Indra Station
Joseph R. Lallo
2019 © Joseph R. Lallo
Cover by Nick Deligaris
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Table of Contents
Intro
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
From the Author
Intro
Adrenaline is a dangerous high. Any addiction can ruin a life. The junkie on the street corner spending his last credits for something to burn his veins and fog his mind faces terrible risks and terrible consequences. But a thrill seeker’s addiction is the risk itself. The high doesn’t come in a bottle or a vial. It comes in a free fall. It comes in hairpin turns. Or in Lex’s case, it came in a tightly packed cluster of overpowered hoversleds.
Lex snapped his gum and listened to the symphony of his sled’s operation. He gripped the steering stick with one hand and cycled through a half-dozen other controls with the other hand as the throbbing power plant roared in an angry rhythm. More engines joined the chorus. The nearest of them wasn’t five meters away from his flimsy cockpit. He didn’t bother looking at the galaxy of meters and gauges reading out pressures and temperatures. If they weren’t pegged against the redline, he wasn’t doing his job. And the speedometer may as well have only two settings, “as fast as possible” and “loser.”
The most incessant and irritating alarm was the proximity alarm. It was a remnant of more-civilized racing leagues where minimum distances were tightly enforced so as to at least marginally decrease the chances of fatal wrecks. The alarm hadn’t stopped beeping at him since the start of the race. As wide as the track was, the optimal racing line was razor thin, so no one was interested in being anywhere else.
Pebbles the size of grapes clattered and blasted at his cockpit windscreen as he drew near enough to the lead sled to get into its backwash.
“I’m reading major collisions on your windscreen,” barked a voice over the sled’s radio.
“Yeah? Well, keep reading, because here come some major ones.”
He danced his fingers over three controls that a sane man would never be tweaking during a race. The modules that kept his sled aloft sputtered and stuttered. His whole sled dropped until it was a whisper away from grinding against the ground. At the same time, he punched the throttle.
The lead sled hopped a mound of gravel. Lex plowed directly through the mound. It cost him some speed, but at the rate he was traveling, all that meant was he was knocked down to the speed at which he should have been taking the turn. The bouncing sled that had been ahead of him came down on top of him. He juiced the hover repulsors to keep from bottoming out. The sled smashed into his and spun madly toward the edge of the track.
“The goal is to win the race. Not to kill the other drivers,” growled his pit man.
He took a sharp turn. One of the trailing racers seized the opportunity to ram him at full speed, forcing him off the smoothed-out track and into the jagged, sunbaked stone of the strip-mined former mountain they’d carved the track out of.
“Tell them that, would you?” he said, his eyes gleaming with demented glee as he wrestled his sled back onto the track.
A spiderweb of fine cracks were spreading across his left window as he glanced aside to see whom he was about to swap paint with. Another tooth-rattling smash kicked the bleeping alarm tones to a new level of intensity. He glanced at the nav screen and his rank indicator. It rolled from Off Track to 3rd Place. Then he glanced at a flashing red blob on his diagnostic screen just below it. One of his repulsors was on the verge of failing.
Four turns left. A tenth of a second separating first from tenth. It was anyone’s race. Or, at least, that was what the announcers would be barking. They didn’t know what Lex knew. It was all over but the gloating.
He wrenched the controls hard, and his much-abused sled lurched up onto two of its repulsors. The damaged one sparked and physically dropped away, pushed past its limit. Lex feathered the controls to keep himself from coming down too early. Digging a damaged strut into the gravel of the track at this speed would turn his sled into a cross between a centrifuge and a rock tumbler in the blink of an eye.
The sled ahead was slowing up for another turn. He didn’t bother, keeping his speed steady and waiting for his opportunity. Just as the sled came into range and that pesky proximity alert became more urgent, he flipped the controls. The tipped-up end of his sled came down like a guillotine. His suspension locked with that of the second-place sled.
Now effectively a sidecar for one of his opponents, he pushed his engines for all they were worth and did his best to keep from being shaken free. Something between fear and uncertainty kept the other driver from trying too hard to lose him. The joined-at-the-hip sleds navigated two more turns without losing any ground. They accelerated down the straightaway, perilously close to the first-place sled. What Lex had in mind had a window of opportunity that could probably be measured in nanoseconds, but that was true of most of the maneuvers in a race like this. The tricky part would be making sure his conjoined partner of the moment didn’t mess things up.
The almost imperceptible shift in hue of the thrusters on the first-place sled signaled that the driver had down-shifted. A puff of additional gravel marked the firing of his retrothrusters. He was slowing for the final turn. Now was the moment.
Lex heaved the controls to one side, then the other. The other racer tried to compensate. Having to react meant he was correcting Lex’s hard right with a hard left, but Lex was already turning left again. The combined shifts sent the pair of sleds into a wild spin. One final yank of the controls tore Lex free. The complex maneuver sent him twirling forward with all the precision of a drunken discus toss.
