side was her husband Oliver, a big grizzly bear, who was also her team’s Pit Chief, or her ‘Chief Technician’ if you wanted to use more modern terminology.
Her husband had only just pressed the call button to summon the elevator that would take them to the top floor of ARA-D 01 where they would be celebrating their victory in the Winner’s Circle. It was always customary for the ARA to treat the winners of 1st through 3rd to a post-race celebration. The other teams could celebrate on their own in whatever fashion they chose, but often on their own dime or the dime of a sponsor.
“While it is true that being dead is tragically worse than being forced into 4th place, Martian pride requires us to sneer when an outsider plays tricks on the track.” The tiger replied, leaving her to lift her eyebrows.
She’d not seen any video clips from the race yet, but members of her team had told her about how Richard Killroy had pulled a ramming maneuver on Charles Lawson, the very same one he had done to her! The bike Charles had driven was lighter in weight than the Noblisse Oblige, and so she imagined there wasn’t enough weight on his wheels to keep Richard from shoving him off course and into the pillar that killed him. Dead on impact, so she’d been told.
The tricks were only bad when they weren’t the victims!
“As I am becoming more aware of by the moment. Perhaps if they started teaching humility in your schools the people here wouldn’t riot so often when they don’t get their way?” She replied, it being common knowledge that Martians threw tantrums any time their teams didn’t win.
It was so bad that everyone in ARA-D 01 had to have their personal devices placed under a media blackout. It was for the personal safety of the drivers and their crews, just in case things got too out of hand and some Martian born employee started getting ideas.
The tiger twisted his expression into a tight smile.
“I’ll be sure to vote for that in the upcoming election, ma’am.” He replied. “The Winner’s Circle upstairs should be ready for you and your crew by the time you arrive. Felicity Dare and Van Thresh are already there, so I am told.”
“Thank you. The ARA’s hospitality is always appreciated.” She said with a smile and a nod, both of which she hoped would come off as condescending.
“As are your ratings, Ms. Fairchild.” The tiger replied, putting emphasis on her maiden name, before pivoting on his heel and walking away briskly. Her smile tightened, and she felt her husband put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her.
When she first started racing, she was still single and wearing her father’s name, but after marrying Oliver there had been a small adjustment period where everyone had to learn to start using her married name. Now, the only people still calling her a Fairchild were the ones that hoped she’d die on the track like her father had.
It was like a kind of death threat. Being famous often meant your detractors were as intense as your fans.
“Rude.” Muttered one of the members of her team.
“He’s Martian.” Said another dryly.
The elevator dinged just before the doors began to slide open.
“Ok, elevator is here, pile in!” Oliver said with authority, commanding everyone to step into the large steel cylinder that would be taking them upstairs. They all entered, and once inside they had some relative privacy.
“Ma’am, is that something we can report to the ARA?” A younger member of her team asked.
“Just drop it, Lily.” Oliver told her calmly, but with enough briskness to make it clear he was serious.
The subject of discussion quickly turned towards what the Winner’s Circle was going to look like on Mars, since this was the first Martian race Valeria had participated in where she finished in the top three. The last time she had raced on Mars was when she was still a Fairchild, and she’d come in 6th in a twenty-four-seat race. Her performance in that race had actually been incredible, but the rules for the Winner Circle were the same then as they were now. Only the top three were permitted to join.
When they arrived at the top floor, they had expected to find a festive mood waiting for them. It was the Winner’s Circle, after all! These functions were always pleasant to attend, and Valeria came in the top three so often that she knew what was and wasn’t normal for them. What they found instead was…
An uncomfortable, muted affair. The Association always hired locally when they needed to fill low level positions like custodians and servers, and there was no reason that habit would change just because they were on Mars.
A quick survey of the visible staff revealed that they were an irritated looking and sour bunch. Stern faced, here to do their job and nothing more. Winner’s Circles were normally staffed by people that wanted to be here, and who wouldn’t? The Accelerated Racing Association was the largest sports corporation in the Solar System and in the Winner’s Circle you got to meet with the most famous drivers from Earth to Jupiter.
When you waited a table in the Winner’s Circle you were waiting on celebrities! But from the mood in this room, it was clear that the celebrity everyone wanted to wait on was absent. Martian pride, indeed!
Like the tiger from before had told them, the room was already occupied by the 2nd and 3rd place finishers and their teams, each seated at the tables assigned to them with food and drink already spilling out from the kitchens to satisfy them all.
Though they were on the top floor, the whole floor was not dedicated to the Winner’s Circle. The room they were in was more like a pie slice cut from the top level of the Dome. It was furnished like a small dining hall, fit for maybe fifty people if you wanted everyone to stay comfortable. With the Dome of ARA-D 01 being round like all the others on Mars, the inside corner of the ‘slice’ was the door that likely led to the staff areas and kitchens, and on the opposite wall were the windows that looked out at the sandstorm that still raged outside.
The sides of the room were white, but they’d been decorated with large painted panels, alternating in color from red, to white, and then to grey, which were Valeria’s team colors, since she was the 1st place winner. Everyone in her group could tell that the staff had been hasty with their decorations, because one of the panels was crooked by just a hair, which was not something the ARA would have normally let slip. There were other decorations in Valeria’s colors, but everything seemed slipshod with its placement.
As Valeria’s group of eight entered, the rest of the room noticed their arrival. A few people began to clap from the two occupied tables, which quickly caught on until everyone seated was clapping for Valeria, a few even standing. It was very polite of them and greatly appreciated considering the sour mood radiating off the staff.
The first of them to stand up from their seat was none other than Felicity Dare, who’d clawed her way into third place after Charles Lawson’s death and Richard Killroy’s fall from grace. Taking Felicity’s lead, the 2nd place finisher, Van Thresh, stood up to join her while all the rest of their team members kept their seats as the top three finishers approached each other in the center of the Winner’s Circle. Behind her, Oliver was herding her own team towards the empty table that was meant for them.
Now that the three drivers were alone, it occurred to Valeria that this was the first time the three of them had been within ten feet of each other since the race had started. Drivers seldom had a chance to mingle right after a race as the news crews all wanted their pound of flesh as soon as they left their bikes.
“Congratulations, Valeria!” Van Thresh broke the ice with a charming smile, sticking out his hand with a flourish.
The driver of the Quantum Pain was a short and agile looking rat, his features looking like they were the inspiration for his own sharp and deadly looking bike. Valeria was impressed he’d made it to 2nd with his bike, as anything built by 777 was notoriously bad at making tight turns and the Death Valley section of the track would have been murder on a bike like his. She was eager to watch the recordings of the race to see how he might have pulled it off.
There were a lot of things she’d need to watch from this race, but that could all wait until they were on their shuttle tomorrow. She did most of her research while she traveled as there wasn’t much else to do in those in-between moments of time between being planet side.
Valeria took his hand, shook it, finding his grip to be a bit effeminate. Felicity was already extending her own, and when she took the eagle’s hand into her own the grip was noticeably stronger, though the interaction was made suddenly feminine when the other woman drew herself close for the typical side hug to which women were accustomed to giving each other.
“And congratulations to both of you! I’m happy everyone made it up here in one piece.” She told them both.
“Only just barely, my bike will be in the shop for a week just to clean the sand out from its guts.” Felicity replied.
“I fared remarkably well for such a track like this. I was expecting far worse, but I think I was fortunate that I lagged a little behind in the first half so I could start exploiting everyone else’s blunders.” Van added, unwittingly helping Valeria figure out how he might have reached 2nd with a 777 bike.
“I was surprised to see up ahead of me, you did good with that slippery thing you drive.” The eagle replied.
“Have they tried to poison anyone yet?” Valeria interrupted the other two drivers before they could argue the sins and virtues of driving a 777 Vehicular Technologies bike on a track that was better suited to something with a tighter grip on the road.
Van Thresh answered first with a wry smile.
“Oh? Why, I’m shocked you’d suggested they’d be capable of it.” Van said with a little laugh.
“They,” Felicity then added with an emphasis on the staff with a glance of her eyes, “Have been quite moody since we arrived. They were ripping down Richard’s colors when my team got here.”
Valeria glanced around, looking again at the staff again. All sour, indeed. She wondered if they actually knew the real results of the race yet, since the ARA sometimes kept their staff in the dark to avoid favoritism or retaliation. Surely, being on Mars, the media blackout might have been enforced a little more heavily on some staffers more than others.
They’d obviously know that their favorite to win had to have lost, since he clearly wasn’t here with them, but that didn’t mean they would know why.
But, of course, that tiger from before knew, and there was always a chance that someone else could have let something slip. It was certainly something Valeria felt rightfully anxious about.
“Oh, I missed that. How confident must they have been to think that their boy would have taken 1st? I hope they humble themselves.” Van said, reminding Valeria of her own comment she’d made to the tiger from before.
“Pride before the fall, as they say.” Valeria added, knowing that things weren’t going to change any time soon on Mars if the local news reports were anything to go by.
“Ah, but not today! I hate Mars. Now, though it has been a pleasure chatting, I would like to get back to my table and celebrate being the highlight of my own evening!” Van said, lifting his hand with a flourish to bid his farewell before excusing himself with a nod.
The two women nodded to him in reply as he left, Felicity being the one to utter a parting goodbye before returning her attention back to Valeria. When the woman next made a sigh, Valeria knew she was about to excuse herself as well.
“I should be getting back to my table, too; it was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Ren. And thanks for that pit maneuver you pulled. It’s not often I get to enjoy the Winner’s Circle.” She said with a wink and returned to her table.
Valeria said her own goodbyes, smiling. She’d skimmed the career history of every driver she raced against today, but Felicity was one of the ones she’d known about prior to this race. The eagle was a competent driver, for sure, but tended to hover in the middle of the pack in most races. Competent, yes, but lacking the grit where it counted most. Even after taking 3rd in this race, the eagle probably didn’t have the results to qualify for the 8th Circuit.
With the pleasantries complete, Valeria walked back to her table to find an open seat reserved for her between her husband and Randall, her team’s Chief Medical Technician. She sat, and a waitress appeared next to her asking what she would like to drink. She looked around the table, saw there was already a glass of water present, and then turned to the waitress to ask for a small bowl of lemons. She made it a point to not drink at social functions like these, even if she was celebrating.
“You could let yourself have a little of something.” Her husband told her after the waitress left.
She shrugged.
“Are you trying to be a bad influence on me?” She asked, and he smiled back at her.
“No, you do that plenty on your own, but I’m having a few beers.” He told her, and she looked at what he was drinking and confirmed that it was some kind of beer judging by the color and the foam.
“What kind?” She asked, unable to figure out the drink just by its look alone.
“No idea. I just asked for a good beer, and they brought this. Don’t recognize the flavor so it might be something Martian.” He told her.
“It any good?” She asked, almost longing for a chance to unwind with a beer no matter how much she was loathe to admit it.
To answer her, he picked up his glass and offered it to her for a taste, and she reluctantly took it for a sip before quickly handing it back. It was especially bitter for a beer, and too strong. She couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be a cheap or expensive beer, since the flavor was too different from what she was used to. If it was Martian in origin, then there was no telling how much of this drink was actual alcohol and how much was some kind of artificial substitute.
The only beer she regularly drank was CockMilk and that was just a cheap novelty beer that owed its existence to the fact that a much younger; and much edgier, Valeria Ren drank it almost exclusively. It wasn’t a good beer by any stretch, but it had a high enough proof to get a girl drunk and that’s exactly what she’d been drinking it for when she was still in her early 20’s. The fact it was called CockMilk just made it that much more attractive to a younger Valeria, since it just sounded too perfect for a depressed young woman that was trying to self-destruct.
In the present day, for a much-matured Valeria in her 30’s, it was the only beer she could tolerate out of habit. She was also still taking their sponsorship deals, since they were one of the very few companies that stood by her when she was fishtailing her way through depression and substance abuse.
“Not my first choice.” She told him, and he chuckled back before taking a big drink from the glass.
Valeria turned her attention back to the table, her team, and the appetizers on display. There was food on the table that she didn’t want to trust. Mars wasn’t known for its seafood, and yet here there were bowls of boiled shrimp that everyone else seemed to be enjoying. She avoided the shrimp and instead chose to instead pig out on the cheese smothered French fries. Potatoes were probably Mars’ only valuable crop, considering their economy was primarily built around mining and fabrication.
Their celebration consisted mostly of food and drink, which included main courses that were brought out after everyone had put in an order; the menu selection being a mix of seafood and North American inspired cuisine.
After the meals had been eaten a news crew arrived and they took photos and video of the festivities before settling down for some brief exit interviews with the three drivers and select members of their teams. Oliver was briefly interviewed for his role as Pit Chief for the Noblisse Oblige. This was the ARA’s last chance to milk them for all they were worth as they’d be leaving early the next day, and the Association loved to fill their film reels to the brim, so they’d have plenty of footage to play on repeat in future segments as they prepared the headlines for upcoming races.
Valeria didn’t know where the other drivers in the Dome were going after this, but she was scheduled to participate in a race on Titan, and then after that she’d be flying back to Earth for two additional races before leaving again to make a trip to Ganymede. A twenty-four-seat, two thirty-seat, and then another twenty-four-seat race respectively. She was going to be very busy for the next few weeks. In order to race in the ARA‘s Professional Circuit at this high of a level you had to be willing to travel constantly and make personal sacrifices to put your career ahead of everything else.
Having her husband by her side made things easier, but with them having three small children at home there were complications. It would be too rough on their kids to make them travel so much, so they stayed with her sister and brother-in-law while she and their father were away. Valeria and her husband did their best to schedule her races so that they could make regular trips back to Earth so they could see their kids and be there for a few days before leaving again. She kept herself so busy preparing for every race that it dulled the pain of being apart from them for so long between races.
Whenever they were home, she tried to make up for her absence by spending as much time with her children as she could, but next year was Caelum Run XIII and she couldn’t afford to slack off and spend too much time at home. She had to push herself and make sure she had as much racing time under her belt as possible. She already knew she was qualifying for the Run, but so were hundreds of other drivers and the Run only allowed twelve people to participate. She had to push even harder to push her Driver Score as high as it could go so that there would be no questions about it.
The Selection Committee would be forced to pick her as one of the twelve drivers for the Caelum Run.
Once the news crews had finished getting the footage they wanted, the three teams of drivers were finally free to return to their rooms. Oliver had, as he’d said, drank a few beers. He was a big bear so it had little effect on him, but Valeria could tell by the sound of his voice that he was feeling a buzz. She’d managed to avoid all alcohol save for the one sip she’d taken from her husband’s drink.
