Chapter 3 - The Race

Once again sat at the starting and finishing line. The count down's just started, the crowd are in their seats and the camera ships are in position, ready to try and keep up with us. The course markers go blue and every ship flares into life, powering forward. I'm surrounded and overtaken from all angles, trying not to get taken out so early on in the race. Usually it's the first lap that's the most dangerous. But in this race, it's all the laps. sixty laps of pure adrenaline keeping you on your toes, eyes everywhere and fingers on the trigger. Number eighty five, Boomer, is right behind me, trying to get past. But he's not succeeding. I'm countering his every move, blocking the way ahead. He goes down, I go down. He goes up, I go up. I'm back up to fifth, behind number seventy one, Dawn's Beauty, Ann's ship. And she's letting no one by. I take a pot-shot at her, clipping her right wing and a string of obscenities crackles over the com to me. She speeds up and so do I. Boomer's trying hard, but his exhaust flares violently and he goes down trailing thick black smoke. I use the moment to slip past Ann, banking hard, tipping the ship on it's side before righting it ready for the entrance into the open caves.

It goes dark. Then a red glow illuminates the caves. Three routes. I take the one on the left, like I did in the qualifying lap, avoiding the mass of ships that have opted for the central route; the shortest with the least twists and turns. A sprinter's route. My ex-fighter shudders and the shields rippled light green showing it's honey-comb energy structure. A sleek, silver and blue striped ship comes up behind me, it's weapons heated and trying to get a lock onto my engine. I see a series of splits in the cave wall where stalagmites and stalactites have merged together to my right and a blur of racers go past on the other side. I bank hard and roll into the central tunnel narrowly avoiding a wrecked engine and almost colliding with two more ships, numbers eleven and one hundred. Naturally they shoot at me, but I fight back, braking hard, watching them split, sparks flying as they run across the icy walls, metal grinding against sharp rock. Eleven bounces roughly across the central cave's floor trailing smoke and flames, hitting a large stalagmite and finally stopping dead. One hundred is right beside me trying to run me into the wall. I tilt onto my side again and speed up, squeezing out every bit of power my ex-fighter has, hitting the boost, the secondary engine propelling me forward faster and faster for a precious few seconds opening a gap between me and one hundred.

I finally make it into second just as the sun light blinds me. The ship's auto-tint darkens the cockpit window and I can see again. I pull up hard, ignoring the headache settling behind my eyes and follow the beacons to level out at seventy thousand. The highest point on the course. No clouds make for relatively plain sailing. Until I see the leader. A larger, more powerful ship than my own, it owns half of the width of the course. It was the Onnotian. I urged my ship to go faster, lining up my crosshairs with his exhaust, trying to get a clear shot, but the exhaust flame was too big to pin point the area I needed to hit to down him in one shot. I didn't recognise the type of ship, so I didn't know it's weak points in the shielding. I opened fire anyway. His shields flared but he continued. I tried again and he still didn't stop. A camera ship pulled up alongside me on the other side of the course's floating marker beacons catching everything on film. I followed him down to the snowy plains below, past the crowd stands and through the old town, snow being kicked up in our wake. I couldn't see a thing through the snow debris. All I had was a 3D wire-frame map to follow that reminded me of old 16-bit games, but without the skin. Just a green mass of wire work on a black background to guide me.

The pit lanes whipped past in a blur and it was onto the next lap. Still can't catch up with the Onnotian. Still can't break through his shields. There's nothing more I want right now than to see him crash and burn. The caves come into view again, the snow disappears as the red glow fills my cockpit. I take the central route. The cave's too narrow for him, so he has to slow down a bit, allowing me some time to catch up. I'm right behind him now, my heat shields glowing from his exhaust.
''Give up little Dragon! You ain't never getting past me!'' He growled over the com.
I ignored him. I was going to get past him, no matter what. Lucas came up behind me and I went into a quick roll, trying to avoid his shots. I took a couple of hits, but the rest landed on the Onnotian's shield. The auto-tint came into play again as the caves ended sending us upward again. I used the momentum to my advantage and squeezed past him, leaving Lucas sat behind the wide load as I powered onward into the cloudless sky. There was no way he was getting past me now. Not in a ship that big. Not without doing himself some serious damage.


Two laps to go. Three pit stops under my belt. Now in third place with Lucas and ship twenty two in front of me. No sign of the Onnotian. Out of the thirty five ships in the race, only thirteen remain.
I slip past twenty two, letting off a shot as I go, making her flinch to one side. Her nerves are showing. But then, so are mine. The race hasn't been as brutal as I expected it to be, but drones and remote controlled fighters or not, it's still been pretty fracking tough. My heart's hammering as I go into the final lap. I hear the crowd cheering and screaming as I go past them, trying desperately to catch up with Lucas. But the little bastard's been on a roll this season. If he wins, this'll be the eigth fracking time in a row this season. I can see him ahead of me as we near the end of the cave, but he's keeping his pace even and fast, the gap between us never getting any shorter, even as we take the nose dive down towards the plains. I think I have him going through the dead town, but I get over enthusiastic and my wing scrapes horribly across the remaining front of the building that took out my fuel tank. The wing survives, but just barely. My ship's leaning, pulling to the left slightly as the wing tip G-Diffuser fails forcing me to be heavy and early with my steering on the right bends and tentative on the lefts.

I use another boost on the final straight that contains the finishing line, the chequered banner squirming in the snowy wind. I get up alongside Lucas, the nose of my ship levelling with his rear dorsal wing. I blink once and the race is over. Lucas slows and diverts around to the area behind the pits, as do I. Eight more ships come in. None of them's Ann. Or the Onnotian. I look around. If she crashed, someone would be here waiting for me. Or she'd be here herself, waiting in the gaggle of different races and species, her hands planted on her hips ready to blame me for her losing. But I didn't see anyone looking for me. And I didn't see her. The Onnotian was nowhere to be seen either, but he was probably off sulking somewhere. Me and Lucas are hauled up to the raised podium along with a gilled Humanoid with three eyes, and put on the specified steps, reethes of greenery hanging around our necks, large bottles of champaign shoved in our grasp and trophies at our feet. The three eyed Humanoid in third, me in second and Lucas in first. A large crowd beneath us and a cameras pointed towards us. I don't much care for this bit at the moment. Usually I'd be celebrating having survived long enough to be in the top three along with Lucas and the other guy, but not this time. I still couldn't pick out Ann from the crowd.

I looked at Lucas and noticed he was paying more attention to the crowd than usual.
''Where's Ann, d'you know?'' I hissed above the din.
Lucas shrugged and shot a look my way, forcing a grin for the cameras.
''Last I saw her was around the twenty fifth lap. Then I left her behind. Ain't seen her since...''
''frack. Something's wrong.''
He nodded before we got escorted off our podiums and ushered down a set of cold steel steps that were crunchy beneath our feet where someone had thrown grit onto them to stop them from icing over.
''You keep the cameras sweet and I'll go have a look for her.'' Lucas said and left me behind to face a crowd of news crews from all over the galaxy. They asked the usual questions. Questions like ''Do you think you'll be able to beat Lucas Mew before the final race?'' and ''Now you have three weeks of free time before the final race, what do you intend to do?''. Most questions that have nothing to do with racing. I brush them off, making up excuses so I can go and find Lucas and Ann. I find Lucas first and his tiny body is sagged and his toe nails are dragging across the floor as he floats toward me.

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