For two seconds that seemed more like two minutes, even Lex’s vaunted powers of perception couldn’t make heads or tails of what was happening. Then a distinctive tone sounded off and slid down into a register almost below the limits of hearing. The blur of debris and dislodged sled parts slowed until the flakes of metal and fragments of pulverized stone looked like leaves drifting in the wind. A bright light flashed lazily on and off. The TymFlex safety system had engaged. This came with the minor effect of shutting off all control systems and the major effect of slowing the passage of time within his cockpit to a crawl. Now he couldn’t correct his flight even if he wanted to. But a quick glance at his trajectory told him there was no need.
A slow revolution brought him around to face the first-place sled. The driver within had his eyes locked on the finish line. With molasses slowness, he began to flick his eyes toward the spinning sled “piloted” by Lex. Lex grinned and gave a thumbs-up as his out-of-control trajectory took him past. In real time, it would be nothing but a flicker, but when they slowed it down for the replay, it’d make for one heck of a highlight.
Lex glanced down to his navigation screen. It was updating so slowly he could see the individual pixels shifting colors. The glowing 2nd gradual
ly gave way to a smoldering 1st.
Ahead, the flickering wall of the finish line awaited him. He bounced once off the ground, which added a second axis to his spin and gave his journey the rock-tumbler quality he’d been hoping to avoid. It cost him a lot of speed as well, but not quite enough to give his opponent the lead before he crossed the finish line and cemented his victory.
A crash and tumble that lasted all of fifteen seconds outside of the influence of the safety system took several dizzying minutes within it. That didn’t matter. The system did its job, and when the wadded-up pile of roll cages and impact dampeners wrapped around his cockpit came to rest, time resumed its natural flow. Out of habit, he shut his eyes and covered his ears. He knew what would come next.
Earsplitting bleeps started to blare from a canister affixed to the inside of the cockpit. The terrible sound was accompanied by a blinding strobe that was still almost painful even through tightly shut eyelids. Of all the safety equipment that was mandatory on these hoversleds, this was the only thing he genuinely hated. Because the tracks were so enormous and the hoversleds moved so fast, there was the very real chance that a wreck might be difficult to locate. Thus, this torture device was present on every racer. When it detected a crash, it would flash and bleep until its power was expended or an emergency key was inserted. The thing was entirely self-contained, so he couldn’t even yank the power on it. He had no choice but to wait for the safety crew to cut him out of the wreckage and end his torment.
Torches flared, tools found their way to designated weak points, and finally the cockpit cracked open like an egg to let in the searing heat of the Operlo sun. The emergency workers hauled Lex out and silenced the device. When he was clear of the wreck, he shook the last of the dizziness away and gave another thumbs-up. The crowd roared.
While the medics applied various sensors and took assorted readings, Lex drank it all in. This is what he had been missing. Pushing his mind and body to the absolute limit. Pulling victory from the jaws of defeat. And having a crowd of people who knew just how impossible it had all been reward him with their adulation and adoration. He squinted at the stands, sweeping across them to see the distant faces of the crowd in a climate-controlled grandstand. He checked the big board to see his time. Not a track record, but fast enough to win. Off to the side he saw the other hoversleds, most of them far more intact than his, securing their own times and pulling aside. The second-place finisher was glaring at him. As well he should be.
Finally, he turned to the second crew cart approaching. The first had carried the medics and track techs. Now that the track was cleared of danger, the second cart carried people with a more personal investment in the crash. Foremost were Preethy Misra and Michella Modane. The former was COO of Operlo Entertainment Enterprises and commissioner of the Operlo Racing Intersystem Circuit. The latter was GolanaNet’s top investigative reporter. They were Lex’s boss and girlfriend respectively. Both managed to achieve the look of combined concern and fury that so often seemed to grace the faces of the women in his life.
Lex spat out his gum.
“I don’t suppose any of you guys can give me a doctor’s note, can you?” he said as the medics packed their things up. “Something tells me Michella’s not going to go easy on me after this one.”
Chapter 1
Lex and Michella stepped out of a hovercar in front of the gleaming new apartment building the league had set up as housing for its racers during the season. It was not clear if it was an oversight or intentional, but this meant the local press knew exactly where to find any racers they felt like hounding, and more often than not, this meant Lex.
A crush of bodies and a swarm of drifting camera modules pressed in around them as they made their way to the front door, sheltered from the punishing sun and enjoying the runoff of the building’s air-conditioning.
“Lex! Lex, how do you feel after your fourth crash of the year?” barked a man holding a slidepad in record mode.
“Hey, hey. This was crash number three. That last one was a fender bender at best,” he said with a grin.
“This brings your preseason record to 4-2,” said another person straddling the roles of reporter and paparazzi.