Normally, she let Oliver be the one to issue directions to her team, but since she was the only person sober in their group, she told everyone to head to their rooms and make sure they were ready to head out the following morning. Shortly after the Martian sunrise they’d need to take a land ferry from ARA-D 01 to Dome 07 where they would then board a mag-rail that would take them to the Martian Solar Spaceport. It would take at least three hours to reach the spaceport, since the ARA had been required Martian Government to build their tracks as far away from civilization as could be achieved comfortably.
She and her husband exchanged goodnights with the rest of the team, then broke away to their own private suite. Once the door slid shut behind them her husband grabbed her roughly from behind, his thick arms wrapping around her shoulders to hug her back tight to his chest, making her ‘oof’ as the wind left her lungs.
“I’m glad you’re in one piece.” He told her quietly, dropping his muzzle down into the crook of her neck. His arms relaxed their grip, and she could breathe again. As he kissed her neck, she cocked her head to the side to give him more room to plant even more kisses while holding her tight to him.
“I am, too.” She replied, knowing he’d kept his concern for her bottled up until they were alone.
“You need to stop doing that maneuver, Val.” He urged her, and she reached up her hands to find his, wrapping her fingers tight around them, clinging with affection.
“I needed to come in 1st.” Was the only answer she could give.
She knew it was dangerous and could have easily wrecked her own bike in the attempt, or damaged the Noblisse Oblige in such a way that the storm could have gotten into the interior. Of all the drivers that crashed in today’s race eight of them were directly caused by the storm, the rest were a combination of the storm and other drivers. Valeria could have also caused the death of Richard Killroy, like he’d done to Charles Lawson.
A pit maneuver was a deadly tool to use on any track, but as everyone in the ARA knew, it was her signature move.
The Association’s pundits would no doubt be taking sides and arguing for and against her decision to use it. Some would say Valeria had been deliberately trying to kill Richard Killroy, others accusing them in turn of victim blaming since Richard had struck her first. Others still would be accusing her victim of being stupid, as ‘everyone’ knew that Valeria Ren only used a pit maneuver when she was on the last leg of a race and wanted to guarantee her place. It was an effective weapon to make sure she got the position she wanted, to knock someone out of her way and keep them there.
In any other instance, the mere threat of a pit maneuver was enough to keep other drivers away from her since they all knew her history with the ARA. The little girl that had watched her daddy die to a pit maneuver had grown up to master the weapon that took him from her. They knew she’d do it to them, too. So far, no had died from her using the technique, but no one wanted to be the first.
“You also need to come home.” He reminded her. She knew he and everyone at home was concerned about her using it.
“Oliver.” She said, with a tone of voice that told him to stop, the bear breathing a sigh into the crook of her neck, but he didn’t break his grip on her, nor did she let go of his hands.
“We both stink, let’s hit the showers.” He told her suddenly, pulling away and moving his hands to her shoulders to push her towards the bathroom door.
She allowed herself to be herded into the luxurious bathroom provided for them by the Association, and then for the next hour the two of them vented their frustrations by putting their room’s sound proofing to the test. Once they were both finished with each other, Oliver told her it was time to drink, which meant he thought they needed to get drunk before calling it a night. The ARA was well aware of her love for trashy beer and always made sure there was a case of CockMilk beer in the minifridge waiting for her, and maybe she had a few too many of them that night. Her husband had certainly hit the liquor a little too hard considering he’d already drank a couple beers at dinner.
When morning came, she was glad that she wasn’t the only person on her crew nursing a hangover. She and her husband looked the worst off, but none of her teammates could deny that they’d dipped into the complementary booze the ARA stocked their rooms with. The ARA could be accused of many things, but refusing to pamper their highest ranked drivers and their crews was never one of them. All the hard work she put in to qualify for the Caelum Run had pushed her out of her old Platinum Rank and into the rare and coveted Diamond, the highest Rank in the Association.
Once they boarded the land ferry, they all quickly snapped into high alert as the media blackout that had kept ARA-D 01 isolated from the rest of Mars broke down. The news of violent rioting came quickly to everyone’s phones and tablets. Five riots had started shortly after the race ended, turning four different Martian Domes into miniaturized warzones as the local population vented their outrage on the streets. During the night those riots grew in size until eleven Domes were under martial law with law enforcement battling rioters in the streets in a vain attempt to wrestle back control.
The land ferry that carried them to Dome 07 was stopped in the middle of the desert so that a company of Martian Armed Forces could link up with the ARA security personnel that was already present.
Of all the Domes to break out into riots, Dome 07 was one of the few that didn’t, and that was only due to the overwhelming military presence that marched through the streets as Valeria and her crew disembarked the ferry at the station. She, and everyone else that was leaving ARA-D 01, were escorted by armed guards to the mag-rail, and then towards the space port where they were allowed to skip all security checks so they could be on their shuttles and off Mars as soon as possible.
Once they were on the shuttle, owned and operated by the ARA, everyone was able to stop holding their breaths, and once they’d launched with the captain telling them they’d achieved Martian orbit, they all relaxed for the first time in close to four hours.
“I’d scold you, but they’d be doing this no matter how you won yesterday.” Her husband told her, having taken a comfy seat next to her in the passenger cabin. Since they were going to Titan, it looked like Valeria’s team was the only group taking this shuttle, apart from some ARA personnel that had their own reasons to be going in the same direction.
“It’s such a lovely place.” She replied sarcastically, referring to the wonderful planet that was Mars.
As she settled herself down in the luxury of ARA private transportation, she took out her digital tablet and began to review the footage of yesterday’s race in detail while the rest of her crew took naps, ate snacks, or otherwise enjoyed being treated like celebrities by the shuttle staff. The ARA took good care of the drivers and crews that made them money in ad revenue and good ratings.
After a while of watching the footage, she asked her husband to grab out her notebook. Oliver reached down, rummaging through one of their carry on bags until he found a thick, worn out looking pad of paper like you’d buy for a child. Her kids were still in school, so they always had spare supplies to steal if mom or dad ever needed a pencil.
He handed her the notebook, and she flipped through it until she found the first blank page in the booklet. She wrote the name of a driver from yesterday’s race at the top of the page. Below his name she started writing everything she saw him do right and wrong during the race, and then wrote down what killed him. When she was done, she turned the page and repeated the process with another driver.
She did this for the next couple of hours until she had twenty-nine new entries in her notebook. When she turned the last page, she wrote her own name at the top and started critiquing her own performance.
After she finished her own performance review, she counted the blank pages that were left in her notebook, then asked her husband to pull out an empty one she’d packed. He did, and then she opened to page one, double clicked her pen, and then used her tablet to look up the roster for her next race on Titan. She had twenty-three rivals to study before she got there, and only so many hours left in the day.
If everyone knew how meticulous she was about studying her opponents then they might have feared her for something other than a pit maneuver.
| [Rank] | [Driver] | [Bike] | [Placement] |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIA | Valeria Ren | Noblisse Oblige | 1st |
| SVR | Felicity Dare | Dour Behemoth | 2nd |
| GLD | Van Thresh | Quantum Pain | 3rd |
| SVR | Richard Killroy | Fair Duke | 4th |
| GLD | Bri Nelson | Bad Manners | 5th |
| DIA | Wilts Brack | The Vengenace | 6th |
| GLD | Carlos Herrera | El Loco | 7th |
| SVR | Don Shackle | Violent Shade | 8th |
| PLT | Duke Odina | Massive Attack | 9th |
| GLD | Vera Tyson | Velvet Cruise | 10th |
| PLT | Nick Dawson | Cheap Shot | 11th |
| SVR | Eugene Cha | Seven Sins | 12th |
| BRZ | Excel Softly | Electric Shout | 13th |
| PLT | Tallulah Dean | Autumn Crash | 14th |
| BRZ | Feddy Juno | Rock Monarch | 15th |
| BRZ | Gillian Valentinus | Take Down | Crash Out |
| GLD | Yvette Frost | Iced Over | Crash Out |
| IRN | Gregory Hilton | True Belief | Crash Out |
| GLD | Charles Lawson | Ruby Rocket | Deceased |
| SVR | Mercury Star | Parse It | Crash Out |
| GLD | Missy Remington | Polar Strike | Crash Out |
| SVR | Michael Daggers | Total Recall | Deceased |
| IRN | Aisha Chatti | Crazy Girlfriend | Crash Out |
| GLD | Red Baker | Crush Shuffle | Crash Out |
| SVR | Brum Aslen | Poker Face | Deceased |
| N/A | Rico Roughneck | Power On | Crash Out |
| PLT | Ryan O'Brien | Irish Laddy | Crash Out |
| IRN | Brenda Colt | Five Iron | Crash Out |
| BRZ | Nines Drocker | Course Correct | Deceased |
| SVR | Tommy Nook | Debts Paid | Crash Out |
Today's Race!
"Welcome back racing fans far and wide! Let's bask in the sunshine today, right here on ARA 01.37, the only place where the hottest racing news gets to meet the sand and surf of Ahola Hawaii! We're about to begin coverage of the day's second race here at Midas at Makolea! The commentators for today's races are Sam Souther, July Jazz, and the always lovely Ewe Euphoria! The Midas track is boasting a star studded cast today with a majority of drivers coming from the Silver rank and higher! If you're a big fan of watching high rollers bet it all or nothing, then today's races are surely set to give everyone watching at home a jackpot to remember! Welcome to Midas!"
It’s another brilliant day in the sun, racing fans, and say Aloha, because we’re here in Hawaii and the temperature outside is hot, hot, hot! We’re nearly at 91 degrees Fahrenheit and the asphalt is absolutely cooking! But nothing in the forecast is as hot as what’s laid out for the viewers at home! Today we’re taking you to the Big Island of Hawaii at the absolutely resplendent resort track of Midas at Makolea!
And there’s no better place to be than at Midas! They’ve got the largest casino in all the islands, and when you’re not down at the tables testing your luck with the dealer, they have three of the finest 5 Star restaurants you can choose from! And of course, who can take a trip to Hawaii without going down to the beaches to experience all that beautiful sun, sand, and surf! Kick back, relax, and enjoy being a king for a change right here at Midas at Makolea!
Please visit the Accelerated Racing Association’s discount offerings before today’s race comes to a close! Midas at Makolea has partnered with the ARA to offer as much as 30% off on all reservations made during today’s race while supplies last!
Visit www.AcceleratedRacing.ara/SponsorshipDiscounts/ to learn more!
To those just tuning in that aren’t familiar with the track at Midas, don’t let your television fool you!
This track might look small compared to the majority of the Association’s asphalt offerings, but the ARA pooled together the brain power of their finest engineers to create the perfect track to make even the most steady handed of racers lose their cool! Midas at Makolea is a mile and a half of nonstop deadly twists and turns with not a single straightaway in sight, and today’s race is scheduled for a full twenty laps!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that’s twenty laps of teeth clenching, knuckle whitening, sweat spilling laps of danger where everything is your enemy from the concrete walls to your fellow man! If our drivers today aren’t scraping their paint off on the walls then they’re swapping colors with each other, as this track is designed to force everyone into an intense free for all where there simply isn’t enough room for everyone to be hugging those tight turns!
So, today’s race is sure set to stun, and we’ve got a roster of eighteen of the Association’s finest down there getting ready to steal the stage!
The ARA is happy to welcome back driver Yuni Savora! The young ex-model and adult performer took an extended maternity leave last year, but not even motherhood could keep this bombshell from busting up the track with her bike, the Full Frontal, manufactured by Sollan Verti!
And joining her we have two other incredible veterans with us today!
Duke Odina is here driving the Massive Attack, a heavily modified chassis manufactured by Chang Zhong! Everyone here at Midas is eager to see if he can pull off a big win after his terrible performance in the Professional Circuit this year. Duke has been a popular, well-known face of the Association for nearly eight years, and it’d be a shame watching someone with such a lengthy career fizzle out at the finish line!
And, last but not least, we have none other than Lundi Quotte, driving the incredible Gemini Vale, manufactured by Lunar Technical, LLC! This is one woman that can’t help but set the betting market alight today as her performance this season has been a real sight to behold! She’s one of the fan favorites for next year’s Caelum Run, but the year isn’t over yet and there’s still more races to come!
Welcome to Midas, everyone!
Down on the asphalt of Midas of Makolea, standing in the sunlight of the Big Island, were eighteen drivers. Each wore a jumpsuit, helmets tucked under their arms, and waiting for the signal from the loudspeakers. Next to each driver was their bike, large and powerful two-wheeled machines. Each metal monster on display could reach tops speeds in the hundreds of miles per hour, and every bike was painted and polished to match its driver’s jumpsuit.
One driver in particular was more important than the rest, a lone 26-year-old woman. The brown hare, her ears high and alert, stood silently as she waited for the race to start, her hand extended towards her bike to touch it gently.
Lundi Quotte ran her fingertips along the exterior of the Gemini Vale. Standing nearly as tall as her shoulders, the bike next to her was in its prime. Its polished exterior had just come out of a spit shine and deep cleaning, the purple and magenta paintjob sparkling under Earth’s sunlight. The gold trim around the edges popping especially bright. As she stood under the sun, she felt the heat and humidity. It was high noon, and the sky was clear. Sunlight beat down on everyone as the asphalt beneath their feet seemed to sizzle under their boots.
“Five minutes till race start.” The voice over the loudspeaker called.
“’Bout time.” One of her rivals said out loud from behind her.
Lundi ignored him, she was too focused on her own little world, the space that included only her and her bike. Her fingers continued to tiptoe across the hull of the Vale, gently like she was tickling a newborn baby. This was her bike, and she was its driver. She drew in a deep breath and let it out just as slow. This was her first-time racing at Midas, and her first time ever being in Hawaii.
It was the smallest track for the Professional Circuit, nestled in the center of a massive tourist hotspot. This part of the coastline used to be a nature preserve, off limits to any major construction, but somewhere along the line the ARA got permission to build a resort here, and with it came this little novelty track.
With how short this track was, every bike parked on the asphalt right now could drive this track from start to finish in a few seconds if you stretched it out straight. Everyone’s top speeds were just too fast. This felt more like a track you’d reserve exclusively for the Juvie Circuit, since those bikes were hardly capable of competing with even the slowest Pro Circuit bikes.
But despite knowing that every bike here could run the track in seconds, Lundi knew it was too twisty and curly for that kind of lap time. It just wasn’t realistic. She would have to throttle back her speed and feather her brake nonstop to maintain a steady, controlled, low-speed peak in order to hug the corners and keep herself clear of other bikes. She’d never raced this track before, but she’d done training runs on other tracks in the lead up to this one to shore up her skill on hugging a wall like glue. She could probably complete a lap in 40 seconds, she figured, but that’s if she was driving solo. She was going up against seventeen other people that were all going to be trying the same thing.
