The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

Kicker
wasn’t that sophisticated, and I preferred it that way. A feature like electronic landing gear would be nice sometimes, but I liked to think that not relying on my tech made me a better pilot. I didn’t want to get lazy and out of practice.
              The cradle was fully under the ship, now. I killed the vents and their roar in the cabin began to grow softer. As the turbines began to slow, the
Kicker
dropped at a steady rate until it made contact with the cradle, sending a heavy jolt through the hull. My seat vibrated slightly as several more clangs and clanks were heard below me. That was the sound of the secure cables being locked around the ship. After several seconds, the experienced dock workers had the ship locked in and my earphones crackled to life once more.
              “Retracting,” said Jack. “Welcome back, Elana.”
              Out my windscreen, I waved my hand at the control tower and smiled, not knowing if he could see it. “Thanks, Jack.
Cloud Kicker
out.”
              I pulled the cord from my helmet and placed it back up with my radio. With a yawn, I unbuckled my safety harness and swiveled around to the cargo bay, stretching my back as much as I could in the cramped space. Two empty hydro tanks were strapped to the wall by the thruster wires. I needed to fill them if I was going to have my speed for tomorrow. Maybe if I whacked the Leap engine with a wrench a few times, it might work for me, too.
              With a free hand, I pushed open the door, letting Rigel Campbell stomp inside. “Hey, Ellie,” he said with a smile, pulling the thick leather gloves off his hands and fiddling with his blonde hair. “Good run?”
              I smiled back at him. “Yeah, not bad. Here, take these, would you?”
              Before he could actually accept, I swung the large, aluminum tanks toward him, laughing at his surprised expression. His warm, hazel eyes went wide and his cheeks puffed out fantastically as the tanks collided with his gut. He wrapped his arms around them and turned toward the hatch, still smiling.
              “You’re welcome,” he said with a sarcastic smirk.
              I followed him out the door and onto the cradle, carrying the cardboard box that was destined for Mayor Westward’s house. “I am deeply in your debt,” I said, doing my best to sound insincere.
              There were a couple of reasons why I always preferred cradle number eleven. One was Rigel Campbell. He was a dockworker, assigned to cradle eleven since his fourteenth birthday when he got the job. He was the same age as I was now, perhaps a few weeks older, and nearly every day that I had been alive, I had seen Rigel at some point. He had been in Dr. Pinbacker’s clinic for a checkup the day I was born. His parents and mine were already acquainted, which was normal in a tiny city like the Gap, and they became great friends. Rigel had been a constant in my life before I’d even gained the ability to walk or speak. We had grown up together, survived together, and he was the only dockworker that I completely trusted with my ship. I had even let him fly it a few times, though I would never admit that to anyone.
              With my mother and father gone, I had very few comforts left in this world, but he was one of them. Whether it was an arm around my shoulder, a conversation, or just his goofy, crooked grin, he reminded me every day what home should feel like. His familiarity was also the only thing that could remind me of myself, to make me remember the girl I was before everything had gone so wrong. Aside from everything else, he was the one person that I would allow to call me Ellie. It wasn’t a nickname I was fond of, but from his mouth, I didn’t mind it. In truth, I would probably feel odd if he stopped using it.
              “You may want to see Alice today. Tomorrow, if you can’t,” Rigel said as we began shuffling toward the dock. The cradle we were walking on was retracting, but we never stood around to wait for it. We both usually had more work to do. “She’s got some…interesting things in there today.”
              I looked over at him, watching his gloved hands easily shift the heavy tanks in his arms. “What kinds of things?” I asked. Alice Butterfield’s entire shop was full of ‘interesting’ things, primarily because she was one of the very few shopkeepers left in Adams that still accepted trade if you had no money. There was never any knowing what would come through her door. Once, while there, Rigel and I saw the mounted, posed skeleton of an animal that no one could identify, or explain how it had arrived there. Another time, we had toyed around with an odd musical instrument that neither of us could seem to figure out. Her store was full of similar oddities. Rigel knew this, of course, so if there was something that he claimed was interesting, it was most likely worth a look.