“That’s not how they keep track of the standings in league racing, pal. You’re thinking of lesser sports,” Lex jabbed. “But yeah, this puts a fourth first-place finish under my belt.”
“Is there any truth to the rumor that you’ve got a personal vendetta against Mars Washington?”
“‘Vendetta’ is a pretty strong word. The guy’s placed ahead of me twice. It’s a little early to be declaring rivalries.”
“But unofficially?”
“Let’s just say he shouldn’t get too used to spending time in that winner’s circle.”
More questions flowed and the rapid click and flicker of video and stills recorded his responses, but Lex’s patience gave out long before their thirst for answers was satisfied. He slipped into the building and gave them a final wave as the building security kept them at bay.
“You’re a little too comfortable with fame,” Michella said.
“You’re just upset this was a racing crowd so you didn’t get many questions,” Lex jabbed.
“I’m not in it for the fame,” Michella said.
“Me neither. I’m in it because this is one of the only careers that pays me to go fast and pairs me up with decent competition. The fame is just a nice little bonus.”
The doors to the building’s elevator slid open, and the pair stepped inside.
“Man,” Lex said, gazing about at the sprawling, carpeted conveyance. “I still can’t get over it. This elevator is bigger than my old dorm room.”
“Yeah. Mobsters do like to make a point of flaunting their blood money at every opportunity.”
“Hey. Race promoters, not mobsters.”
“Oh? Are we just pretending Nick Patel isn’t a notorious crime lord?”
“No. I’m just pointing out that he’s not the one behind all this; his niece is.”
Michella crossed her arms. “There’s a reason why they call them crime families, Lex. You’re playing a dangerous game.”
He shrugged and let the comment hang for a moment. They’d had this conversation enough times that he didn’t feel obligated to rush through it. Instead, he gazed at an advertising screen showing a shallow holographic promo for the first official race of the season. The high-impact nature of the exhibition races had not been lost on the marketing team. The ad was practically a nonstop montage of the bumps, crashes, and wrecks that had happened thus far.
“I’ll grant you things are a little more full-contact in ORIC than back in the old days. But, you know. Racing was never without risks.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“In that case, why aren’t you talking about that?” He pointed dramatically at the crash footage. “Look at those maniacs smashing into each other. Aren’t you worried about me getting mangled?”
“I know you, Trev. You’re safe as a baby in his mother’s arms so long as you’ve got a vehicle to manhandle. But you’re a tad too trusting to be wrapped up in organized crime. Remember what happened last time?”
“Last time? Let’s see…”
The doors opened and they stepped out onto his apartment’s floor, which was just shy of penthouse level.
“I’m having trouble recalling. Oh, right. I remember. That’s when I took a bribe to take a dive, because I was up to my neck in debt and needed a way out. That got me kicked out of the sport for a few years and reduced me to driving a limo, delivering packages, and otherwise squandering my talents. Funny how that slipped my mind.”
“I don’t appreciate your tone, Trev.”
“I don’t appreciate your inability to conceive that I might have learned from my mistakes.”
“Well, here we are, you racing in a sport that’s completely entrenched in organized crime.”
“No.
Here we are, me racing in a sport that is completely separate from organized crime.”
“Allegedly,” she muttered.
They approached a turn in the hallway and paused as the excited tapping of toenails on the polished tile floors approached.
“Sounds like someone let herself out of the room again,” he said in an accusatory tone.
The tapping nails stopped. Lex crouched down low and crept up to the corner. When he was nearly there, he poked his head out and was immediately assaulted by a bundle of black-and-white fur, who lavished his face and neck with licks and nibbles.
It was Squee. While genetic tinkering was responsible for producing the fox-skunk hybrid, Squee was unique in her capacity to overcome any and all attempts to electronically wrangle her, thanks to the side effects of some rather significant modifications.
She curled happily about his shoulders and rode him back up. When Michella’s face came into range, Squee gave her a pity lick. It was clear the creature was far more excited to see Lex than her.
“What was I saying?” Michella asked.
“We were talking about how it is supposed to be a beautiful day tomorrow and we should make the best of it.”
“It’s supposed to be sixty degrees Celsius tomorrow with a severe sandstorm watch,” she said.
“But I am fresh off a win, and I’m here with my two best girls. That makes every day a beautiful day.” He waved his slidepad at the lock for his apartment and happily stepped inside. “I know. Let’s hit Sarafa tonight.”
“Sarafa is way too expensive and exclusive.”
He pulled open the fridge and grabbed a container of beans and rice. Squee practically vibrated with glee at its appearance.
“Sometimes you’ve got to treat yourself. I won the race today.” He popped the beans in the cooker to reheat. “And as for exclusivity, I know someone who can pull some strings.”
He waggled his eyebrows. She smirked, but the moment of weakness passed quickly.
Indra Station Page 1