She drew in another breath and let it out slow. This would be a short, but intense race.
“Drivers, you may now enter your bikes!” The loudspeaker called out, and Lundi lifted her helmet and pulled it over her head, making sure her ears were carefully tucked inside without getting pinched.
Loud, excited cheering was booming out from the tiered grandstands that overlooked the gathered drivers. Several thousand people were here on vacation and watching the race live from their front row seats while drones flew noisily overhear to film everything.
All eighteen drivers standing on the track reached for the buttons on their bikes that would pop their cockpits. Lundi found hers and listened as the Gemini Vale popped open with a hiss, the magenta compartment lifting skyward before rotating up on a hinge like the lid of a soup can. The cockpit of the Vale was compact, just like her. Her bike was a small and lightweight machine.
She lifted one leg and started climbing into her bike.
Once the first leg was in, the second soon joined it, and she began to wiggle her body backwards, belly down, into the body of the Gemini Vale until the walls of the cabin were rubbing up against her elbows and shoulders. It was a claustrophobic space that held you tight like an ill fitted glove once you squeezed yourself in, but Lundi wasn’t claustrophobic. The tight embrace of the Vale was comforting like one of her grandmother’s hugs.
She crossed her arms in front of her chest, wiggled her legs into position so that her feet were touching her foot pedals behind her, then with one hand she tapped the button below her chin that would close the lid.
The Gemini Vale’s cabin rotated back on top of her, then slid down to seal her inside. For a brief moment she was bathed in darkness until the lights came online, a series of small screens and running lights glowed in the darkness ahead of her. The cockpit interior, now tightly sealed around her, contained all of her vital controls.
The dash cameras all activated, their dim glow turning bright white before the video feeds all kicked in at once to give her multiple views around her. The center monitor showed her exactly what was in front of her in high resolution, with two smaller screens on either side that gave her a panoramic view of what was happening both to her left and her right side, as well as one behind. It was an unusual angle to watch, but after having raced with them hundreds of times, Lundi looked at the world through those camera feeds as easily as she did with her own two eyes.
Lundi pressed another series of buttons, then pressed the ignition. Her engine roared to life, no longer powered solely by its battery. The rumble of the engine was muffled, but clear as day through the vibration of the chassis under her stomach. She reached in front of her, grabbing the gold-plated tip of a small auxiliary cable. Pulling it out of the dash, she plugged it in directly to the underside of her helmet, giving her a direct hardwire connection to the Vale’s built-in radio.
The speakers built into her helmet woke up with a crackling noise before falling silent. Apart from the dull rumble of the Vale she couldn’t hear anything else outside of her bike. During the race, she’d be able to hear the thunderous roar of the track, but her helmet and cockpit were both shielded enough to dampen any unnecessary noise from the outside world.
“Test.” She said aloud, testing the microphone in her helmet.
“Hearing you loud and clear, Lundi. Good luck out there!” Her Chief Strategist replied over the radio.
“Thanks.” She replied back. She didn’t rely on her radio too often during her races, as there wasn’t much for any crew to do once the race started. It was mostly for emergency purposes should she or someone else crash.
And all around her the other bikes were revving their engines. She drew in another deep breath, then let it out slow, thumbing the mute button on the dash to silence her microphone. She didn’t need to subject her crew to the ASMR of her racing noises.
She knew there wasn’t much time left before it started. Very soon.
She was in the middle of the pack with nine bikes ahead of her and eight behind her, and the bikes in front were all going to have an unfair head start on her. Her Chief Strategist had given her the rundown on everyone she was competing against today, and there were some strong contenders with half the track boasting better acceleration than her own.
The Vale was a good bike, but it was best suited to straightaways where she could exploit her top speed to the fullest. She wasn’t going to have that luxury here today, and she’d be throttling back to rely on the Vale’s other assets. Her Chief Technician had her tires swapped out for this race, ones with a different tread that could bite down on the road better and had a lower melting point than what she was accustomed to driving with. They’d heat up faster and grip the asphalt better.
“All drivers! On your mark!” The voice shouted over both the loudspeaker and through the speakers in her helmet. She put both hands on the handles on her bike, squeezing them and feeling the hard textured rubber under her fingers and deep inside her palms.
“Get set!” Louder still. The red lights flanking the finish line were burning bright hot like a warning.
“GO!” A gunshot echoed in the distance, though she couldn’t hear it through the walls of the Gemini Vale.
The red lights in front of her flicked from red to green, and she floored it. All eighteen bikes on the track tore forward, Lundi feathering her brake as she maneuvered to the inside of the track where she planned to hug the inside wall of the course.
As she was doing that, every other driver was doing the same as everyone tried to cram themselves to the left side as they rapidly flew through the first turn of the Midas at Makolea. Sparks were flying from bikes both in front of her and behind her as drivers were colliding with each other, physically jockeying for the best position in the narrow track.
Lundi collided with a bike on her right side, his rear end bumping into her front, forcing her to feather her brake to lag back several inches so the two bikes were no longer at risk of touching. She darted her eyes to her left side camera and saw how dangerously close she was to the concrete wall that wrapped around the track.
Her hands were gripping the handles like steel clamps, her eyes forward again, waiting for her chance to break rank and take the lead.
She tried gunning it the moment a narrow opening presented itself, a white and gold bike having leapt away from the inside wall to floor it. The Vale picked up speed, Lundi watching with alert eyes as the bike ahead of her forced his way in between two other bikes, sparks flying through the air as their machines clashed.
Another bike appeared beside her, a loud bang, and then she was almost losing control of the Vale as the track turned sharply with every bike in the pack colliding against each other as everyone was trying to micromanage their brakes and accelerators on a track that was far too small for bikes so fast.
For the first time in a long time, Lundi felt fear.
Twenty laps later, fourteen drivers crossed the finish line with four others having dropped out of the race by crash out. As Lundi let the Gemini Vale coast forward slowly, following the instructions of the men with orange flags, she was gripping her handles tighter than she’d ever had before.
Midas at Makolea had fooled her.
She thought she’d come prepared for it, with her handful of practice runs on other tracks and her brand-new tires, but she’d been overconfident. She’d been overwhelmed. When she was instructed to park inside her designated bay, she activated the parking brake with her left foot pedal. She needed to turn off the Gemini Vale now, but her hands didn’t want to let go of the handles. She had to make herself let go of them, and with a shaky hand she started pressing the buttons on the dash ahead of her to shut off the ignition before popping the seal on the Vale.
As she started crawling her body out of the tight confines of her bike, she was being swarmed by her pit crew who helped her out safely before turning their attention to her bike’s condition. She stood up on two feet feeling like she’d not been upright in days, the cramped space of her bike, and the intensity of the race, distorting reality for her. It felt like she was standing on legs made of wet clay, soft and sluggish.
“You did great, Lundi! That was a damn dangerous track, but you pulled off a great performance!” Ty, her Chief Technician was telling her between claps on her shoulders, but his voice sounded muffled to her ears. She reached up to remove the helmet and the world around her began to sound normal again with the sound of dozens upon dozens of people swarming man and machine alike as the garage was filled with post-race frenzy.
Her Chief took her helmet away from her, clapping her again on the shoulder. She discovered her lips were dry, and for the first time realized how much she was panting. She licked her lips, nodding to him, as she tried to calm her breathing down. Her heart was still pounding in her chest like she was still on the track.
She turned back to face the Vale and saw the damage. Nasty dents and scratch marks ran all along the side of her bike, looking like the claw marks from some kind of snarling beast. And this was just the left side of her bike. The other side had it worse. Halfway through the race and she was dragging the Vale along the wall just like the rest of the drivers. The rest of the damage was from other bikes that were fighting with her for space. There was so much paint smeared on her bike that she could tell which bikes it all came from.
It was insane that this was a legal track for the Pro Circuit!
Midas at Makolea had no straight shots that let her take advantage of the Gemini Vale’s speed. She’d struggled the entire race, feeling timid for the first time in years as she failed time and time again to grab an opening to climb further up in position. Every inch of that track was like driving along the steel of a corkscrew, and that wasn’t something the Vale was kitted out for, even with the new tires!
She was in 9th place at the start of the race and after twenty laps she only just barely clawed her way to 4th place, and that was only because four other drivers crashed out. Lundi’s skill had only managed to pull her ahead by one placement. Inside, she felt like a failure. She’d never finished a race before where she only moved up one position from where she started. She hadn’t earned that 4th place finish!
“Ms. Quotte!” A voice was calling out to her excitedly from somewhere else in the garage.
She looked, saw what it was, and sighed. She wasn’t in the right headspace to deal with them, but now the news teams were swarming the garage like a pack of paparazzi, and a whole crew of them were heading in her direction with the intent to interview her.
As she watched the crew rapidly approach with their hands full of camera equipment she drew in another deep breath and let it out slowly. She tried flexing her hands to calm them down but was forced to cross her arms to hide them in her armpits so no one could see how much they were still trembling.
“Ms. Quotte, what a race! Can you tell us what it was like out there!” The reporter asked, sounding breathless as he stuck out his microphone for her to speak as the camerawoman next to him aimed her lens straight at her face. She smiled, but on the inside, she felt shaken, messed up from top to bottom. She was furious at herself for underestimating a track and failing to do better.
“Gotta say, Midas had me surprised. It’s a hell of a track!” She replied, her own voice still sounding breathless, but she did her best to hide it behind a fake show of confidence.
“I don’t see how you could have done better, Lundi. Look here.” Rod, her Chief Strategist was pacing in front of an illuminated display that was being projected by a laptop onto the opposite wall. She and half her team were sitting in the small conference room that they’d rented out at the hotel they were staying at for Midas at Makolea race.
This was the race debriefing, something they always did to do a rundown on what went right and what went wrong and doing it all while the race was still fresh in everyone’s minds. This didn’t just include Lundi’s driving performance, but also the performance of her Chief Strategist and her Chief Technician. They all had their own roles to play in the success of failure of a race.
Rod, her Strategist, had been hired to do one thing, review and micromanage her race footage and performance, as well as monitor the footage coming from other drivers from any track she was going to find herself driving on. He was like a football coach and researcher all in one, telling her what plays to make when she stepped out onto the field, and advising her on what weapons to expect her enemies to wield.
The mouse was now tracing his hand along the wall to a western part of the Midas track, before he stopped his hand and tapped at a specific part of the track.
“Rick, roll the footage to timestamp 04:09:22, it’ll be in the fifth lap.” He said, and Rick, one of the Junior Technicians working under Ty, started clicking with his mouse to navigate through windows to change from the map display to the video recording. Moments later, video was playing out on the wall.
“Ok, stop, rewind thirty seconds.” Rod said, and Rick did as he was told.
Lundi sat with her face locked in a permanent scowl, arms crossed over the table with her chin resting on her arms. She both felt and looked like a pile of shit, ears laid low down her back.
“Play it.” He said, staring intently at the wall.
The footage began to play, the feed coming from one of the dozens of remote-controlled drones that filmed every race. The video showed a part of the race that Lundi remembered well. What was happening on screen was Tina Tracer losing control of her bike, leading her to nosedive into the concrete wall before spinning out of control and taking out Mercury Star. Two of the four crashes for this race happened at the same time, and right in front of Lundi.
The footage then showed her on the screen, making a tight right turn, steering away from the inside wall to dodge Tina’s wreck, but also threading the needle to avoid colliding with Mercury’s own wreckage as it skidded to a halt in the middle of the track.
“Lundi, that was an incredible maneuver, especially with the Vale! You were so close to them that I was honestly ready to throw in the towel when I saw that happen! Anyone else in your shoes with the Vale’s performance and they’d have turned that into a three-car pile-up!” He told her, looking back at her with determination.
Everyone on her crew knew she was self-flagellating herself over today’s race, and doing their best to peptalk her, but it wasn’t working.
“Rod, let’s just wind it down. We can only go over so many minute-long laps before our eyeballs pop out.” Tony, Lundi’s Chief Medical Technician spoke up, drawing everyone’s attention to the stoat.
“We’re not even at the halfway point! We’ve got a lot more to cover, we can’t quit now!” Rod replied, flabbergasted at the sudden suggestion that they might break tradition and not do a full debriefing of a race.
“This has been, by far, the most stressful race Lundi’s been in this year. I think we should step away from the table for now and come back at it tomorrow after she’s gotten some sleep. That’s my medical opinion, if Lundi agrees.” Tony said, looking to her for guidance.
Now everyone was looking at her. She pulled her hands over to her face and began rubbing at herself until she slapped them to the table.
“Let’s do this tomorrow.” She agreed, feeling sick of herself, and wanting to crawl under a rock.
Rod shrugged, looking like he might protest, but then gave up on it shortly after to agree that it would be best to try again after everyone had rested up.
Even as the meeting wound down, she wanted to kick herself all the way back to her room, but one tradition that couldn’t be broken was and has always been to have a team dinner after a race, and so that’s what they did even if she wanted to spend her night alone and sulking. As much as she wanted to crawl under a rock, she had enough good sense to know that it wouldn’t help her or anyone else out if she did.
Something her Grams always told her was to smile even if you weren’t happy, because then you’d just be making everyone else sad when they saw how you really felt. Keep smiling, she’d say even when Lundi knew she didn’t mean it. Just gotta keep smilin’. She’d been screwing up at that today, and as they made their plans to go out and eat, she tried to smile more.
But she sure as hell wasn’t having dinner at the Midas with so many other drivers there. She wanted to get away from the resort, the track, all of it. Lundi had her Chief Tech call a shuttle and an ARA chauffeur swung by the hotel entrance and picked her and her entire team up in a limo. Lundi wasn’t the biggest name in the ARA, but she raced well enough to earn herself that Gold rank, which came with perks like travel assistance packages and access to some local amenities.
She sat in the middle of the group while her Chief Medical Technician argued with her Chief Technician over what restaurant to go to. After five minutes the team voted, and the Ayes had it. They were having Hawaiian BBQ tonight despite Lundi being one of the Nays. Two of them actually since it was team tradition to count her vote twice. She still lost, and now she had to stomach whatever the islanders here thought was BBQ instead of the real thing.
“Must you be in that race next week, baby? The news said this morning someone died there yesterday. It’s dangerous.” Grams told her while they both sat down at the dinner table.
Lundi was back in Tallassee, visiting her grandmother in between races. She had just left Fort Worth, TX, having gotten home late the night before with enough time to spare to hug and kiss her Grams before crashing to bed in her old bedroom.