              “I’m sure she’ll show you if she gets the chance,” Rigel said with a smile. He nodded toward the simple box in my hand. “Where’s that going?”
              If it were anyone else asking, I would have simply brushed off the question with something sarcastic. Since it was Rigel, though, I didn’t worry about it. “Mayor Westward,” I confessed.
              Rigel’s eyebrows lifted at once. “Ohhh, I see. What do you guess? Script for his Race Day interview?”
              I grimaced at the mention of Race Day. “Ugh. If it is, I think I should trip and lose it over the side.”
              It was sarcasm, of course, but Rigel knew better than anyone how I felt about the Race. For the last few days, more and more decorations had been going up all over town. It had been three years since I had seen them, and they were something I had not missed one bit. Soon, everyone in Adams would be asking who I was favoring, what ship I thought would be best, or which radio star I would get my play-by-play updates from. Some people knew enough to not bring it up to me, but I still dreaded it, and was unwittingly snappy and rude to anyone that I saw enjoying it.
              Part of me wanted to like it, honestly. The race was the only holiday that everyone in town could participate in. Most hadn’t the money for things like Christmas gifts or Ascendance Day parties, but the race was different. You didn’t need any money to enjoy it. You didn’t need a special venue to hold an event, it was universal. It was an event shared by everyone in every city. People were in good spirits leading up to it, it gave everyone plenty to talk about, and you could even stand to make a little coin, if you got lucky and placed a bet on the right pilot, anyway. And it only came around once every three years. I truly wished that I did enjoy it.
            But I didn’t.
              The race brought only pain to me. It brought memories and sorrows that I would rather stay buried. The race had taken my father six years ago. Three years later, my mother had entered. She never came back, either. The race had flown my siblings and me twice to Shiloh, the wealthiest, most fabulous city in the Dominion, where I’d wept against the Wall of the Fallen with my family’s names on it. At home, I had two Certificates of Bravery, the only consolation that we were given for their sacrifices. The race had taken almost everything from me, and it had given me nothing but grief.
              With the cradle still retracting, Rigel and I stepped onto the docks with Toby, the other dockworker a few paces behind us. Toby and I were cordial enough, but he was Rigel’s friend, really. He and I exchanged nods as he headed back to his work station, and Rigel let him pass before turning back to me.
              “You want me to help you take these to the shop?” he asked, raising his eyebrows and gesturing to the heavy hydro tanks under his arms.
              I nodded. “Yeah, if you could drop them there while I take this to Mayor Westward, that’d be stellar.”
              “Copy,” he said with a nod, seeming satisfied. “Toby, I’ll be back in a few.”
              Toby nodded, giving Rigel an odd smile as he passed.
              “What was that about?” I asked, glancing back at Toby. Rather than meeting my gaze, he was focused on watching the
Cloud Kicker
settle into place on the docks.
              Rigel looked down at me in confusion. “What was what?”
              “Hmm.” I narrowed my eyes up at him. “Nothing, I guess.”
              Shrugging, Rigel shifted the tanks in his arms and gave a smile to a passing mother and child. “Hi, Celia,” he said cheerfully.
            “Hello, Rigel!” Celia said beaming. Her daughter, which couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old, gave him a giddy wave of her own as they passed by.
              I had to admire the way that everyone seemed to adore Rigel. He may not have been the most skilled worker, or the best mechanic, or the best pilot, but…everywhere he went, people loved him. It may have been his sunny disposition. It may have been the way he was always ready with a joke or an optimistic comment. Personally, I thought it was just because everyone saw him as a big, goofy kid.
              “By the way,” he said to me as we made our way into the city. “You’re gonna want to cover your eyes when you cross the causeway.”
              I groaned. “Oh, right. The
banner
.”
              The causeway was the large, iron bridge that separated the town itself from the residential area, which was comprised mostly of tin-and-wood shacks. It was the part of Adams that actually spanned the gap on the mountain, the gap from which the city got its nickname.
