We did not. My calculations varied widely from Hacker’s. When we checked each other’s work, it turned out I had made a boneheaded mistake that had thrown my end results off wildly from what they should have been. Hacker looked smugly superior when she pointed out my error. I wished, not for the first time, I had been paired with Isaac or Neha instead of her.
Once we were on the same page mathematically, what we needed was clear. We needed to build a ramp at a certain angle. If I then rode off of it going at least fifty-five miles an hour on the motorcycle I would easily sail past the gold energy field that suppressed my powers.
I had hoped the math would show Hacker could have driven the motorcycle with me behind her, but our combined weight would have made us too heavy for it to work. Thanks to the implacability of math and physics, jumping off the ramp with the motorcycle would have to be all on me.
Fantastic. No pressure at all.
We got to work building the ramp. Fortunately, the building had all the tools and wood we needed, including an inclinometer so we could get the angle right. Unfortunately, Hacker didn’t know a Phillips-head screwdriver from the screwdriver drink. I resisted the urge to rub her nose in the fact I knew useful stuff she didn’t know as I took charge of designing the ramp and building it. Hacker helped once I taught her how to use a hacksaw without cutting her fingers off.
Hacker looked at me in near awe as the ramp started to take shape, as if I were performing someone sort of wondrous magic trick.
“Where did you learned to build stuff?” she asked me as I hammered a board into place. “They don’t teach this at the Academy.”
“My Dad James taught me. I grew up on a farm. We didn’t have a lot of money, especially after my mother died. A farmer, especially a poor one, must be a Jack of all trades. My Dad could butcher a hog, build a house, do electrical work, repair a tractor, and a bunch of other stuff. He was versatile.”
“Your father sounds like a great man.”
“He was,” I said. My eyes unexpectedly blurred with tears. So Hacker wouldn’t see me tear up, I turned my head a bit, pretending to examine a piece of wood. Even though Dad had been killed a couple of years ago, I still missed him. Grief still stabbed me like a knife sometimes when I thought of him.
To avoid getting dehydrated or sun stroke as we built the ramp under the hot alien sun, we took frequent breaks to drink water. We also took a break to eat some canned food as we both were famished. We had to pry the cans open with screwdrivers as we couldn’t find a can opener in the building.
A motorcycle but no can opener? If we ever got back to Earth Sigma, I needed to have a chat with the Guild’s supply clerk.
Eventually, eating and drinking took their toll.
“I wonder where the bathroom is,” Hacker said.
I pulled out the nails I had between my lips. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
I spread my arms out to encompass the unpopulated alien landscape around us.
“The whole world is your bathroom.”
Hacker looked disbelieving.
“You expect me to do my business outside?” She sniffed disdainfully. “I’m not a savage.”
“Well you’re going to be an awfully backed-up non-savage if you don’t.”
Hacker frowned and continued to work on sawing boards into set lengths as I had instructed her.
As she worked, she got more and more fidgety. Finally, with a curse, she threw her saw down on the ground. She stomped over to the building. She went inside.
A few seconds later, she walked back out of the building. Though I was a good distance away from her, she appeared to be holding white sheets of papers and a bottle of water. She glanced at me. She then walked further away from me until she was but a dot in the distance. She stayed there for a little while. Eventually, she walked back to where I continued to work. Her hands were empty. She got back to sawing.
I was dying to say something. I held it in as long as I could. A heroic effort counts for something, right?
“Everything come out okay?” I finally said, vainly trying to suppress a grin. “I hope you didn’t get a paper cut.”
“I hate you,” Hacker said, without looking up. Despite her words, a slight smile played around her lips.
It took about eighteen hours of almost non-stop work to get the ramp built and adequately secured in the ground so it wouldn’t be pushed over the cliff into the canyon as soon as the motorcycle hit it. Though I knew my way around a toolbox, I was hardly a professional carpenter. It undoubtedly would have taken less time if I had been, or if Hacker could have been more help than she was.
As I put the final finishing touches on the ramp, I told Hacker to go to sleep for a couple of hours. When I finished, I woke her up and in turn went to sleep myself for a few hours. It would be hard enough to learn to ride a motorcycle without being so tired I’d fall asleep while doing so.
By the time Hacker woke me, a little under twenty-four hours was left on Overlord’s countdown. While I had slept, Hacker had used both her hands and a rake to clear a mostly rock-free path leading to our new ramp. She also marked off with rocks how far away I would need to start riding from the ramp in order to have accelerated to the necessary speed of at least fifty-five miles per hour.
I got on the motorcycle behind Hacker. We made a few practice runs up and down the path she had cleared to give me a feel for being on the bike. I also got a good feel of Hacker since I had my arms around her as she drove. It would have been a lot more titillating had we not been fighting for our lives.
After several practices runs, Hacker gave me a crash course in riding a motorcycle, quickly but thoroughly explaining the operating parts and how to use them: the clutch, the front and rear brakes, the gear shifter, and the throttle. It would have been a lot more confusing if I didn’t already know how to drive a manual transmission car. My car before I had set off to try to be a Hero had been a manual Chevy Cavalier with a sun-faded, powder-blue paint job and rusted-out floorboards. If I could pull off learning to ride a motorcycle and survived this test, maybe I would one day buy a bike. It was sure to attract more positive female attention than my beat-up Cavalier had. It would be nearly impossible not to.
