Throttle Thirty-One

Abatrath was a confident man. It wasn’t a confidence borne of arrogance though. He was confident because he took things at his own pace.

When he placed a bet, it was, more often than not, a winning one. When he raced, it was to win, or at least come close to it.

His confidence was earned. Others who knew him respected him. He enjoyed that, but he didn’t let it go to his head.

Being respected was not something you needed to be a victor. Knowledge, preparation, study, and the assuredness required to act on those were the keys he found that opened the locks of victory.

Abatrath glanced back as he heard a wild scream. There was chatter over his comms, but he had dimmed the sound to reduce the potential for distraction. He realised why there was so much excitement as he saw a full squad of station security rushing after him on their little jet-propulsed no-gravity scooters.

Then he searched for his opponent.

The… he wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but it seemed to use female-pronouns. A bi-gendered race, likely able to give live-birth, predatory, and likely omnivores. That was enough to narrow down the species of most sentients to a few hundred, but he had yet to pin Diana’s exact species.

It didn’t matter. He had prepared for this race as well as someone could given the circumstances, and he would win.

It would bring him some joy to beat Diana, especially after seeing her futile efforts to keep up. She had even passed by him at one time, though at great risk to herself.

The creature was not confident in the way he was. She charged ahead with the headstrong assuredness that all would be well of a kitten trying its first jump. The mad dash, the scramble of gangly limbs with no grace. He couldn’t help but see it as more evidence that he would assuredly win.

And yet.

Abatrath sensed something approaching him from behind at great speeds and he twitched a finger over the controls of his jetpack.

A small burst of gas shoved him to the side, which he immediately corrected with a counter-balancing push.

The tunnels of Waitless Station were hectic, chaotic places. They were too narrow to allow for proper laneways, so a jumbled mix of different traffic types were jammed in together in a way that would make a borel safety inspector sweat syrup.

He judged the distance ahead of him—still some ways before the last big turn—then glanced back.

He stared for a moment, moderately confused.

The… Diana, was hooked onto a station security scooter with one boot. The device had obviously been set to autopilot, but Diana was manoeuvring it with big waves of her forelimbs and shots of compressed air.

Why she was making a fool of herself became clearer when a second station security officer approached her, flicked out a stun baton, and tried to hit her with it.

That was foolish. Both her actions and the officer’s. Hitting her now might injure her, and then she might crash into the floating civilians nearby, or into a wall or tram. The death would be the officer’s fault. Her foolishness was… doing whatever it was she was trying to do.

Abatrath blinked as the woman caught the officer by the wrist, pulled the thin erivada off their scooter, then with a kick of the leg that wasn’t clinging onto the other scooter, shoved them backwards and towards the other station security officers trailing them.

With another push of her little manoeuvring thrusters—clearly not strong enough for a proper race—she came close enough to the now liberated scooter and grabbed onto it.

Abatrath glanced ahead. The penultimate curve was coming, and if he didn’t slow down, he might not be able to take the turn tight enough to avoid a crash.

He looked back, just for an instant, as Diana screamed what he imagined was a cheer as she clamped her boot onto the second scooter.

The idiot! Her centre of mass was far too high, it would drag her up and—

Her boots unclamped from both at the same time, the two scooters pulling up and ahead of her until, with twin smacks that he heard despite the distance, she caught onto the handles on their middle and forced one of the scooters to point in another direction.

For just a moment, Abatrath imagined seeing Diana being torn in half by the opposing pulls, but she dragged the two devices into a rough semblance of the same direction and then shot down along the tunnel, only narrowly missing one of the stone walls.

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“She’s mad,” he said.

The chatter on his comms seemed to agree.

The problem was that it didn’t matter how insane Diana was, she was still catching up.

Abatrath decided that the best thing to do was to ignore her and focus on the path ahead. He didn’t slow down as he approached the curve. Quite the opposite, he pushed his throttle up just a notch. It was only two percent more, but he was already hovering just under the redline, and he didn’t dare push past that.

The curve was wide and long and near its middle it switched directions, meaning that he wouldn’t be able to see far into it.

“Clearance?” he barked.

His engineers and crew were on the line. They weren’t just there to keep tabs on the gambling, but to keep him appraised too.

“Good. Tram upper level with cargo boxes. No emergency calls. Some security amassing at the end of the curve.”

Abatrath grunted an affirmative and the line filled with the inane chatter he was used to once more.

With a few careful adjustments, he moved ground-ward and towards the outer edge of the tunnel. Large signs sticking out of the walls blasted past him, but he continued to keep his speed up.

He grit his teeth as he glanced to the side and saw Diana catching up, her unwieldy twin-scooters giving her some trouble as she took the turn far faster than was reasonable. At the rate she was going she’d burn out both of her scooters in a matter of minutes.

But she didn’t need minutes.

The end was just one curve and then a straight away.

“Boss!”

Abatrath cursed. “What?” he asked.

“They’re closing the emergency bulkheads! Just after the next curve.”

His blood ran hot.

The sunless bastards from security had probably decided that two races in one day was two too many. If they were going to lock up this section of the station, then… then there was little he could do.

He glanced over at Diana, who clearly didn’t get the memo.

Would she slow down even if she knew?

He took the next curve hard, burning down with his pack until he was afraid a nozzle might melt. It was fast, and dangerous, but he came out of the curve intact.

Just the straight left.

The bulkheads were shutting ahead of them. Two large doors, both cutting off the tunnel as they slid across it.

Even as he looked, the doors, coming in from opposite sides, crossed by each other.

There was maybe five or six metres between the two, and they weren’t moving rapidly. If someone were to slow down enough, they could slip past one, then the other.

He spun around and started a slow-down burn, losing speed to gain the momentum he’d need to slip by.

Then Diana shot right past him.

“What are you doing!”

She laughed, a high cackle that he recognized as madness. “Winning!”

He spun around again, relying on the smaller, less powerful jets on his chest to slow him down. He needed to see this.

Diana let go of her scooters, then brought her limbs forwards, all the jets on them firing to slow her down.

It wouldn’t be enough!

And then, at the very last moment as she crossed the edge of the first bulkhead, she reached out and grabbed the metal door.

There was a heavy wrench as she was swung around, and Abatrath was certain he saw her arm twisting back…

Was she of a species that had very flexible arms? It was possible that her limbs could absorb that kind of impact. Possible. But he doubted it.

He slipped past the first door, landed on the second with a bend of his knees, then carefully jetted around the second door.

It was too late, of course. Diana was far ahead of him now. It would take entire seconds for him to catch up.

Station Security were pouring out of side streets to catch them, but they too would be late.

“She’s insane,” he said.

Insane but, perhaps, confident in her own insanity. She had said that she would win, and she had, he realised as he jetted after her.

Confidence, untempered by sanity, but not exactly arrogance.

A cold sweat slid under his thick fur. What was he dealing with here?

***