Throttle Thirty
The first intersection would be one of the best places for Diana to gain any sort of lead.
It was a tight turn to the right, then another turn to the left. The first was about ninety degrees, the second was even tighter. The tunnel also narrowed considerably around that junction.
She couldn’t guess why. Maybe they had to build around something. It didn’t matter at the moment.
Neon advertisements blurred past. Not so much because she was moving past them at ludicrous speeds, but because she was skirting so close to the edge of the road as she flew past.
Abatrath spun himself around and fired his thrusters again to slow down. He was doing it at an angle though, aiming to shoot around the corner with a nice curve.
Diana twisted in the air like a cat trying to land on all fours, she set her boot magnets to fire automatically, then she started running from sign to sign. Her feet crunched on plastic and glass tubes, sparks following her steps as she used every item hanging off the walls as a step to make herself just a little bit faster.
Abatrath reached the intersection first, of course, but he’d slowed down.
She shot after him, going well past the speed a normal human could sprint in one-g.
Planting a foot on the last signboard before the intersection began, Diana thrust ‘forwards’ with the jets on her back and realigned herself before jumping off into the intersection.
She flipped herself over into a smaller target to avoid a tram that was passing right through her trajectory.
Then she was in the middle of the corridor, and the next turn was a hundred and ten degrees behind her.
Diana spun, brought her feet down before her and aimed for the stone wall between two shops.
Her knees bent so hard she almost knocked the air out of her lungs as she rammed into the wall. She flung her arms out, spurted some air from the jets on her arms to keep even, then sprung back up, heading straight down the passage.
Abatrath’s more sensible flightpath meant that he was dead in the centre of the route when Diana zipped by him. “See you around!” she said.
That got the polerin to glower at her. His thrusters barked and soon he was jetting after her.
It wouldn’t be fun if he lost because he thought she was going to be so easy to beat.
Diana laughed as she took in the next section of the path they’d be racing down.
It was a much wider tunnel, more or less flat, but far busier. Trams were flowing past, three above and below, tubes cut across the space, with a full flow of floating traffic zipping around the edges as aliens with jetpacks flitted from shop to shop.
Diana flung an arm out and fired her thrusters for all they were worth, aware the entire time of the dropping percentage of fuel as she did so.
Abatrath was coming in hot behind her, and in this wide open space, he’d have a huge advantage over her.
She spun, bleeding off some of her sideways momentum even as she narrowed herself down to be as aerodynamic as possible and fired her upwards thrust as hard as she could.
The smart thing to do was simple: burn a bit over half her fuel on the way across the room, keeping to the middle where the traffic was lightest and where there were fewer obstacles. Midway across, she’d spin around and burn to decelerate.
The timer on the compressor upgrade read thirty-four seconds until the nanites were done. If she was smart, they’d be done before she reached the end of the passageway and she’d have better chances as she took on the rest of the raceway.
That was the smart choice.
Diana didn’t hold the smart choice in high esteem. Not when it wasn’t the fastest choice.
Gritting her teeth, Diana pushed every last bit of fuel into gaining speed. The thrusters in her arms were the first to run out of fuel. Then her leg thrusters sputtered out.
Still twenty-five seconds until the compressors were done, and she was past the halfway mark of the highway.
Abatrath was ahead of her, but he was slowing down already. He was going to take the turn fast, but not stupidly fast.
When the fuel in her torso thrusters reached 10% she stopped burning and stopped accelerating. The g’s from the acceleration weren’t anything special, but it was a comfort to return to just plain freefall once more.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
She fired a microburst to one side, cutting ahead of a group of aliens crossing the road fast enough that her wake sent them reeling.
The curve was coming up ahead. The next turn was, technically, only about forty degrees to the right. But in reality, the intersection was shaped like the outer edge of a circle, a big curve that moved out to the left before circling around.
She eyed the time until her jets would start to refuel. Still twenty seconds. Plus the refuelling time…
She was, by her own guesstimate, going to ram into the far wall at about forty-five or fifty kilometres an hour. Her bones might have been reinforced, and she had nanites in her blood that would help against the impact, but she didn’t expect to walk away from that kind of crash while essentially wearing nothing but a jumpsuit and some weak body armour.
Diana glanced down, then grinned.
The trams followed maglev tracks laid out across the ceiling and floor. Nice, predictable paths. They weren’t exactly fast, maybe moving at thirty or so kilometres an hour. But that was fast enough for her.
She fired a burst downwards, gently guiding herself next to a tram heading in the same direction she was heading in. She didn’t have time to match speeds with it.
Instead, as the tram started to turn out ahead, she spun around and scraped the tip of a boot along the sleek metal of the train. The first impact sent her moving away from the train, so she turned on the magnets in her boot.
It was nearly impossible to balance it right, so she winged it. Slow enough that the traction between her boot and the train didn’t send her flying off, but not so strong that her boot clamped onto the train’s side.
She was still moving faster than the tram as she left a line of sparks along its side. It was, she figured, a little bit like rollerblading.
If rollerblading was done at high speeds, sideways, in zero-g, on moving platforms.
On reaching the front of the tram she fired her thrusters upwards and to the side, flinging herself across the tunnel so that she collided with the train above heading in the opposite direction.
She rolled with the impact, then groundher boots along the upper edge of the tram.
It was slowing her down, of course, but she was conserving at least some of her forward momentum, and it was allowing her to—more or less—gracefully take the turn.
“You’re insane!” Abatrath shouted as he rocketeed by.
Diana grinned after him. So, he’d caught up again. The race was turning into a constant game of cat and mouse, one passing by the other at every turn. In this case, she wanted to play the mouse more than the cat.
A ding sounded in her mind as the compression system for her jets finished. She glanced at the readouts. In the space of a single second the fuel in her arm thrusters went from 1% to 4%. That was… about half as much as she burned every second while using the thrusters.
It was better than nothing.
Diana leapt off the tram’s rear as she passed it, used a burst from her torso thrusters to level off her flight, then shot forwards and after Abatrath who was quick to start putting space between them.
She had to find a way to gain more speed, and before they made it to the next big turn. After that one there was just one last intersection where she’d be able to gain on him.
The brilliant flashing lights of security vehicles reminded her that Abatrath wasn’t the only challenge she’d have to deal with on the course.
A glance over her shoulder showed her two security aliens being pulled along by little thruster packs.
“Mistress, I see you’ve noticed station security. Do you want me to scramble their coms?”
“Nah, they’re as much a nuisance to him than they are to me. Besides, they make things more interesting!”
“As you wish. Please avoid injuring yourself.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” she replied.
Now, how was a simple girl to gain on someone who was accelerating faster than she was? She decided that the best way was probably to try something a little reckless.
***