Under Hacker’s critical eye, I put the bike into neutral and then started it with a push of a button. The engine roared to life. Good. Step one: Start engine. Step two: Don’t die.
Straddling the bike with my feet on the ground, using only the clutch, I walked the bike slowly forward, getting a sense of the bike’s balance.
Now feeling more confident, I eased into first gear, taking my feet off the ground and putting them on the bike’s foot pegs as the bike moved forward. I have it a little gas, and the bike surged forward like a spurred racehorse.
I was doing it! I was riding a motorcycle. Pride swelled within me. I could check “riding a motorcycle like a badass” off my bucket list.
As the Good Book says, “Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.” In this case, the fall was literal. I must have gone all of forty feet before I lost my balance. The bike and I hit the ground with a crash. Fortunately, I pulled my right leg free before the motorcycle fell on it. Even so, the fall wasn’t like falling into a pile of feathers.
Hacker rushed over to see if I was okay. No, strike that. I thought she was rushing over to see if I was okay. She stepped right over me and bent down to make sure the bike was okay.
With a friend like this, who needed enemies?
Despite the fall shaking me up a little, both the bike and I were none the worse for wear. After taking a few minutes to collect myself, I got back on it and tried again. While I practiced, Hacker got the rake again and cleared a longer path so I could practice going longer distances at higher speeds.
I wound up falling a few more times. But, in a few hours, I was whizzing up and down the path we had laid out like I was one of the Hells Angels. Well, that’s not exactly true since I couldn’t reall
y turn. I was too scared to try. I would skid to a stop, put my feet down, and walk the bike in a circle so I could make another run down the path. I didn’t need to be able to turn, anyway. I just needed to be able to go down our path and hit the ramp at the necessary speed.
By the time we had about an hour and a half left on Overlord’s countdown, I felt confident. I was zooming up and down the path we had made in excess of sixty miles an hour. This was going to work.
I was about ready to stop practicing and actually ride over the ramp and over part of the chasm when it happened.
There was there was a sudden clatter as I zoomed down our path, and the motorcycle slowed. Freaked out, I braked and brought the bike to a stop. I got off. Hacker came over and together we checked out the bike.
As it turned out, the “it” that happened was the motorcycle’s chain had broken, probably due to age and neglect. We found the broken chain back along our path, flung there when it had been ejected by the motorcycle.
I glanced up at the countdown clock. There was less than one hour and twenty minutes until the worms made their appearance again.
I looked at Hacker. She was tapping her cheek with her finger furiously. She looked like she was holding back tears of fear and frustration.
I knew I was.
Hacker and I hustled to push the motorcycle back to the building. We had seen a replacement chain in there. Plus, there were more tools inside than we could shake a stick at. Surely we’d be able to fix the motorcycle. How hard could it be to put a replacement chain on? Maybe it was like putting a new chain on a bicycle. I had done that lots of time when I was a kid.
As it turned out, it was not much like putting a chain on a bicycle. Unfortunately, Hacker didn’t know how to do it, being tool and mechanically-challenged despite her years of motorcycle riding. Fiddling around with computers, not mechanized devices, was her bailiwick. We had to figure out how to install the chain on the fly.
By the time we got the chain on, we were both streaked with grease and oil. But, it was on.
The problem was, what would probably have taken us less than ten minutes had we known what we were doing took us well over an hour. We were cutting this incredibly close.
“Stay here,” I said to Hacker as I wheeled the motorcycle out of the building. There were literally seconds left on Overlord’s countdown. “If I can’t pull this off, even with holes in it, this building is the safest place to be.”
Hacker flung herself against my back, hugging me awkwardly. Her breasts pressed against me. The unexpected and uncharacteristic display of affection nearly made me drop the bike.
“Good luck,” she murmured before letting go of me. Once the bike was clear of the door, Hacker closed it behind me. Maybe it was my imagination, but there seemed to be a lot of finality in the sound of that door clicking shut.
Overlord’s countdown was now a red row of zeroes. The sky was darkening again. The cicada-like sound got louder and louder as I raced towards the path we had cleared that led to the ramp. If I could have hopped on the motorcycle and ridden it there, I would have. The problem was the ground was too rocky here. I was sure I’d wipe out if I tried to ride the motorcycle on anything other than the path we had cleared.
I wanted to pushed the bike all the way to the end of our cleared path. I knew from my practice sessions I would be able to accelerate the bike well past the needed fifty-five miles per hour if I started the bike off from there.
The problem was, I didn’t think there was time for that. The sky was too dark and the sound of the approaching swarm was too loud. Already I heard whizzing in the air.
Once I hit our path, despite the fact I was nowhere near the end of it, I hastily mounted the motorcycle. My heart was in my throat. I could feel the blood pounding in my head like a drum. My hands were sweaty on the motorcycle’s handlebars.
