The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) (34 page)

sat on. Reinhart, alongside a handful of other workers, had pulled out several burned up wires, which were sitting in a pile, all four of my hydro thruster tanks, and some boxes. They had practically removed everything that wasn’t bolted to the hull. On the platform under my starboard wing, I recognized the metal remains of my roof harness.
              As we approached, Reinhart raised his massive metal hand and gave us a friendly wave. “Ren, tell her what you found.”
              From the hatch of the
Kicker,
an athletic man - presumably Ren - poked his head out and looked over at me. He hopped out of the door and made his way over, wiping his blackened hands on a cloth he had hanging from his waistband. He was my height, probably about five-foot-six, or so, and he had short black hair, which was full of dirt and ash. From his pocket, he produced a pair of bifocals and put them on.
              “You were almost killed,” he said shortly. “Or I assume as much, anyway.”
              From behind Ren, a tall, thin, dark-skinned man emerged from the hatch, pointing down at one of the boxes on the ground. “Unless you make a habit of carrying bombs around.”
              I was taken aback. “I - what? A bomb?”
              The dark-skinned man, who I would later find out was named Moore, knelt down by the wooden box nearest to me and gently lifted the lid of it. “Take a look.”
              My eyes and mouth were already wide open. Inside the box, there was a complex system of gears and other clockwork. In the bottom of the box, I could make out some small grey blocks of what looked like clay, but they all had wires protruding out of them. On the surface closest to me, there was a strange curved hourglass with the sand mostly emptied into one side.
              “We guessed it wasn’t yours,” said a third voice. I looked up at another man, even taller than Moore, but still smaller than Reinhart. He was thin and wiry, and had long blonde hair that was swept to one side of his head.
              I tried to remember the names that Reinhart had called out to help him earlier. “Um…Noah?” I asked.
              He nodded, flashing a smile that was perfect enough to look like it belonged in Shiloh. “That’s me. But anyway, Ren’s right. You were probably two minutes from this thing going off.”
              I stared down at the bomb in front of me, shaking my head. How did this happen? Who had put a bomb on my ship? And when?
              “What stopped it from going off?” I asked, still incredulous.
              Ren knelt down and pointed to the curved hourglass. “Basically…this thing is the timer. It was built in here to sit on a trigger lever.”
              Moore nodded, rolling his shoulder. “Once enough sand drains into the bottom part, it has enough weight to press down on the trigger.”
              “And you light up like a solar flare,” Noah finished. “Lucky for you, the box tipped over and the sand stopped draining.”
              I blinked my eyes, somehow unable to comprehend just how close I had come to death. The box had probably tipped over when I had gone through the turbulence of the thunderstorm, the same one that had knocked out my electrical systems. I had a sudden realization, and I turned my head toward Darby, who had the same dumbfounded look on her face that I did.
              “Killian,” I breathed. “That’s what happed to him. That’s why he suddenly blew up!”
              Darby’s forehead wrinkled. “I thought it was because of Grace Buchannon.”
              I shook my head. “No, I…I think she was just there to make sure things went off as planned. She had a gun, but she couldn’t have made a ship just ignite like that. Not unless she was a perfect shot.”
              “She didn’t hit any of the rest of us,” Darby said, her eyes focused on the distance. “Which means she’s not.”
              “So Killian must have had one of these on board his ship!” I exclaimed. Unfortunately, this raised more questions.
              “Why just him?” Darby asked, voicing them. “Because he associated with you? If that’s true, then why not my ship? Or Rigel’s?”
              I shook my head. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
              Moore put his hands on his hips and clicked his tongue as he thought. “I think a better thing to wonder is…why someone is trying to kill
you
.” he asked, looking directly at me.
              I sighed and reached up to rub the back of my neck. This was insane to me. Someone was trying hard to kill me! I knew that the race was dangerous, but this was a whole new level. I felt like I was actively being hunted, conspired against. My insides turned to mush at the thought, and I shivered with a chill that had nothing to do with the hangar temperature
              “I don’t know,” I answered quietly, staring down at the bomb. It wasn’t entirely true. I had some idea, but I didn’t want to discuss it freely with these men. Maybe I could get some time alone with Darby to hash it out.
              The men in front of me exchanged looks with one another, and then slowly began gathering up the burned out components from my ship. “Well, you’re good to go on electrical systems,” Ren said. “We were able to cannibalize the roof apparatus to get the parts we needed.”
              “That means you won’t be able to fly from the outside anymore,” Noah said, looking as sympathetic as he could. “Sorry about that.”
              “That’s okay,” I replied, still in a haze of dread. “Thank you. All of you. I really appreciate the help.”
              They all suddenly reminded me of the cooks after I had thanked them, their faces surprised, but flattered. They gave me their best nods, and then shuffled away with the junk scrap in their arms. Moore even volunteered to take away the bomb. I didn’t know what they planned to do with it, but as long as it wasn’t on my ship, I didn’t really care.
              After they had gone, Reinhart sauntered over toward me, his enormous boots sending small vibrations through the platform with each step. “You’ve pissed
some
body off,” he rumbled. “Watch your back. No matter where you go. Don’t tell a soul, but we put you an extra radio with your old one. It don’t use megahertz like the normal ones. We use gigahertz. It’s trained on the frequency that we use here in the Cog. It’s a high frequency, so you won’t have comms on it until you’re about a click away.”
              Before I could respond, another man slipped out of the hatch of my ship. I recognized him immediately, mostly from the wild hair and soot on his face. I still didn’t know who he was, but he was obviously a mechanic of some kind. In his hands, he clutched some piece of machinery that I didn’t recognize, but it was blackened with grease and rust. Had he gotten it from my ship?
