Throttle Thirteen

The open field ended in a drop, with mountainous walls rising up on both sides and the path narrowing down into a twisting corridor that occasionally branched apart, pillars of stone rising out of the walls and ground to create natural obstacles for the racers to deal with.

All of that was coming up fast, but Diana had a bigger, more immediate problem.

With the bulk of the racers all squeezing in together, those that had strapped every sort of gun and cannon onto their ships were going wild.

Rockets screamed through the air, crashing into the ground and ships, bursting apart in great gouts of fire that left wrecks and plumes of earth behind.

Diana shifted on the pedals, tossed the yoke aside, and ducked under the wreck of another racer as it tumbled around in mid-air, its directional thrusters desperately trying to keep it afloat.

“Ahvie doesn’t like this!” Ahvie screamed over the comms.

“We’ll be fine,” Diana said. She pulled their nose up, rose higher than most of the racers they were catching up to, then flung them over a larger, slower ship. A trail of bullets followed after them, but they ended up drawing a line of sparks against the hull of the bigger ship.

Diana glanced to the side, saw the pilot of that ship cursing her, then waved.

“Ahvie, what kind of boost can you give me?” Diana asked.

“Boost?”

“We need a burst of speed, Ahvie.”

“Ahvie can flood the main engine for a moment; it will make us faster, but it’s bad for the engine!”

Diana laughed. “So is getting shot up!” She brought them lower, so that the belly of their ship was almost scraping the ground and their thruster was kicking up a wall of dirt behind them. It made it that much harder for the ships they were passing to tag them.

Another ship exploded ahead, and Diana gently moved them out of its path. “We’re reaching the end of the field, I need a big boost!”

“Ahvie’s working on it… there! Say when!”

Diana leaned forwards, eyes narrowed as she focused on all of the ships ahead of her and the chaos unfolding all around. A dozen ships had been taken out already, but that didn’t do much to clear the path.

She needed to get through the congested mess ahead.

“Now!”

The ship rumbled for a moment before the engine screamed. Diana pushed the thrust on all the secondary engines to the max, then laughed as they jerked ahead and she was thrown back into her seat.

The ground dropped below, falling into the canyon.

The Scrap Rocket, with its powerful boost, didn’t fall so much as shoot straight ahead. Red holographic lines were painted across the ceiling of the canyon, marking the maximum height allowed. They zipped right past those, skimming so close to them that Diana could have reached up to touch them.

Then gravity took a hold of them and they started to drop back down.

“We can’t keep this up!” Ahvie screamed.

“Lower it! We’re good!” Diana said.

They came rushing back towards the ground, and Diana made sure all of the ship’s winglets were set to give them as much lift as possible as they descended.

They approached the ground, right at the head of the biggest pack of ships, and right in the bullseye of every ship behind them.

Diana jerked them to the side to avoid a stone pillar, then started zig-zagging the ship to make them that much harder to hit.

Bullets pinged off their hull, and an unguided rocket shot past and rammed into a wall, sending pebbles scattering across the raceway. Diana winced as the windshield of her cockpit exploded and sent pieces of glass flying past her face.

“Damn, this is something,” Diana said. Their ship was fast, faster than the others around them, which meant that they were pushing through the pack and making space every second, especially as the path tightened and ships had to start flying in a rough line wherever the route became too tight.

Diana squinted ahead and swore when she had to choose between pulling back on the throttle or ramming a larger ship in the rear.

They were one ship behind the very front of the middle pack. After that, all she’d need to do was catch up to the dozen or so ships that were ahead. Diana stretched her head out and looked at the trailing end of the lead pack. The ship at the very back was that asymmetrical Jelsha ship, with the guns all set to one side.

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The gap between the leaders and the rest of the racers was only growing though, and Diana could see why. The Jelsha ship only had guns on its left, but they were all guns that could fire behind it, and if they were always turning left, then they’d be able to hit anyone coming closer.

A little zippy ship cut past Diana, a tiny thing that could fit between the stone walls and her ship.

“Damnit,” Diana said as she watched it go.

She winced a moment later as it got too close to the Jelsha ship and was torn apart by converging streams of machine gun fire.

“Okay, next big curve, we’re moving ahead,” Diana said.

The ship just before them shifted to the side a little, and Diana shoved them through the opening.

Metal met metal, and sparks flew as they scraped past, but they made it through.

The next curve was a long one, with plenty of smaller stone plinths in the way to provide cover.

“Ahvie’s not sure about this!”

“Trust me!” Diana said. She gave them more gas the moment the Jelsha ship disappeared around the bend.

The gap between them and the ships behind grew as they dared to move on.

Diana wove around stone obstacles until she could see the Jelsha ship ahead. Its gunners could see her too.

A spray of bullets dug into the stone around them as Diana pushed them forwards faster and faster while hugging the rightmost wall. It gave them that much cover in the slight gap where some of the ship’s guns couldn’t track them.

And then the inevitable happened, and a line of holes was stitched into the Scrap Rocket’s side.

Smoke started to pour out of their side, and the ship veered to the left as the engine on that side gave out with a sputtering cough.

“Shit!” Diana tugged them back to the right, but with uneven thrust, the ship was fighting back.

“We were hit!” Ahvie screamed.

“Yeah, now fix us!” Diana screamed.

“It’s a line break. Ahvie… Ahvie can fix it! But Ahvie needs time to reroute!”

“Cool. Hang on,” Diana said.

She twisted the yoke and the ship rotated onto its side. Diana hung on to the sides of the cockpit even as she tugged them towards their new ‘up’ and brought her head to within touching-range of the stoney wall. Their busted engine was now ‘up,’ and the other side-thruster was ‘down’ and kicking up dust below them.

“The ship’s not supposed to fly this way!” Ahvie said.

“It’s temporary!” Diana said. “Get that engine fixed!”

She could barely see anything ahead of them, not while hugging the curve from so close up. Her reaction range was cut down to a dozen metres at most.

That didn’t mean she slowed down any, not when the curve was ending and they’d be right in the Jelsha ship’s sights.

“Hang on, I’m going faster!” Diana said.

“What!”

Diana gunned it just as they exited the curve, then she turned them to their left, bringing the Scrap Rocket up and over the Jelsha ship.

She glanced to her right and stared down into the Jelsha ship below, where the crew were staring right back at her from behind their guns.

Diana whipped out her pistol and aimed down at the plant-like aliens occupying the bulky ship. “You scratched our paint!” she screamed as she fired. Her first two shots pinged off of the cases next to their guns.

The third hit something important.

Diana laughed as pops and explosions went off inside the ship, like a popcorn factory set ablaze.

“It’s fixed!” Ahvie said.

The left engine groaned, but it came back to life. It was still smoking lightly, and there were sparks going off under the hood, but it was giving them thrust.

Diana levelled them off and came back down to a more reasonable height just as they passed the smoking Jelsha ship.

“Nice work back there!” Diana said.

“Ahvie thinks that you’re insane!”

Diana couldn’t help but cackle. “Maybe, but it’s the insane that win these kinds of things!”

The canyon ended in a stark wall, and they found themselves shooting across the next section of the race. The scrap graveyard, where behemoths went to die.

There were seven ships ahead of them, some a decent ways away.

Diana was itching to catch up.

***