For a split panicked second, I drew a complete blank on how to started the damned motorcycle.
Then, I suddenly remembered. The bike’s engine roared to life, throbbing between my legs like something alive. I started to roll forward, praying to God I wouldn’t stall the engine in my haste to get the bike moving and up to the necessary speed.
I accelerated towards the ramp at the end of the path. My vision tunneled, I was focused so hard on the ramp. I felt more than saw a worm shoot right past my nose. There was no time for do-overs. I had to get this right the first time.
I hit the ramp dead-on with a thump that rattled my bones. As I zoomed up it, I glanced at the speedometer. I flew off the ramp. I sailed into the air with a roar of the bike’s engine. The wind whipped past me.
The speedometer had read forty-eight miles per hour. I needed at least fifty-five.
I wasn’t going fast enough.
I wasn’t going to make it.
CHAPTER 15
Math doesn’t lie. Equations don’t miraculously change because you want them to.
But the variables you plug into those equations can.
I hadn’t hit the necessary fifty-five miles per hour. I couldn’t change that variable. The ramp’s angle was fixed. I couldn’t change that variable.
The only variables I could change were me and the bike.
In a vacuum, the fact the bike weighed more than I wouldn’t be relevant. If there was no wind resistance, we would fall out of the air at the same rate. If the scientific urban legend is to be believed, Galileo proved that back in the sixteenth century when he had dropped two spheres of different weights off the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The balls had fallen at exactly the same rate.
But here’s the thing: The bike and I weren’t airborne in a vacuum. Wind resistance had to be factored in here. A motorcycle flying through the air was not aerodynamic. But I could be, at least far more than the bike was. Me studying the most efficient way to fly at the Academy had taught me that.
That all flashed through my mind once I saw I wasn’t going fast enough when I hit the ramp. As soon as the bike cleared the ramp, I let go of the bike. I put my arms down at my sides and closed my legs, straightening my body out like a skydiver cutting through the air. I knew trying to minimize the wind resistance and traveling further than our calculations had shown the bike and I would travel together was my and Hacker’s only chance.
The bike and I separated. It dropped behind and below me as I cut through the air more efficiently than it did. The golden energy field was straight ahead, getting closer and closer with each instant.
I punched through it like a shot bullet.
Though I didn’t feel any resistance as I moved through the gold field, I did feel something familiar as soon as my body passed through it.
My hands were burning.
My powers were back.
Yes!
Able to fly again, I needed to change my trajectory. My current descending one was hurtling me towards the wall on the other side of the canyon where I would go splat.
I angled up, out of the canyon. I turned in midair to get my bearings.
The power nullification box was below me. The sky was now almost completely dark. There was whizzing in the air around me. I raised my force field, but I had no idea if it would stop the worms or not. The only thing I had seen stop the worms so far was the metal walls of the building Hacker was still in.
The whizzing sound as the worms passed by increased. A couple of worms zoomed right in front of my face, barely missing my nose and chin. They had passed through my personal shield like it didn’t exist.
Wonderful. That resolved the question of whether my shield was effective against the worms. The answer was a big fat NO.
Overlord had told us at the beginning of this test that if we destroyed the power nullification box, the portal to take us back to Earth Sigma would reappear. Just as there had been on the side of the canyon I had just left, there were massive stone structures on this side. I ripped one of them out of the ground with my powers like it was a weed. I rapidly moved it to high above the power nullification box lik
e it was slung inside an invisible crane. I turned off my power’s hold on the huge rock structure, and let gravity do the rest.
As soon as I let go of it, I realized it had weighed many tons. It was the heaviest thing I had ever handled. By far. And yet, I had ripped it from the ground and picked it up almost without effort.
Maybe the Old Man had been right in our conversation from an eternity ago: maybe stress had acted to kick my powers up another notch.
SMASH! The massive stone structure crashed into the metal box on the ground. It crushed the box the way a stomping foot crushes an ant.
The gold energy field immediately disappeared as if someone had neglected to pay the light bill. Simultaneous with the gold field disappearing, the portal that had sent me here flicked back into existence. It floated off the ground maybe fifty feet from the mangled debris of the power nullification box.
The cicada-like noise the worms made and their whizzing increased in intensity as the main body of the swarm got closer. The sound of them was now almost deafening. I felt like the leading man in a horror flick.
Safety was now right at hand, though. The emerald field inside of the portal rippled, almost seeming to be gesturing at me invitingly. I could fly through the portal and back to the Guild complex on Earth Sigma. The worm swarm was so close, it was likely I’d only manage to kill both of us if I went back for her. Surely no one would blame me if I saved myself and left Hacker behind.
The smart thing to do would have been to save myself.
Sometimes I’m not very smart.
I rocketed towards the building Hacker was in like a stone shot from a slingshot. Worms rained down around me. I felt a sharp pain in my right arm, and yet another in my backside as approached the building. I cried out in pain. I opened the building’s door with my powers. I shot towards small opening in the building like a billiard ball racing towards the side pocket.
Trials: The Omega Superhero Book Two (Omega Superhero Series 2) Page 12
