by Ian Whates
"Ah good, we've timed it perfectly," Malcolm murmured. "The first race hasn't started yet."
"Race?"
"Yes, that's what draws the crowds."
His father nodded towards a group of people gathered a little further up the road. The two of them headed over, working their way towards the front of what proved to be a sizable throng. The greatest concentration clustered around what were clearly machines, half a dozen of them. They looked to be motorbikes of some sort, though Philip couldn't get close enough for a proper view.
"Come on, all you freaks and skike-heads," a voice boomed out. "Last chance to splash those credits and watch 'em soar. The road's about to burn!"
Initially Philip thought the speaker was talking through an old-fashioned megaphone, but then he realised that it was actually part of his face, with cheeks, chin and philtrum extending forward in a solid, fused funnel. The man's voice boomed out as if bolstered by the latest in hi-tech amplification. The crowd melted away as people drew back, giving Philip his first clear view of the machines. They were like motorbikes, if a little longer and lacking wheels.
"Skycycles, or skikes," Malcolm said.
Six figures stepped forward to take station by their respective machines.
"Give it up, boys and girls, for the jocks with the rocks!" the announcer called.
Each rider was clad from head to toe in glistening, figure-hugging black, as if oil had been poured over them from above. The black was unbroken even by mouth or eyes, apart from a coloured stripe that ran vertically from the crown of the head to the coccyx - gold, silver, red, blue, green and orange. Each rider's stripe matched the colour of the bodywork showing amongst the shining chrome of his or her skike.
People started calling support for this colour and that, or yelling out the names of individual riders. 'Randy' and 'Kensal' seemed the most popular. Philip realised that the drums and guitar had fallen silent for the first time since they arrived.
"Riders, mount!" the starter cried.
The sense of anticipation rose in proportion to the noise level, as the six jet figures slipped aboard their machines, lying forward along the skike's body, knees drawn up beneath the waist and legs extending behind them, hands clutching grips a little below and in advance of the head. The stance brought to mind a person caught in the process of leaping forward from a crouch, perhaps diving into a pool.
"Power up and lift those beauties!"
Fire ignited within the broad burners at the back of each skike, accompanied by the throaty growl of engines. Headlights shone forth from the noses of the six machines, which lifted into the air - a couple wobbling slightly as their riders adjusted position - to hover above the ground at around waist height. The air smelt abruptly of burnt oil, petrol fumes and ozone.
"And... go!"
The engine growl crescendoed to a deafening roar and flames flared from the rear of the six machines as they shot away at breakneck speed, heat washing over the assembled watchers, who shrieked their approval. In no time at all the roar dwindled to a distant buzz and the skikes were mere fiery dots vanishing into the distance along the improbably straight road, like a pack of ground-hugging comets.
Philip felt vaguely disappointed. As a spectacle, this had been impressive enough but much too brief. He'd hoped for more. The experience at Bubbles the previous evening had taught him not to judge events in Virtuality too soon, but so far the street meet struck him as lively up to a point but somewhat on the tame side. He was about to say as much to Malcolm when a 3D image formed in the air above the 'starting line', complete with sound. It showed the skikes racing towards the watcher before passing beneath, the viewpoint swivelling to follow their progress, enabling Philip to catch a bird's eye view of the riders' backs and then watch them shoot into the distance once more. The brief flash of coloured stripes as they tore past below revealed the current state of play.
"As you can see, Blue's forging ahead from the start, inviting the rest to suck his fumes. Green isn't about to take that lying down and is pushing him hard. Gold is boxed in behind them - he won't like that - with Orange to his right and Red on the left. Silver's playing a canny game, lagging behind the others and staying out of trouble. Still everything to play for."
Somebody poked Philip in the side. He looked around to find a pair of striking blue eyes staring at him from beneath a ragged blonde fringe.
"Are you following me?" asked the beautiful girl he'd danced with at Bubbles the previous evening, the same girl he'd watched being sliced apart by flying saws.
"No, I..."
Before he could say anymore, she reached up towards him, hand at the back of his neck, to draw him into a lingering kiss. Her lips were slightly sticky and tasted of strawberries.
"There," she said as they separated. "I wanted to make sure we at least did that much before anything happens to wrench us apart this time. I'm Tanya, by the way."
"Philip," he mumbled, still feeling the stickiness of her lips on his.
For a moment he'd forgotten about the race entirely, until she looked past his shoulder and said, "Who are you backing? My money's on the gold, Kensal - a real maniac. He'll either win or die trying."
"First time here," Philip said quickly, not wanting to look a complete idiot due to his lack of knowledge. "Still finding my feet."
"Riiight," she nodded, as if this explained a lot. "So you haven't placed a bet?"
"No." He didn't even know you could.
She laughed. "But that's half the fun. Don't worry, Tanya's here now." She slid her arm through his. He thrilled at her touch, her closeness, and flared his nostrils in anticipation of catching a whiff of her perfume but failed. Perhaps avatars didn't do scent? No, he'd smelt the sweetness of strawberries from her lip gloss. A detail overlooked, then. "We'll make sure you get fully involved before the next race."