              “Repair, repair,” he muttered to himself. “Repair injector…must ionize the plasma.”
              He tottered by us without even acknowledging that we were there, and disappeared up a ladder to the second floor.
              “Don’t mind him,” Reinhart assured me. “He’s harmless.”
              I thanked him again, and he gave me a pat on the shoulder that almost knocked me to the floor, but he left me with Darby without asking any other questions. We watched him lumber away until he was well out of earshot before we turned to one another.
              “What are you thinking?” she asked hurriedly. “Audra?”
              I shook my head. “No. That was my first thought, but I think it was actually Beatrice Montgomery.”
              “The Archon!?” Darby’s face was contorted in shock.
              “I found her in my ship last night!”
              Her face was unreadable, some mixture of stunned and confused. “Tell me.”
              For the next several minutes, she and I held a whispered conversation outside of the
Kicker
. I explained to her about the previous night, when I had stumbled upon Beatrice inside the hold of my ship. I even included the part about her trying to steal my Helios brooch. The odd name was familiar to Darby, but she couldn’t nail down exactly where she’d seen or heard it. I was about to mention the captain’s pin, but a sudden epiphany struck me like a ton of lead.
              “Beatrice,” I said, letting the knowledge wash over me. “When I found her in there, that had to be what she had come to do.”
              Darby chewed her lip, considering this. “And Killian was docked right next to you.”
              “Oh, no…” I breathed, feeling a stab of horror slowly burying itself in my heart. “It was my fault! Those radio guys came to talk to me, and Killian…he was there! He started talking to them so I could leave, and I heard him say he and I were in an alliance!”
              I sank to my knees, but Darby stood in place with a faraway look of melancholy in her eyes. “That’s why he was bombed. Beatrice must have heard it on the radio.” Her voice was very quiet as she spoke.
              “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry! It’s all my fault!” I didn’t know who I was talking to, maybe to Darby, maybe to Killian, but I felt the terrible urge to throw up. He was dead because of me, because he happened to come to check on me right when Reed and Lex wanted an interview. Such a trivial thing…and it had cost him his life.
              Darby knelt down beside me and put her arm over my shoulder. “That is not your fault,” she said sternly. “There was no way you could have known. If I had been there, I would have said the same thing, and it would be Killian here with you instead of me. It’s just…bad luck.”
              Bad luck. Not just bad, it was the worst luck that anyone could have, being friends with me. Just because they knew me, Darby and Rigel had almost perished several times, and Killian had paid the biggest price. It was more than bad luck. It was more like a curse.
              Without a word, I got to my feet and shuffled through the hatch into my ship. I dogged it behind me and then just stretched out on the floor of the hold, lying on my back and hating myself.
              I didn’t have a watch, so I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but I was beginning to feel my lips cracking and drying out. I needed something to drink, but I had no idea how to get back to the galley. Even so, I didn’t really feel like leaving the ship. I kind of just wanted to lay there and do nothing. If I was by myself, no one could get hurt because of me. I thought about starting up my turbines and asking to leave. That Edmund guy was right. I was endangering every citizen of Ravencog just by being here.
              A knock at my hatch door stymied any thought of absconding. I knew it was Darby, but I didn’t say anything. I sort of wanted her to go away, but at the same time I didn’t really mind if she stayed. After a moment, the latch squealed open and she stepped inside, holding a decent-sized basket under her arm.
              “I know it’s late, but you should eat something,” she said. She sounded sweet and coddling, like a mother talking to a sick child.
              I was about to ask her to leave me be, but the scent of food from the basket roused the beast in my stomach, and I had no choice but to sit up and make room for her. She sat down next to me and opened the basket, pulling out two skins of water first. I took one and drank deeply from it, feeling the dry flesh in my throat coming back to life. Next, she handed me a plate of fried potatoes and peppers, and finally an apple, which I was impressed by. Sweet fruits were a delicacy to everyone in the Dominion, and the price reflected it. I wondered if they were from a personal stash of hers.
              “Thank you,” I said quietly after I had eaten everything.
              She leaned back against the wall and sighed contentedly. “You are very welcome.”
              For a while, the two of us just sat in silence. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t have anything to say, or if she was just waiting for me to come out of my funk. I yawned and cracked my knuckles, deciding to say the first thing that popped into my mind.
              “I wish Rigel was here.”
             
Where did
that
come from
?
              Darby looked over at me and grinned widely. “I bet he wishes you were there.”
              “Why do you say that?”
              She shrugged, still smiling. “Just a hunch.”
              I gave a sideways glance at her, wondering just what she knew. Or at least what she suspected. I hadn’t told her about the kiss on the cheek Rigel had given me back in Shiloh, so I don’t know what she was basing her thought off of. I thought about filling her in, but just the thought was enough to make my face and neck grow hot.
              I wondered what he was doing. Was he flying? Or was he scrambling about on some mountaintop, searching for a clue that I would never have a chance to find? I realized then that if I were to continue in the race, I would have to depend on Rigel, on the information that he collected. He was racing for both of us now. Darby too, in fact. He had made mistakes, yes, but if there was one thing I knew about Rigel, it was that he would never let me down when it really mattered.
              “He’s a good guy,” Darby said, sounding like she had read my thoughts.
              I nodded in agreement, but didn’t say anything. Another moment of silence passed between us before I opened my mouth again.
              “I’m sorry about Killian.”
              This time, instead of trying to cheer me up, Darby just drew in a slow breath and exhaled it in a huff. “So am I,” she said sadly. “May I sleep here for the night?”