It wasn’t often this year that she found herself stomping around her old turf. Used to be that she lived and breathed everything that was U S of A, but now that she was finally racing in the big leagues, she had the numbers to get herself off of Earth and onto tracks in other parts of the solar system. After spending more than a month off Earth she was grateful to be back, and in the US, to do several races.
She’d been to Fort Worth before, but not to race. Her family was from south Texas, then she moved up towards Dallas briefly in her early teens before she went to live with Grams in Florida. Fort Worth used to have an air force base, but after the government abandoned it for the new one closer to the Gulf, the ARA bought the land and converted it all into a racetrack.
Now, Lundi just needed to make her way next to Luna. It would be her fifth time racing on the moon since she’d started racing in the Professional Circuit.
“It’ll be fine. I’ve raced on that track before; I know what I’m getting into.” She replied, dismissing her grandmother’s concerns over a plate of home cooking. Corn bread, peas, lots of gravy, the kind of stuff you can’t get anywhere else but home. Not many people knew how to cook like Grams did anymore.
“News said his name was Wally Costner, and he was only 21.” She kept going and Lundi started to get angry with her again. Why did she always have to do this?
“I’m not gonna die!” She said loudly, looking up from her plate and staring her grandmother down.
Grams fell silent, the old hare looking back down at her plate to pick at her food. After that, the dinner table was real quiet for a while until Grams stood up and put her plate in the kitchen sink, pushing the scraps into the disposal.
As the disposal ran, loud and angry, Lundi realized her own appetite wasn’t really with her anymore. She made herself eat anyway, making sure to clean her plate like she’d been taught even if she wasn’t hungry enough to eat it. Eat even if you don’t want any, smile even if you don’t have any shine in your soul. All the different little ways Grams had of telling her things were rubbing off on her.
There wasn’t anything about the next race that had Lundi worried. She’d been on that track twice already and she knew what it was all about. Her bike was actually suited to it like a fitted glove. The gravity was lower, but that only messed with her head the first time she raced it.
Now she had enough experience in lower gravity racing that it didn’t bother her any, especially since half the track was doing those half-pipe things like in a skate park. It made turns so easy that a bike’s forward momentum would carry into its wheels when you were banking left and right to make those turns, holding it solid on the track to pick up speed. Soon as you finished the turn inside the pipe and came out the other end the Gemini Vale would fly out like a bullet, top speed achieved.
“When do you have to leave again?” Grams asked after she finished running the disposal.
“Day after tomorrow, in the morning.” She answered.
“Why so soon? You haven’t been around to visit much in a while.” She replied.
Lundi didn’t say anything right away, running the side of her fork across the plate to pick up what was left of the crumbs of cornbread and gravy.
“It’s just how it’s been lately. I have a lot of races to do, but the season is almost over. I can take some time off then.” Lundi replied, thinking now of how hard she’d worked to make it to the 7th Circuit. When she was done, she stood up to bring her plate over to the sink.
Together they started cleaning what little dishes they’d dirtied up during dinner, and then the stove top right after. Grams didn’t bring up her races anymore, which suited her fine. She wished she never talked about her races anymore, since all she ever did was complain. Lundi just wished she had more faith in her, as much as she had in herself. Wished she could watch her race and cheer for her like everyone else did.
“I was going to make you a cherry pie, but I don’t guess you’ll get to eat the whole thing if you’re leaving so soon.” Grams said once they started putting everything away.
There was a loud buzzing noise growing louder and louder, angry and obnoxious, and suddenly Lundi was lying down on her side in an unfamiliar bed, staring at the red numbers on an alarm clock as it buzzed to wake her. She reached out and pressed the button to shut it off, the alarm falling silent at her touch.
Lundi rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling, the taste of Gram’s cherry pie fading back into her memory. She drew in a deep, shaky breath, pulling her hands up to her face to hide her eyes from the empty room as she listened to the memory of her grandmother’s voice. As her eyes started to burn behind her hands, she struggled to contain the painful emotion of her loss, Lundi’s lips trembling. She’d been having a lot of dreams about her lately, and she wished they’d stop.
| [Rank] | [Driver] | [Bike] | [Placement] |
|---|---|---|---|
| SVR | Mark Dandy | Dixie Tango | 1st |
| PLT | Yuni Savora | Full Frontal | 2nd |
| SVR | Peter Prowl | Jersey Devil | 3rd |
| GLD | Lundi Quotte | Gemini Vale | 4th |
| SVR | Erik Juniper | Fury Fist | 5th |
| PLT | Duke Odina | Massive Attack | 6th |
| PLT | Tallulah Dean | Autumn Crash | 7th |
| IRN | Chance Sellers | Cash Back | 8th |
| SVR | Picori Thraw | Maximum Violence | 9th |
| SVR | Rent Tile | Cue Ball | 10th |
| GLD | Faraday Night | Bad Vibes | 11th |
| GLD | Uli Set | Psycho Mantis | 12th |
| SVR | Quet Dossi | Murder Suspect | 13th |
| SVR | Edgar Wills | Bold Statement | 14th |
| N/A | Wanda Vile | Misfit Maiden | Crash Out |
| BRZ | Mackenzie Bronx | The Big Cheese | Crash Out |
| SVR | Mercury Star | Parse It | Crash Out |
| SVR | Tina Tracer | Matchstick | Crash Out |
Today's Race!
"Hey, hey, hey fans! Here we go again! I hope you've still got cold gear handy, because it is COLD here today in New Alexandria City with the surface temp hovering at a -275 degrees! But in less than half an hour the asphalt at Cold Shoulder will leave you cooking, because we have an incredible lineup of drivers hitting the streets! Top of the chart is Nuka Song, not often we get a Diamond Rank racer here at the Cold Shoulder, and right behind we have a pack of heavy weight contenders! Nyx Mortar and Duke Odina are both here to tear up the ice, but we're just gonna have to see if they have what it takes to compete with Nuka Song! I won't even pretend the rest of the pack has a chance."
A wide table sits in the center of a large pristine room, its surface a polished ivory white. The overhead lights glitter in the table’s mirrored surface as two figures sat jovially in front of a wide array of cameras, each filming their every move, and recording their every word. All around the room are hanging banners and display posters, each emblazoned with the ARA’s colors and logos, and all advertised today’s race at New Alexandria City, on the Saturn moon of Titan.
The Accelerated Racing Association has brought yet another stellar race to the legions of racing fans clamoring for more at home, be they from Earth or as far away as Jupiter!
“I just can’t express enough how bad I feel for the people watching at home right now!” Said Grace Gallant, making up half of the table’s occupants as well as being the only female present.
The 41-year-old heron, just like her namesake, was one of the most graceful faces in all the Association to date with her sparkling eyes and even brighter personality. Having served as a professional newscaster for several years with LSNBC News, she was sniped by the Association fifteen years ago and has been a proud member of their team ever since.
Seated at the desk next to her was her co-host Vic Vigor, the 52-year-old wolf with a smile that was said to leave even the coldest of women feeling weak in the knees. Vic had been a talented racer in his prime, having been the driver of his only child, the Cast Iron Queen. With an impressive sixteen years of racing experience under his belt and more than a decade more time spent as one of the Association’s premier commentators, Vic is one of the best-known faces in the ARA today.
Together, the pair watched with excitement as the next big race of the season was about to get its start! Today’s race was set on Titan, being held at the aptly named Cold Shoulder racetrack, which was the 6th to have been built on Titan’s icy surface! Though the temperatures outside were too cold for any modern bike to withstand for long, the Cold Shoulder was built like most other surface level tracks on Titan.
From start to finish the Cold Shoulder’s route was encased in a protective glass tube that protected the drivers inside from the surface’s frigid temperatures. Woven into the four-foot-thick glass were thousands of metallic cables that, when the generators were active, heated the glass to maintain a buffer against the outside temperature of Titan’s harsh surface. With the planet reaching -290 degrees Fahrenheit it would be fatal for any driver to find themselves exposed to it, and that’s even if they were still inside their bike.
“What makes you say that? This’ll be a great race!” Vic laughed in reply.
“We’re racing on Titan Standard Time! I think more than half the people that want to watch are asleep in their beds in their local time zones.” She replied.
While the pair made small talk for those at home listening and waiting for the race to start, the drivers for today’s race were all in the hanger going through the last of their preparations. As the clock ticked down to race start each team handled their duties differently, as the Association gave as much freedom to its drivers as possible. So long as every driver and team member abided by the Association’s rulebook of racing virtues you were typically never micromanaged.
Some crew had their Chief Strategists going over last-minute plays with their drivers, while teams that lacked such a Strategist often left the thinking to their drivers. The Chief Technicians all double and triple checked the work of their junior Techs while also informing their drivers of anything they thought was important.
But some teams hardly spoke to their drivers, as communication simply wasn’t necessary.
Nyx Mortar was the driver for one such team.
He’d been employing the same ten people for twelve years straight, and they were all qualified to be Chief Technicians in their own right, if they ever wanted to quit and join up with some other driver. And maybe someday a few of them would, but not today or even tomorrow. The money was just too good working for Nyx Mortar.
Nyx, the tall, but aging reptile that he was, had a successful career. He had the money to pay for the best without being yoked and strangled by sponsors that asked too much of him in return for their money. Being 90% self-funded had its perks, and for someone with his working-class background he had earned it all through raw grit.
“Boss, she’s good!” His Pit Chief shouted, slapping his gloved hand over the hood of the Roaring Rampart before flashing him a thumbs up.
Nyx nodded back to him in agreement. He exhaled hard, watching his breath explode out like a cloud of steam. Even inside the insulated hangar the place was like an icebox. No amount of indoor heating was going to keep this hangar, or the track, at a comfortable temperature. It was around forty degrees right now, and his knees were starting to ache from the cold.
Once he got inside the Rampart, with its engine running under him, he’d warm back up just fine. It’d be a cozy race until he had to park and climb back out into the cold again.
He wasn’t worried about the race any.
The Cold Shoulder only had one corner that would stress out the Rampart, due to how tight a turn it was going to be. It was something like a 45-degree sharp turn, but the mileage on the track was so great that the 45 only looked scary on paper. In the flesh it wasn’t much different that checking your blind spot in a car.
The rest of the track was well suited to him, being that the Cold Shoulder had been built like a five-pointed star. That’s assuming of course that you remember to lop off one of the star’s arms. It was a funny looking track that crossed over itself several times just like a pencil would if you drew that same five, or four, pointed star.
The race would start at the hangar, located at the southernmost tip, then immediately open out into a very short strip of track that ended with a very generous lefthand turn, then after a lengthy straightaway there came a 50–60-degree righthand turn that would then open into another long straightaway. Repeat these two more times and you’ll be pulling right back into the hangar.
The track had exactly four turns and five straightaways totaling up to about 150 total miles of track.
Nyx enjoyed tracks like these, as it was hard to get bored of the scenery when you weren’t driving laps past the same landmark three or more times. The benefit of building tracks on desolate places like Titan meant that the Association could buy up hundreds or even thousands of square miles for cheap and build huge tracks on them that only required a single lap to complete.
The Cold Shoulder was going to be a one lap race, too, with the last driver crossing the finish line after maybe a half hour or so of driving. Nyx expected to finish much sooner than that in a significantly better position than where he started, though he suspected he wouldn’t come in first this time considering who else was here competing.
He actually preferred it that way.
Racing against small timers was a poor way to pass the time and was always the worst part of starting a new racing Season. The early Circuits in a Season were too filled to the brim with fresh meat that were eager to prove themselves, but they always came up short next to men like Nyx. He was the old man on the battlefield that younger men too often overlooked in their hubris.
“All drivers, please make way for the taxi service. The race will start in T Minus 10 minutes.” A woman’s prerecorded voice called out through the loudspeakers in the ceiling.
Nyx lifted his hand and with two fingers swirled a circle in the air to signal his team to back off from the Rampart. One nod of the head to his Pit Chief was all that was needed for the man to start issuing commands. The crew would be exiting the hangar to find someplace warmer to watch the action from.
Meanwhile, crews of Association personnel began to drive taxi lifts through the hangar to pick up bikes from their respective gantries. Nyx stood to the side as a taxi came to collect the Rampart. It stopped and began to slot its prongs into the metal platform the Rampart was parked on. Much like how a forklift would operate, the taxi used the prongs to hoist the platform off the ground before retracting the entire assembly into the back of the taxi.
With the Roaring Rampart weighing nearly two tons the taxi’s guts were whining from the strain. A few minutes later, and all the bikes were loaded onto their respective taxis and were being carried off to the official starting point for today’s race.
Next, four man-taxis started their engines and began to slowly pick up drivers, six to a taxi. Nyx began walking towards the taxi nearest to him, hopping on and taking a seat on one of the benches. Another two drivers hopped onto the taxi with him, making it a full house. Nyx scanned his eyes around, checking the faces of who was riding with him, and then looking over at the other three vehicles which were now full of drivers, too.
None of the real competition was sharing a taxi with him. Nuka Song and Duke Odina were elsewhere sharing a taxi, and Xander Haufman was in yet another. There were others here that had talent, but not enough to put them ahead of the pack.
Though, this industry likes dropping surprises every now and again, and Nyx always welcomed a good surprise.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I think this race is finally about to start heating up!” Vic Vigor announced, leaning forward excitedly as he watched the plethora of television screens that fed the race feed to the News Bunker.
“Vic, honey, that’s the sixth temperature pun you’ve made in under an hour!” Grace lamented, resting her cheek into the palm of her hand.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were counting.” He laughed, leaning over towards her to give her thigh the lightest of squeezes. She rolled her eyes and tugged her leg away from his grip.
“But yes! You are right, and I’m hoping everyone watching has made sure to get their liquor and their licorice ready, because the race is indeed about to start! That’s what Vic should have said, instead of another of his silly puns.” Grace added, a graceful hand laid across her petite bust as she did her best to remain the angel of virtue while her co-host allowed his reputation as a charismatic lady’s man to dominate his side of the desk.
“Licorice? Who even eats that these days, let alone with liquor?” He asked, drawing attention away from the race and towards the elegant, and now flustered, heron.
“Well, if you can play with your puns then I can play with my alliteration!” She defended herself. “And I’ll have you know that licorice is an acquired taste, some might even say Avant Garde. I’m not sure you’d have any idea what good taste is, Mr. Vigor.” She replied.
“Oh, I know plenty about taste, but before someone storms into the bunker and strangles us for all this small talk, let’s bring everyone’s attention back down to today’s race! How about it!” He replied, his charm not so strong that he’d forget to mind the clock ticking down to the start of today’s race.
