Sword Fight

by Nathan Van Coops

  “He got it,” Rico said, rubbing his hands together.

  With the seat on the train, he’d be in position ahead of Valerie for most of the main track features. With limited pit assets, there wasn’t a lot they’d be able to do in terms of maintenance, but if necessary, he could wait for her along the track for roadside repairs. Anything was better than nothing.

  “Better get your armor on,” Damon said from the radio. “You don’t have long till the start.”

  “There are some things I need to talk to you about,” Valerie said. “In person.”

  “First things first. You’ve got a race to win. Keep this channel on. I’ll check back shortly. Danger Dog out.”

  Valerie’s eyes roamed along the spectator train. Was the king aboard somewhere?

  She moved to the back of the Guardian and opened the trunk. Her armor was sparse, the cast-offs from Damon’s training gear that fit plus a few odds and ends they had managed to scrounge or fabricate, but it was at least enough to give her some modest protection from outside assaults. Her racing helmet would protect her face, and the neck guard and pauldron would cover most of her exposed shoulder. She was hoping to avoid anything coming through the window grate, but in a race like this, anything could happen.

  Rico did last minute checks on the Guardian’s tire pressures and offloaded his tool kit from the trunk. They did a run-through of the car’s armament assets and tested the fire-warning light panel. Everything was in order.

  “You ready for this?” Rico asked.

  Valerie finished cinching up her helmet. “As ready as I can be.” In truth, her heart was pounding, and she was doing her best to keep a tremor from her hands.

  Rico helped strap her into the racing harness and handed her the water bottle. Valerie took a quick drink. All around them, engines revved. She turned the ignition and was relieved to feel the Guardian come to life around her. The vibration of the engine was like a salve on her nerves.

  “Those four lanes through the Bottleneck will jam fast,” Rico said. “Whatever you do, don’t get caught behind a blockage. Some of these big boys will come right over you.” He gestured to the trucks with monster tires that were as tall as a house.

  “You have any positive things to say?” Valerie asked. “I could use a few of those right now.”

  Rico leaned in the window and smiled. “Don’t worry. This war car is the best mix of tough and fast. If it was good enough for Il Orso Nero, you know it has to be good.” He slapped a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got this.”

  Valerie nodded. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Rico gave her a reassuring wave before scooping up his tool kit and the spare gas can. He then joined the flow of other mechanics boarding the rear of the spectator train.

  As the plaza cleared out, Valerie had an unobstructed view of her competition. Over a hundred vehicles were spread out across the starting line, every one of them aimed for the mouth of the Bottleneck. The smell of exhaust mixed with burnt rubber from tire burnouts. The air was alive with tension. The energy of it pulsed through her.

  “It’s about focus.”

  Her father’s words cut through the anxiety, the memory forcing its way to her mind.

  The radio crackled, and Damon came over the channel. “The official has the flag. Get ready. Fast launch and go hard for the Bottleneck. I’ll call out trouble if I see it coming.”

  Valerie tapped the mic button and allowed herself a smile. “I’m the trouble.”

  “Damn straight.”

  She gripped the steering wheel and focused on the race official with the starting flag. “Think like a car,” she muttered.

  The official raised the flag. All around her, engines roared.

  The flag dropped.

  Valerie launched.

  28

  Race

  Pedal down.

  A hundred cars launched off the line in a blur of chrome and flame.

  Fuel burned and rubber smoked.

  Valerie shifted into second, and the tachometer needle soared across the gauge. A dozen cars vanished behind her, but dozens more were eating up the ground to either side.

  An emerald blur erupted from the center of the V. The charcoal streak of the Easton Blackbird was on its tail. The wall of vehicles on either side constricted, narrowing the open space every second. Tailpipes glowed orange with flame as drivers pushed their engines to the limit, fighting to stay ahead of the wave of compressing steel. The plaza’s jaws were closing, and the racers were the teeth.