            Due the rise in global temperature that had happened hundreds of years before my birth - around the same time that the air pollution was forming the Veil - the glacier that had been a part of Mt. Adams had melted, leaving two separated sections of land. When the geothermal plant was built, the shacks and huts for the workers sprouted up around it, creating a village that would later expand into a town. It was easier for the workers to live and labor there when it felt more like a home. Sadly, the financial backing was never enough, and the town had never been anything but impoverished. For the most part, I was grateful for this. I was glad that we didn’t end up like the snobby rich citizens from over on Rainier. Anyway, the city needed a bridge to connect the residents to the businesses, so they built the causeway between the two peaks, and the Gap became our official nickname. The wealthier cities used it almost like an insult when referring to Adams, but we adopted it as our own ages ago.
              “Yeah, the banner,” Rigel said, giving me a sympathetic smile. “Right where it always is.”
              “I’ll try not to tear it down as I pass,” I joked.
              Rigel grinned. “You really should. I’d make a new one that said
Elana Silver is the greatest
, and hang it there instead.”
              At this, I laughed loudly, something that I was not accustomed to doing. “Yeah, I’d like to see that.”
              We continued on our way into the city streets, nodding to the familiar shop vendors and even pausing so Rigel could drop some coins into the hands of Mr. Dormeur, the most notorious beggar in town. He gave Rigel a word of thanks and smiled widely.
              “How much do you give him on an average week?” I asked curiously as we walked away.
              Rigel shrugged. “I don’t know. Three or four tokens. Why?”
              “You do know that could feed you
and
your dad for probably two days?” I asked. “Since when are you that rich?”
              Rigel grinned again. “I’m not. None of us are. That’s why I like to help out. We’re all in the same ship, Ellie,” he finished with a crooked smile.
              I sighed, stepping out of the way as a group of young children scampered past our knees. “Say that when you’ve got mouths to feed.”
              “I will one day,” he said, almost dreamily. “See you later.”
              “See ya,” I said, watching as he took a left at the intersection we were passing. Despite the heavy tanks under his arms, he sauntered toward Old Man Nichols’ shop like he hadn’t a care in the world. I couldn’t help but smirk at the sight of him as I continued toward my delivery destination.
              The Mayor’s house was at the center of the town, and was the nicest building in the Gap. Of course, that wasn’t saying much. That just meant it was sturdier, and had less rust on the metal sections of it. It also had a second story, which was basically unheard of in Adams. Mayor Westward and his wife were the closest thing we had to wealth in our town. The people here tried not to resent them for it, though. Their status gave them some privileges, but ever since the death of their young daughter, Constance, from illness some years back, none of the citizens ever gave them any flak for it. The Dominion had failed to provide Constance the proper medical care in time, and she had died. The Westwards had felt the pain that the rest of us had felt, as well as the barely concealed indifference offered by the Archons, who were the rulers of the Dominion. From that moment on, the Westwards had become the same as us, and we all felt it.
              My route to the center of town took me past all the landmarks I had grown up with. There was Wilkerson’s bakery, where my brother and sister always like to stop and smell the air when the door opened. I couldn’t deny that I enjoyed it, too. It always smelled of sweetness and cinnamon, and sometimes even chocolate. Such delicacies were always just out of our budget, but smelling the delicious fragrances on the air was a treat in itself, and it always made us feel like children again. As I walked by, I inhaled deeply through my nose, catching a small whiff of fresh bread. It was delightful.
              After that was the Greer’s shop, where Mr. and Mrs. Greer made and sold glass trinkets and miniatures. They never got much business. Not from locals, anyway. But it was a labor of love for them, and Zanna adored looking at the tiny glass animals and airships. Rigel was fascinated by the process of glassblowing, and had almost ended up as an intern for Mr. Greer before Leo Campbell, Rigel’s father, forbade him from doing so. Apparently, there wasn’t enough money to be made in glass crafting. I remember Rigel being pretty upset, but he had listened. He became a dockworker instead, but I knew he still sometimes snuck into the Greer’s on his lunch break to watch them work.