Turning his attention to the large screens in front of him and Grace, he reached over to give the heron another squeeze of the thigh and she stifled a giggle as she swatted away his hand.
“Absolutely! For anyone that hasn’t paid any attention to the roster, the lineup we’ve got in store for you today is absolutely incredible! It isn’t often we get so many power players in a single race like this, so this is truly going to be a sweet treat!” The heron said, reaching her right hand over to a panel at her side that gave her limited control over some of the screen overlays and transitions that were possible during race coverage.
She pressed a green button on the top right of the panel, and on the main screen in front of them the roster of drivers began to crawl upward across the screen like it was a sci-fi flick.
“Oh, you’re definitely right about that. Shave ten to fifteen years off my age and I’d be itching to be down there myself. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to see Nuka Song and Duke Odina race against each other live and in person!” Vic added.
“And Nyx Mortar is down there, which isn’t a terrible surprise. He’s been in so many races this season you’d think he’s trying to qualify for next year’s Caelum Run.” She told him.
“I think it’s a foregone conclusion that he is. Four times in a row isn’t enough for The Immortal, Nyx Mortar. He won’t stop until he gets his 1st place finish!” He replied.
“Oh, I don’t doubt it, but there’s so many people out there trying to get in, too. Why, I think even Ms. Song is making an effort, though she recently denied that she’s trying to qualify. She’d be a fantastic face to see on race day for the next Run!” Grace replied.
“Oh, no doubt about it. Her, Nyx, even Duke Odina though I doubt he’s got it in him. He’s not as old as I was when I retired, but I see some of myself in him when I watch his races. He’s trying his damnedest, but it looks like something in him is giving out.” Vic replied.
“We can’t all be Nyx Mortar, right? I think he turned forty-two this year but there he is like he’s still twenty and kicking it!” She replied, and Vic shook his head.
“That man’s something else, never seems to miss a beat, but even he’ll have to stop eventually before something else makes him.” Vic replied.
A series of colorful green lights began to flash along the edges of the ceiling, which was a passive way of signaling to the News Bunker that the race was due to start in a few moments.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the race is about to start! Let’s zoom in on that lineup! Get the drones in close!” Vic immediately shifted gears towards the here and now.
Elsewhere in the bunker, inside its own specialized command room, were the drone pilots. Twenty-eight men and women sat at their own consoles, each in control of a single state-of-the-art drone designed and built by the Association’s best engineers. Each drone, fifty pounds in weight and about the size of your standard bike tire, was mounted with four high-definition cameras.
For every ARA sanctioned race, a drone was assigned to follow a driver, with four extra drones operating in tandem to capture additional footage from other angles. With Vic Vigor announcing live that the cameras needed to pull in close to the lineup for today’s race the swarm of drones all launched from their own ceiling-mounted bays.
Once in the air, the swarm held steady just below the hangar’s concrete ceiling, waiting for the race to start, while the four pilots that were designated as extras flew their drones down to sweep their cameras across the two long lines of bikes. In another part of the News Bunker was Camera Control, where the video feed from all twenty-eight drones were being fed to a massive room of televisions and support staff that micromanaged the live feed for the entire race.
More than three dozen people studied the video feeds and made judgment calls on which angles were to be prioritized with another group of technicians at the ready to resolve any problems that might arise during a race that could interfere with the broadcast.
Back where Vic Vigor and Grace Gallant were sitting, all their television screens began to switch views until all that was on display was the lineup of bikes.
“This should be such a fun race!” Grace said, excitedly clapping her hands and leaning forward to give herself a better view.
“Oh absolutely, just look at all those beauties down there. Nuka Song and Nyx Mortar of course there in the middle of the pack, and Duke right behind them. Honestly, apart from those three I’m really interested in seeing how well Nia Ahmad and Jozo Rask perform.” Vic replied, tapping his fingers across the buttons of his own panel to signal a request to the drone pilots for a tighter zoom on those two drivers.
The pilots in the drone Command Center complied, shifting the four drones that were surveying the lineup to locate and single out Jozo Rask driving his Little Champion, manufactured by GAW Motors, and Nia Ahmad driving the Wash Out, manufactured by Sollan Verti.
“What has you intrigued about those two?” Grace asked.
“Nia’s bike is called the Wash Out, which amuses me. I just get a kick out of people choosing names that imply they might fail. They usually have a quirky personality I can get behind. And then Jozo is a long-time vet whose proved himself a whiz on tracks like these. I think a track like Cold Shoulder would be perfect for him.” He told her.
Grace began to type onto her own panel, and as she did the drone pilots all began to rearrange themselves to bring other bikes into view.
“I see, well I see your two and I’ll raise you two of my own! I think a little spotlight is well deserved for Shadi Umar and Arlen Daniels. They’ve both been doing great this Season and I’ve been trying to follow their careers a little more closely to see how well they do. I think they’ve got a lot of great potential!” She replied
With the drones bringing the pair into better focus, you could clearly make out the bikes of Shadi and Arlen. Shadi Umar was driving the Cold Sweat, manufactured by Janis Inc. while four rows behind her was Arlan Daniels and his Carefree Spirit, also manufactured by Janis Inc.
“Not bad. I’m not as familiar with Arlen, but Shadi has been a real sport for years. She’s a great driver, and I do think she’ll do well today, but with the kind of competition she’s got against her it’s hard to give a prediction. There’s just too much talent down there!” He replied.
“You’re not wrong, but I think both of them will do better than you think. I have high hopes for Shadi especially, but Arlen has been knocking it out of the park during the last several of his races and the Cold Shoulder will probably be one of the easiest tracks for him to tackle this year. He’s survived far worse, and he’s come up against some heavy hitting competition. He went toe to toe with Resna Kant twice and made it away without a scratch, I’ll have you know.” The heron bragged on the driver’s behalf.
Vic let out a whistle in reply, looking impressed.
“Well, maybe you’re right! I can’t wait to see.” He replied, and the running lights around the room began to flash colorfully again. The panels at the sides of the desk began to flash as well, the race authorities giving final authorization for the race to start. The drivers were now all in their bikes, at the ready, and all that was left was for the gun to fire.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I know it must have been killing you to have to listen to me and Vic kill time while the race gets its shoes on, but we’re finally here!” Grace cheered, cheerfully clapping once again.
“And do we have an incredible race for you! We are counting down now from thirty seconds! Get those drones ready people, we’ve got a race to watch!” Vic added.
Off and away from the News Bunker, the starting line was flooded with the fog of twenty hot running engines, the exhaust pumping out heat and leaving a layer of mist to hang just over the frigid asphalt track of the Cold Shoulder.
Nestled comfortably in the Roaring Rampart was Nyx Mortar, laying belly down in his mighty machine while her engine rumbled angrily around him. With eyes shut he patiently waited with hands on the grips. His bike was ready, the only thing keeping him from flying down the track was the brake lock.
“Ten seconds to race start.” The voice recording called out. With Nyx’s habit of never wearing a helmet, he only heard it because of the small earbud he’d stuck into his left ear.
He opened his eyes and revved his engine. The thunderous roar of the Rampart sounded its call. The name of his bike wasn’t just him being cute. It was a custom-built machine made just for him, and his engine had to be powerful enough to carry a bike as heavy as his at a top speed of 310mph. It took him a few weeks to settle on a name, but Roaring Rampart had proven perfect.
It’s engine literally roared, much louder than other bikes that drove the tracks each Season, and just like the ramparts of ancient European castles, the Roaring Rampart was a fortress. Built like a tank he could wreck it in every race and never have to worry about it being too totaled to drive again. It was nearly indestructible.
The red lights that held everyone back turned a rich shade of yellow. He revved his engine again, staring forward at the bikes ahead of him. He quickly recounted the roster, rolling through the names of the drivers he had the most to worry about. It didn’t take long, since the number of threats were so few today.
The lights flashed to green.
“Race Start!” The pre-recorded voice shouted at max volume over the loudspeakers, and every bike on the track launched forward.
Nyx felt himself sink backwards against the padding in the Rampart, his bike slower than most, his competition quickly overtaking him in ones and twos until the precious seconds passed by that allowed his bike to reach its top speed.
Almost every race was the same, with the pack overtaking him due to his heavy weight and poor acceleration. The Rampart was just too slow to pick up speed as quickly as other bikes, and his top speed wasn’t the highest either. What he lacked in speed, however, he made up for in his head. He knew how to drive and had nearly twice the experience of the majority of drivers on the asphalt today.
He won his races by being the patient elder, the old man on the battlefield that understood when to move, where to move, and why to move. With the Rampart being an unstoppable force of nature, he never had to worry about being forced off the track. His bike was nearly two tons in weight, the legal maximum for any bike. There was no bike tough enough to knock him off course, and the drivers that were dumb enough to try were always left ruining themselves as Nyx knocked them to the floor like a boxer in the ring.
And the best thing about single lap races like these was that they were easy to plan for. You only had to navigate a hazard once, and the second a problem fell behind you it was gone for good, never to bother you a second time. Nyx favored tracks like the Cold Shoulder.
The first leg of the race went about as he expected. No one was fighting each other, just every driver trying to take advantage of the long straight away with all the fastest bikes pulling ahead of the pack. It was a natural sorting process, like blood in a centrifuge separating all of its components into neat little layers.
But soon the process would get an ugly shuffle when the front runners reached the first major turn of the track.
Here is where Nyx expected things to improve for him. Every time the route hit a tight turn, of which there were four on this track, Nyx would naturally gain in position as the less experienced drivers struggled to hit their turns at top speed, too hungry to eat at the Winner’s Circle table to throttle their speed back to safely make the corner.
He’d already predicted the outcome for today’s race, he was just checking in to see if he was right. Far up ahead of him the drivers in front all hit the first turn, and half of them fumbled, skidding into the left side wall violently where they then had to struggle to recover as the ringing in their ears subsided. Only the more seasoned drivers survived the turn without missing a beat.
And just like that Nyx feathered his brake and cut the corner, making the turn himself with little to no loss in speed, passing by faster bikes driven by rookies that bit off more than they could chew. Driving a faster bike doesn’t mean much if you don’t know how to drive, and all that speed doesn’t make ice any less slick.
The Rampart passed by several more bikes while they fought to recover. As he sped off on the second straightaway for the Cold Shoulder, he figured he knew which bikes behind him would recover first and overtake him. He was just wondering if they’d screw up again at the next corner or if they would learn their lesson.
“Oh no!” Grace lamented, putting her face in her hands to violently shake her head.
Down on the track one of her favorites, Shadi Umar, had just joined the list of drivers who’d wiped out in today’s race. Three drivers were now out of the running, each having been taken out by the sharp turns on the Cold Shoulder. Today’s track was deceptive, tricking drivers into believing that its lengthy straightaways were their friend, but that was in fact a lie.
Reaching your top speed on cold asphalt that required an underground heating system to prevent ice from forming was a bad idea. Try as the Association might, they weren’t gods and mother nature had a way of making sure that ice was a constant threat on tracks built on Titan. Entering one of the Cold Shoulder’s tight turns at a bike’s top speed risked putting a driver on a road that had less grip than expected, and skidding and slipping was an ever-present problem.
Every turn the drivers took, several of them were threatened with a loss of control, until finally one driver after another started crashing into the side walls. Most recovered, but bikes like Cold Sweat, driven by Shadi Umar, could only handle so much abuse after slamming into the wall twice in one race. Her wreck was gentle, her machine sputtering out of control after an engine failure that left her losing speed and stopping dead on the track and awaiting a Retrieval Team.
The previous two crashes had been significantly more violent and one of the drivers was being escorted to the on-site emergency room to be treated for a concussion and broken femur.
“Oh, none of our favorites are doing well today!” Vic lamented as well, dropping his elbows to the desktop, reaching over to his panel to thumb the controls.
“No, no they haven’t! I’m usually a better guesser than this, Vic!” Grace replied pitifully, using her own controls.
Together, they began to update the screen with updated positions for the remaining twenty-one drivers now zooming across the live feed. With less than an estimated five-to-six-minutes left until the first bike crosses the finish, the pair of commentators were distraught over their favorites lagging in position.
With Shadi Umar now out of the race, Grace’s remaining favorite Arlen Daniels had stalled out. He’d started today’s race at the back of the starting lineup and had steadily climbed in position until the halfway point for the Cold Shoulder. It was there that he seemed to stay, never finding himself able to climb further ahead than 10th place, and the gap between him and current 9th place driver, Youko Ho and her Stone Scout, was widening by the second.
Vic Vigor’s fan favorites were doing poorly, too. Nia Ahmed was lagging behind, having started strong near the front of the pack but every turn cost her dearly with her falling further and further behind. She was currently in 12th place, but she was now forced to fight tooth and nail with her fellow driver Rent Tile, driving his Cue Ball, to keep it.
Jozo Rask was faring far worse, having just lost 14th to Felicity Dare, driving the Dour Behemoth, and now struggling to keep himself ahead of rival Fez Tulli and his bike, the Piff Pow!.
With so little time left in the race the final results were almost all but set in stone, but all that could change should the unexpected occur, and there was always a chance of that in the Accelerated Racing Association!
“Do you think we can still brag that we were right about the Winner’s Circle?” Vic asked his co-host, leaning over to comfort her with a hand on her thigh.
She reached down to pat his hand, no longer interested in pushing it away, instead choosing to let her hand rest over his.
“I don’t think we can brag over stating the obvious, Vic, they were obviously gonna win!” Grace replied, reaching with her other hand to signal that she wanted to bring up the front runners.
The camera feeds began to change, swapping out displays until the footage from four different drones began to show the action happening at the front of the pack. For Grace and Vic, they had a wide array of television screens to watch, while viewers at home had to use their remote controls to switch manually between the different available feeds.
“Nuka Song is of course in first, and she’s so far ahead there’s no way anyone else is catching her!” Vic replied, then pointed at the center display.
The view ahead of him was a zoomed in shot of the Hot Ice Hilda, Nuka Song’s bike built by Olympus Mechanics. The large red and pink monster was a heavy weight behemoth with an incredible engine that kept it moving at high speed, while leaning into its own weight class to maximize its grip on the track to bolster its handling performance.
“Nuka Song and the Cold Shoulder are a great example of two things being made for each other. With how fast she can go, and how good her grip is, there was no chance of her lagging behind anyone else. This entire race, go check the replays when you can, will show that she never missed a beat at every corner the Cold Shoulder threw at her.” Vic began to sing the distant woman’s praises, Nuka Song being a long-time veteran of the Association with more than two decades of experience.