  Valerie kept her eyes on the mouth of the Bottleneck. Her feet pumped the clutch and gas again, hurling the car into third. Her peripheral vision was now filled with the blurry shapes of the cars that were outrunning her to the opening. She was ahead of the bulk of the pack, but there were machines here built solely for speed, and they were showing it all.

  An unarmored Super Seven slingshotted to the lead on its thin racing tires, a yellow bolt of lightning straining for the freedom of the open lanes at the far side of the Bottleneck. A black-and-red Shogun swung into position behind it, engine straining to keep the car in the draft.

  Then the first ballista bolt flashed from somewhere behind Valerie. The missile screamed past her window and found its mark in the back of the Super Seven. The car canted sideways at the impact. The driver fought to keep the wheels straight, but with nothing to protect it from the blow, the missile pierced directly through the thin metal protecting the rear-mounted engine. Belts and hunks of the motor exploded from the car as the motor tore apart, and the next second, the Shogun slammed into the Super Seven’s bumper.

  The lightweight car went airborne.

  The road was chaos as a hundred vehicles shifted trajectory to avoid the blockage.

  Metal screamed from somewhere to Valerie’s right, and something slammed into her from the left.

  Collisions rocked the wave of vehicles, some spinning out and wiping through competitors to either side. Valerie wrestled the wheel straight and kept her focus on the road—not the wide open beyond the Bottleneck but the asphalt immediately ahead—gauging the shifting vehicles around her. She was no longer an arrow but a hare, weaving and dodging as debris rained from the sky and pummeled the road.

  “Pileup to the west!” Damon shouted over the radio. “Stay right!”

  She swerved right and found herself behind a Ridge Runner with tail spikes the same height as her head. If it stopped suddenly, she’d lose her face. She swerved left again just as the Ridge Runner collided with something immobile and tore apart.

  The road was now an obstacle course with diminishing exits. A flurry of vehicles shot toward the Bottleneck from the left, but the route through the center was full of collisions going badly.

  A volley of spikes rained into the roadway ahead, launched from some vehicle in the rear, and a half dozen cars met in a violent crash as they tried to avoid them. Connor Kane’s flame-painted truck rolled into the fray, blasting his way through with a ram.

  The opening Kane made was inviting, but a silver Lanternfire beat her to it before laying down a patch of tire spikes as it went.

  “Bottleneck is closing!” Damon shouted. “Get out now!”

  Valerie downshifted and swerved right again, finding herself alongside a jacked-up orange Rockwell Hurricane that had a plow affixed to the front of its frame. The driver looked left and met her eye.

  Valerie keyed the mic. “That you, Brickyard?”

  “Sure as shootin’, Alley Cat!”

  Valerie dodged a loose wheel in the road. “You see a way through that mess ahead?”

  “I plan to make one!” He grabbed a lever overhead and yanked on it. “Oorah!” The plow on the front of the Hurricane lowered and sparked off the pavement. Valerie was headed straight for an overturned Vulcan. She braked and swerved into the lane behind Brickyard.

  “Coming through!” The Hurricane plowed through the remains of the Vulcan, and metal flew in every direction.

  Tucked behind th
e Hurricane, Valerie couldn’t see much of the road ahead, but they were closing on the Bottleneck fast, and it looked to be completely clogged. An arrow shot through the grating of her open passenger window and imbedded itself in the dash. She checked her side mirror and found a heavily armored truck with a ten-pack arrow launcher aimed her direction. It looked to be targeting the Hurricane’s tires.

  She weaved right to block the shot, and several more arrows bounced harmlessly off her rear armor.

  “You’ve got company, Brickyard!”

  “Thanks for the defense!” he called back.

  She weaved right to get a view of the track, but the Bottleneck was solidly jammed with wrecks.

  “Detour!” Brickyard shouted.

  Valerie turned hard to follow the Hurricane as it went off-road and plowed through the lower level of one of the buildings bordering the track.

  “This is crazy!” Valerie shouted into the mic.

  “Crazy like a fox!” Brickyard replied. He plowed his way through the empty building’s old walls, ancient lighting and drywall raining down behind them, then they erupted onto a road running parallel to the track. He swerved left again and blasted through the low barrier wall, bringing both of their vehicles back onto the track in a spray of concrete.

