Race Day
A Science Fiction One Shot
Thanks to for another excellent set of prompts for Flash Fiction Friday, 28th March edition, this time he offered - “Write about a triumph.” “Divine thunder.” “‘Pick something else.’” and “A character with a scar.” I went with “Write about a triumph” and “divine thunder”. Hope you enjoy!
Gersha twisted the throttle hard. It was now or never. Divine Thunder growled and growled, sliding across the desert sands with liquid ease. He passed Fresh Paint on the inside, then Tubular on the outside, but he was still only in third with Blue Sunrise ten yards ahead almost neck-and-neck with Callisto. The finish line was just beyond The Drop, he just needed a little more. Gersha hunkered down and pushed Divine Thunder to her limit until she screeched a broken roar and he was thrown from the seat, the bike spinning out of control to explode on the track. Gersha lay in his racesuit screaming into his helmet, cursing and thrashing the sand that had cushioned his fall. The paramedics were rushing over but they weren't needed, he wasn't seriously injured, but his bike... his bike was dead.
Race day. Without a bike. Gersha looked at the digital clock display bleeding red numbers out into the before-dawn night. He couldn't go to the track, not without a bike. He'd be a laughing stock, a hanger on. Better to drink till noon and pass out on the couch watching Lampert win another season on Callisto. How'd he explain it to his mama, to Seraphine, to anyone. He'd dodged every commentator on his way out, he'd ignored the phone calls from Cheng Industries, even deleted the condolence message from his agent. On track to win the season only to crash out, literally. It was the worst of all possible results. Grand plans to propose to Seraphine when he was victorious now lay in tatters, his dream of winning the season as the youngest hoverbike rider was over. What girl would want a failed hoverbiker, a washed up rider before his twenty-fifth. Maybe it was best he bowed out now and saved everyone a lot of heartache.
He rolled over and went back to sleep.
His phone rang, loud and obnoxious, which meant it was a number he didn't recognise. Beams of sunlight filtered round the edges of his curtains, the digital clock read 10:38AM in red blinking numbers. In his drowsiness he hit accept rather than decline and someone using an electronic sounding voice changer spoke, 'Shame about your last race. Shame you aren't on the track for today's. You going to throw away your dream just because of one crash? Divine Thunder's waiting for you,' the line went dead.
Gersha tossed his phone across the room and crashed down on the pillow, 'Bloody pranksters!' he lay there thinking about the race, it was all that occupied his mind from waking till sleeping. 'A substitute on my bike?' A flicker of hope rose in him and he leapt out of bed. He grabbed his racesuit and helmet and rushed out the door.
Gersha arrived with ten minutes to spare. Twenty-nine riders were on the track finishing their warm up laps and getting into starting positions. His agent, Fresko, rushed to get his attention but Gersha wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, he had to see if it was true. He barged into the garages and there it was, Divine Thunder as shiny and gold as the day he had bought it. He sprinted to it and ran his hand down the length of it, feeling the electricity of unbelief crackle across his fingertips.
Fresko was behind him, 'You can't ride it. We don't know who brought it here, where it came from, we don't know anything. It could be a trap.'
'Why bring my bike back just to kill me on the track?' Gersha was already switching her on and checking the balance. Everything was exactly as he liked it.
'Not that kind, a legal kind. If you use it you might be forced into a contract you don't want, become indentured to some criminal gang or tied up in a tussle between you and which ever company brought this in,' Fresko's mind raced with disastrous possibilities.
'Fresko, I'm riding the hoverbike. You can't stop me,' Gersha lay a hand on his agent's shoulder and smiled. He hopped on the back of Divine Thunder, back from the grave, and slipped his helmet on. He had less than a minute to get on the track.
The hoverdrive thrummed to life and he burst out the garages and onto the track.
'Is that Gersha Halden on Divine Thunder?' the colour caster called from the booth at the height of the stands.
'Looks like it, didn't that bike get destroyed last race?' the other commentator added.
'It did and Gersha was lucky to walk away with only a few scratches. I wasn't aware there was a backup Divine Thunder.'
'Me neither,' the other commentator said.
'There wasn't,' Gersha told himself in the privacy of his helmet. He zoomed onto the track and down the line of ready hoverbikes to reach his seed position near the front but it had been reassigned due to his absence. Officials were waving him at him from the stands that he would have to start the race from the back of the line, in the thirtieth position. Gersha spun the bike around and blasted to the other end as the starting lights flashed red. He one-eightyed just as they turned green and the race began.
Gersha revved the bike to the red line and blitzed past eleven hoverbikers before anyone had reached the first corner. The sand swirled behind him like a giant wave. The crowds jumped and cheered, waving streamers and flags with their favourites on, he saw his own up there in clusters, the words Divine Thunder splashed in thick expressive characters over a golden background. Seraphine's usual seat was empty, then he was past the crowds and it was him and the track. He cut across to the inside, shifted down, and drifted round the corner, a hairs breadth from the auto-cut that would have left him, and any other race cutting the corner, a sitting duck. Divine Thunder slipped by two other riders in pink and orange. Gersha cursed, he couldn't even see Lampert on Callisto no doubt leading the race. A torrent of sand was kicked up ahead of him as three hoverbikes vied for a single position. The loser of the trio was shunted into the sand, flipping end over end, tossing his green clad rider high in the air to land in a heap on the sandy track. Gersha veered around the rider, curled up into a ball, not wanting the sudden and short change in height from the track to distress Divine Thunder's hover drives. A rider behind him wasn't so careful and in his mirror he saw his pursuer jerk around and the hoverbike spin horizontally off the track, taking its rider with it.