Philip wondered what had become of Malcolm. He looked around to see the older man standing a little way off. Malcolm gave his son a knowing grin and winked.
Tanya fidgeted beside him. "First corner," she said, her gaze fixed on the projection.
Sure enough, the pack of skikes could be seen converging on a sharp left-hand turn. The vantage point was much lower this time and seemed to be trackside at the very apex of the corner. Little had changed in positional terms, except that Gold might perhaps have edged a quarter length ahead of Red to his left. If the riders made any concession for the approaching corner by slowing down, it was too marginal for Philip to notice. One, pushing hard - he thought it was Green - almost overshot. His skike skewed across the mouth of the turning sideways, heading for what looked to be certain catastrophe. At the last second, the rider banked his machine, so that whatever kept the skikes off the ground repelled him from the wall. The machine reared spectacularly in the foreground and almost hid the moment when Gold made his move and started to justify Tanya's dramatic build up.
Perspective switched at the vital instant, taking the watching crowd from skike-in-your-face dirtside to a loftier viewpoint once more. Gold cut the corner sharply, throwing his body into a precarious left-lean to drag his skike over. Even so, how he managed so tight a turn at such speed was beyond Philip. It caused Red, who was inside, to swerve, almost hitting the wall, and then to overcompensate, taking the corner far too wide in a repeat of Green's manoeuvre. This time, however, as the rider banked his machine, he overcooked it. The side of his mount scraped along the ground in a blaze of sparks and a screech of protesting metal. The oil-clad figure was thrown free as the skike bucked and cartwheeled. He hit the ground and rolled helplessly over and over as his machine crashed back to the road and disappeared in a spectacular bloom of fire and debris.
The other five racers were long gone by then.
The coverage continued to leapfrog the pack of four skikes as they jockeyed for position - Green now lagging some distance behind the others and unable to make up the deficit - showing them tear into a right-hand turn and then another. As they exited the second, Blue held
a marginal lead over Gold.
"Final turn coming up," Tanya squeaked, squeezing his arm. "This is where things usually get really exciting."
No sooner had she spoken than Gold dived for the inside line again. He leant so far away from his machine that his back nearly touched the sharp brick corner. His bold attack forced Blue wide. Perhaps distracted by what was happening immediately in front of them, the two skikes at the rear of the group - Silver and Orange - touched, producing a spray of sparks like a saw cutting through metal sheeting. While Silver fought for control, Orange lost it completely, slamming into the wall of the nearest building. Rider and skike disappeared in a billowing fireball. Silver went down an instant later, skidding along the road in a trail of sparks. Something immediately below the projection caught Philip's eye; a blossoming of light as if a distant flare had gone off. He realised this was the explosion that marked Orange's demise, that he could see it with the naked eye. The combatants had returned to the road they'd started from, albeit they were still a long way off.
The calls of support and encouragement that had provided a constant background to the race now grew louder and more persistent, as others realised the skikes were on the home straight. The murmur of the surrounding crowd swelled to become a roar. Philip wasn't looking at the projection anymore. His attention was focused on the twin pinpricks of headlights growing steadily brighter and nearer.
Tanya, her arm still linked in his, was bobbing up and down, fist raised as she cheered Gold home. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and he found himself yelling along with her.
"Stand back, Jack, here comes the pack... and they're comin' in hot!" the announcer declared, his voice struggling to be heard despite the amplification. "Gold has his nose in front but Blue's pressing him hard. Green is still in the air but well out of the reckoning; it's between these two."
"Come on, Gold!" Tanya shrieked.
"Go, Gold... go, Gold... go, Gold..." a chant started up among the crowd.
Now redundant, the projection winked out as the headlights of the two contenders grew rapidly closer, larger, and more immediate.
"Shift your feet to the side of the street, people!" the announcer warned. "They're not stopping to watch you hoppin', it's pass the line in double-quick time, so clear the way or you're done for today!"
The man's slick rhythmic patter sounded as improvised as the construction of your average starship; it had to be scripted, or at least recycled and ingrained after constant repetition.
Nonetheless, feet shuffled in response and people started moving away to either side, clearing the road. Philip and Tanya moved with them and found themselves at the front of the rearranged cordon. Tanya had let go of his arm as they made their way across and was now jumping up and down beside him, clapping her hands and vociferously cheering on her favourite.
A finishing line appeared a little way up the street - a strip of lights embedded in the road, positioned roughly beneath where the projection had been. The thunder of the skikes' engines was now clearly audible even over the crowd noise, swelling until it threatened to drown out the watchers' rowdy excitement altogether. In the final few seconds the racers loomed out of the night with frightening speed - twin rockets with throttles wide open, neither giving any quarter and both hell-bent on crossing the line first.
As the pair shot over the all-important strip of lights they finally eased off, spinning their hurtling skikes around so that they faced back the way they'd come, their powerful engines now fighting against their own momentum.