“Oh absolutely, and I can’t see either Clay or Nyx catching up to her, though I’m honestly a little shocked to see Clay is there at all. His bike just doesn’t seem well suited to this track at all.” The heron replied.
Vic pulled his hand away from her thigh, his technical expertise demanding that he talk with both hands, lifting them high to gesture.
“It’s not, but I think Clay must have known that going into it, but I was noticing that every time he’d come to a corner, he would risk it all to pull off a wild turn. The Thunderclap is a good bike, but it’s still a Triple 7.” He replied.
“I always hate those, every time someone I like starts driving one of those goofy things, I get nervous!” Grace told him, her hand working the panel again to shift the attention away from Nuka Song to Clay Claw, who was now neck and neck with Nyx Mortar.
Nyx’s blue beast, the Roaring Rampart was casually driving down the middle of the track, while Clay’s own Thunderclap was weaving in an effort to squeeze himself into any opening he could if it meant putting more distance between him and his rival.
“See, right now he’s fine and I don’t doubt that by the time they reach the finish that Clay will take second. His bike is rated to have a slightly higher top speed than the Roaring Rampart. But the Thunderclap has such terrible steering that he had to think up ways to take those turns without sacrificing his top speed, and I think he was gambling the entire race. Every turn he was shaving paint off his hull by brushing up against the inside wall.” Vic continued.
“I just love how Nyx doesn’t seem to care what’s going on around him.” She replied, changing the subject a little.
“No, he doesn’t! Even if he was racing against Valeria Ren he wouldn’t be sweating. He knows he’s safe in that monster he’s driving. He doesn’t need to do anything now except floor it and wait for the flag to drop.” He told her with a smile.
Down on the track, the three front runners were barreling ever closer to the finish line with the last turn of the race now behind them. It was a straight shot to the finish with only minutes to go.
Just as Vic and Grace had said, Nyx Mortar was driving down the center of the track, drawing a steady line down the frigid asphalt while Clay Claw struggled to gain enough inches to firmly put him ahead of his opponent. It was a certainty now that Nuka Song would take 1st, the Hot Ice Hilda now a full thirty seconds ahead of her rivals. Meanwhile, Clay had secured 2nd place by only a fraction of a second over Nyx Mortar’s 3rd position.
The reptile driving the Roaring Rampart did not seem to be bothered by being in 3rd, as he made no effort to stop Clay’s advance.
Nuka Song then crossed the finish line, taking 1st, the black mamba slamming her brakes to slow her approach as she entered the hangar.
Waiting for her were the drag nets, massive constructions of synthetic webbing that were used to catch bikes and force them to a rapid halt when they entered compact spaces like the Cold Shoulder’s hangar. There were thirty-two nets in operation, one for every driver in today’s race with extras as insurance, though due to the three crashes earlier, only twenty-one of the nets would be seeing use today.
The Hot Ice Hilda slammed into the first net she came to, the thick elastic cables stretching, the gaps in the web yawning wide as her speed dropped sharply from over 300mph to around 50mph. Her bike was still driving forward, the momentum and grip from her tires keeping her from being slingshot backwards as she feathered her brake and let her speed naturally come to a crawl to safely stop.
Clay and Nyx then each crossed the finish line to slam into nets of their own.
The Roaring Rampart hit its net, the cables straining under the bike’s monstrous weight. The Hot Ice Hilda was similar in weight, but her drag net had held the line, the synthetic material the drag nets were made of having been rated to catch bikes as heavy as two and half tones without snapping.
But unlike the Hot Ice Hilda, with its smooth rounded exterior, the Roaring Rampart was angular with many sharp edges on its hull.
The drag net that was struggling to catch the Roaring Rampart snagged on one of the bikes many sharp edges, and for the first time in Nyx’s career a drag net actually tore. With that first snap, the rest of the net gave out under the strain and his bike ripped through the rest of the net and flew through the webbing at half its top speed. Nyx slammed his brakes, bracing for impact while ARA personnel fled the scene to avoid the crash as the Roaring Rampart slammed nose first through a bike gantry and into the wall opposite the finish line.
“Oh my God!” Grace was screaming, her hands trembling over her mouth as she watched in real time as the famously Immortal, Nyx Mortar, suffered his first crash in six years. The ruined remains of the bike gantry sparked and smoked from being torn through like paper, the impact of the bike against the concrete wall having shaken other nearby gantries and work zones so hard that tools and debris were now littering the floor.
“Jesus, what the hell happened! Why’d the net break, they’re not supposed to fucking break!” Vic shouted, standing up from the desk and outraged at the failure of a such critical safety measure.
You couldn’t run a single lap track like the Cold Shoulder without drag nets in place to catch bikes as they crossed the finish line, because there was seldom enough room to let a bike come to a stop naturally without something present to catch them.
There was a loud ringing in his ears, and then a terrible headache began to split his head wide open. He opened his eyes only to blink as a chorus of voices were shouting all around him. The bright overhead lights of the hangar bay were blinding him, and he lifted his hand to shield his eyes, but another hand took him by the wrist and forced him to lower his arm.
“Mr. Mortar! Mr. Mortar, can you hear my voice?” An eagle wearing the white uniform of an ARA EMT was hovering over him, now shining a small flashlight into his eyes, forcing him to blink even more.
“Did I crash?” He asked.
He immediately tried to remember what he’d been doing. He’d been close to crossing the finish line.
“I can’t remember finishing the race.” He quickly added.
“Mr. Mortar you have a concussion and we’re going to take you to Medical for evaluation. You might have other injuries we can’t see right now. You crashed into the wall after the drag net failed.” The EMT began to rapidly, but calmly, explain.
Suddenly, there was a stretcher being brought next to him, and Nyx began to become more aware of his surroundings. He was lying on his back a few dozen feet away from what looked like the Roaring Rampart, its front end dented almost flat, concrete and metal scattered across the floor from what looked like a dead-on impact with the wall.
Now, suddenly, he was wide awake and very aware of himself and his surroundings, blinking at the obvious wreck that he’d clearly survived.
“Oh, so I survived.” He laughed, now in good spirits and pointing out the obvious.
“Sir, please remain calm, we need to get the rest of you checked out.” He was told, and a team of three carefully lifted him up and onto the stretcher.
Panning his eyes around he saw that the race must have just ended, bikes were still tangled in their drag nets with drivers and their crews crowding around Nyx and his crashed bike. They were being held back by armed security personnel to keep the EMTs free from interference. His own team was within the crowd watching with concern.
“What place did I get?” He asked.
“3rd place. Sir, can you tell me exactly what you remember? I need to know if you’re suffering from any amnesia. Have you also ever had a concussion before?” The eagle asked him, and as they took him away to the medical wing of the facility, he answered all the EMTs questions, and then answered them all again when he was presented in front of a doctor.
Today’s race at the Cold Shoulder had ended with a thunderous bang, with the famous Nyx Mortar suffering a terrible crash, but miraculously surviving due to the sheer durability of the Roaring Rampart. Martian Heavy Industries had built the bike so rugged that apart from external damage to the front of the bike, and the twisted front wheel, the Rampart had limped away with shockingly little damage for such a high impact crash, a testament to its impeccable design.
Its driver Nyx Mortar was diagnosed with a mild concussion, whiplash, and a broken collar bone. The interior of the Roaring Rampart’s air bag system did deploy, catching its drivers and preventing the worst of the potential injuries he might have suffered. His stubborn refusal to wear a helmet ended up being the primary cause of all his injuries.
The Cold Shoulder track was put into retirement immediately after the accident so that an investigation could be performed on all drag nets to ascertain the cause of today’s failure. The results are still pending, but the current assumption is that a combination of long-term exposure to cold temperatures alongside the angular design of the Roaring Rampart created an unsafe combination that resulted in the drag net failing, prompting a review of all currently in-use drag net safety systems.
| [Rank] | [Driver] | [Bike] | [Placement] |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIA | Nuka Song | Hot Ice Hilda | 1st |
| GLD | Clay Claw | Thunderclap | 2nd |
| PLT | Nyx Mortar | Roaring Rampart | 3rd |
| SVR | Xander Haufman | Hang 'Em High | 4th |
| PLT | Duke Odina | Massive Attack | 5th |
| SVR | Mike Deal | Scruffy Scoundrel | 6th |
| SVR | Viola Aben | Dress Down | 7th |
| IRN | Abdullah Cai | True Believer | 8th |
| BRZ | Youko Ho | Stone Scout | 9th |
| SVR | Arlen Daniels | Carefree Spirit | 10th |
| BRZ | Notah Chow | Feral Fright | 11th |
| SVR | Rent Tile | Cue Ball | 12th |
| BRZ | Nia Ahmad | Wash Out | 13th |
| SVR | Felicity Dare | Dour Behemoth | 14th |
| SVR | Jozo Rask | Little Champion | 15th |
| SVR | Fez Tulli | Piff Pow! | 16th |
| N/A | Ben Hur | Wild Willy | 17th |
| SVR | Mike Law | No Limits | 18th |
| GLD | Faraday Night | Bad Vibes | 19th |
| GLD | Fuku Shimada | Rising Tide | 20th |
| IRN | Gin Vandal | Verdant Hills | 21st |
| GLD | Shadi Umar | Cold Sweat | Crash Out |
| N/A | Nita Kukuzawa | Bad Fiction | Crash Out |
| SVR | Marie Braam | Myth Hunter | Crash Out |
Today's Race!
"L4 Race Radio. Listeners, we are entering into the 9th race of the day, ETA 25 minutes. Eighteen drivers are participating with an even spread of talent from Iron to Platinum Rank. Thak Jypsun headlining, followed by Klixon Swank and Andy Graff. Estimated race time 36 minutes. Next race ETA 1 hour and 13 minutes. Nicholas Nirvana headlining. Stay tuned for race start, Phil Crown and Frank Faust commentating live from Luna City."
The serpent groaned, twisting his back as he slowly roused himself from sleep, feeling as much as hearing his spine pop in a few different places. He exhaled, then lifted himself up and out of bed. The room was cold, too cold for his bare skin as he padded across the room to find the bathrobe he’d slung over the back of the chair the previous night. Resting on the table was his breakfast, right where he’d left it yesterday evening.
Thak Jypsun, serpentine extraordinaire, now stood bare assed at the window of his hotel room with a glass of whisky in his left, and a cigarette in his right. A real breakfast of champions.
Anyone with the idea of looking up from the dingey street below would have seen the serpent’s carefree spirit, his bathrobe left open to expose the world to as much of him as anyone could bear to stomach. The tabloids never needed to work hard to find dirt when it was Thak Jypsun they were reporting on. He often waved to the paparazzi like they were good friends of his, just to irritate or confuse them.
But his view from the hotel’s full-length window was shit, as he was on Lagrange 4. Everything was shit here, but it was within spitting distance of Earth and Luna, so it was easy to show up to squeeze in a quick race before moving on to the next one.
That’s about the only reason people came to this shithole colony.
The interior of Lagrange 4 was just a dirty, dingey, trash heap of poverty and working-class struggle. Before Thak had been born, many decades ago now, Lagrange 4 had been a major hub of transportation and trade. People and goods flowed through it like water passing through whatever that river is called in North America. The Missilippy, something like that. He was from Ganymede, so the only names from Earth he knew were cities he’d raced at before.
But Lagrange 4 had once been a lively, prosperous place with excellent pensions and benefits.
Now, with Thak living life at the ripe age of 33 years of old, Lagrange 4 was what happened to a colony after space flight gets a few good engine upgrades. People didn’t need to make pit stops here like they used to, as ships were much faster now and could just go straight on to their destinations. This left Lagrange 4 a deep hole filled with people too poor to climb their way out of the colony and on to greener pastures.
He squinted his eyes, seeing the distant flickering of lights on the other side of the colony’s cylindrical body. The grey and brown sea of metal and industry flickered like the nighttime horizon of a planet side city, except carved into it was now a single straight road that made a big ass loop around the full circumference of Lagrange 4’s interior.
The Lagrange Loop, the colony’s only sanctioned racetrack, was what Thak was now watching. It was short, sweet, simple. An easy race, and they ran them 24/7 without stopping to accommodate people like Thak who wanted to get in and get out before the shit could cling too long to his shoes. As he watched the flickering of lights through the window, entire rows of them speeding along that narrow road running a loop around the colony, he could see the bed behind him in the reflection of the glass.
A lump in the bed began to move about under the covers, until a porcelain white and petite little figure poked her head up to look for him. He half watched her as she slipped out of the bed, just as naked as he’d been, with her white fur a matted mess from the night before. He took a sip from his glass, savoring the sharp burn of alcohol, listening to her footsteps as she approached him from behind. She reached him both in the reflection and in person.
“Good morning.” She told him in a whisper, and he hummed back in reply.
The little white rabbit stepped around him, squeezing between him and the window, before slipping herself into his robe. She hugged him tight for warmth as he took a drag on his cigarette.
“It’s early again.” Mary, who was his wife, told him.
“Just doing some thinking.” He replied, exhaling a plume of smoke over the window and his own reflection.
She coughed from the smoke, hiding her face in his chest while he took another sip at his glass.
It was such a simple race. Do fifteen laps and the race would be over in about half an hour, maybe a little more. It was like the fast food of tracks, a quick in and out with fries in the bag. He just needed to figure out how dirty he’d allow himself to race today.
He couldn’t be as cutthroat as he used to, as he needed to maintain the appearance of being a changed, God-fearing Christian man. There would be no sideswiping today, or sneaky tricks. Thak would have to race honest again, too honest. It would be a terribly boring half hour of him driving in a straight line for fifteen laps!
“You should eat a real breakfast.” She told him, and he hummed in reply.
“When I’m down in the garage I’ll down an energy bar and protein shot.” He told her, making reference to his other favorite breakfast of champions.
For short races he preferred being on the hungry side, and his crew would be shipping out shortly after the race was concluded, so he could eat a real meal once they were on the shuttle to Luna.
“When do you need to leave?” She asked him.
He glanced over at the bright red letters on the wall clock.
“Half hour, but not in a hurry.” He told her.
His attention was then pulled away from the lights in the distance, and to his own reflection in the glass. The petite white rabbit began to slide down his legs and onto her knees in front of him. Thak took another long drag, watching the embers burn brightly in the reflection. He exhaled, blowing smoke across the glass while his wife started blowing something much larger than a cigarette.
“Ladies and gentleman! Our next race is due to start in one hour!” The announcer crackled out over the loudspeaker.
Thak navigated his way through the throngs of people crowding the streets. His wife had been left behind in the hotel room where she would be watching the race. Safer for her to be there than out mingling with these unwashed masses. A dumb girl like her would get into trouble here.