  They were past the Bottleneck.

  Valerie checked her rear-view mirror and noted that a stream of racers had followed them through their alternate route. The truck with the arrow launcher had been lost in the fray, but a dozen other vehicles that looked just as mean had replaced it. She recognized the house emblems of Nikki Patel and Mervyn Doyle, as well as a car she had seen with Jasper in the garage. They all had her in their sights.

  “Time to open it up, Brickyard!” Valerie shouted, pulling alongside him.

  Brickyard whooped again and raised his plow, then stepped on the gas. “It’s on!”

  Valerie smiled and upshifted, keeping pace with her track mate for a few seconds. Then the Guardian’s engine snarled as she accelerated and pulled ahead.

  The road was clear.

  However many cars had survived the Bottleneck were now screaming along the highway toward Mount Oro.

  She concentrated on the chatter coming from the radio.

  “ . . . this is Danger Dog. Come in, Alley Cat.”

  “Alley Cat here,” Valerie said. “I’m back.”

  “Tell me you made it through that pile-up.”

  “I’m through. Where are you?”

  “The train is five miles ahead of the Bottleneck now. It’ll rejoin the track at Mount Oro. From the spotters’ reports, you’ve got about twenty cars ahead of you. Time to make up some ground.”

  “I’m on it. Where’s Jasper?”

  “He’s going by the callsign ‘Viper.’ He’s two cars back from the lead and gaining. You’ll need to really pour it on to catch him.”

  “And the Red Reaper?”

  “Not sure. Keep your eyes peeled.”

  “Let’s hope that bastard got stuck in the pile-up,” Valerie muttered. “If not, I’ll put him into one. Alley Cat out.”

  She shifted into fifth gear and floored the accelerator. The Guardian’s turbo kicked into full boost and hurled the car down the highway.

  The towers of Mount Oro Castle kept a brooding vigil over the twisting highway that climbed its mountain cliffs. For a hundred years, the castle’s intimidating height and perilous maze of a moat system had kept all intruders at bay. Today the castle walls were lined with spectators. Binoculars were trained on the spillway at one end of the moat that had been linked to the road via a newly constructed stone bridge.

  Jasper Sterling crossed the bridge and headed into the moat to the sound of cheering. He could hear it even over the noise of the Samurai X’s high-pitched engine. So far, it had been almost too easy. Of the racers within a mile of his position, he knew at least five of them were paid off and would stay respectfully behind him, keeping his other competition at bay. The driver of the silver Stingray directly ahead of him hadn’t gotten that message.

  As the Samurai splashed through the muddy moat, he eyed the armament dashboard at his fingertips. He had always wanted to see what a flaming harpoon could do to a rear-mounted fuel tank. That would give these people something to cheer about. He’d need to punch through the Stingray’s armor first. His fingers found the lance lever and activated it, twin metal spikes extending from the Samurai’s front bumper. He pulled into the draft of his competitor’s vehicle, accelerating hard and aiming the steel spearheads for the Stingray’s trunk.

  “Time to face the music,” Jasper muttered.

  Then, to his surprise, the Stingray’s trunk flew open, and three jets of fuel sprayed from the nozzles aimed directly at his windshield. Jasper gasped in horror and braked hard. It wasn’t fast enough. A ball of fire ejected itself from the roof of the Stingray and exploded across the hood of Jasper’s Samurai. His entire view went up in flames.

  “No!” Jasper squawked and slapped at the fire controls. The car sideswiped the wall and spun out.

  Jets of pressurized extinguishing agent sprayed from orifices all over the car, blanketing the vehicle with foam as he spun. When the car had stopped and the flames were out, he angrily flipped the switch for the wipers, flinging away the foamy obstruction to his view. He had lost valuable seconds and suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of this upstart. It wouldn’t stand.

  He gunned his engine, then shifted back into gear, tires slipping and sliding on the wet stones. The automatic traction control kicked in, and the Samurai leapt forward, eating up the ground. There were cars in his rear-view mirror now—a trio of vehicles entering the moat.