Gersha hunkered down below the minimal windshield above the handlebars and accelerated on the long straight that stretched out ahead of him. The racers spread out trying to slip ahead of one another, leaving little room to manoeuvre around them. He squeaked between two racers neck-and-neck ahead of him, both watching him sail by, Gersha watching himself reflected in their visors. He waved and leaned right to pass by the next rider. The end of the long straight was nearing, the horizon a haze of heat and light. Callisto reached the next corner, well ahead of Lampert's closest chaser.
The track weaved through towering rock formations with canyons barely two hoverbikes wide. Gersha closed to the rider in front until Divine Thunder was touching the rear of whatever the middle of the pack racer was riding. He darted left, then right, but each time the rider ahead matched his movement preventing him from passing. Gersha braked, hard. He was shunted backwards, forcing the hoverbikes behind him to slow or crash into him. Then he twisted the throttle to maximum, shifted low to high in rapid succession, and feinted left. The middle of the pack rider went left and at the last moment Gersha slammed Divine Thunder rightward. His competitor attempted to match the movement but Gersha was already between him and the rock wall. Sparks sprayed as Divine Thunder was slashed along the back half but Gersha was free and past with another ten ahead of him, Lampert, the favourite, in the lead.
Divine Thunder hummed through the canyon and burst out into the flat sand dunes that dominated the landscape, the track marked out with flags and flashing white beam lights beyond which lay hover dead zones, sinking sands, buried predators, and anti-hover patches. The track swerved left and right with harsh hairpin bends that forced him to slow right down lest he shunt the hoverbike too hard and cause the hoverdrive to malfunction as it attempted to hover against nothing. He maintained his position through the mile of bends while Lampert pulled further ahead.
The track gained incline toward the end of the flat desert slalom and it was what Gersha had been waiting for. He engaged Divine Thunder's rear hoverdrive and revved it hard making the bike stand at a forty-five degree angle against the track. The hoverbike groaned climbing the almost twenty-five per cent incline but it did not slow, unlike everyone else. He managed to crawl past four riders at embarrassingly low speeds and then slammed down at the peak and tore ahead of the next few until he was in second place. Lampert on Callisto was still a ways ahead of the pack but now he was the only one in Gersha's way. From the peak of the desert mountains he could see the stands, and the finish line below in the wide crater that housed The Hover Bowl. The megascreens showed him and Lampert streaming across the track, a vortex of sand behind them both, Divine Thunder with a nasty scar down her right side. Gersha hoped nothing internal was damaged, that she would hold unlike last time.
He twisted the throttle and blasted across the plateau, Lampert growing as he closed the distance. The rider checked behind him, the glare of his visor giving him away, and Callisto was squeezed for a little more speed.
It wouldn't be enough, so long as Divine Thunder held together.
Gersha pushed his darling to the red line and then past it, the rev dial maxing out and flashing a red triangle at him. The hoverdrive was warm between his legs and the hoverbike began to lift higher off the track, a sure sign of too much power for it to handle. Gersha slid low behind the windshield to increase the aerodynamics by an iota and clung to Divine Thunder.
The track gently curved toward the finish line, the crowds screaming his and Lampert's names and the names of their hoverbikes.
Then came The Drop; a two hundred foot cliff from the upper track to the lower, and the finish line.
Gersha clung to his bike, flicked the rear drive on at the last moment and all the excess power that threatened to pop like last time was blown at the rear sending him up and forward to arc through the air. He switched off the hoverdrive and flew.
His breathing stopped.
The crowds went silent.
Lampert was below him, thudding hard against the track and quick to regain speed but it wasn't enough. Gersha was in free air, his bike a missile. He angled it down and flipped the hoverdrive on a few yards above the ground. Divine Thunder grumbled as the sudden force slammed a crater into the track. Lampert hit the crater, the sudden change in height shaking Callisto from his control and out into the anti-hover fields. Lampert was flung across the sand, spinning on his front.
Gersha sped off towards the finish line.
'He's done it! The youngest champion in the history of hover racing!' the commentator announced.
Gersha stood in the seat, waving to the thousands of cheering fans waving flags with his image on, his hoverbike, emblazoned on gold backgrounds. He sped round the track, him and a few smouldering hoverbikes lost in the race. When he returned, after a more sensible approach to The Drop, she was there. Seraphine, all smiles in her sundress and combat boots. Divine Thunder growled to a halt, the crowds had descended towards where the podium had been hastily erected in the centre of the track. He dismounted, his entire body trembling with energy, and Seraphine threw her arms around him.
'I'm so glad you came.'
Gersha took her by the arms and kissed her, then, her words bouncing in his head, he held her and furrowed his brow. 'It was you?'
'On the phone,' she nodded, a beaming smile. Her blonde hair drifted over her shoulders in the gentle breeze.
'But... how?'
'You were so close and I knew it meant the world to you, and it means the world to me to see you win. You have a lot of incredible fans who pulled through, that's all I'll say.' Seraphine grinned mischievously and held him tight.
A man was at his ear, 'Come on, time for your trophy.' The man was the Commissioner, chief of the race, and he guided Gersha up to the podium. Everywhere he looked there was a camera, a fan taking a photograph, someone screaming his name, others queueing for autographs. The cameras all focussed on him and the Commissioner began speaking but Gersha was too distracted to hear his words. Then a tall brunette was handing him the slender Hoverbike Championship trophy in all its gold and silver glory. He raised the shimmering prize over his head. The crowd cheered, but all he could think about was Seraphine. He searched for in the crowd and ran to her, trophy in hand. He leapt off the podium and into the crowd, 'Seraphine!'
There she was, all smiles and giddiness, the crowd and cameras fell away leaving only him and her.
'Will you marry me?'
'Yes!'
That was all he had ever wanted to hear.
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