The roar was deafening, even with head gear. Two dozen skiffs screamed to life, barreling down the initial straight away on the course. A skiff’s top speed was over four hundred kilometers per hour but these custom ones could do even better. He was grateful that there were only a few straight aways that allowed for that sort of speed.
Remy thought his eyes were going to push through the back of his head as he struggled to focus on what was happening around them. Josie darted left, shot around a skiff and settled in to draft behind the next one. Her hands moved like they had a mind of their own, aided by her Quant Vasc. He’d always felt queasy using a Quant like his brain worked faster than he himself could think about it, but he was sure glad Josie could use it now.
The Road Hogs re-appeared on their right and came up on Remy’s side, dangerously close to brushing against their skiff. Their gunner locked eyes with Remy and held his hand up like it was a gun and blew a kiss at Remy. Looks like they have a list of their own. Remy was thankful they’d have at least a lap to separate.
Racing was dangerous enough without cannons or murderous pilots ramming into you, so the Beltrider had rules to ensure not everyone died in the opening straight away. That would just spoil the fun. For the first lap, that meant no offensive Vascs, no weapons, and no ramming. This allowed some measure of separation and gave the good pilots a chance to get their gunners into a better position. Starting in lap two, things progressively became more deadly until the fifth lap where everything was allowed. There had been a big dust-up a few years back when a freelancer didn’t play by the rules and Volted one of Jack’s drivers during the first lap. The others forced the offending skiff to the ground where Jack himself had gotten a hold of him and made a nice show out of cutting him up slowly. All the other gangs attended the butchery with their crews, showing solidarity. Honor among thieves, he supposed.
Josie didn’t say anything and Remy just tried to hold on to his lunch. They soared over collapsed bridges and between dark buildings abandoned long ago. Some parts of the undercity thrived and were nearly as safe as New Madison proper, while other areas were left unclaimed and fit only for rat warrens and the truly desperate. The pack of racers was still thick, and Remy was amazed that there wasn’t more incidental contact between racers. Jack’s main ride took an early lead but two of JD’s freelancers were close behind. Drones with cameras zipped alongside the front-runners capturing the race for the amusement of everyone with their feet firmly on the ground.
The drifted around the first corner and approached the cavernous opening in the side of a warehouse. Somebody had built the gargantuan warehouse before the revolution and no one had had the money to do anything with it since. The Beltrider took racers through derelict processing rooms, transportation corridors and loading docks before funneling them out through the launch port on the north end where only two skiffs could fit through at a time.
Remy thought his teeth would shatter from clenching. Josie dipped and duck around thick concrete columns and machinery. Only lights from the skiffs themselves and the camera drones lit their path beyond a simple string of red beacon lights marking the path. It was a nightmare of roaring engines, dancing lights, and dizzying turns. He tried to follow their path but soon gave up, and focused simply on breathing to get his heart under control. All those cigarettes and a gin-centered diet hadn’t done him any favors there, and it thumped away like a hammer.
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They rounded the last corner and Remy could see a sliver of light at the end of the corridor marking the launch port. The leaders dipped out but the fourth skiff came in too tight and clipped the edge of the opening. It burst into a fireball and Remy cried out.
“Watch it!”
Josie hit the throttle instead of slowing down. Remy ducked as they rumbled through the fire and its turbulence. He glanced back at the monstrous concrete opening dancing with flames.
“Did the grav unit blow?”
“No.” Josie said through gritted teeth. Remy gulped and shook his head. Hopefully, the wrecked skiff’s anti-gravity unit would blow before they came back around. It would just be a ticking bomb until then. The undercity was dark, but Remy was surprised how bright it was compared to the warehouse’s depths. In the dim lighting, he could clearly see that only three skiffs made it out of the warehouse ahead of them. The warehouse would’ve been disastrous to anyone not running a Quant-enhanced pilot or without the money for corrective AI units.
They roared over a dusty field on the east side of the city, the ruins of the old capital dome glittering in the distance between the foundations of the surface towers. The passed through the runway of a burnt out airport and the capital view disappeared behind the holding tank of the largest lake.
The back stretch of the race wedged in between the holding tank and the foundations of the Ghostfence to the north. Long dead redwood trees towered hundreds of feet into the air and the skiffs zoomed between their monstrous trunks. Remy had taken a date here once. It was tough to believe any tree could grow to be that big and the girl had been suitably impressed. The date had been good, the sex had been better, but the relationship was terrible.
The maze of skeletal trunks was better than the warehouse if only because he could see when a branch was about to destroy their skiff. His gut lurched with each sudden movement. Throughout the forest of petrified trees, giants leaned on their neighbors and small patches opened up where trees had fallen in previous Beltriders or simply by nature. Josie poked them out the other side of the forest, having gained no ground on the leaders. Remy watched his screens and saw a handful of skiffs getting closer behind them. Lap two would bring out the Vascs and things would start getting messy, especially without offensive ones of their own.
They rounded the northwest edge of the lake’s tank and jumped back onto the ruins of the ancient broken highway. The final feature of the course took the skiffs winding around the foundations of New Madison’s west side towers before emptying onto the southern straightaway which carried them over the finish line. After zipping through the warehouse and darting around the branches of gargantuan trees, slaloming large and obvious buildings was practically relaxing.
Remy’s relaxation was short-lived as they came onto the straight away and Josie pushed the throttle to full once more. He rubbed his hands together and took as deep a breath as he could manage. Two beeps in their headsets confirmed.
Lap two.