It was then that disaster struck. One of the riders, Blue, overcooked the swivel, his skike continuing to turn and spin. Completely out of control, it flew at the crowd, heading directly towards where Philip was standing. At least the rider had the sense to cut his engines, but too late to prevent what was about to happen.
A detached part of Philip's mind heard the announcer calling out, "And the winner by half a length is... Gold!" Another registered that the screen had reappeared, to show a replay of the finish. None of him seemed inclined to move. He stood rooted to the spot, watching this increasingly huge machine slew towards him. In those last few seconds everything slowed, so that the skike appeared to be moving in slow motion while the screams of those around him came as if from a long way off. The tail of the skike swept unerringly at him and he knew there was no escape.
Something struck him in the side, hitting hard, knocking the wind from his body and sending him sprawling to the floor. Not the skike, however, which cut through the air an arm's length above his face as time resumed its normal flow. Heat and air washed over him as the machine struck the wall and bounced off, skidding along the pavement and scything down half a dozen bystanders who were too slow to react. The victims vanished, their avatars kicked out of Virtuality.
No, not the skike; a compact bundle of warm flesh and muscle. "Tanya?" She lay on top of him, her face glaring into his.
"Were you ever going to move?" Her expression matched the exasperation in her tone. "Or were you intending to just stand there and let that thing finish you off?"
"I..." Philip had always considered himself to be level headed in a crisis - hadn't he stayed calm and composed when that remote drone came to kill him in his own apartment? This time, though, he'd frozen to the spot. "Sorry." Why was he apologising?
She climbed off him and they both got to their feet. Philip found himself confronted by a blonde spitfire, anger still apparent in her face and in every line of her body. "There are no second chances in here you know, not for you. You have to start taking this life seriously."
She knew. Her words sent cold horror running through him. Somehow this girl he'd only just met had worked out that he wasn't simply another avatar. No, that was impossible, while her abrupt change from bubbly blonde thrill-seeker to angered professional was merely unlikely.
"Who are you?" he asked, though he already had a pretty good idea.
At which point Malcolm appeared, to pull his son around and hug him. "Philip, I thought I'd lost you again. Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm fine, though only thanks to Tanya here."
He turned back but she'd gone, using the distraction of Malcolm's arrival to slip away into the milling crowd. That figured, but Philip wasn't concerned. She'd shown her hand and somehow he had a feeling he'd be seeing her again; far sooner than he might wish to.
Chapter Eight
The way she heard it, even finding the habitat had been difficult. These people had very effectively cut themselves off from the rest of humanity and had then done an expert job of erasing their trail, though not quite expert enough. The amount of resources needed to build a place like this had to show up somewhere, and by searching hard enough and far enough back enough the ULAW AIs had identified traces of the habitat's construction and followed the tenuous trail to here. Everyone knew what this was about, although officially no one admitted as much. You couldn't stop rumours any more than you could hide something the size of the habitat from a concerted search. Sheol. Somebody had done the unthinkable and broken out of the notorious prison station that ULAW refused to admit existed. Yes, they'd had help, but even so the feat was impressive.
From what Boulton had been able to gather, there were only two groups reckoned to have the capabilities and the balls to attempt something like this, and favourite was the habitat. The authorities weren't taking any chances, though. Two task forces had been mobilised, set to strike both candidates simultaneously. She took it as a sign of her own personal progress that she'd been given command of the principle action in this one. On the far side of the station a second eyegee, Case, had two squads of marines under his command, tasked with taking control of the ship currently docked at the habitat - large and of unfamiliar design, clearly a starship - but that was very much a secondary consideration. Hers was the mission that had brought them all here.
Even so, Alaine Boulton still felt she had a point to prove. To herself, to the smug bastard whose bed she'd so unwisely tumbled into one ni
ght after a particularly tense mission on a grotty little world called Holt, and maybe even to her ULAW overlords. This assignment was going to run like clockwork, it had to. She was one of the newest of the eyegees and that made her feel she had some catching up to do, particularly with the likes of Jim Leyton, a veritable legend within the whispered world of black ops. A man who owed her, big time.
His presence had haunted and tantalised her from the moment she first joined the service. Rumour of his ingenuity and near-superhuman deeds were everywhere, so she'd been a little in awe of his reputation long before they'd actually met. When ULAW had assigned her to the Holt mission, she could hardly believe her luck, knowing that she would be working alongside this living legend. Yet he'd all but dismissed her at first and then continually accused her of incompetence during the mission itself. He had humiliated her. Afterwards she'd sought him out, determined to tell him what a disappointment and a complete arsehole he was, and to convince him that she hadn't screwed up at all. Instead, he'd seduced her and used her body mercilessly. She'd left his room battered and bruised, feeling violated and more like the survivor of a vicious fight than a departing lover. The message she'd left about Mya - a woman she barely knew - had been a cheap shot, but the very least he deserved.
Now she learned that Leyton had gone rogue and was rumoured to have led the raid on Sheol. There was even talk that a guard had been killed. First this man she idolised had humiliated her, then he'd used her like some sexual object and now he'd betrayed everything she held dear. No question, Jim Leyton was going to pay.