And that race being called out on the loudspeaker was his.
His phone buzzed in his jacket, Thak pulling it out to check it, then flipped it open, lifting it to his ear.
“I’m just walking up. How’s the Valiant?” He asked, dodging a burly rhino in a jumpsuit as he made his way forward through the mass of bodies.
Technicians, crews, custodians, and even children were clogging the grounds today. It was probably like this every day, since this is what it looked like every time he was here. The children weren’t here to watch the races though, most of them were either pickpockets or trying to sell you worthless crap. That’s why he kept anything important in his inside jacket pocket.
At least when you feel a woman touch your ass from inside your back pocket it’s for pleasure. You feel anything like that anywhere around here and you’ll leave the colony minus a kidney for how quick they can fleece you.
“She’s good to go, just waiting on the officials to clear her for the race. Got two of them snooping over her now.” The voice of his Chief Tech replied.
“Copy. Be there in a few minutes.” He replied, then snapped the phone shut before slipping the skinny device back into his pocket.
Of course they were snooping, they always did. He made damn sure to make a stink about it, too, whenever he was in public. Privately, he’d be snooping himself, too, if he were anybody else. But that was him being the pragmatic sort of fellow that he was.
The serpent dipped the street and down a well-marked alleyway that led to a junction in the footpath. Ugly scenery was everywhere to be seen, the only thing that was missing were the homeless, but that was an Earth Only sort of thing that even the two Lagranges didn’t have. They put your ass to work on the colonies whether you liked it or not, put a shackle around your neck if they had to. You worked or the only thing you ate was a hard foot into your ribcage until you learned to enjoy the taste of blood.
He rounded the corner and made his way towards the equally well-marked back entry to the garage where he’d had the Valiant taken. There were a pair of burly doormen, and they were already buzzing the door open for him even as he was still pulling out his wallet for the ID check. IDing Thak Jypsun was more of a formality these days.
They let him in, and once he was inside the garage the dank air from outside was replaced with the fresh, crisp aroma of oil and fuel. At least everything was about as clean as a garage could be expected to be. He knew he was looking for Garage Bay 17, which was on the other “north” end of the garage from where he was at.
Eyes followed him as he moved, most people steering clear of him as he made his way through the garage. Thak didn’t need an introduction, even without his bright orange jumpsuit. He was dressed casual, the only iconic thing about him being the grey jacket he liked to wear.
“Mr. Jypsun!” A vaguely familiar voice called out, several nearby conversations falling silent at the sound of Thak’s name being shouted.
“No.” He replied more to himself than to anyone shouting at him, not even bothering to direct his voice or increase his volume any louder than a whisper.
The voice called out again, even more familiar now as it drew closer, the sound of two pairs of feet clapping their soles on the concrete floor approaching him from behind.
“No.” He replied again, a thread of irritation tugging inside him like the pull string of a child’s toy. His tail flicked in response on its own, producing a quiet rattle.
“Mr. Jypsun! It’s a pleasure to see you again!” The owner of the voice appeared beside him suddenly, Thak looking sideways with an ugly sneer stretched across his mug.
The smiling face of a reporter was now beaming all his disgustingly pearly white teeth at him, framed by the russet red face of a certain male fox he’d come to hate.
The fox wasn’t ARA, but a member of Lagrange 4’s local news. The ARA didn’t dump any more money into L4 than was necessary, and they seldom sent their people here to cover races in person. The local news boy was no different than most other locals to the colony, an unwashed body mass of poverty who’d crawled on his belly until he found a job that paid well enough to keep him just barely on his feet.
Except this one spent all his income on his teeth and not one penny anywhere else. Perfect teeth framed by a face in desperate need of a wash and comb.
“No.” Thak replied for the third time, another rattle produced by his tail.
“When I saw your name on the roster, I just had to find you! Can you tell us what you’ve got planned for your race today! What tricks are you planning, should we send out a warning to the morgue?” The fox hit him with a flurry of questions, shoving a handheld mic in Thak’s face.
The serpent’s hand shot up and snatched the fox by the hand, catching and twisting the mic back around and toward its owner’s own face. He squeezed with a tight grip.
“I said no.” Thak replied, twisting around to glare at the shorter man.
The fox replied with a bigger smile, lifting his free hand to reveal he’d slipped a taser from his pocket. Thak sneered again, licking one of his fangs with his tongue like he was scratching an ugly itch. He let go of the fox.
“The world wants to know what the infamous Thak Jypsun has in store for the Lagrange Loop today! What do you say!” The fox replied, lowering the taser and tucking it back into his pocket, twisting the mic back around to aim it at Thak.
This one was a frustrating, persistent, prick. Just like the belly crawlers that try to sneak product into your pocket to swindle you into a sale, or the pickpockets that follow you for hours until finally you let your guard slip, this reporter was tenacious. He just wouldn’t take a hint and scram every time Thak was here.
“No tricks. I’m just here to race clean, just like I have all Season.” The serpent replied, molding his sneer back into the approximate shape of a proper smile, because right next to the fox was a cameraman with a handheld aimed right at him, capturing the entire interaction on film.
“Oh, but that can’t be true! You’re Thak Jypsun! Surely, you’ve got some kind of scheme! Everyone watching is hoping and praying to see you do something exciting today! The Lagrange Loop needs some spice to punch up its flavor!” The fox told him with a toothy grin, his face a mockery of aesthetics.
The serpent quietly inhaled, trying to maintain his smile even as his tail continued to quietly threaten the fox with the occasional stress induced rattle.
“As I have said many times over, I’ve turned over a new leaf. I have no intentions of playing tricks on the track and will be racing as clean today as I have this entire Season. The Valiant 03 is being inspected right now to ensure that there is nothing funny going on, and the ARA will be reporting later that my bike is 100% clean, same as its driver.” Thak replied calmly, making a similar speech to the ones he’d been making all Season.
It was getting old.
“No one believes that, tell me what you’re planning.” The fox replied, his smile gone and voice now a deadpan.
A sneer was the first thing given back in reply, but then the showman in him was starting to come out, which happened any time the camera lingered on him for too long.
“Why, that’s an offensive thing to say! I recognize that my track record for many years has been rife with scandal, but I would like to think that this year I might have convinced a few people that I’m being very sincere!” Thak replied almost like it was intended to scold.
“And you’ve built up a big reputation for being a bald-faced liar, so what good does half a Season of clean races do? It wouldn’t be out of the question for Thak Jypsun to pull a long con!” The reporter shot back animatedly.
His tail rattled once in reply.
“There is no long con, I can assure you.” Thak replied, tapping himself on the chest while reaching his free hand over to catch his elbow.
Now that he had his one hand elevated, he began to enunciate his words with little waves of his hands like a form of ASL that only he could read.
“I’ve been worked painfully hard to correct my old habits, as my dear wife can attest to. I cannot say I’m free of sin, nor that Saint Peter would let me through, but I’m young yet and I have taken many serious vows to atone. I’m not just racing clean to fool anyone into thinking I’m a righteous man, as I know that’s not possible. I have to clean my insides out first, so to speak, before anyone on the outside can even start to think I’m being honest. I’m doing this for my own salvation.” He told the fox, his eyes passing a glance at the camera propped over the shoulder of the cameraman.
He saw his tiny, warped reflection in the lens, and noticed that he was wearing a smug grin. He quickly corrected it, his face morphing from one expression to another to appear genuine.
“A cleansing diet would be a lot easier if that’s all you wanted to do, and it would make your races a lot more fun to watch for the rest us!” The fox shot back, shaking the mic at him.
His face morphed back into an ugly sneer.
“Go fuck yourself.” Thak replied, his tail snapping, an aggressive rattle echoing across the concrete before he pivoted on his heel to march away and towards his destination.
“Oh, I assure you Mr. Jyspun, I can afford to have someone else fuck me with my salary. I don’t need to marry a whore to get laid!” The reported mocked him from behind, and Thak kept walking, his tail rattling angrily all along the way.
As the serpent moved through the crowded garage, the ugliness of his mood was worn right on his face.
Life was honestly so much easier and less stressful when he was openly, brazenly, a villain of the ARA. He found it so easy to just smile and lie through his teeth at every junction, to slither his way through any impasse. Being forced to race honestly had been the hardest thing he’d ever done, even without all the pitfalls and difficulties of bribery, rigging, and cheating. Being slimy had a charm to it, a challenge that made him walk with pep in his step.
The only silver lining he had was the fact that being married wasn’t as hard as he’d thought it’d be, though he supposed that was only because of who he married. Had he picked anyone else as a prop he’d have probably divorced her by now, but God had smiled one gift down at his wayward son by talking a prostitute into turning herself over to Jesus, who then started writing him crazy love letters while he was in prison.
A sharp, yet lyrical whistle sounded out from further down the busy garage. It was a familiar tune that could only be sung by one of Thak’s junior techs. The cardinal was standing further down the way waiting for him, the bird lifting his hand and waving. Thak locked eyes with the bird and nodded, his pace quickening with purpose as he closed in on Bay 17.
“Boss, the snoops are gone, they’ve cleared you to race.” The cardinal told him as he walked by, the bird spinning on his heel to fall into line behind his employer.
“Good. Richard and Jimmy got her ready?” He asked in reply.
“Yep! She’s as good to go as the starting pistol.” The bird told him, provoking another nod in reply.
They reached the open hangar bay door and walked inside. The Valiant 03 was loaded into its gantry with his crew milling about lazily. She was a beaut’, looking pristine with a fresh coat of paint and polished up wheels, the font for the manufacturer a pearly perfect white on glossy black rubber.
He pulled off his jacket and handed it over to the cardinal, who took it.
“Got your duffel back there already, Boss.” Jimmy told him, and Thak replied with another nod, already snapping the button on his pants as he approached the door to the private facility in the rear of the Bay.
He entered, kicked the door shut and changed out his slacks and shirt to swap it out for a jumpsuit. Thak was already a minor celebrity in any circle where wheels met pavement, so his bright orange jumpsuit wasn’t something he wanted to wear any more than necessary, especially on Lagrange 4 where everyone assumed he likely had money on him.
He tucked his clothes back into the duffel and emerged with it in hand back out into the Bay. He handed the bag off to the cardinal in exchange for his jacket, Thak checking to see that his wallet was still in the inside pocket, it was. He pulled it on, zipped it up.
“Have that taken back to holding locker at the shuttle, then go help Mary pack my room.” He told the bird, who then darted off with the duffel bag.
They were all leaving as soon as the race was done, so the sooner their luggage made it to the shuttle the faster they could all leave.
Outside the Bay an alarm began to sound. It wasn’t an emergency alarm, but a warning for everyone to clear the walking space between the two ends of the garage. They were going to start collecting bikes soon to be brought out to the starting line.
“Did you tinker with the nitrous any?” Thak asked Richard, his Chief Technician, a large bear of a man.
“I played with it, but I couldn’t get it to replicate what you described without wasting more nitrous than you’d be happy with. I think to do what you want; we’ll have to start looking into getting a new injection system.” The bear replied.
Thak sneered.
His current injection system was a burst model, giving him three chances to dump nitrous into the engine and no more. He’d hoped to throttle back that injection so he could squeeze a few extra doses out of the tank without swapping out for an entirely new system. He didn’t mind a boost being a bit weaker if he could get about five of them instead of three.
“If it’s in the budget, research new injectors and new tanks. Find something economical.” He replied, getting a quick agreement in reply.
Outside, the walkway was clearing out and taxis were beginning to zip by to start collecting bikes from the end of the garage where he’d started and moving closer to Bay 17. Lagrange 4’s garage was long, the place he’d entered in from being near the halfway point. Something like seventy bikes could be stored here in gantries before they needed to be cleared out.
He exhaled, staring now at the Valiant and wondering if he’d have to upgrade her from a 03 to a 04 someday. He hoped not, as he liked the attitude of this one.
A taxi swung into their Bay and began the process of lifting the Valiant up and into its bed. Once he was given the go-ahead, Thak jumped up into the bed himself and stood with a hand on the Valiant as the taxi began to move.
“Good luck, boss!” One of his crew shouted, and he wordlessly nodded his head in reply as his mind began to whirl into motion about the race that was soon to come.
As boring as a race like this could be, his mind was still a collection of cog wheels that turned at speed, scheming and planning. He’d be going up against seventeen other drivers in this one, but half the roster were nobodies, as far as he was concerned. He’d already skimmed the dossiers of everyone he was competing against and found only three names that were notable enough to leave him raising an eyebrow.
Van Thresh worried him, because he was driving a tightly tuned 777, and the Lagrange Loop wasn’t going to stress out a bike like that at all. He’d have great acceleration and speed on his side to carry him along.
Belle Demure was also trouble, since her bike was rated to have the highest top speed of everyone he’d be competing against. In a previous life, Thak would have taken measures to knock her out of the running early, but he’d have to bite his tongue and keep his hands to himself. He’d have to outrace her the old-fashioned way instead of turning her into a smear on the pavement.
And then Gloria Dunlop, again because of a high top speed, but her bike was a heavyweight. Terrible acceleration but once she got going, and she would, she’d be unstoppable. Even if he raced dirty, he’d struggle to knock her out with the Valiant. He clapped his hand gently over the hood of his bike, irritated that he was risking a loss to two women and an effeminate man.
The taxis all began to drop their cargo off at the starting line with Thak waiting in line to be placed in the middle of the pack. Half the drivers had done as he had, which was ride out with the taxi carrying their bike, but the rest came in behind them on man-taxis. Everyone was now on the move, ditching their rides and allowing the crews to deposit each bike into its designated starting position.
Thak lingered at the periphery of his own zone, a trio of white clad jumpsuits riding in on a taxi of their own. One of them approached him with a tablet and quickly showed him the screen. Thak just nodded and waved the man off before he returned to his companions. The three began to do a walk around the Valiant, waving small wands around its components and checking the insides of the wheel wells with little mirrors. They were humiliating him with yet another round of scrutiny to make sure he didn’t have any aces up his sleeve.
As if he needed to go that far to cheat. If he’d felt the inclination, he could just drive another racer into the side wall and force them to crash. Most of his stunts were tricks like that. Just be a good driver and know what your bike could handle on the asphalt. The Valiant 03 wasn’t a stock model bike, even if it looked like it was. He’d spent a good amount of money tuning up her chassis so that it was rugged enough to put other drivers through some ugly abuse.
The race suffered a slight delay due to the scrutiny, but finally the suits all gave their approval, then cleared out. Thak approached his bike, thumbed the cockpit release with the hatch swinging up and out. Everyone else was mounting their machines, and so Thak did the same, his mind back to whirling away at the race that was about to start.