  The radio squawked. “Viper, this is Ghost Dagger. I’m on your six. Be aware, you’ve got some kind of mega truck coming in hot.”

  Jasper checked the mirror again. There was indeed a truck closing fast. The flames decorating the paint were now splattered with mud from the oversized tires. He’d heard of this truck. Some sailor from the out-villages that no one would shut up about. Kahn? Kane? Whoever he was, he wasn’t part of the plan.

  “Keep him off me!” Jasper shouted into the mic as he plunged the Samurai into a dark tunnel.

  “We’re trying but he’s no joke.”

  Jasper cursed into his helmet and focused on keeping the Samurai off the walls going through the moat’s twists and turns. Multi-colored murals of graffiti on the tunnel walls seemed to move with the passing of his headlights. It was almost enough to make him nauseated. He tried to keep the car at speed while listening for the competition behind him. The echo in the tunnel changed to a deep rumble as more vehicles entered.

  The Samurai slipped and skidded around the turns. If he was having this much trouble, his competitors must be as well. He had the best car on the track. There was no way they could beat him.

  He searched the armament dash.

  Tire cutters, chainsaw, harpoon launcher. No. No. No.

  Black Ice.

  That could work.

  He flipped the switch for the chemical pot, then hit the trigger on his steering wheel.

  A fan of black fluid sprayed from beneath his rear bumper. Mixed overtop the already muddy stones, it would make a surface that was as frictionless as the ice it was named for.

  “Let’s see you drive on that,” Jasper muttered as he watched his rearview mirror.

  The big truck that had been gaining on him slid around the curve and slammed into the wall hard. The gigantic wheels spun, losing traction fast. Jasper smiled and accelerated around the next curve, putting more distance between them.

  A boom echoed through the tunnel.

  Jasper couldn’t see what had happened, but a moment later, a woman’s voice came on the radio. “Viper, this is Song of Silence. Ghost Dagger just hit the wall hard. Someone slicked the track. I don’t think he’s walking away from that.”

  “What about the truck?”

  “Still coming.”

  Jasper cursed.

 
The muddy tunnel gave way to an inclined ramp, and he shot into the sunshine again.

  Valerie entered the Mount Oro moat system unsure of what to expect. With walls that stretched for miles around the mountaintop, this wasn’t an average castle, and the route was far from ordinary.

  The sloped walls made for a narrow racing lane, and while the concrete moat had served as a defense system for past attacks, it was also tied into the city’s drainage system and handled the runoff from the rest of the city.

  The moment her wheels touched the bottom of the inlet ramp, she was glad for the all-terrain tires.

  Plumes of water fountained from her rear wheels as she tore through puddles several inches deep.

  Damon’s voice emanated from the radio. “Be alert. Sounds like there’s a potential pile-up in the moat.”

  Valerie downshifted and took the next curve cautiously. She’d made up a lot of ground on the open highway, the Guardian’s speedometer at times topping 150, but now wasn’t the time to throw away that progress in an ill-timed corner.

  She passed more inlets to the moat—steep drainage spillways from higher ground. High above, spectators looked down from battlements cheering and waving the house flags of their favorite competitors.

  Seconds later, they vanished from view as she drove into a tunnel.

  It didn’t take long till she found the trouble, coming upon a section of tunnel illuminated by the red glow of taillights. A half dozen of her competitors were trying to get by a wreck of a war car that had piled into the wall. The driver was no longer in the vehicle, but it was upside down and blocking a third of the passage.

  If it was only a matter of going around the wreck, the cars would be on their way in seconds, but one particularly stubborn driver had turned around and was deliberately blocking the road, preventing passage. The war car had engaged twin buzz saws and was also spraying jets of fire from nozzles over each headlight.

  “Filthy cheaters,” Valerie muttered. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out that it was likely one of Jasper’s paid cronies. The only positive to the situation was that the closest car being blocked was the charcoal-gray Easton Blackbird belonging to the Red Reaper. He was a sitting duck.