His helmet was resting in the seat, and as she squeezed his tail into the back and his body right behind it, he slid the helmet over his head and secured it. The noise of engines starting came from all around him, then he silenced it at all with a push of a button, his cockpit sealed him in. Lights flicked on, illuminating the interior, and all his viewscreens came online.
As he ran through his routine pre-race checks, his Chief Tech was talking to him through his helmet, giving him a quick rundown of what his team had picked up from the garage via their own snooping. Two nobodies were driving bikes that looked like they needed repairs, probably too broke to afford proper maintenance. He didn’t care about either of them.
Haley Hardball was driving a brand-new bike, similar model to her previous one. He wasn’t concerned about that. Then Klixon Swank was overheard as saying he was enjoying his new injection system. That made him sneer with jealousy. He wondered what sort of system it was.
“All drivers, please prepare yourselves! T minus 5 minutes to race start!” The loudspeaker crackled, Thak barely hearing it from the inside of his bike.
All he cared to pay attention to were the overhead signal lights suspended over the starting line.
“Your wife is wishing you good luck.” His Chief Tech told him through the radio.
He hummed in reply, staring forward with his hands now wrapped around the handles.
Time ticked by, and finally the bright red lights switched to yellow, the loudspeaker shouting that the race was about to start. When the lights all flicked to green, the sound of a fake gunshot blasted from the loudspeakers, and then Thak slammed his accelerator.
He shot forward along with everyone else, but the Valiant only needed about three seconds to reach its top speed. He quickly pulled ahead, the long straight track affording everyone plenty of room to reach their respective top speeds.
Thak knew he was now hovering at 300mph, too slow to whip some of his opponents, and he’d have to endure this for 15 painful laps. He checked his viewscreens, then jerked his bike to the side and blocked a faster bike from pulling ahead of him, brake checking the other driver and forcing them to tap their own. Thak quickly regained speed and put distance between him and the other driver.
He had to race fair and square, but a little jockeying for position was normal for even the most strait-laced of drivers. His thumb hovered over the ignition switch for his nitrous, but with so many laps to sit through he wasn’t ready to start dumping fuel just yet.
And as he’d suspected, the drivers he knew to worry the most about were giving him ulcers. Either too fast or too clever, they were being thorns in his side every single lap until finally halfway through the race he touched his nitro and dumped his first third into the tank. That briefly secured him 2nd Place, but then he fell back to 5th until he had to dump another third. The slower competition were all stuck fighting with each other behind him, but now he was far ahead of the pack with four drivers all trying to jockey for position to steal his spot.
Belle Demure was pulling ahead of him again, and she was too heavy for him to risk trying anything funny, especially with the cameras watching. Lagrange 4 was cheap, but they still had a fleet of drones following the track to record everything. He probably had several drones aimed squarely at him, watching his every move.
He jerked his bike to the left and cut off Fez Tulli, forcing him to feather his break and try to find a spot to pull ahead. Thak kept himself planted in his way while giving up on doing anything about Belle Demure. Gloria Dunlop was beside Fez Tulli with Van Thresh right behind her.
As they all sped through another completed lap Thak was fighting the urge to slam his break and knock Fez Tulli to the floor. His bike, the Piff Pow!, was a lightweight chassis and the Valiant could easily throw that bike to the side with a well-placed brake, and then Fez might skid itself into Van Thresh and they’d both stop being problems.
He couldn’t do that though, so he purposely jerked to the right, giving Fez a false opening to pull ahead on Thak’s left side, only for Thak to jerk back the other way. He tapped a switch next to his left thumb, shifting the Valiant from all-wheel drive to front, and then let his bike fishtail, its rear end swinging with the front wheel as its pivot point. This spooked Fez into thinking he was about to be hit, and he slammed his brake and backed off hard.
Thak tapped the switch again, catching the road with his all-wheel drive, then hit his nitro, dumping the last of what he had and quickly corrected his fishtail into a straight shot forward. Fez was in his rear screen falling behind Van Thresh who was now pulling to the side to wisely put distance between himself and Thak.
Gloria Dunlop and Belle Demure were ahead of him, but not by much. He was in 3rd Place and likely to keep it, but the gap between him and the women was going to start widening now that his nitrous was dry and he’d drop back to 300mph with three laps to go.
By the time he crossed the finish line, still in 3rd Place, Fez Tulli had caught up and pushed Van Thresh back into 5th. The gap between 3rd and 4th was small, irritatingly small. He really wanted more chances to dump nitrous in the tank, three just wasn’t going to cut it anymore if he seriously expected himself to play fair in a race from now on.
The race was only 15 laps, but everyone who hadn’t crashed out always drove one additional lap to let their bike slow down to a snail’s pace. He did just that, then parked the Valiant in an open spot on the track, and once every bike had come to a complete stop the taxis all began to drive out to collect everyone’s bikes.
Thak exited the Valiant, then moved aside so the taxi could do its job. As he waited, he walked a circle around the taxi to give the Valiant a go over, seeing that it looked no worse for wear. He’d not done anything too strenuous with it today. As he walked, he could see a few drivers were giving him dirty looks, or at least the ones who’d removed their helmets. Fez Tulli didn’t look happy with him, but he should be grateful that Thak was an honest man now. He could have been made into a pancake if Thak felt so inclined.
There was a kind of smug satisfaction to be felt when he finished a race in the top three without pulling any stunts. Thak knew he was a talented driver; he didn’t need to blow out someone’s tire to win. Trickery was just a tool, but there were many tools in the chest to use.
When the Valiant was loaded up, he hopped onto the taxi and put a hand on the Valiant to keep himself steady, then waited to be driven back to Bay 17.
His crew were waiting for him, giving him a round of applause as the taxi backed up into the bay. Thak hopped off so the taxi could safely deposit the Valiant back into its gantry, but as his foot touched the concrete, he lifted his hand high and then gave a little bow to his team, a little flourish with a smile.
“We breaking out the champagne on the shuttle, boss?” Richard asked him.
Thak barked a laugh in reply.
“Not for this race. When we get to Luna City I might consider it.” He replied.
“Mr. Jypsun!” A familiar voice shouted enthusiastically from behind him, and the tip of Thak’s tail began to rattle.
Thak’s mood immediately soured as he tightened his smile and turned around to look at who was behind him. The reporter from before was beaming a broad grin as he approached, his cameraman in tow right behind him film.
“Go away, not doing interviews.” Thak told him, then turned back to face his crew.
The fox appeared at his side, mic uplifted and shoving it towards Thak’s face, testing his patience.
“Mr. Jypsun, congratulations on your 3rd Place finish today! But don’t you think you could have taken 1st had you driven the way you used to? How can you feel confident about your performance this Season when you aren’t racing at your best?” The fox spat out quick questions.
Thak flexed his jaw, tail rattling enough to put his crew on visible edge.
“Taking 3rd out of 18 positions is a good finish, but I don’t expect a reporter to understand the difference between success and failure. Now leave before I have one of my boys toss you out of the Bay.” Thak threatened the fox, his sour mood no longer permitting him to even humor a camera.
“Oh, I don’t think that will be happening, because the story is that you’ve gone soft! Everyone saw how you raced today, and you could have pulled some incredible stunts, Mr. Jypsun, but you turned coward the whole way through! How do you expect to keep up your reputation with a performance like that?” The fox grilled him.
Richard started to step forward, being a big man and easily capable of tossing the reporter and his cameraman out of the Bay. The fox slipped his free hand from his pocket, revealing the taser from before. Thak lifted his own hand and directed Richard to stop. He was actually starting to lose his temper now.
“Go back to getting everything ready to ship out.” Thak told Richard, darting his eyes across his team to lock eyes with each of them. They all backed off and zipped back to handling the matter of getting the Valiant packed up along with all of their equipment.
“So, what do you have to say to all your fans that were expecting better! Have you actually gone soft?” The fox stuck the mic further into his face, igniting a sharp burst of anger, which the fox must have noticed because he started wiggling his taser back and forth like a warning.
“My reputation is whatever I want it to be, no business of yours. I race for my reasons and today I raced exactly as I had intended to.” He answered the fox sharply, keeping his tone even, even as his tail continued to signal a warning of its own.
“You know, some rumors say you’ve been pussy-whipped ever since you married, do you think that’s true? Is your wife the reason you don’t race the same anymore? You say you found God, but I think most people would agree your choice of partner isn’t very convincing! What does a born-again Christian man have to say about marrying a hooker?” The fox replied, dragging up on camera his wife’s history.
“You’re deliberately asking for something I don’t think you’re prepared to get.” Thak told him.
“A good and married, Christian man has what to give me, Mr. Jypsun?” A smug reply with a waggle of the taser.
He so desperately wanted to sock him, to lash out. The adrenaline from the race was still fresh in his system and he would love nothing more than to throttle the fox and send him packing to the infirmary. He had to draw in a deep breath to control himself. It wasn’t worth it.
“Nothing you’ll succeed in getting, I assure you.” He swallowed his pride, backing off from his worst impulse.
“That doesn’t sound like the Thak Jypsun of old at all! Marrying a whore really did a number on you, Mr. Jypsun, why-“ And then the fox was sharply cut off by Thak’s hand snatching him by the throat, his patience now a severed cord.
The fox jabbed out with the taser, but Thak caught him by the wrist, spinning the smaller man around and slamming him up against the Valiant with the taser now painfully pressed into the fox’s crotch, Thak’s finger resting over the fox’s own to hold it down over the trigger.
“You wanted the old Thak Jyspun so badly, that you came to my fucking doorstep and insulted me to my face to see it!” He shouted at the fox, who was gagging and choking under his grip, desperately struggling to break free and failing.
The fox lifted his mic high and dropped it to strike.
The cheap plastic of the mic shattered across Thak’s head, which sent his tail into a ferocious rattle. Thak let go of the fox’s throat, smashed his fist into the fox’s perfect teeth, then slammed his palm back down onto his throat to grip him again. Richard had already leapt in to assist, dealing with the cameraman, the camera now smashed across the concrete with the man pressed to the floor next to it, pinned under Richard’s full weight with an elbow dug painfully between his shoulder blades.
Thak pulled at the fox’s wrist, forcing him to raise the taser up higher and higher, the smaller man too weak to stop the full strength of Thaks’ rage. He made the fox press the end of the taser against his own temple.
“I’ve been trying so hard to change, but if you want to see the devil I’ve been trying to suppress, I can show it to you!” Thak spat, glaring into the fox’s now terrified eyes.
He started to push down on the finger that would fire the taser.
“No!” The fox choked out from behind Thak’s grip.
For a small moment Thak was himself again, right at home. He wanted to pull that trigger and pump every single volt into the fox’s skull and leave him foaming at the mouth on the concrete floor. Give him a kick in the ribs, make him taste the iron of his own blood as his belly filled with agony and the end of Thak’s boot.
But he leaned back from the fox and let go of his throat. The fox quickly tried to jerk himself free, but Thak just struck him across the face again, those pearly perfect white teeth now richly stained with blood.
Thak reached his hand over, and forced the taser from the fox’s hand, and once it was in his own grip he lifted it up high and tossed it to the floor as hard as he could. It struck the concrete and shattered.
“Now get the fuck out of my sight.” Thak told the fox, letting him go.
The fox bolted, stumbling and scrambling away. Thak pointed at Richard and gestured with a hand to let the cameraman go. The bear did, and the cameraman bolted the same as the fox had, the pair now out of their collective sight.
Richard rushed over to him.
“Boss, you alright?” He asked.
Thak lifted his hand to his head, felt the spot where the mic had hit him. There was a thin layer of blood on his fingertips when he looked.
“Probably, that mic was cheap as shit. Get someone to toss the camera in one of the garbage bins outside then light the whole thing on fire.” He told Richard, openly telling his team to destroy video evidence.
This was Lagrange 4, local news couldn’t afford to do their own live broadcasts, and the fox wasn’t ARA. All the evidence was about to go up in smoke when the camera finished burning.
“Want me to phone in the authorities?” Jimmy asked, handing Thak a clean rag to touch up his head.
“No, leave it.” The serpent replied.
It wouldn’t matter, and he wasn’t worried about any consequences.
He could have put the fox into a coma, and nothing would happen, because Thak Jypsun was a driver for the ARA. The people in charge only cared about the gruesome bottom line, keeping the cogs in the machine turning even if it requires a public beating to make it happen. The ARA didn’t account for the majority of their revenue, but it was a large enough minority of it that they couldn’t afford to lose it. Drivers had more rights than the people that lived here.
It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t just, but if there was one place in the solar system where God’s absence could be felt, it would be here on Lagrange 4.
| [Rank] | [Driver] | [Bike] | [Placement] |
|---|---|---|---|
| SVR | Gloria Dunlop | Terrible Titan | 1st |
| SVR | Belle Demure | Azure Bolt | 2nd |
| PLT | Thak Jypsun | Valiant 03 | 3rd |
| SVR | Fez Tulli | Piff Pow! | 4th |
| GLD | Van Thresh | Quantum Pain | 5th |
| BRZ | Rick Childs | Skinwalker | 6th |
| GLD | Andy Graff | Double Take | 7th |
| BRZ | Hugh Brand | Steel Skeleton | 8th |
| IRN | Chance Sellers | Cash Back | 9th |
| GLD | Klixon Swank | Aces High | 10th |
| IRN | Detta Grie | Break Fast | 11th |
| SVR | Haley Hardball | Homerun Hit | 12th |
| BRZ | Alex Speed | Phantom Pain | 13th |
| SVR | Trace Draff | One Last Time | 14th |
| GLD | Quinn Nelson | High Note | 15th |
| N/A | Sam Sweet | Tastes Like Candy | 16th |
| SVR | Thomas Rule | Rock Island Line | 17th |
| IRN | Polk Drem | Solid Strat | Crash Out |
Today's Race!
"TEXT"
CHAPTER
| [Rank] | [Driver] | [Bike] | [Placement] |
|---|---|---|---|
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 1st |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 2nd |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 3rd |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 4th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 5th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 6th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 7th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 8th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 9th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 10th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 11th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 12th |
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| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 17th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 18th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 19th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 20th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 21st |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 22nd |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 23rd |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 24th |
Today's Race!
"TEXT"
CHAPTER
| [Rank] | [Driver] | [Bike] | [Placement] |
|---|---|---|---|
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 1st |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 2nd |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 3rd |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 4th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 5th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 6th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 7th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 8th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 9th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 10th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 11th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 12th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 13th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 14th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 15th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 16th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 17th |
| RANK | NAME | BIKE | 18th |
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